In first floor speech, Joe Heck says ‘more wrong than right’ with health care law

By Karoun Demirjian

Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011 | 9:19 a.m.

Nevada’s newest congressman made his first speech on the House floor this morning, and he broke onto the scene by breaking his silence on a bill to repeal the country’s new health care law.

“Increasing access to high-quality health care while reducing costs — that was the goal,” Rep. Joe Heck said. “Some of these solutions are there, but there is more wrong with this bill than there is right.”

Speaking with the authority of a medical professional and small business owner, Heck spoke calmly against the GOP-dubbed “job-destroying” health care law they also call "Obamacare," which passed the 111th Congress on a party-line vote last year.

When the House votes this evening on whether to repeal that law, it’s also expected to come down to the party line.

Nevada’s Republican Rep. Dean Heller, who voted against the original health care bill, is expected to vote for repeal.

Nevada’s Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, who voted for last year’s health care bill, is expected to continue to show her support for it by voting against repeal.

It’s not expected to come up before the Senate, where Nevada’s senior lawmaker, Majority Leader Harry Reid — who maneuvered the bill through Congress a year ago — has said repeal attempts are a pointless exercise and a waste of time.

“This is nothing more than partisan grandstanding at a time when we should be working together to create jobs and strengthen the middle class,” Reid said of the House’s planned vote on Wednesday.

Republicans have argued that the health care bill is a job-killer — destroyer these days, post-Tucson — and will siphon off 1.6 million jobs from the economy.

Not repealing the health care law “will cost money taxpayers don’t have and will cost jobs we can’t afford to lose,” Heck said on the floor Wednesday morning.

Democrats counter that the changes to the system and the tax breaks for small businesses in the health care law helped to add more than a million jobs to the economy since the legislation passed Congress last March. They also say it will make the health care sector one of the fastest-growing industries in the country, and in the final analysis will add 890,000 jobs.

Economists have opined that the job-making vs. job-taking abilities of the bill are difficult to predict, and in the end, may in fact, be a wash.