As founder and co-chair of the upper Mississippi River Congressional task force I have long sought to preserve the river's health and historical multiple uses including as a natural waterway and a home to wildlife for the benefit of future generations of Americans.

I think that the millions and millions of young Americans young Americans who have health care today who wouldn't have had it if the president hadn't acted are better off.

Americans want and deserve a broad array of health insurance choices so they can identify those that best fit their own individual or family needs. These choices expand when we allow free enterprise to foster innovation not smother it with taxes and one-size fits all ideology.

Prior to passage of Obamacare Americans spoke out against the individual mandate they didn't want to change the health care they had they didn't want a 3 000-page bill that empowered 15 Washington bureaucrats to decide the future of the doctor-patient relationship.

The Supreme Court has never ruled that Congress can use the Commerce Clause to require individuals to engage in an activity they have chosen to avoid. Yet that is precisely what Obamacare does: It forces Americans without health insurance to purchase coverage. Such a requirement is unprecedented and unconstitutional.

Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less.

Under the Healthy Americans Act you're in charge of your health care - not your employer. If you lose your job change jobs or just can't find a job your health insurance is guaranteed to stick with you.

I believe the most important aspect of Medicare is not the structure of the program but the guarantee to all Americans that they will have high quality health care as they get older.

It's time to look beyond the budget ax to assure access to health care for all. It's time to look for bipartisan solutions to the problems we can tackle today and to work together for tomorrow - building a health care system that works for all Americans.

I mean the fight for a health care bill to cover all Americans and leave none behind is attacked as being a race appeal which is not true but then it's put out in the media as true.