[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 166 (Tuesday, October 30, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H12224-H12231]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HEALTH CARE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for
60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address
you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.
And having been a speaker in waiting, I had the privilege to listen
to some of the Blue Dogs talk about their budgetary priorities. And I
also listened to the reflection of the individual from Iowa, whose cows
I represent down there in my territory. And we are good neighbors and
we've worked together over the last 5 years that I have been in this
Congress.
There always are two sides to an issue, and a number of the
statements that were made here I absolutely agree with. I would submit,
though, that there is a distinction between us, and that is, I want a
balanced budget. I worked for a balanced budget. I called for a
balanced budget upon my arrival in this Congress 5 years ago. I've
sought to produce those numbers and get that language out on the floor.
My Blue Dog friends also call for a balanced budget, but they're
willing to raise the taxes. And they have offered several budgets to
this Congress that would have raised taxes in order to balance this
budget.
I would submit that we need to balance the budget a different way. We
need to do it by controlling spending. And we can do a better job of
controlling discretionary spending, but in there is not the answer, not
the complete answer to the things that we need to do.
The tax cuts that came from the Bush administration immediately
following September 11, 2001, and the next wave of tax cuts that we did
in 2003 have stimulated this economy, and they have probably kept us
from a recession and maybe even a depression. So, Mr. Speaker, I would
submit this: I would take your reflection back to that period of time
that was in the end of the Clinton administration, during the campaign
of the Bush-Gore campaign in the year 1999 and 2000 and the beginning
of the Bush administration. We had this growing, booming economy, and
it coupled with serious spending cuts that were brought forth on the
floor of this Congress by Republican leadership, the new Republican
leadership that arrived here, elected in 1994, sworn in here in the
first week of January of 1995, and came in and said, we're
[[Page H12225]]
going to do these 10 things, and we're going to work towards a balanced
budget. And they actually didn't know that they could accomplish that.
But as they brought the spending restraint and the cuts and the efforts
to eliminate entire departments, unsuccessful, I might add, Mr.
Speaker, that constrained this growth in spending. And by the way, they
didn't have any inhibitions about cutting down and limiting the
spending that President Clinton wanted to do at the time. They had
political opposition, so points were being scored on both sides. And
while that was going on, we were holding this budget down. In fact, the
government went into shutdown. And there was a time when I thought that
the leadership in this Congress should not have blinked. But in the
end, regardless of who got the blame, this Congress, had it not had the
majority that was here, and I would point out to the Speaker that that
was a Republican majority, we would not have had a balanced budget in
the 1990s. You would not have seen John Kasich with a T-shirt that said
``back in the black'' with the line of our spending cut down and where
we were going into solvency.
But we got into solvency. And I don't get the credit for that, I
wasn't here at the time. This Congress got into solvency because it had
solid, conservative leadership. And then, as the administration changed
from the Clinton administration, which has been lauded here tonight, I
believe, to the Bush administration, at the same time we had a dot-com
bubble in our economy, there was a growth on Wall Street that capital
was being attracted to the information age, that type of industry. And
there was a belief that because technology had taken the microchip to
the level where we could store and transfer energy more effectively and
more efficiently than ever before, there were billions of dollars
speculated in dot-com companies on the idea that, with all this
technology, we are transitioning from the industrial age into the
information age.
And as we go into the information age, Mr. Speaker, the capital that
was attracted to those businesses was capital that simply was placed
upon the speculation that, because we could transfer and store
information more efficiently than ever before, somehow these companies
that were formed for that purpose would be able to all make a profit.
But the bubble, when it burst, it was the realization that this
information, just because we could store it and transfer it more
effectively than ever before, didn't necessarily transfer into profit.
It couldn't be translated directly into profit because the information
storage and transferability that came with the information age, that
actually caused the information age, that ability was predicated upon
how that information could provide a good or a service more
efficiently, or to the extent that that information could be used for
recreational purposes.
Now, we understand the good or the service being provided more
efficiently. Look at the things that we can do with tracking inventory,
for example, or dispatching trucks on the roads of America with the
satellite transponders, to be able to sit there at a software screen,
if you're dispatching trucks in a nationwide or continentwide trucking
company, and be able to see on that screen a little dot where every
truck is, be able to click on that and find out when that truck got its
last rest, how much rest the driver had, what the maintenance is on the
truck, what the cargo is, what the delivery time is, how many miles are
left, and be able to have that software package give you a warning on
when a load might be late. And we went from keeping significant
inventories in our warehouses in America to just-in-time delivery,
partly because we could do a more effective job of dispatching trucks.
That's just one of the things that came with the information age, and
that's efficiencies that came into this because of being able to store
and transfer and calculate more efficiently than ever before. But, a
miscalculation that was made by Wall Street was a miscalculation that,
because we could store and transfer and calculate more effectively,
that it all translated into profit. It did not.
And so the speculators on Wall Street and into the private companies,
whether they were publicly traded or whether they were privately traded
companies, the speculation part of that was the dot-com bubble. And it
burst. And it burst kind of slowly, not like a balloon pop, but kind of
a slow letting out of the air. And as that bubble collapsed, that
transitioned across the end of the Clinton administration into the
beginnings of the Bush administration. And while that was going on, we
had corruption that emerged within major companies, within major
corporations within the United States. And we know who some of them
are, Enron, for example.
And so, as this corruption was corrected and as we saw legislation
being passed in this Congress and signed by the President, there was
also downward pressure on our stock market because they didn't know how
much regulation they were going to get from this Congress, under the
pen of the President, what was going to happen. So, how would this
Congress react?
Well, as that debate went on, as we began to clean up the corruption
that emerged, and thankfully that did happen to a large degree, that
went on top of the slow letting out of the air, I call it the bursting
of the dot-com bubble, those two pressures downward came downward on
our economy. Well, we know that our tax collections are also predicated
upon how strong our economy is. And if we have growth, we will have
more taxes; if we have a decline, we will have fewer taxes. With the
dot-com bubble bursting and the corporation corruption that was being
addressed, both suppressed our economy and the tax revenues declined.
While this was going on and as the President was getting his feel of
coming into the Oval Office and beginning to become the newly sworn
President of the United States, January until September, in September
of that same year that the President was sworn in, while he is dealing
with the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the corporation corruption,
and while this Congress is as well, we had the September 11 attack on
the Twin Towers, on the Pentagon, and a plane that crashed in
Pennsylvania. That was a direct attack on our national defense center
and a direct attack on our financial centers.
And so, Mr. Speaker, all of these things came descending down upon
this Nation, focused like a laser beam on the responsibilities of the
President of the United States. And the President responded by calling
for tax cuts in a wave that came pretty closely after the September
11th attacks. While we were ramping up our defense, while we were
ramping up homeland security, while we were setting up the TSA, and
today we walk through the airports and there are billions that have
been spent for the security just to board airplanes, and you add that
to the cost of the expansion of our military, the cost that came
because we went, appropriately, into Afghanistan and then in the
following year and a half we went then on into Iraq, all of these
things were pressures on this economy. And all of them worked against a
balanced budget that, the last number I saw it looked like we were
going to come in about $158 billion in the red, $158 billion, and one
could speculate as to whether that is a hard number, whether it might
go up or whether it might go down as a percentage of our overall
budget, tells me if we would have had hard-nosed fiscal discipline even
on the discretionary spending just in the time that I have been here in
5 years, we would have reached a balanced budget. We would have gotten
there just by having spending discipline, not the discipline that says
I want to increase spending because I think I see these needs, and if
I'm going to do that, then I want to increase taxes. That's the
approach that comes, and, admittedly, the Blue Dogs have more
discipline than a lot of the folks on their side of the aisle, but they
don't have as much spending discipline as I have. I would pull this
thing right on down and I would set it out and say, we can get to a
balanced budget by having discipline and discretionary spending.
{time} 1945
But, Mr. Speaker, that is not really the answer either. That is a
constant fight, and it is a diminishing effort to slow down and
eventually reduce discretionary spending to balance the budget because
the more we do that, it is working in the right direction because it
slows growth in government and it holds more personal responsibility
and so less spending creates less
[[Page H12226]]
dependency. Those are all good things, Mr. Speaker.
But the other side of this is that while we are talking about
discretionary spending, the huge elephants in the room, one might
speak, or should I say the gorilla in the room, I hesitate to say the
donkey in the room, but those huge gorillas in the room are this:
Medicare; Social Security; to a lesser extent Medicaid; the
entitlements; and then, of course, the growing interest, which we heard
about from the Blue Dogs, the growing cost of maintaining the interest.
But Medicare and Social Security are the two big ones.
As the President stepped out from his second inaugural address that
took place in January right out here in the west portico of the Capitol
Building in January 2005 and talked about the position we were in as a
Nation and we were poised to hopefully end the war in Iraq and move
forward with our economy; the two rounds of tax cuts that we had done
had succeeded in rebounding this economy and got us back into a growth
mode again, and today we are sitting on 49 consecutive months of
growth. Astonishing.
There are astonishing measures of the economic growth in this
country. But the President stepped out from that west portico and
invested his political capital in addressing the Social Security
entitlement, a huge burden that is coming at us. As I listen to the
Blue Dogs talk about Social Security, I didn't hear them talk about,
this is a bit of an old number, but a number that I recall from a
couple of years ago and is at least representative and it will not be
precisely accurate today but slightly dated, $1.7 trillion in the
Social Security trust fund. That was there a couple of years ago. That
trust fund continues to grow today because we are collecting more
Social Security than it takes to pay the benefits out to the people
that are the recipients of that Social Security.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I don't submit that where we are with this is a
good idea. I point that out that there is an account there that
presumably we could draw from that is going to address this big
entitlement. But it works out like this. Even if that money were going
into a lock box, as some said it was, even if that were an account that
grew interest at $1.7 trillion and add some more in there over the last
couple of years to get that number up, it is probably approaching $2
trillion or more by now, the accumulation in that account goes, it
accumulates until about the year 2016. And then it goes the other way.
Then we start spending more than we are taking in. And from that year
forward, that roughly $2 trillion that will be in there will be spent
down by the year, and these numbers aren't the freshest again, but in
the neighborhood of 2042, by then the Social Security trust fund is
broke. Then what do we do?
I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that, first of all, it wasn't a good
idea to put the Social Security money into a trust fund if we were
going to spend the money from the trust fund and put it into the
general fund. If we were going to borrow the money from the Social
Security trust fund and spend it with our overall budget, which we have
been doing, that breaks faith with idea that there is a trust fund,
because in the end it is an accounting gimmick.
I have in my file somewhere, an electronic file of one of the bonds
that are on file. This Social Security trust fund that is approaching
$2 trillion is the accounting of it is, yes, electronically but also it
is an accounting that is paperwork, actual bonds that are printed on
paper that is identical to this paper worth no more than probably not
as much as a blank sheet of paper from a copy machine, 8\1/2\ by 11.
They print these off. I have one that is a sample. I believe it is
$3.54 billion on that little sheet of paper that says trust fund
account bond for the Social Security trust fund. Those original
documents, Mr. Speaker, are on file in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg,
West Virginia, Robert Byrd's district, and they are there because some
enterprising Senator passed legislation that said, you will keep a
paper accounting of the Social Security trust fund.
Well, the paper is an accounting. The electronics is an accounting.
But the accountability of our Social Security trust fund is the full
faith and credit of the people of the United States as represented
through the United States Congress, and when the day comes that we need
to tap into that Social Security trust fund, which will be a day in
about the year 2016 when we start tapping into that, there isn't any
money there. It is only there on IOUs from the government to the
government, which is the equivalent of writing yourself an IOU and
putting it in your pocket. The value is only the value that it reminds
us that we have this obligation to keep our sacred trust with the
senior citizens of America. I am pledged to do that. Our President is
pledged to do that. I think that that is something that is a universal
opinion between Democrats and Republicans in this Congress, that we
keep our sacred trust with the seniors in America, that we do not
diminish their benefits, their anticipated promised benefits, that we
keep that intact, that we don't increase the contribution rate, we keep
that intact.
But something that we have done if we had had the support of the Blue
Dogs, because the Republicans were in support of this, was the
President's proposal that we offer people the opportunity if they were
young enough to make the actuarials work out, a personal retirement
account that could begin to transition some people off of Social
Security. They get their Social Security benefits too, but it would
supplement that, and then the need to increase that would have
diminished over time.
We couldn't get there, Mr. Speaker. We couldn't reform the huge
entitlement of Social Security even to keep it actuarially sound. Some
said it is a political third rail the President should never have
touched. The President says it is a third rail that you if you don't
touch it, it is the third rail, but he couldn't and we couldn't get the
job done to reform Social Security even though there was no down side
for senior citizens, at least a level guaranteed to them, even though
there was only an upside for the younger generations, and one of the
reasons is the issue got demagogued across this country dramatically.
The President did at least 30 stops across the country. He
articulated what this was about. It would have been good if he would
have had spokesmen and women from the younger generation, the under-30-
somethings that were half as vocal as the 30-somethings that come out
here on the floor that would speak up for their opportunity to be able
to ensure their retirement without having to become financially
destitute when you get from that point where we start out 16 workers
for every one retired at the beginning of Social Security, where we are
about three to one now and where we will soon get to two to one under
this current program.
Mr. Speaker, we need to look into the future. We need a long-term
planning approach to the things we do in this Congress. And this
electoral process does anything but. It focuses Members on the idea
that you get elected, you come down here and swear into office and
while you are doing that, there is someone announcing their candidacy
to run against you. They're home in the district 6 or 7 days in a week,
stabbing you in the media, raising money and trying to unseat you. You
are supposed to concentrate on policy when you have someone trying to
unseat your political survival from the day you swore in, and you are
up for reelection in 2 years.
So this constitutional system that we have, in fact, it is one that I
appreciate and revere. In a lot of ways it makes us very responsive to
the public. Our fingers are on their pulse. They let us know; we react
quickly. This House can move more quickly than the Senate by far if we
decide to do it. That is a good thing.
The bad thing is if I called a meeting and said, we are going to
start a new long-term planning caucus here in the United States
Congress, and invite all 435 Members, you know, if I ordered a lot of
good food and advertised it, some would show up. And then after the
next week and the next week and the next week, pretty soon there will
only be a small handful of people that would be working on something
like that just because the system is set up where it focuses us on the
things that are urgent, sometimes at the expense of the policy that is
important. That is the down side of this constitutional system that
sets us up for reelections every 2 years. But if you give us a lifetime
tenure, I'm not sure we would solve the problem either.
[[Page H12227]]
And you go over to the Senate side and there every 6 years a third of
them up for reelection every election cycle and they don't seem to have
a lot more interest in long-term planning than we do over here.
So I look to Wall Street. I look to major corporations. I look to the
business communities in America for leadership. I am wondering what are
they putting together so that we can have economic viability and a
healthy populace that can be raising families and bringing up the next
generation so that we can continue this American Dream. I watch what
they do, and I get the unalterable message from them that their real
focus is on their next quarterly report.
Well, I understand that. You have got to produce profit for your
investors, and the board of directors is telling you what they want you
to do. But where is the leadership in America for long-term vision?
Where is the leadership that will take us down this path where we will
eventually get to solve the Social Security problem, to solve the
Medicare problem, and I will submit the words of George Will which
were, democracies function under the lash of necessity.
And we haven't reached the lash of necessity if we are talking about
actuarial tables that start going into zero on the Social Security
trust fund in 2016 nor a fund that runs out to zero in 2042. That is
not the lash of necessity. We need the American people to be looking
ahead and demanding that we put long-term plans in place. And that is
important that the media, that the philosophers, that the writers, the
people that are opinion leaders in America join with us so we can put
the pieces in place for a long-term solution to Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid to a lesser degree. All that solves the interest
problem, and even then, if we simply had discipline in our spending, we
can solve this all with growth, Mr. Speaker.
So if the Blue Dogs want to talk about getting to a balanced budget,
I am for that. Let's do so. Let's do it by spending discipline. Let's
do it by reforming Medicare. Let's do it by reforming Social Security.
By the way, I have a couple of ideas for you on Medicaid. If we can do
those things, this budget becomes easy. We need to index our spending
then to the factor of inflation which should keep us down below the
revenue stream when we have the economic growth that we have if we have
good favorable tax policies.
I can go on into subject matter that has to do with reforming the Tax
Code that eliminates the IRS and eliminates the entire income tax code.
It untaxes all the production in America and puts it on consumption.
Mr. Speaker, I would take us all down that path, and I may well run out
of time before I can get to that.
But I wanted to address the concerns that were raised by the Blue
Dogs. And I would point out that to compare spending, the spending of
the National debt to the amount of money that we spend in this Congress
on education, I can look through this Constitution that I have in my
pocket, and I can't find anything in there that says, thou shalt
extract money from the taxpayers to fund education. It is not
comparable to the National debt. It is not relevant to the National
debt. To the extent we make the decision that we want to invest in
education, it is not something that is a legitimate measure.
Neither is it a legitimate measure on the part of the Members on the
other side of the aisle. And I believe that includes the Blue Dogs as
well. Neither is it a legitimate measure to argue that because we spend
billions of dollars in Iraq, we ought to spend billions of dollars on
SCHIP. There is no legitimate measure. They are not linked. They can't
be linked. But if you want to link them, if you choose to link SCHIP
spending to the global war on terror, to the funding that supports our
men and women whose lives are on the line in places like Afghanistan
and Iraq and other places around the world, if that is your will, to
link that spending, then let me associate this for you.
I point it out this way, Mr. Speaker, that if it is a zero sum game,
and by presumption it is a zero sum game if we are going to compare
national defense spending to the State Children's Health Insurance
Program, then the zero sum game comes down to this: How many bullet-
proof vests would you deprive our soldiers and marines of in order to
fund health insurance for middle, let me say, upper-income kids?
Because we are talking about a Congress that passed subsidy for health
insurance premiums for families in my State up over $103,000; $103,250,
400 percent of poverty. That was the Pelosi plan. That was, Mr.
Speaker, the 400 percent of poverty that passed off the floor of this
Congress.
I submit that subsidizing health insurance premiums when people are
making over $103,000 a year is an irresponsible expansion of this
budget. It cannot be defended within the context of the previous hour
that was delivered by the Blue Dogs. It can't be defended by anyone
unless it is their will and their intent to move us to socialized
medicine.
What is our line here? I will argue that in the 1990s we passed
welfare reform. This welfare reform was called workfare in a lot of
cases, to move people off of the multigenerational dependency on
welfare, move them into work, transition them smoothly so they could
get there and observe and recognize and act upon the reality that when
people moved off of welfare when they started to earn more income, they
would no longer qualify for Medicaid which was, of course, the health
care that is provided for the low-income among us. The working poor
weren't going to have health insurance for their children.
{time} 2000
So this Congress passed SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance
Plan, to subsidize, in most cases, to replace, to buy the health
insurance premiums for working-poor kids, the children of the working
poor, so they could transition out of welfare and onto work without
losing the health coverage for their children. Pretty good idea. When
it passed out of this Congress and went to the States, the States had
this opportunity to take it up. We took it up in Iowa. We called it
HAWK-I. We called it the Healthy and Well Kids in Iowa.
We set that at 200 percent of poverty. I supported that and adapted
some of the language technically and voted for 200 percent of poverty
level. That 200 percent of poverty level then grew. The State got an
exception where one could exempt 20 percent of the income of a family.
So you get into a situation where the 200 percent of poverty, that
turns out to be about $41,000 and change a year for a family of four;
when you exempt 20 percent of the income, that goes to $51,625.
That is where we are today. I don't call $51,625 the working poor in
my State. It might be in some States. It's not the working poor in my
State. Most people don't make more than that in the State, but most
people provide the health insurance for their families and their
children. When it's provided through the employer, this bill that was
pushed through this Congress provides a perverse incentive to crowd
kids off of private health insurance and put them on the government-
funded health insurance. That is the crowd-out factor.
The crowd-out factor was a lot bigger for the 400 percent of poverty.
I don't recall that number, as I stand here, Mr. Speaker, but as that
bill went over to the Senate and it was negotiated down to 300 percent
of poverty, the crowd-out factor became 2 million kids in America that
today have health insurance that is paid for by their parents or at the
workplace of their parents, and those 2 million kids would be crowded
off of their own private insurance rolls and put onto the government-
funded insurance rolls.
Now they would match up with a number about 3.8 million kids that
don't have insurance today. They have health care, but statistically
they don't have insurance. That sometimes is a fluid number. There are
people in transition between one policy and another. That is added into
that 3.8 million. But the 2 million is a hard number. That is the
number of kids that get crowded out, pushed off their own private
health insurance.
That is unacceptable. If we are trying to insure children of the
working poor, we don't take it up to $103,250 income for a family of
four and say we are going to subsidize it up to that point, now we have
helped the poor kids, because $103,000 is not poor. That is really
wealthy where I come from. That is 400
[[Page H12228]]
percent of poverty. That is not the answer to subsidizing health
insurance for the kids of the working poor. That is what SCHIP is
supposed to be.
Three hundred percent of poverty is what this House passed the last
time after it was negotiated in the Senate. That is $77,437 in my
State. In some States, it's $83,000. That is not the working poor for a
family of four. Probably not for a family of any normal size that we
would see today. But that is the standard that this House has passed
again. Still, it crowds out 2 million kids. One of my objections, one
of my real objections to this is that they have changed the language in
this bill. They have changed the language that under current Medicaid
qualifier standards there has to be a demonstration of citizenship or a
lawful presence in the United States that extends beyond the 5-year
prohibition for receiving any welfare benefits here in this country.
That provision has been weakened by an addition to a section in this
SCHIP bill, and it has been done so by the majority, and they have done
it more than once. When we raised the objection and said that this
language has changed and it will provide taxpayer dollar benefits to
people who are in this country illegally to give them Medicaid and
SCHIP, the majority said, no, that's not true because we have a
paragraph in the bill that says none of these funds shall go to fund
illegals.
I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that they wouldn't have had to add the
language to the bill if they weren't going to do something with it. The
language that they added to the bill is scored by the Congressional
Budget Office, who analyzed the language and has a job in a nonpartisan
way of calculating the impact on our budget, and they concluded it
would cost an additional, the changes that open the door to allow
people who are deportable to collect health insurance benefits and
health benefits in the form of Medicaid, illegals in the United States,
the cost to that is, according to the Congressional Budget Office, $3.7
billion in Federal tax dollars, $2.8 billion in State tax dollars. The
easy math on that is $6.5 billion all together it costs the taxpayers
of the United States to fund Medicaid and SCHIP, most of it, a vast,
vast majority of it, for illegals, that if we simply ask the
immigration customs and enforcement why don't we deliver that benefit
in the form of a voucher and you guys take it up there and hand it
over, when they met with most of these people they would have to take
them into custody and take them home to the country where they belong.
That is the reality of the law. That is the law, Mr. Speaker. $6.5
billion, and yet I have people here in this Congress and around the
country that say: Steve King is wrong on this. This bill really doesn't
allow for funding to go to illegals. It really doesn't open the door.
My answer to that, first of all, is if you think I am wrong, what is
your number? Submit to me your number. Would you like to submit zero?
Say that to the Congressional Budget Office.
Right here, Mr. Speaker, is the CBO report that shows the $3.7
billion, and the easy math that came from the Energy and Commerce
Committee to put the States' share in that comes to $6.5 billion. My
question is: If you think I am wrong, what is your number? The second
question is: If I am wrong, why is the majority so insistent upon
keeping their language in the bill that opens the standards up for
Medicaid qualification that just simply says all you have to do is
write down a Social Security number and we are going to recommend that
the Social Security Administration verify that number, maybe send a
letter back to the provider or to the State if that number doesn't
match up.
We know how well that works with employment in this country. We have
at least 6.9 million working illegals in America. According to the
Center for Immigration Studies, those 6.9 million, which may now be 7
or 7.1 million people, at least 55 percent of them have false
documentation that they present in order to get the job. That is a
Social Security number that has been submitted in the same fashion
under the same standard as would be required for Medicaid
qualifications. We know how well it is working with hiring illegals in
America when you say, give me a Social Security number. It is not
working. That is why we are in the middle of this immigration debate,
Mr. Speaker.
So, I will submit that that same standard has no chance of working
any better if you are going to use it to be able to qualify applicants
for Medicaid and SCHIP. It defies logic to think that the Congressional
Budget Office hands out a document that says $3.7 billion Federal, and
Energy and Commerce calculates the State share of that and it comes to
$2.8 billion, and you are at $6.5 billion in cost. Why does it cost
$6.5 billion more money, if there is nothing in this bill that funds
illegals? And why is the majority going to fall on their sword to
protect the language that opens up the standards, if it doesn't change
anything? One can't get past that. Facts are inconvenient truths to
some people on the other side of the aisle and sometimes on this side
of the aisle.
But what I recognize is I have been joined here by my colleague from
New Jersey who occasionally will be watching C-SPAN at night and have a
thought and a concept that he needs to get out here this evening. So
with that in mind, with great gratitude, I would be happy to yield to
the gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Well, I thank the gentleman from Iowa for
giving me the opportunity to address the House.
First, before I begin, let me just say this. I commend the gentleman
for your being down here on the floor to, first and foremost, refute
the arguments that had been made initially, in your opening statements,
refuting the arguments made by the other side of the aisle, where I
believe you were getting into the issues of the debt and what have you,
and some of the other points you made with regard to our spending
levels, and finally on SCHIP.
If I may, I want to address a couple of those. First of all, here we
are at the end of October, 10 months into the rule under the new
Democrat majority, and we have to ask, what has their leadership
wrought? They have brought us the largest tax increase in U.S. history,
the creation of slush funds, where a lot that money is going to go to,
and the end to the transparency that they promised in the last election
that they would bring to this House.
On the first point, as far as the largest tax increase in history,
that began initially as soon as the Democrats took control with their
budget, a $387 billion tax increase, which basically is too large of a
number for any of us to get our hands around. But what it really
translates down to is, on average, around a $2,500 to $2,700 increase
that every individual in this country will have to take out of their
pockets, from the hard-earned money they make, and send down here to
Washington so Congress can spend it instead on who knows what it may
be. That is where they began.
We know just this past week the chairman of Ways and Means has come
out with the ``mother of all tax increases.'' That ``mother of all tax
increases,'' of course, basically begs the question of what happens to
all the orphaned taxpayers then in this country, those who are now left
having to foot the bill for that tax increase.
So I raise these points only because it is truly ironic that the
other side of the aisle would come to the floor and raise the issue of
the debt level and the spending of Congress, because, when you think
about it, they ran on a platform that the Republicans were spending too
much, but what was the first thing they did when they came here? They
decided that they would spend even more. They ran on the platform that
we were taxing too much. And what was the first thing they did once
they got here? They raised our taxes. And they have done so repeatedly.
They have about half a dozen times now had legislation, just about
every single major piece of legislation that has come to the floor so
far, that has included some form of tax increase in it.
Now, the gentleman from Iowa raises the point now near the end of his
discussion with regard to SCHIP, and I always appreciate his explaining
to the American public what the acronym SCHIP really does stand for.
SCHIP stands for ``Socialized Clinton-Style Hillarycare for Illegals
and Their Parents.'' I will get to that point of illegals in a minute,
but let's look at
[[Page H12229]]
the overall focus and what the intention is here.
I think it begs the question to ask, is anyone from either side of
the aisle not intending working towards making sure all Americans can
have the health care that they need? I think we all agree on that.
The next question is, do we not want to make sure then that all
American citizens' indigent children get the health care that they
need? I think, generally speaking, except for the partisanship and the
politicking on the other side of the aisle, I would have to say that
all of us agree on that as well.
Then we have to ask ourselves, what is the best mechanism to get
there? Is SCHIP and the expansion that the Democrats want to foist on
the American public the best way to get there? I would answer that
question by saying, no, it is not.
Going in reverse order, the gentleman from Iowa raises the point with
regard to illegals, an important point. The Democrats will tell you,
don't worry about it. The bill already says in plain language that
illegals are not allowed to get these benefits, as if all you need to
do is put those words into a bill and that makes it so.
I see on the table over there, I think that looks like your
demonstration for the wall. Is that what that is?
Mr. KING of Iowa. Yes.
Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. You know, we would not need that wall
under the Democrat philosophy, because we already have a law that says
no illegals may come into this country illegally. If that is all it
takes is just to say they can't do it and it won't happen, you don't
need that wall. You don't need any surveillance. We don't need any
border security guards, because we have a law that says they are not
allowed to come into this country illegally. But we know that that is
not the way it works. What works is you need enforcement. You suggest
enforcement in the form of a wall, and I agree with you on that.
In the area of SCHIP, enforcement means that we need to have a way of
verification for an individual when they come to claim American
taxpayers' dollars for their own benefit for them to verify that they
are legal American citizens entitled to it. And that is all that the
Republicans were asking for, some sort of process to make sure that was
done.
Now, the Democrats also argue, look, they put in a penalty provision
for the States. The Democrats were not willing to actually put an
enforcement mechanism in themselves to say how they want to verify the
illegals. But the Democrats will say, well, we are going to leave that
little question to the States instead and have the States cleverly come
up with it. Of course, you and I are all supportive of States being the
laboratory of experimentation.
{time} 2015
The Democrats then say that is all we need to do. I would suggest
that is not all you need to do. The enforcement there is not to say to
the States if you mess this up, if you don't enforce the law and allow
illegals to get American taxpayer dollars under this program, and
therefore potentially deprive other American children of their
benefits, it does not say that those States will not receive any
Medicaid benefits whatsoever. It does not say that they will not
receive SCHIP benefits as well. It just holds the additional funding
that goes to those States.
Under the original DRA law that was signed in 2005 and went into
effect in July of 2006, for those States under Medicaid where it
applied to, we saw a decrease because of the Republican enforcement
mechanisms of illegals actually getting those benefits. What the
Republicans have simply asked the Democrat majority to allow us to do
is to allow those systems that are working to apply to the entire SCHIP
process.
So on the point of trying to make sure that only U.S. American
citizens get the benefits, Republicans have a plan and it has been
working in other aspects of Medicaid, and we wish to expand it.
I yield back.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman for coming to the floor and
giving us a New Jersey perspective on this issue of SCHIP and also the
overall budget that we have.
As the gentleman arrived, I was reaching for a quote in my memory and
I came up a little bit empty. And so I looked it up while I was
listening to the gentleman from New Jersey.
You have heard a number of facts that have been rolled out by the
gentleman from New Jersey. You have heard a number of facts that I have
rolled out here. I have said they are stubborn things. But it was John
Adams who spoke to facts in memorable fashion when he said: ``Facts are
stubborn things. And whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations or
the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and
evidence.'' John Adams, and that was before the Declaration of
Independence that he made that statement, as I recall.
And so as we laid these facts out here, this SCHIP initiative that we
have today, current law, family of four qualifies in my State up to
$51,625. It may be higher than that in New Jersey.
But the bill vetoed by the President and the bill that was passed out
of this House last week is a bill that funds up to 300 percent of
poverty, family of four, $77,437. That is off of Governor Culver's Web
page. By doing the simple calculation that is provided there on whether
you qualify or whether you don't, the $51,625, and 300 percent of
poverty is pretty simple, you just do the math on that.
This House passed it at 400 percent of poverty. That was the Pelosi
plan. The argument is this is not the cornerstone to socialized
medicine.
Mr. Speaker, I submit when you cover 95 percent of the kids in
America with SCHIP, which you would do once you get up over that 400
percent of poverty, only 5 percent are left on their own insurance. The
rest are crowded out. The 2 million who would be crowded off their own
insurance plan under this plan which has been vetoed by the President
and then brought back in substantive identity to the first bill by the
Pelosi-led Congress, that legislation still crowds out a huge
percentage of the kids.
I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I will make this last point if the
gentleman permits. The definition of a middle-class benefit or
entitlement is one that goes to the middle class of America.
The definition, I guess, of a program for the indigent would be a
program that is aimed for those who are making less than the average,
less than middle-class America.
I wanted to give a couple of numbers. The median, middle, middle
income in this country is around $46,000 for a family of four
essentially. That is the middle. That would be how we define middle
class across the board. Some higher, some lower. That is the middle.
The bill, SCHIP, as it was created initially was for 200 percent of
poverty. That would be around $42,000 for a family of four, so less
than the middle.
There are some discussions going on literally as we speak right now
in what the Senate is looking at to bring this program up to around 275
percent of poverty. That would be $58,000 for a family of four. So if
middle, middle-class America is around $46,000, and some are suggesting
we should be bringing the coverage up to $58,000, by definition it is a
middle-class entitlement. Actually above middle class. Slightly above
middle-class entitlement, as a matter of fact. It begs the question if
you are trying to set up a program to address the problems of the
indigent Americans in this country, why are you bringing the number up
so high we are going over the median income in this country.
That is a rhetorical question. I don't think the other side can
answer it unless they simply want to be honest with us and tell us they
are trying to do what Bill Clinton said back when he was President that
he wants universal coverage where the government has socialized
medicine, and you will start with indigent children, you will go to all
children and eventually you will go to all adults in the entire
country. One-fifth of this economy will be encompassed by a government-
run health care system, something you and I definitely oppose.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Again I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I
would ask him to point out to the body the acronym of SCHIP that he
illustrated in his speech. I know that poster is available, and so I
would direct the attention of body to the gentleman from New Jersey and
the poster.
[[Page H12230]]
Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. SCHIP. It has another meaning as
Republicans initially created it, but we see what the Democrats have
morphed it into. SCHIP now stands for Socialized Clinton-style
Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents. That wraps it all right up
there. They are willing to go back to what Hillary and Bill Clinton
wanted to do, and that was to have a universal, socialized plan that
the government would control, literally one-fifth of the economy,
health care economy, the same government that gave us FEMA and the way
they handled Hurricane Katrina and the same aftermath of Katrina, the
same government that gives so many other problems of waste, fraud and
abuse, and the same government that gave us the proverbial bridge to
nowhere. That Clinton-style type of government, Hillarycare for
illegals. As the gentleman from Iowa just pointed out, it is not for
American citizens. It is for anyone who simply wants to walk across the
border and take the benefits of the hardworking American taxpayers.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I very much thank the gentleman from New Jersey.
I want to point out that this acronym has been out here now for over
a week. When it says SCHIP stands for Socialized Clinton-Style
Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents, the criticism that has come
for that is that no one has argued with the substance. They simply say,
well, this is emotional. It is reactionary. Well, tell me what's wrong?
Does this not lay the cornerstone to socialized medicine, to provide
for taxpayer-funded insurance for kids and families up over $100,000
for the 400 percent that was brought across this floor in the first
place.
Mr. Speaker, does that not lay the cornerstone for socialized
medicine? I submit, yes, it does.
And what happens in this county when, under current SCHIP, we have
adults on up to age 25, 85 percent of those receiving SCHIP funding in
Minnesota are adults. Some argue 92 percent. It is 66 percent in
Wisconsin. I mean, these are huge numbers. This isn't for kids the way
the system is today. But it is to lay the cornerstone to socialized
medicine. I will support that statement.
As John Adams says, facts are stubborn things. Here is a fact about
laying the cornerstone for socialized medicine. This is what President
Bill Clinton said about achieving socialized health care on September
29, 2000: ``You know, when Hillary and HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and
I started working on this back in 1993, we proposed a solution that
would have covered all Americans. And it was too much for the system to
accommodate at once, so we've gone back, piece, by piece, trying to
achieve that. We have now the Children's Health Insurance. Next, we
need to deal with the 55 to 65-year-old age group.''
Does anybody think that this isn't part of a plan to lay the
cornerstone for socialized medicine when the very words came out of the
mouth of Bill Clinton on September 29, 2000? He was still President
then.
And a speech he gave here on the floor of Congress on September 22,
1993, where he laid out component after component of the plan to get to
Hillarycare. And by the way, it was Hillarycare. It was Hillary working
behind the scenes in some secret meetings to put together an overall
health care proposal which was socialized medicine.
Mr. Speaker, it was wrong then. It is wrong now. This is the
cornerstone of socialized medicine. It is a component of Hillarycare.
Bill Clinton again, September 29, 2000: ``You know, when Hillary and
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala started working on
this back in 1993, we proposed a solution that would have covered all
Americans.''
Well, a solution that covers all Americans, I would submit, isn't
your private health care program, isn't the one that has been built by
the free enterprise system, the one that has provided the incentive to
do the research and development that has given us the best health care
in the world. A system that would have covered all Americans is
socialized medicine. That is a definitional fact. This is a direct
quote from President Bill Clinton, September 29, 2000.
I say SCHIP stands for Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare for
Illegals and their Parents. It is a matter of historical fact. She met
over and over again, and some would say the meetings could have been
more lawful. That is not my issue so much as she was driving a health
care policy as First Lady as if she were the lead health care policy
wonk in America. It collapsed when the American people revolted against
it because it was Hillarycare, because it was socialized medicine.
It came to us Clinton-style, but he delivered it here on the floor of
the House of Representatives on September 22, 1993. In the year 2000,
when he found out they couldn't drive it through, he said, well, we are
going to give you a solution that will cover all Americans, but we are
going to give it to you a piece at a time.
So when SCHIP passes at 200 percent of poverty, then we will raise it
to 400 percent of poverty. This is what the Pelosi Congress wanted to
do. These are all facts, these inconvenient, stubborn things. At 400
percent of poverty, you have only about 5 percent of the kids any
longer on private health insurance. So the culture to provide for your
children's health insurance premium is gone. It is wiped out. It is
destroyed by a Congress bent on laying the cornerstone to socialized
medicine, SCHIP. Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare. Those issues are
all addressed for what, Mr. Speaker, for illegals and their parents.
I have spoken to this. Here is the CBO score: $6.5 billion increased
costs in fundings that are not currently going to illegal recipients of
Medicaid, and those funding that currently are going to SCHIP to
illegal recipients, that comes from the changes that are in this bill
that passed this House last week and the bill the President vetoed, the
bill that this Congress refused to override. That $6.5 billion.
They can argue that they changed the language. They did. They were
distinctions without a difference, and the proof that it lacks a
difference is because the Congressional Budget Office scored, evaluated
the cost to taxpayers, at precisely the same dollar amount. Regardless
of whether it was the language they first brought or the language that
they amended it to, the distinction is without a difference. It still
provides for health care for illegals in America.
Mr. Speaker, fact after fact come out here. These inconvenient
truths, to quote a famous author in America. I will go down through
some that I have missed.
It does weaken citizenship requirements. The loss in taxpayer
dollars, the net loss to my State is $226 million. Everybody that has a
State where people smoke will pay 61 cents more a pack. When they do
that, they will pay more taxes.
It is also a fact that one of the most regressive taxes we have is
the tax on tobacco because people less well-to-do tend to smoke more.
It is an inverse relationship when they do a little better. We could
look into the reasons for that, but we know this. Poor people pay a
greater percentage of their income on the current tobacco tax, and will
pay a far greater percentage of their income on the proposed tobacco
tax. The idea on the part of the Speaker's side of the aisle is you
would raise the tobacco tax and, therefore, there would be an incentive
for people to smoke less.
{time} 2030
I agree there would be, and I'd like to see what those numbers
produce and maybe that's a good thing, and I'd like to evaluate that
tax policy on that.
But we've got another little problem here, and that is, that in order
to fund this increase, we have to have 22.4 million new smokers in
America. So we've got to go out there and unleash Joe Camel again and
get him out there recruiting the kids in America to start smoking,
because if we don't do that, we can't fund their health insurance, and
even if we do do that, we're still going to have, according to the
first bill they passed at 400 percent of poverty, 70,000 families in
America that qualify for SCHIP and still qualify to pay the alternative
minimum tax, that tax on the rich.
So I'll submit, Mr. Speaker, that this is a bit of a bizarre
proposal, and it's awfully hard to explain the rationale behind it when
there are so many conflicting inconsistencies. But in the end, it's a
net increase in cost to my State
[[Page H12231]]
of $226 million. It will take an increase of 22.4 million new smokers
to fund it. It will fund, at 300 percent of poverty, families of four
in my State earning $77,473. It will crowd 2 million kids off of the
private family and business, job-funded insurance rolls, cost $6.5
billion to fund the illegals that are participating in programs that
today are barred from so and add taxes to cigarettes of 61 cents a
pack.
Now, you add that all up, those are the facts. Those are the stubborn
things. Those are the inconvenient truths that the other side of the
aisle has to deal with. I simply called it SCHIP, ``Socialized Clinton-
style Hillarycare for Illegals and Their Parents.''
So, Mr. Speaker, in the remaining time, I think that I should do a
bit of a demonstration for the sake of popular demand. I wanted to
point out for the body that we're spending $8 billion on our southern
border, and this is supposed to keep us from the $6.5 billion in costs
that are accumulated here under this SCHIP bill that came out of the
Pelosi Congress.
But on that border that's 2,000 miles long, $8 billion, that's $4
million a mile. So I thought, you know, I've got a mile of gravel road
that runs west of my house, and if Michael Chertoff came to me and he
sad I'm going to give you $4 million but it's your job to make sure
that only 75 percent of the people that want to cross that road get
across and 25 percent of them stay where they are, that's our current
efficiency rate that we're getting out of our $8 billion and $4 million
a mile on our southern border today. We interdict about 25 percent of
those trying, and about 75 percent get across. You might argue it's one
out of three, but they'll testify one out of three, one out of four. We
stopped 1,188,000 going across that border in the last year that was
reported to me. That means about 4 million try. That's about 11,000 a
night, 11,000 a night. Twice the size of Santa Anna's army pouring
across our southern border, not in the day, at night. Every single
night, Mr. Speaker.
What would I do if Michael Chertoff said, I'm going to offer you a
contract. I'd bid it. It wouldn't be a no-bid contract. I'd want to
compete for this, $4 million for my mile of road. What would I do?
Well, I'd get out there and build something because I know the
Humvees cost a lot of money, and uniforms and retirement programs and
health plans for our Federal employees cost a lot of money. Now, I love
our border patrol. They're doing a great job, and I've been down there
to work with them, but I would submit they could use some help. I would
give them a little structure. I'd go in there and say, Your job would
be a lot easier if we build you a physical barrier. I'd want it double.
I'd put the fence in, and I'd build the wall. The wall would be
something that would last a long, long time.
This would be the trenched footing that I would put in. It would be
slip form, Mr. Speaker, and I would set this trench footing into the
ground. I'd drag her along, and I'd pour slip form right behind it. It
would look like this from the end. Then I'm going to set it up in this
stand, and I'll show you how easy it is to build a wall. It will take
about, let me say, $1.2 million, about $1.2 million a mile, and you
just simply put this in about like that. That would be a piece of
concrete that would be about 13 feet high, 13-and-a-half feet high,
about half that for width, and then you pick up your little crane and
drop this thing in here. That's about 12,000 pounds per formation.
Mr. Speaker, I thought I heard your gavel as I dropped that in the
hole. I apologize for that. I was making a little too much noise.
I would wrap this up simply by then submitting that I believe I have
demonstrated how we can protect America at about $1.2 million a mile as
opposed to $4 million a mile. I'd encourage this Congress take a good
look.
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