[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 70 (Thursday, May 7, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H5381-H5387]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     ENERGY AND HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for giving me 
the opportunity to spend some time on the floor this evening with our 
colleagues.
  I am going to talk about two different issues. We are going to talk 
about energy, and particularly the scheme of carbon tax or cap-and-
trade and renewable energy, renewable quotas, if you will, because 
that's a hugely important issue that's facing the Nation and the 
Congress is dealing with at the present time, and particularly through 
the committee on which I serve, Energy and Commerce, and the other big 
issue also coming through the Energy and Commerce and a couple of other 
committees is the issue of health care reform.
  Now, President Obama, when he was sworn in and shortly after that 
when he spoke to a joint session of Congress here in this House 
Chamber, he talked about the importance, in his opinion, despite the 
economic downturn and the need for stimulus bills--hundreds of billions 
of dollars' worth, in fact, of stimulus bills, spending on projects and 
hopefully will get the economy going again, the TARP money, the money 
that went to banks, continuing to go to banks, and that's expanded, of 
course, to include insurance companies and the domestic automobile 
industry. We have spent literally hundreds of billions, if not 
trillions, of dollars trying to stimulate the economy. But the 
President still feels very strongly, as does this majority party, the 
Democratic Party, Mr. Speaker, of pushing ahead with this idea of 
solving the global warming issue by limiting the amount of carbon that 
can be produced and released into the atmosphere as we go through the 
process, and always have for 100 or more years, of producing 
electricity mainly from coal. So that is on the front burner, no pun 
intended, Mr. Speaker, of issues that we are dealing with right now in 
the House and in the Senate. And then, of course, the other issue is 
reforming health care.

  I would like to start by talking about health care. I feel I have a 
little bit more expertise in that area. I darn well should, having 
spent 30 years practicing medicine, but I will allow to you, Mr. 
Speaker, and to my other colleagues that just practicing medicine, 
seeing patients and not being in a research environment doesn't 
necessarily give you all the answers in regard to how we go about 
funding health care for 300 million people, how we deal with the 
massive expense of government programs like Medicare and Medicaid and 
still make sure that everyone in this country has access to health care 
and that it is affordable, that it is affordable even for those who 
have more than one serious medical condition that they're dealing with.
  So we all, on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, realize that this 
is a problem. It's not something that we ought to be burying our heads 
in the sand and just hoping it will go away. It won't. It will only get 
worse, just like the Social Security crisis. As we get more and more of 
our baby boomers reaching that magic age of 65, we don't have enough 
people working really to pay into the payroll tax to provide the 
benefit that has been promised. And I know that scares our seniors and 
it should, although every reform that we have talked about in regard to 
Social Security has assured and will continue to assure, I think, no 
matter who is in the majority up here or what administration--it has 
been Republican under President Bush. It's now Democratic under 
President Obama. It was Democratic under President Clinton, and these 
things go back and forth. But I think that people, seniors, need to be 
comforted by the fact that if you're over 55, as an example, there are 
not going to be any changes in Social Security for those of you who are 
within 10 years of receiving that benefit.
  But that doesn't mean that we don't fix the system, that we don't try 
to fix the system for our sons and daughters and our grandchildren as 
they come forward, because if we do nothing, then clearly there will be 
a time when people will not get the benefit that their parents and 
grandparents have received under this program of Social Security. And 
the same thing is true of Medicare, and that, of course, is our health 
care system for our seniors, 65 and older, and for those people who are 
younger but are disabled, totally disabled, and need that help. So we 
all recognize that there's a problem, and we have recognized it for a 
while and agree that something needs to be done.
  Now, the timing of that, I think, is in question when you talk to 
both sides of the aisle. Some, quite honestly, on our side of the aisle 
feel that we need to get the economy back on its feet before we spend 
hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reform our health care system 
while we are still in a deep, deep recession and people can't get 
loans. Businesses in particular can't get loans. People are still 
having a very difficult time getting a mortgage on their home. And 
401(k)s are down, 401(k)s and IRAs, which are the savings that people 
have for their retirement, along with Social Security.
  I am kind of of the opinion, Mr. Speaker, that we don't need to move 
too quickly for fear that the economy will worsen and not get better 
and also for fear that in our haste to do something even if it's wrong, 
it might well be wrong. So that adage of ``do something even if it's 
wrong'' is a wrongheaded adage.
  But in any regard, we do agree that if the statistics are correct 
that 47 million people in the great country of the United States go 
every day without health insurance, there's something wrong with our 
system, and we can do better in that regard. We should do better, as I 
will talk about over the next 45 minutes or so. We can and we will do 
better.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make sure that all of our 
colleagues understand something. I think intuitively they know this, 
that statistics

[[Page H5382]]

can be often misleading. The 47 million uninsured statistic was 
obtained by the Census Bureau. And what does the Census Bureau do? 
You're sitting there at home watching television or whatever, reading a 
book preferably, and you get a call from the Census Bureau and they 
probably just ask this question: Are you employed? Yes or no? Do you 
have health insurance? Are you an adult, head of household? End of 
story. And the response from 47 million is ``No, I don't have health 
insurance.''
  Now, the question that is not asked is, are you a citizen of the 
United States? Are you a permanent legal resident though not a citizen, 
in other words, a green cardholder? Are you here legally on a temporary 
worker program? Are you an illegal immigrant? I think at that point, 
Mr. Speaker, you would hear a loud click, because I'm sure if someone 
were here illegally, they're not likely to give that to anybody, 
especially a census worker.

                              {time}  1730

  But the question that is not asked is how long, if you do not have 
health insurance, what are the circumstances regarding that? How long 
have you gone without health insurance? And then you would find that 
many of these people, maybe just a couple of months.
  And they might say, yes, well, actually, I do have insurance. I have 
this COBRA, this temporary health insurance that's allowed, when you 
lose your job, that you can continue with that company. If the company 
were providing the health insurance, then they would let you continue.
  But you would have to pay more, because you would be outside the 
group rate. But you could be covered hopefully, you would be, long 
before that, reemployed and into another group policy at a reasonable 
rate. So a lot of these people that say I don't have health insurance, 
and they add to that, up to that magic number of 47 million, they are 
going to get insurance when they go back to work and, probably, within 
a short period of time.
  Probably 10 million of the 47 million are the ones that clicked the 
phone down when they were asked if they were legal immigrants, about 10 
million.
  So now you are down to 37 million. And it has been estimated that 40 
percent of the rest make at least $50,000 a year. Now, you might say, 
well, gee, if you make $50,000 a year, even if you are a family of 
three, you probably ought to be able to afford health insurance. You 
are not going to be eligible for Medicaid, or you may probably not be 
eligible, at least in my State of Georgia. You are not going to be 
eligible for the SCHIP problem, PeachCare, we call it, for your 
children. And I am assuming that you are not 65 and you are not 
disabled, so you are not eligible for that.
  So why do these people that are not eligible for anything else, and 
they make at least $50,000 a year, why do they choose not to have 
health insurance?
  I would guess that most of these people are in the workforce, maybe 
they are single, they are probably between the ages of 21 and 40. Many 
of them are athletes, not professional athletes--I don't mean to imply 
that--but athletic, engage in sports, work out and have good genes, 
grandparents lived to late eighties, maybe even early nineties. They've 
got the Methuselah gene, where their relatives live into the hundreds.
  And they think, golly, why should I take $250, $300 a month, whatever 
it costs, maybe $400 a month and buy health insurance when I don't even 
go to the doctor every year. I don't even get a cold. I don't take any 
prescription medications, I might take a One a Day vitamin. So a lot of 
people like that would roll the dice and say I don't need it.
  And they say, I am a very disciplined person, and I will take that 
$350 a month and put it into--not a passbook savings, but invest in a 
mutual fund. And every month, you know, I put into it, the mutual fund, 
when it goes up in value, my money doesn't buy as many shares. But when 
it goes down in value, it buys more shares.
  That's what we call dollar-cost-averaging. And, gee, you know, over a 
10-year period of time I am going to have a ton of money. And over a 
30-year period of time I am going to have a quarter of a million 
dollars that I will have saved by not taking out a health insurance 
policy.
  I don't recommend it. As a physician Member, I think it's a bad bet. 
You are rolling the dice, you might get lucky, but you could crap out, 
in other words, come down with cancer, or, at age 35 have a heart 
attack, and then, of course, you would be out of luck in today's market 
in regard to getting it insured. Or, if you had access to insurance, it 
would be so expensive, because now you are a preferred risk, and it's 
only appropriate then that the insurance would cost you more. If you 
look at our Medicare program on part B, the voluntary part A, of 
course, 65 or disabled, you are automatically in part A, the hospital 
part, or the part that covers nursing home care.
  But for seeing a doctor and paying surgical fees and having 
outpatient diagnostic tests done, you don't have to take the part B of 
Medicare, nor do you have to take the part D, the prescription drug 
part of Medicare. That's optional. You might decide to, because you are 
still working, to continue to get your health insurance from your 
company. Or you might decide, well, here again, I'm healthy, and I 
never bought insurance before I got eligible for Medicare, I'll take 
the part A, because that's kind of given. I get that free, so to speak. 
Somebody else is paying for it, and I'm not going to take this part B.
  You have that option. Nobody forces anybody to sign up for part A or 
part B. And, of course, here again, if you get sick, 2 years later, now 
you are 67, let's say, and you call up Social Security and you say, oh, 
I've decided now, I think I want to sign up for Medicare part B and 
part D because now, I had a heart attack, and I'm on five medications, 
something to lower my cholesterol, something to make my heart beat 
stronger, I'm on a water pill, a diuretic, so I don't build up too much 
fluid. And, oh, by the way, I've come down with the gout.

  Well, you can sign up at that point for Medicare part B and part D. 
But the Federal Government says it's going to cost you more because now 
you are at much higher risk.
  Well, that's the way private insurance works as well. So, I mean, 
what's good for the goose is good for the gander. It would be 
inappropriate for us to say to the private market, insurance companies, 
who are insuring younger people, that if someone decides they don't 
want health insurance until they get sick then, clearly, they are going 
to have to pay more.
  So those people that make more than $50,000 a year and elect not to 
take health insurance that they could afford to pay for, they are 
taking a chance, they are rolling the dice. But in this country, thank 
God, you can do that. You are free to do that.
  So a lot of the people that are included, when the Census Bureau 
calls and says, do you have insurance, they are in that group. It is 
also estimated that as many as 10 million of the 47 million, guess 
what, are eligible for Medicaid. They didn't know it. They didn't 
bother to inquire. Or maybe somebody gave them some misinformation. 
They thought they were making too much money, and their children are 
eligible for the SCHIP program, the Children's Health Insurance 
Program, which is very generous on the part of the Federal Government, 
Federal-State partnership, even more generous than Medicaid.
  So you take those people, subtract them from the number, and you 
probably end up, Mr. Speaker, with, I am going to be generous here and 
say 15 to 20 million that don't have insurance over an extended period 
of time.
  It is important that all of us listen to what I said about that 
number not being 47 million. Because statistics, if they are not 
accurate, can cause us, from a policy perspective, even from a 
political perspective, to make some huge mistakes. Spending $2 billion 
or more, $3, $3.5 billion, maybe, because we still have some money left 
over from the $6 billion that we put in the Treasury, took out of the 
Treasury, put in Health and Human Services and the CDC for combating 
bird flu, which never really occurred in this country.
  And now we are probably going to put another $2 billion in this 
supplemental bill coming up to treat the influenza type A H1N1, forgive 
me if I say it at least one time, swine flu. And I hope and pray that I 
don't have to eat

[[Page H5383]]

these words. It's probably going to turn out to be a fairly mild type 
of flu, not as severe, Mr. Speaker, as your seasonal flu, which on a 
yearly basis, over many years, we have lost 35,000 people, 35,000 
people dying from the regular seasonal flu, even though we have 
developed a vaccine every year.
  We try to anticipate what next year's flu is going to look like. The 
CDC does a great job on that, by the way. I think the flu vaccine is 
good and certainly it's good for the elderly and the immune compromised 
and the very young. I am not opposed to that at all. I commend the CDC.
  But, again, we tend to react to the latest crisis. Sometimes it's 
media driven, this media frenzy, literally creating a pandemic, yes. 
Not a pandemic of the flu, but a pandemic, a panic.
  So what's the President to do? He doesn't want to get Katrina'ed over 
this thing, so we throw a lot of money at it that may well not be 
necessary. So as I talk about health care and the need for reform and 
bring up some of these statistics and peel the layers of the onion back 
and get to the real facts so that we know what the real problem is, how 
can you know what the response is if you don't really define the 
problem? So that's what the loyal opposition, the minority party, in 
this case the Republican Party, has the responsibility to do. That's 
what makes our system work, that's what makes it great, unless we don't 
go through regular order and don't get an opportunity to weigh in.
  And maybe the only opportunity we get to weigh in on the minority 
side is these late afternoon and late evening after-school's-out 
opportunities to talk on the House floor and inform. And you hope 
everybody is listening, but maybe not.
  So as I stand here this evening and talk about health care reform and 
also the energy bill, it's not to be partisan or political; it's to 
take whatever opportunity, Mr. Speaker, that I, as a member of the 
minority party, can grab onto on behalf of our leadership, John Boehner 
and Eric Cantor and other leaders on the Republican side, to put the 
message out.
  And they trust me on certain issues, other Members on other issues 
because of the background that I have, in this case, a background of 30 
years of practicing medicine, as an OB/GYN specialist in northwest 
Georgia. And I don't have the last word on this. Maybe the last word 
comes from somebody like Sanjay Gupta for CNN or Isadore Rosenfeld for 
Fox News.
  I commend any one of those great doctors on Sunday morning where they 
do 30-minute shows and talk about issues like how should we reform 
health care, how should we respond to this latest flu crisis? What do 
you do when your child gets a little bit sick and you're worried? Those 
folks do a great job. But we have a responsibility here to share our 
knowledge as well.
  So as I talk about that 47 million, I wanted to make sure that to the 
best of my knowledge, I think I am giving accurate information to say 
that truly only 15 to 20 million people in this country are falling 
through the cracks in regard to not having the ability financially and 
maybe not having the access to health insurance and having no choice 
but to show up in the emergency room late at night and getting very 
expensive care and probably substandard care only because the doctors, 
the health care providers there, don't know them. They don't know their 
medical history.
  And we don't have electronic medical records now, as we should have, 
as President Bush has called for, as President Obama has called for, as 
I totally agree with, by 2014, if not even sooner. You ought to be able 
to, in a situation like that--or even if it's somebody that's well 
insured and they are just on vacation, and they get this great 
opportunity to go to Russia or somewhere. And, obviously, most people 
don't speak the language there, and the doctors don't speak English, 
and you show up in an emergency room, and they don't know what's wrong 
with you and what your past history is and what medications you are on.

                              {time}  1745

  But if you had a radio frequency-identified card, a health care card, 
smaller, maybe, than even an American Express card, that you could just 
swipe, maybe like one of these Clear cards that some of us use to go 
through security at the airport, read your iris scan, whatever, and it 
has got every bit of medical information--every operation that you have 
ever had, every allergy, every prescription that you're on--and the 
language is immediately transferred from English to Russian or Russian 
to English, or whatever, and that's what we call fully-integrated 
electronic medical records.
  And the Federal Government, thank goodness, is working on that, and 
working very hard on it. In fact, President Obama put $19 billion in 
the Recovery Act of 2009. I think that's a good thing. I'm glad he did 
that. I think we definitely need to do it. We need to give loans and 
grants to doctors and hospitals, and encourage them. But every system 
has to be certified because the Federal Government with Medicare and 
Medicaid and the CHIP program and the VA program and TRICARE and our 
military health care system accounts for maybe 65 percent--I'd say at 
least 60 percent--of every health care dollar that's spent every year, 
Mr. Speaker. We're totaling I think now about $2.3 trillion. Seventeen 
percent of our Gross Domestic Product is health care dollars.
  So when people say to me, Well, why should the Federal Government 
have anything to do with what vendor I buy my software and hardware and 
maintenance program from that's very specific to my specialty--OB/GYN 
or general surgery or pediatrics or psychiatry, the answer is, Well, 
you don't just want to be able to communicate with the other doctors in 
the neighborhood or the two hospitals in the county, because the world 
doesn't end at the county line.
  That's true in regard to countries as well, as we talk about our 
borders, north and south, and you think about over in Europe. You have 
so many small countries and the borders are so porous. People move and 
travel and vacation. So you want all that connectivity. And I think 
it's usually important.
  So we on this side of the aisle would say to you, Mr. Speaker, and 
your Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle and to the 
current administration, Hey, we agree with that. We agree that let's 
spend some money. Let's work toward a fully integrated electronics 
medical system.
  What it would do, the Rand Corporation says, is save $160 billion a 
year. I don't know if it would do that. That would be quite a cut in 
that $2.3 trillion. But even if it's $100 billion a year, that is a 
significant savings.
  Maybe more important than saving money with that, though, is it saves 
lives, because people on Plavix are not going to inadvertently, because 
they show up with a transient ischemic attack, and it seems that maybe 
they're on the verge of having a stroke, some emergency room doctor who 
doesn't know them, who doesn't know that they have been on Plavix for 
years, and they decide they need some Coumadin right away--Coumadin, a 
much stronger blood thinner--and while trying to prevent this person 
from having a stroke, they cause them to have a hemorrhage in the 
brain. It's kind of like a stroke, but it's different. But the results 
are the same. They're catastrophic, and they can lead to instant death.
  So that's why we need to do this, and I think that it would save 
lives and save money. I think doctors in fact, Mr. Speaker, would 
ultimately be reimbursed better. Now they are very reluctant. At least 
300,000 physicians in this country don't have much in the way of 
electronic medical records. They might send their bill electronically. 
They may even prescribe electronically.
  But the records of the patient would literally be secure, very 
secure, and we have to make sure of that. You don't give that 
information out to anybody that has no business looking at it. Other 
physicians, of course, as long as the patient is comfortable with that.
  But we will continue to work on it. I think you will have less 
lawsuits because doctors would be less likely to make an error in 
prescribing. We would have lower health care costs because a doctor 
would not automatically order an MRI or a CAT scan, or somebody who 
presents to the emergency room with a headache, if he or she, the 
health care provider, knew that a week ago, by looking at those 
electronic records, the patient just had that done.

[[Page H5384]]

They might not do an echocardiogram if that was just done yesterday in 
the cardiologist's office.
  And then, lastly, in regard to electronic medical records, doctors 
are reimbursed under Medicare based on the amount of time that they 
spend with a patient. Now, if it's a surgical procedure or the delivery 
of a baby, these things are fairly easy to have a standardized 
reimbursement for that degree of service. But when most of the visit is 
cognitive--it involves the time and thinking and physical exam on the 
part of the health care provider, then the code that you submit is what 
determines the reimbursement.
  I will submit to you, Mr. Speaker, and to my colleagues, that most 
doctors are afraid that if they submit a code that is too high and then 
some inspector general--certainly, Medicare and Social Security has a 
right to do that if you're seeing Medicare patients, and look at your 
charts. And if you're over-coding, gaming the system, then not only 
would you have to give the money back and you may get kicked out of the 
Medicare program, but you could go to jail. You could go to jail. So 
doctors have a tendency to code lower rather than higher.
  Well, with electronic medical records, it's all done for you. There's 
no question about how much time you spent with a patient, what you 
talked about, what you did, what tests you ordered. And then it's just 
sort of like a neon sign. It pops up there and says this is the 
evaluation and management code. I think, ultimately, the doctors would 
be reimbursed more fairly.
  I didn't want to spend too much time on electronic medical records, 
but I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, it is important to talk about that 
and to understand why it's important and why we should, on both sides 
of the aisle, come together on this one. If we can't come together on 
anything else, we ought to come together on this one.
  I see that I have been joined by one of my classmates. I always like 
to see him on the House floor. I see him everyday on the House floor, 
but to hear him speak on the House floor--and you will too, Mr. 
Speaker--as I present to you the gentleman from Utah, Representative 
Rob Bishop. I don't even know what he is going to talk about. Well, 
when he talks, it's worth listening. And I yield to my friend from 
Utah.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Congressman Gingrey, I appreciate that 
introduction. You know there's no way I can possibly live up to that 
now. But I did want to come down here and talk not about health care 
specifically, but about some of the things we're doing differently and 
uniquely with energy.
  I realize there is somewhat of a connection because what Dr. Gingrey 
was talking about is a vision of another approach to try and solve the 
energy crisis. What we are talking about as Republicans is trying to 
give options to individuals and choices to individuals. And when it 
comes to energy, it is the same kind of concept. We are talking about a 
vision for America and a road or option that can be taken. It's not 
just simply one.
  So I appreciate very much the concept of health care. In fact, when I 
leave, I expect Dr. Gingrey will come back again to that area and show 
once again how these are all the concepts that have to be in there.
  But I did want to take just a moment, if I could, because today the 
Western Caucus as well as the Republican Study Committee did introduce 
a new bill that deals with energy. And it is, once again, with the same 
purpose or overall vision that Dr. Gingrey was talking about, because 
our goal is to say there are two competing visions of where America is 
ready to go. It's kind of like the Frost poem of two paths in the woods 
that are diverging. We have to choose which one we want to go.
  The Democrats have already offered a proposal of cap-and-tax. And the 
Republicans are now coming up with a different proposal of trying to 
take the cap off our energy development so that we have the choice of 
which of these two paths Americans want to take.
  If we go with what the Democrats are already proposing, there will be 
an increase in the energy costs of every individual. It can be as high 
as $3,000, which is a legitimate number. But the problem is it is also 
disproportionate. There are some parts of the country that will have a 
bigger hit than others. And it is worse on the poor than any other 
segment.
  If you're rich, this is an inconvenience. If you're poor, this is a 
decision on whether you can celebrate with Hamburger Helper that 
evening or not.
  The Republican option, on the other hand, the Republican road, is to 
try and increase and grow our energy supply so we reduce the cost 
because there is more available. It also recognizes that energy has 
always been the vehicle for those in the lower classes and poverty to 
raise themselves up. Their ability to increase our gross domestic 
product and our wealth has been based on the concept of having 
affordable energy.
  The Democratic approach, once again, will cut jobs. The greatest 
estimate, most conservative estimate, is at least 3 million jobs will 
be taken. The Republican one is not to increase jobs, it's not to 
increase taxes, but rather, instead, to create increased royalties we 
will get from increasing production, and put that into a trust fund to 
attack the deficit that this country has and take the cap off of our 
production so that we can actually succeed as a country.
  The Democrats would have us go down the approach where there is no 
real reward for conservation; only mandates. The Republican option that 
will be before that is to reward people for their efforts at personal 
conservation, which is what we should be doing.
  The Democrat road would take us down to the approach in which 
government starts telling people how to live their lives. We will 
harken back to the era of Jimmy Carter, where the government told you 
how fast to drive, how warm your house could be, and when you could buy 
gasoline, unless you're like the one family we knew about who had two 
different license plates--one odd, one even--so he could buy gasoline 
whenever he wanted to fill up his car.
  The Republican approach, though, is different. It is trying to reward 
innovations, giving prizes for ingenuity. What we realize in this 
country is there is within Americans the spark of creativity, the 
ingenuity, the ability to come up with new solutions. We don't need the 
government to pick winners and losers and tell us how we shall live. 
Open up the options for individuals and reward them for taking the risk 
to come up with those options, and we can create a better world.
  There are ideas that are out there--new ideas in this particular bill 
which gives incentives for every kind of energy, from solar to new 
algae production, and some old ideas that have been around which have 
never been done. And they are going to be new ideas until we actually 
do it--and there is no better time to do it.
  In fact, the Democrat approach is simply saying: We can't do it, so 
why try? The Republican option is saying: There is limitless 
opportunity in this country. We should do it, and we should simply do 
it now.
  It's kind of like the tale of two cities: one city where the lights 
are off; the Republican city, where the lights can be turned on. 
Actually, a better one is if you remember the sequel to ``Back to 
Future'' where there were two options in which civilization could 
develop. The Republican one takes you down to where the McFly family is 
happy; the Democrat option takes us down to where Biff is still ruling 
the world.

                              {time}  1800

  We have a chance of making the choice between those particular 
options.
  The bill is basically about all the energy that we can create. It 
says that there is, in this country, a better dream and a better vision 
of what the future can be. The Republicans want to take us down a 
better road for America's future, a better vision, by creating a bill 
that, once again, does three things:
  It rewards Americans for efforts of conservation. We are talking 
about a lot of mandates, but not allowing Americans to voluntarily 
conserve and be rewarded for it. And for every gallon that we can 
conserve, it is a gallon that we don't have to try to import from a 
country that basically doesn't like us.
  To increase significantly the amount of production we have so there 
is more energy, it is more affordable, it is more useable, it is more 
helpful, and, that it can be that type of thing that will allow those 
in the lower classes economically to rise above their situation right 
now.

[[Page H5385]]

  And, third, reward Americans for innovation. Prizes for innovation 
have always been the way the world has made quantum leaps forward. When 
the British were trying to become the maritime power, they didn't know 
how to map the waters, so they offered a 20,000 pound reward for anyone 
who could solve the problem, and a London clock maker came up with the 
concept of latitude and longitude we still use today.
  When Napoleon needed to have his troops fed, he offered a 14,000 
franc award for the first person who could come up and solve his 
problem, and the result was the concept of vacuum packing that we still 
use today.
  When Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean, he was responding to a 
prize offered by a newspaper.
  The ability of Americans to solve our problems and come up with 
creativity and new ideas and new solutions far and beyond what we are 
thinking about today is something that has never been driven by 
Washington. It has been driven by giving Americans the opportunity to 
use their native abilities, expand the horizons, be creative, and then 
be rewarded for that kind of creativity.
  We are talking about two potential roads: one road which leads to 
more control of government; one road that leads to greater innovation 
and acceptance, and the ability of Americans to dream new dreams and 
create new visions.
  Dr. Gingrey was talking about that same concept in the field of 
health care, that what we need is to look at the two roads that we are 
taking, and perhaps even look at--I think the word in the vernacular in 
the medical community would be trying to come up with a second opinion 
of where we should be moving and where we should be going.
  I do thank Dr. Gingrey for allowing me to intervene here, because, 
like I say, there is a new energy bill that has been produced. It is an 
energy bill that I think is positive. It is one I want Americans to 
deal with, because what we are trying to say is there is a better path, 
there is a better future for this country, and we want this out here as 
an option so people can understand it.
  On the issue of health care, I think the good representative from 
Georgia will also admit there has got to be a better path and a better 
option that is out here, one that ennobles and empowers Americans. I 
think he has some great ideas on how you can steer this country down to 
that correct path.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Reclaiming my time, and if the gentleman from 
Utah can stay with us and engage me in a colloquy as we continue the 
time talking about these issues, I really appreciate Representative 
Bishop's expertise on energy and our second opinion, the Republican 
alternative, a second opinion.
  Forgive me, my colleagues, if I utilize medical terminology, but it 
seems to work for me. And as we developed a caucus on our side of the 
aisle, as our health care provider membership grows--I think we have 11 
medical doctors now on the Republican side and I think there are four 
or five on the Democratic side. We have psychologists, we have 
dentists, we have nurses. We have some medical expertise, Mr. Speaker, 
in this Chamber, and we want to utilize it. But this GOP Doctors Caucus 
is working very hard to develop a second opinion on health care reform.
  Rob Bishop and John Shimkus, who leads the coalition on a second 
opinion for energy reform, market driven, these are Republican ideas. I 
get a little weary when people suggest that we are just standing in the 
way of progress and, what is our plan? Well, these are our plans.
  Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, as I said at the outset of the hour, we 
don't get many, if any, opportunities under the leadership, I am sad to 
say, of the first female Speaker of this great body serving in her 
second Congress in that capacity. It was supposed to be the most open 
opportunity to get away from these Republicans who all they wanted to 
do was shut the place down. We were going to open the doors and open 
the windows and bring in some sunshine and have transparency and give 
everybody an opportunity to represent their 675,000 constituents, 
whether they were Republican or Democrat, whether you were in the 
minority or the majority.
  So what has happened? I don't know what happened. Mr. Speaker, I 
don't know what led the Speaker--you are the designated Speaker, but I 
don't know what led the Speaker to change her mind, but I, for one, am 
saddened by it. So we have to convince our colleagues and hopefully the 
American people that we do have opinions. We just don't get to express 
them. We are not the party of ``no.'' We are not the party of ``no'' on 
health care reform. We are not the party of ``no'' on having a better 
comprehensive energy reform bill. These are second opinions.
  I yield back to my colleague from Utah.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. If I could ask to interrupt for just a second 
with my good friend from Georgia, because I do have to leave in a 
moment or two, but I think you were talking about something that is 
very significant. There have been over 950 bills introduced by 
Republicans so far this session; 59 of them have been allowed to be 
discussed on the floor, most of them suspensions.

  It is not that we are wanting for ideas. It is we are wanting for a 
vehicle in which they can be debated and discussed and be presented to 
the American people.
  I have one other analogy. I have grayer hair than you do. I am older. 
But when we were growing up, remember those old records you had to buy? 
If I wanted a song, I had to buy the entire album or the entire 8-
track. We won't even go how far back that has to be. My kids, though, 
have these little iPods, which I still don't know how to work. But if 
they want a song, they don't have to buy the entire album. They can 
download their song on their iPod. They get to pick and choose.
  Every aspect of American life now, we have been given Americans' 
options. The business world gives Americans options. The American 
Government, the Federal Government is the only place where we are still 
talking about one-size-fits-all mandates on people. What we need to be 
doing is giving Americans choices and allowing Americans to choose for 
themselves how they wish to live their lives. And that is the message. 
That is the Republican option that happens to be out there. That is the 
vision that we are trying to present.
  And I appreciate it, as I am going to have to leave the gentleman 
from Georgia, especially with his expertise in the field of health 
care, that he recognizes this is the same solution: not telling the 
Americans how to live, but giving them options and allowing Americans 
to choose their own future. They get to buy the song they want and put 
it on their personal iPod.
  I appreciate him for allowing me to join him here this evening as 
part of this hour, and I appreciate Madam Speaker's consideration and 
toleration in us taking this time to try and give a new vision, another 
road, another option for Americans. I appreciate the gentleman's time, 
and I return back what is left to him.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I appreciate very much the 
gentleman from Utah joining us this evening. If he is going to have the 
opportunity to get to his district in Utah, it is not easy every week. 
It is pretty easy for me to go home, Madam Speaker, to Atlanta, 
Georgia, Marietta and Cobb County. It takes about 1 hour, 45 minutes. 
But our Members west of the Mississippi, I really feel sorry for them 
in a way, because it is tough. I wish him Godspeed and a safe trip 
home.
  But we are here to make sure that people do understand, and I think 
our Members do. I think Members on both sides of the aisle. And, look, 
I am not saying that we are above reproach on the Republican side. When 
we were in the leadership and controlled this body, maybe we were a 
little heavyhanded. Maybe we didn't keep everything open and 
transparent and make amendments in order from the minority.
  But when you campaign and say, as we are doing now, please give us 
another chance and you will see that we have learned our lesson, that 
is what the current Democratic majority said when they were campaigning 
in 2006: Give us an opportunity. Let's throw those bums out and we will 
show you, John Q. Public, what we can do in the people's House and how 
much better it will be for everybody.
  So, yes, I am disappointed, Madam Speaker, that it hasn't turned out 
that way. But still, we do have an opportunity, as Representative 
Bishop and I

[[Page H5386]]

take this hour and talk about these two hugely important issues and let 
people know that we do have a second opinion. I started the hour 
talking about the physical health of the Nation. We talked about it 
last night on the swine flu discussion. And then Representative Bishop 
came as I yielded time to him, Madam Speaker, and he talked about the 
fiscal, the economic health of the country. Our country cannot be 
healthy without both fiscal health and physical health.
  So, yes, these are hugely important issues. Don't ignore the 
brainpower on this side of the aisle just for purely partisan reasons 
or, well, you did it to us and we are going to stick it to you. That is 
not what the American people need at the Federal or State level. I hope 
we can give them better, and I think most of my colleagues feel the 
same way.
  I will stay on the energy side for a few minutes, Madam Speaker. This 
issue in the energy bill that is coming through the committee, which I 
am honored to serve on under Chairman Waxman and Ranking Member Barton, 
Energy and Commerce, this energy bill that has this strong emphasis on 
a carbon tax, or cap-and-trade you might call it, Representative Bishop 
talked about the fact that that ultimately will end up being a hidden 
tax, a hidden tax on mostly middle class Americans. Lower-income 
Americans will be, as he pointed out, hit hard. For rich people, it 
will be an inconvenience. For people with marginal incomes, it will be 
devastating. And it is up to $3,000 a family. As these producers of 
electricity are penalized because they are producing too much carbon or 
releasing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, then they will 
pass those costs right on to the consumer, to John Q. Public.
  Madam Speaker, I was at a breakfast this morning, and I guess there 
were maybe 25 House Members in attendance. We were privileged to have a 
doctor, a Ph.D. doctor from Spain--his name, Gabriel Calzada--talk to 
us. He is an associate professor of applied economics at the King Juan 
Carlos University in Madrid, and he talked about how this cap-and-
trade, cap-and-tax, following the Kyoto Protocol of 1991 to the fullest 
extent of the letter, that is what Spain has done. Their current 
President is determined for Spain to be the poster child for abiding by 
the Kyoto Protocol, and they do.
  This professor, this Ph.D. doctor told us that it is an economic 
disaster in Spain, that they are losing jobs, that these companies that 
are trying to produce electricity with alternative sources such as wind 
and solar and geothermal, they are losing money. Many of them are going 
out of business. And also, a lot of the factories in Spain that produce 
things, but they can only produce these things by using electricity to 
keep the lights on and to keep the turbines or the robotics running, 
the machines running, the workers working, they are packing up shop and 
going to other countries in this global economy.
  Now, we have been hearing about all these green jobs that this is 
going to create. Well, he said in Spain they call those jobs subprime.

                              {time}  1815

  I will repeat it. They call them subprime jobs because they are not 
going to last very long. They are not lasting very long.
  We have got a situation where Chairman Waxman and Chairman Markey 
want a bill where every part of this country has to abide by these 
renewable standards so that 25 percent of your electric power 
generation by the year 2025--think ``25 by 25''--25 percent has to be 
produced by renewables, wind, solar, geothermal. But guess what? In my 
beloved area of the United States in the southeast, we don't have a 
constant source of wind. We don't even have a constant source of sun. 
We have very little geothermal. But do you know what we do have? We 
have lots of coal. We have lots of water. We have the ability to 
produce, to turn these turbines and produce electricity by just letting 
water fall. We pump it back uphill and let it fall again. If that is 
not renewable, I guess some of it evaporates, but it seems pretty 
renewable to me.
  We are not able to count nuclear power. We haven't had a new nuclear 
reactor go online, Madam Speaker, since 1976. And it is clean. It is 
efficient. And it is safe. It is expensive. Yes, it is expensive. But 
when you have these nations, these ``rogue'' nations I will call them, 
or near rogue nations, even if they are not rogue nations, they don't 
like us very much, charging us $140 a barrel for petroleum and 
strangling us with the cost of natural gas. You know, we need to become 
independent of that. But you can't do that if you are not going to be 
allowed to burn coal. And in the United States, I think we have 
something like 240,000 tons, enough coal to last us 150 years. I think 
these folks are misguided. I know they are smart people, but I think 
they are misguided. For them to shut all that down just because the 
Greenpeace folks and the environmentalists run amok, they just don't 
understand this global economy and how you lose jobs and you have 
countries like China and India with almost 3 billion people, almost 
half the world's population, they can do anything they want to. And 
they are bringing on a coal-fired power plant once a week, a new one 
every week. And yet we are going to do what we are doing. It just 
doesn't make sense.
  I have talked to the committee, to the powers that be, and explained 
the situation we have got in the southeast. And sometimes it makes you 
wonder, Madam Speaker, when you use the word ``scheme,'' that can be 
just a plan, but that word also can be interpreted in a pejorative way, 
a real scheme, like somebody is scheming.
  Lots of jobs came to my part of the United States almost 100 years 
ago. We had textile plants everywhere. Where was the corporate office 
of those plants? New York City. But they came south for one reason, 
because of inexpensive labor. And they could make their products, make 
a profit and pay well. And times were good. My dad was born in 
Graniteville, South Carolina, built by the Graniteville Company, a 
company from New York traded on the New York Stock Exchange. And that 
company built everything in town and employed every worker in town.
  Well, those jobs came from the Northeast. Now, if we follow through 
and pass a bill that penalizes the southeast by raising utility prices, 
then these factories will say, well, we will just stay up north with 
all these expensive union workers, because if we go down South, we will 
get cheaper labor, but we will have to pay out the wazoo for 
electricity. It is the same thing with California.
  So I would say to all my colleagues and everybody listening and men 
and women across this country, they are connecting the dots. They are 
figuring this thing out. There is, indeed, in my opinion, Madam 
Speaker, a scheme going on here. And it makes no sense. It makes no 
sense at any time, especially in a time of severe economic recession in 
which we almost are reduced to the point now of hoping and praying that 
we will come out of it. Bail out this one, bail out that one, stimulate 
this, stimulate that. But when we go back home, Mr. Bishop to Utah, I 
to Georgia, and you start talking to people and they are about to lose 
their home, and the banks are about to close, small community banks, 
and they are saying, Congressman Gingrey, why couldn't you get me any 
of that TARP money? We made loans to builders because we were literally 
forced to by the Homeowners Reinvestment Act or what Fannie and Freddie 
forced us to do because of wanting more diversification in 
homeownership. We knew that you don't lend money to people that can't 
verify that they have got a job or what the income is and they have no 
down payment and their annual salary is $50,000 and they want to get a 
loan on a $600,000 house, and it should be no more than one to three. 
But, we were literally forced to make these loans. And now we are about 
to go under. All these senior citizens who invested in the bank and the 
local community, they are about to lose their investment. Where is our 
help from the Federal Government? No. We forced the big banks to take 
money, and then won't even let them give the money back. Well, that is 
what I call ``socialization,'' ``socialism.''
  And I don't know how much time we have got, but I'm going to maybe 
utilize a few more minutes, Madam Speaker, and if you need to gavel me 
down, you go right ahead, and I will just shut up immediately. But I'm 
going to switch back a little bit to the health care part now.

[[Page H5387]]

  As a physician, I don't want to see that socialized. I don't think 
men and women want the government in the examination room standing 
between the doctor and the patient.
  And it sounds like the good Speaker is letting me know that the magic 
hour has expired. When you are having fun, time flies. Thank you for 
your indulgence, my colleagues, and we will continue to talk about the 
Republican second opinion on many issues.

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