[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 165 (Friday, November 6, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H12569-H12575]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I have some prepared remarks 
tonight about the Pelosi health care reform bill, but you know what I 
would like to do here in the beginning is just to talk about some 
things that Republicans believe in.
  I have plenty of criticism about Ms. Pelosi's bill, and I will 
definitely make that known in a few moments; but you know sometimes I 
think it is incumbent upon all of us in this place, rather than just 
saying what we're against, to say what we're really for.
  Republicans have believed since the beginning of the party that no 
matter who one was, that they had the right to be free, the right to 
live, and the right to pursue their dreams. This is something that we 
have felt was the essence of America from the very beginning. In fact, 
the Republican Party was born out of a commitment on the part of a 
group of people that believed that African Americans were human beings 
deserving of the same protection that all other human beings had, even 
though the Supreme Court of the United States had said that, under Dred 
Scott, that Dred Scott, a slave, was not a human being or not a full 
person under the Constitution.
  Of course, you know there was some unpleasantness about that debate, 
Mr. Speaker; we had a great Civil War in this country. But the 
commitment on the part of Republicans to restore equal protection to 
all people regardless of their station in life sustained them in that 
crucible of that horrible Civil War, and I hope that Republicans will 
maintain their commitment to that no matter what happens.
  We have been debating a great deal on trying to make equal access to 
health care in this country, and Republicans believe in that with all 
of our hearts. I've often heard in this Chamber, What are the 
Republican ideas? They have challenged us and said that we really don't 
have anything that we believe in, that we are just the Party of No. 
That is such tragic injustice because there are about 40 bills that 
have been introduced into this House by Republicans saying what we 
wanted to do with health care reform, and we have not had the 
opportunity for any of those bills to be presented on this floor, and 
oftentimes even our amendments are not allowed.
  Mr. Speaker, for a moment let's just ask ourselves, What has given 
America the most powerful economic engine and force of productivity in 
the face of human history? It has been that thing called freedom, that 
thing that allows each person to pursue, to the greatest extent 
possible, what they believe to be true and good, whether it be in the 
area of their own self-interest or the area of trying to help other 
people or in the area of just trying to make a better world, that we 
believe freedom created innovation, it created a sense of almost 
dreaming about what could be. That innovation, I think, is probably the 
most important difference in the effect of the Republican's version and 
the Democrat version of health care reform.
  Republicans believe that when health care is in private hands, that 
even the providers of health care--sometimes because they want to make 
money, sometimes because they want to help others--but the providers of 
health care are always seeking new ways and better ways to do things, 
new innovation, ways to come up with new, less expensive, but more 
effective procedures. I think that we all delude ourselves if we 
believe that we can accomplish making affordable health care available 
to everyone if we don't focus on this thing called innovation.

  Let me, if I could, deviate and give an example, Mr. Speaker. There 
was a time in America where the government controlled our telephone 
company. It was true that our telephone company--at that time we called 
it Ma Bell--was a private company, but it was almost entirely 
controlled and regulated by government. Of course you know you had one 
old clunker telephone and you had to dial the number, and of course 
sometimes the operator would get smart with you if you asked her what 
time it was. It was a government-run system with all of the attending 
bureaucratic nightmares.
  And the equivalent in today's dollars for long distance would be 
about $3.10 a minute. It was a real disaster. Now, it was nice just to 
have a phone system, but the reality is we never really saw a great 
deal of innovation.
  But then, when I was just a young man in the legislature, we decided 
that maybe it was time to break this thing up and give it to the 
private sector and see if they couldn't do something better with it. 
And what happened was profound; we created a system that would serve 
everyone. In other words, we told those companies that if you're going 
to provide telephone service, you've got to make sure you provide it

[[Page H12570]]

to the senior citizens up in the mountains or something like that that 
wouldn't be able to compete in the regular process. We've got to make 
sure that they're taken care of, and they were.
  But something else very wonderful happened, Mr. Speaker. When we 
turned the telephone company and broke it up and said now we're going 
to let the private sector come up with the innovations that they could 
and we're going to see if they can provide a better mousetrap for the 
country, if they can provide better telephone service at a cheaper 
price, look what happened, Mr. Speaker, look what happened.
  Today we have cell phones, almost everyone does. You can pull up the 
Library of Congress on your cell phone. It is astonishing. The 
BlackBerrys that we carry around here can send messages anywhere on 
Earth, and we can even pull up our Web site. Boy, I'll tell you, for 
those that are narcissistic, that is a great little item. And it is 
just an amazing thing what has happened.
  And guess what else has happened, Mr. Speaker? Today, long distance 
is around 3 cents a minute; sometimes it's less than that. It's getting 
to the point where a lot of the companies are just offering a system 
that you can say, well, you've got unlimited dialing and phone and 
voice and text now that you can use all you want for $50 a month. Isn't 
that amazing, Mr. Speaker? But that was because innovation occurred.
  I truly believe that this country has shown a proclivity to create 
innovation that could absolutely revolutionize the health care industry 
in a way that almost none of us can imagine at this moment. Would we 
have imagined 25 or 30 years ago that the telephony, the telephone 
systems of this country, would be so amazingly transformed when we put 
it into private hands? Now, it was true that some of the people that 
were in that area were motivated by profit. Some of them made money, 
some of them lost money, some of them went broke. It was a typical free 
enterprise situation. All the chaos and the attending realities went 
along with that. People went broke; people made money. But the end 
result was the American people were served in a wonderful way and today 
we have the most magnificent communication systems in the world, and 
almost everyone takes part in that.
  The poorest of the poor have a better life because we deregulated the 
telephone companies. And it had this magnificent effect on all of 
America. And now we are able to do things that we never could have done 
before.

                              {time}  2145

  Yet it seems like, when government has something, that innovation is 
stifled and that the things that would create a better system are 
somehow suppressed. Because, after all, what is the incentive for 
innovation in a government-owned system?
  If you're a bureaucrat, you have a certain amount of money, and you 
are tasked with the job of delivering the service in your mission plan. 
It's not an evil or a bad thing. It's just a bad system. It just 
doesn't work very well, Mr. Speaker, because the bureaucrat kind of has 
two options. He is not in charge or she is not in charge of innovation. 
He is in charge of the delivery system that government doesn't deliver 
very well.
  He has to make kind of a calculation. Well, we've got so much money, 
and we want to make the services available, and sooner or later, he or 
she runs out of money from the budget--it always happens--and they have 
to make some very hard choices. When that occurs, there is rationing or 
somehow they will distribute it in ways that are more amenable to the 
budgets that they have. It's just a very difficult situation.
  I'm sorry that bureaucrats have that difficulty. It's a difficult 
thing to be a bureaucrat, and I kind of feel sorry for them, but I 
don't want to make more of them, Mr. Speaker. I don't want us to lose 
sight of the greatness of America and forget that it is not too late to 
make a better world. We cannot give up our freedom and expect that 
somehow socialist policies will do the same thing for the family of man 
as this thing called ``freedom'' has done for America. It has never 
happened.
  Any time you have ever turned over any major process to a socialist 
environment or to a socialist enterprise--that's really a bad word. 
``Enterprise'' and ``socialism'' don't belong in the same sentence. Any 
time you turn it over to a socialist, bureaucratic system--again, 
``system'' is probably being pretty charitable--what happens is that 
all of the ways to improve the system are diminished or are completely 
eradicated.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I think it's important that we don't lose sight of 
what made us a productive country. In that sense, what Americans need 
to realize is that there are ways that we can improve the health care 
system. There are ways that we can fix what is broken without breaking 
what is working.
  About 83 percent of Americans believe that the health care system is 
working for them. Now, there are many people who simply cannot afford 
health care insurance, and they need it and they want it. Republicans 
have come up with a very simple approach to that, and that is either 
through tax credits or through some type of drafts or vouchers or 
something along those lines that we can put in the hands of people who 
cannot afford health care insurance, and we let them then be empowered 
to go out and to buy health care policies from the private sector which 
best meet their needs.
  Now, there is still a raging debate about how much we should do or 
how we should do it or if we should do that. I understand that because 
I think that can move us in a dangerous direction as well, but it is 
still the safest way that we can use the mechanism of government to 
somehow provide for those who are less fortunate.
  In the final analysis, it is important that we empower the 
individuals and not empower government, but if we did it the right way, 
if we could see innovation occur, Mr. Speaker, and if we could put this 
thing back the way that the Founding Fathers first envisioned it, 
health care would be one of those magnificent advanced systems in which 
everybody would be able to go to their own doctors and say, Well, you 
know, I've got this problem, and they say, Well, you know, we've got 
this new system that could really fix it.
  I'll give you one example, Mr. Speaker. It is something that is 
completely untested yet, and it is something that isn't finished, and 
it is something that doesn't work yet, but there is an effort to try to 
treat cancer in a new way by injecting a substance into the body that 
disperses throughout all the cells in the body. It even passes the 
blood-brain barrier, and it literally is able to be disseminated into 
every cell. Now, that is the theory. I want to emphasize in the 
strongest possible terms that we don't have this kind of process or 
procedure yet, and it's too bad that we don't.
  In any case, the dream--the hope--is that this substance would 
disperse throughout the entire body and that the person would be left 
in a dark environment and that within about 24 hours this substance 
would disperse out of the body or would be changed in nature to where 
it would be diminished or dispersed or eliminated and that the only 
cells which would retain it would be cancer cells and that, when this 
substance is exposed to very bright light, it would turns toxic and 
would kill only the cancer cells.
  What an incredible idea. What an incredible dream. Now, I know it's a 
long ways away. I know there will be people who will like to pursue 
something like that. It's just not available yet, Mr. Speaker, but it 
could be, I believe. I believe, if we turn the minds of free people 
loose, that all kinds of wonderful things can happen. Something like 
that would cost a few thousand dollars, not the tens of thousands or 
the hundreds of thousands that are spent on advanced cancer surgeries 
and treatments today. It could change everything. Yet, if we don't 
allow the free market and free people to pursue those kinds of things, 
they will never occur, because one thing is very certain in a 
government-run plan: There are just no pursuits of those kinds of 
things. That is one of the great tragedies of forgetting that freedom 
still works.
  Mr. Speaker, Republicans believe that there are ways that we can 
empower individuals to be able to go out and do things for themselves 
and that we can empower even those who cannot afford health insurance 
to buy it on their own and that we can still maintain this free market 
freedom that we talk about so often.

[[Page H12571]]

  I truly believe in things like allowing us, as individuals in 
America, to be able to buy our insurance from any insurance company in 
America. We can't do that now. If you're in one State, you can only 
buy, in most cases, across the State that you're in. There are 
about 1,400 or 1,500 insurance companies in this Nation. If we could 
allow people to buy insurance from any of those, can you imagine the 
competition that would occur? Can you imagine the ways that they would 
work to try to be the ones to sell you your insurance? Can you imagine 
how much nicer they would be on the phone? Can you imagine that, when 
something would go wrong, they would try to work with you as much as 
possible because they would know, if they didn't, they would lose your 
business?

  Unlike a private system like that, in a government system, if 
bureaucrats make you mad, tough luck. It doesn't really matter to them 
that much. There is no incentive for them to even be kind to you. You 
only have one place to go, and they know that. They have a monopoly as 
it were. I just think that that's one of the Republican ideas that 
could be very helpful.
  Another one is just tort reform. You know, a lot of people don't know 
what that word ``tort'' means, and sometimes I wonder how they came up 
with that term. It simply means that we would try to have some sort of 
legal reform that would end these frivolous lawsuits which cause 
medical malpractice insurance to rise through the roof, and it would 
make all the difference in the world.
  I mean the fact is that just what we could save on stopping frivolous 
lawsuits, Mr. Speaker, would buy every one of the 11 million people who 
we are projecting don't have health care insurance, who can't afford it 
but who would like to if they could, a Cadillac health care insurance 
policy. I just think that it is astonishing that we don't pursue things 
in that direction. There are so many things that we can do, and 
Republicans have some ideas to do that.
  I told you, Mr. Speaker, that I have about 15 minutes of prepared 
remarks on Ms. Pelosi's bill, and I intend to give those, but first, if 
he would be inclined, I would like to yield to my friend, Congressman 
Hoekstra, if he is prepared to speak to the issue at all.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague for yielding.
  As we are moving forward now--and it looks like we are going to move 
forward on this debate and vote on the Pelosi health care bill, and 
we're going to have a massive government takeover--I would just like to 
have a dialogue with my friend to talk about some of the issues that 
the American people need to consider.
  Before I came over, I think I heard my colleague talking about some 
of this, and I know what a fan you are of this document right here, 
called the Constitution.
  You know, as you go through the Constitution and as you go through 
the first 10 amendments--the Bill of Rights--people wonder, now, if you 
can build a Nation off of 37 pages, why does it take more than 2,000 
pages to build a health care system? It's very simple.
  If you go through and take a look at the first 10 amendments to the 
Constitution, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are all about 
enshrining freedoms: Congress shall make no law respecting an 
establishment of religion. The right to bear arms shall not be 
infringed. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, 
houses, papers, and effects shall not be violated. It's all about ``the 
government shall not.'' ``The government shall not.'' Again, it 
enshrines your freedoms and my freedoms.
  The health care bill is 2,000 pages. What's in that bill? What's the 
difference between that document and this document?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Reclaiming my time here, Congressman Hoekstra, 
the main difference is that that document that you hold in your hand 
primarily chains down government. It dictates to government, not to the 
individual. It empowers the individual.
  You know, when George Washington and some of the other Founding 
Fathers put this together, they did something that was singular in 
history. They were in a position to arrogate all kinds of power under 
themselves. They had just thrown off the Crown. They had done some 
amazing things. The people of this Nation loved them, and they could 
have had any kind of power, any kind of government mechanism, really, 
that they had tried to put together, but they did something very 
amazing, and it has changed the world. They said, for once, we are 
going to empower the individual. We are going to give the individual 
the rights, and we are going to tell government what it can't do rather 
than tell the people what they can't do.

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, I was having this 
discussion with a friend of mine.
  He said, You know, you've got to get away from that term ``empower.''
  Actually, that's exactly it. It's empowering the very foundation of 
American society and American Government. We made that decision more 
than 200 years ago that, in America, we would empower the individual, 
and the Constitution enshrined that, and it has worked phenomenally 
well.
  This bill--I don't have it with me. I don't take it with me because 
you don't carry it too many places. It's 20 pounds. Tomorrow, we are 
going to unroll this bill. We rolled it up as a scroll. It's more than 
a third of a mile long, meaning that I could leave my district in West 
Michigan and go to Chicago. I could stand on top of the Sears Tower, 
and then I could put the Washington Monument on top of it. I could drop 
it, and it would be from the top of the Washington Monument on top of 
the Sears Tower, and it would just about get to the ground. That's how 
long this bill is. It's more than a third of a mile if you lay the 
pages from end to end. The Constitution is just 37 simple pages.
  Like you said, which is a great way of putting it, the Constitution 
chained government and put limits on government. This health care bill 
chains you and me and each and every one of our constituents because, 
in this bill--I've not counted them all, but I think someone has said 
that it has the word ``shall'' in it--what?--over 3,000 times.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. If the gentleman would yield, I will give you 
the exact number. The word ``shall'' appears in this bill 3,425 times.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. So, where the Constitution has in it the words ``shall 
not,'' I would bet that those two words ``shall not'' do not appear 
together very often in this health care document, but over 3,400 times 
it says ``shall.'' It's the Health and Human Services ``shall,'' and 
most importantly, it is the commissioner ``shall.''
  What we've done is we've taken the rights from this. We've taken them 
away. We've put them into this health care bill, and we've said the 
commissioner now shall make these decisions; shall make the decision as 
to what kind of insurance policies are available to you and to me and 
to our constituents and which ones are not; shall determine what 
benefits are going to be in a basic plan and which shall be available 
in a premium and in a premium plus plan.
  The commissioner shall decide whether you and I can get health 
savings accounts. Actually, we've already made that decision. That's a 
decision that we in this House shall decide because health savings 
accounts will no longer be available.
  So it is a great transfer of power from where the Founders wanted it 
to be to where now this House believes it should be, because this House 
now believes or may believe--I hope we stop this bill because, before I 
came here, you outlined some issues. They're not simple. They are 
complicated issues--tort reform, competition, availability, and those 
types of things.

                              {time}  2200

  But those are the types of things that we could do that would address 
the specific problems that we have in the health insurance market and 
that we have in the health care area today that would specifically fix 
those areas and make insurance more affordable and more available for 
the people who don't have it today, whereas this new massive bill says 
it's going to change for all of you. The commissioner shall decide.
  For those of you that have a health care plan, you can keep it for 5 
years maybe. But after 5 years you can be pretty well assured we all 
shall have a new plan that shall be determined by the commissioner, and 
we shall not be able to buy anything else.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Hoekstra, the reality is that word 
``shall''

[[Page H12572]]

should be pointed out as to what that means in this place. ``Shall'' is 
the preeminent word of law. In other words, that is, if there is any 
single word that makes law, it's that word ``shall'' in this place. You 
can say ``may,'' that's permissive. But ``shall'' or ``shall not,'' 
those are the key crux of all law in a sense.
  It's astonishing to me that we forget that law is force. I had a 
wonderful friend many years ago that was in the State Senate. He said 
always remember, Trent--I was a very young man--he said, remember that 
law is the gun.
  He had big envelope on his desk. He had an old World War II pistol in 
it that was disarmed, and he always pulled it out and he said, The law 
is the gun. It is force. The word ``shall'' is what puts force to it. 
When you have this word ``shall'' 3,425 times in a bill, that's a lot 
of force. That's a lot of government arrogating great power unto itself 
and taking it away from the people.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. You and I have a tremendous amount of background in 
dealing with legislation that has a lot of ``shall'' in it. We can go 
back, you and I weren't here, but we can go back to a very novel and 
noble idea, the highway transportation bill back in 1956 under the 
administration of President Eisenhower. The goal was very, very good--
build an interstate highway system, something that was very, very much 
needed, and we built it. That thing still exists.
  Now what has it become? It has become this massive bill, this massive 
process where we take all of this money from the States, so a State 
like Michigan, and I don't know if you are a donor or a donee State.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Arizona is a donor State.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. All right. Let's explain to our colleagues and our 
visitors in the gallery exactly what a donor State means. It means that 
Michigan, we send, on every gallon of gas, there is something like a 
19-cent tax. For the 53 years that this program has been in existence, 
for every dollar that we have sent to Washington, Michigan has gotten 
back 83 cents. People wonder why roads in Michigan aren't in great 
shape.
  I had a constituent a couple of weeks ago come to me and say, 
Congressman, why can't our roads be like West Virginia? We checked. For 
the average of 53 years, West Virginia has gotten $1.74 back for every 
dollar that they put in. That's a pretty good deal. No wonder their 
roads are better than our roads in Michigan, because they get $1.74 
back. Michigan gets 83. I don't know what happens in Arizona.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It's in the low nineties, Mr. Hoekstra.
  It seems like what happens every time you send something into the 
Federal Government for them to send back or disburse, they always whack 
a little piece of it off as it goes by, don't they?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. They whack a little piece off, it goes into this 
bureaucracy. Then they allocate it according to people who may be more 
powerful than others, that's why your State and my State, why we are 
donor States. At one point in time it was to build an interstate 
highway system. Today that money is used for all kinds of things. That 
money now comes back to Michigan, and we've got to put up matching 
funds. Two years ago the money came back and it had to go to highway 
enhancement. You kind of look at it and say, What's highway 
enhancement? Well, our Governor figured out, working with the 
Department of Transportation, that the ``shall,'' you shall use this 
money for highway enhancement meant that rather than improving our 
interstate highway system by expanding capacity, perhaps putting on a 
new interchange, perhaps extending it into an area where we needed it 
extended, the ``shall'' meant you shall build a turtle fence.
  And what's a turtle fence? Well, in Arizona, you probably don't have 
many turtles.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. We don't have many turtles.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, in Michigan we have quite a few. It was $400,000 
for you shall build a turtle fence, you shall not use it for an 
interchange, you shall not use it to fill potholes, you shall build a 
turtle fence. I didn't really know what a turtle fence was. I had an 
idea, but I asked.
  A turtle fence is exactly what it's intended to do, what you would 
think when you hear the term. A turtle fence is intended to keep 
turtles from crossing the highway.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. We need a rattlesnake fence in Arizona.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I don't know if a snake can go over a fence or not. But 
in Michigan, they decided to make sure that this fence would be turtle-
proof, to make sure that no turtle would go over the fence, they built 
it about 3-feet high and then they put one of these round things over 
the top of it, 3- or 4-inch diameter, to make sure that for those 
turtles that were climbing turtles, they couldn't climb and climb over 
the fence.
  The irony of this whole thing is I still drive that road and I drive 
it quite often; and I still see turtles that have been hit by cars. You 
say, now, how can that be? We've spent all of this money. We spent 
$400,000 to build this turtle fence and to study it. Why are there 
still turtles being hit on that highway?
  Then you think about it and it's like, I know why, because this 
protects the turtles that are outside of the fence, because they can't 
get to the highway. But it's really a bad deal for the turtles that 
were fenced in. They have nowhere to go. They can't get out. Most of 
their living area now is the median, and a little bit of land on each 
side of the highway before you get to the fence. But for the turtles 
that are in the fenced-in area, they can't get to the river anymore, 
because that's fenced in, and they can't get out anywhere else. The 
only place they can go is stay in the median, or if they want to move 
at all, they get on the road. It really didn't work that well. The 
Federal Government, in its infinite wisdom, saying you shall spend it 
on a turtle fence. And the people say, Pete, why do you bring this up 
in the context of health care? Why are you and Trent talking about 
this?

  We will see the same kinds of decisions in health care. The money 
will come here, and it will not be fairly distributed to the States, 
just like you are a donor State and we are a donor State, and there are 
other States that are getting an unfair share. The same thing is going 
to happen to health care.
  One of these days a Congressman from Michigan is going to come back 
home and someone is going to say, I was traveling through West 
Virginia, we got sick, and why do they have such better medical care, 
and their facilities are so much better than Michigan?
  And the answer will be, well, you know, over the last 30 years of 
this Pelosi health care, West Virginia got $1.74 back for every dollar 
that they sent in taxes and Michigan and Arizona, they got 83 cents. 
There will be an inequity in health care.
  Then the other thing it will be is we'll start spending it on foolish 
things because people here in Washington will all have their pet 
projects, whether it's rattlesnakes or whether it's turtles, they will 
start siphoning the money off and growing it to something it was never 
intended to be.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I've heard a lot of strange stories about 
bureaucratic programs, but one that drives peace-loving turtles to 
suicide is just about too much, isn't it?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, it is.
  You and I have another program that I believe you and I fought 
together: No Child Left Behind. Congress in its infinite wisdom in 
2001, again with the noblest of goals, just like building an interstate 
highway system, just like making sure we left no child behind, just 
like making sure we want everybody to have quality health care? What 
did we do in 2001? You and I voted against it, I believe.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Yes, we did.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We said taking power from parents, and you and I are 
working on this constitutional amendment together that enshrines in the 
Constitution that parents have the right to raise and educate their 
kids, protecting parental rights.
  Again it says, Congress shall not, government shall not infringe on 
the right of parents to raise and educate their kids. We are enshrining 
rights. No Child Left Behind took rights away from parents and gave 
them to government.
  Washington now forces States and local school districts to go through 
this paperwork and determine this process. Well, we'll determine 
whether your kid is making progress or not.

[[Page H12573]]

We'll tell you who is a good teacher or a bad teacher, what school is a 
good school or bad school.
  You know what? I don't need to send money to Washington and have them 
come put a bunch of paperwork and try to tell me that.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. You know that's right, Mr. Hoekstra. It's 
amazing to me the parallels that we see in these things. When we talk 
about education, I think it's pretty significant to remember one basic 
equation. That is, that one of two people will decide the academic, the 
spiritual, the philosophical nature or the substance of a child's 
education. One of two people will decide what that's going to be. It 
will either be a parent that would pour their last drop of blood out on 
the floor for that child that they love very much; or it will be a 
bureaucrat who doesn't even know their name.
  I would suggest to you that that's the same thing with this health 
care bill, that the parallel is profound here. We are either going to 
have one of two people make decisions in health care. I mean, we might 
have a little bit more involvement by the doctors, but ultimately the 
ones that decide what treatment they have or don't have, it's either 
going to be the patient or some bureaucrat.
  Because the patient, when they are talking to their own doctor, if 
the patient is empowered, they can always go to some other doctor. But 
when we have this Pelosi nightmare shoved down our throats, I am 
convinced that all of a sudden those decisions that were better made by 
the patients will be made by some bureaucrat.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. You and I in 2001, we didn't call it the Pelosi 
nightmare, we called it, in not so many words--maybe we're a little 
kinder--but we both genuinely felt it was the President Bush nightmare 
for education. What have we found out? There were 41 of us, 41 of us 
that I believe stood up for the Constitution, stood up for parents, 
stood up for local public schools, stood up for the States and voted 
``no'' on No Child Left Behind.

  Eight years later, there are a lot of people who now recognize that 
program doesn't work, it's leaving more kids behind, it's wasting 
money. And the answer some people have now is, we've got to spend more. 
And it's kind of like, no, when you're sending a dollar to Washington 
and the thing that you highlighted, Washington skims off the top or 
bureaucracy skims off the top.
  We now know that under K-12 education, when we send $1 from Michigan, 
whether it's from Holland or Lansing or Detroit or Pontiac and it comes 
to Washington, before it ever gets back into a classroom, we are 
actually doing what education dollars should do, which is educating 
children. We figure that we lose about 35 cents of that dollar in 
wasted bureaucracy.
  I tried to talk to the superintendent--he and I have not been able to 
connect yet--the superintendent of Pontiac public schools. I give him 
credit. They took the Federal Government to court and said this is 
unconstitutional; it is unfair and inappropriate for the Federal 
Government to have these kinds of mandates on our schools, because 
what's the other thing that they do? When they say in No Child Left 
Behind, you shall, they don't give them the money to do it.
  He said, or the school district said, you can't put all of these 
unfunded mandates on us, because what you are forcing us to do is to 
spend money on programs that we don't think are a priority for our 
kids. We know our kids. We know their names. We know what their 
challenges are. We have got these sets of priorities that we think we 
need to spend on our kids. That superintendent and those teachers and 
those parents and that community, you are right. They know those kids' 
names. They know what those kids need, and they want to spend the 
dollars to get the most advancement for those kids.

                              {time}  2215

  The bureaucrats here in Washington, what do they know? They know the 
book of rules and regulations and say, sorry, it says right here, 
Congress says you shall do these things. All I can do is make sure that 
is what they do. That is, again, exactly what is going to happen in 
health care.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I would suggest that one of the more 
frustrating things about all of this, like in education, what happens 
when government controls it is the wealthy can still do pretty much 
what they want. Wealthy families in this country can choose private 
schools for their children, because they have the extra money to do it. 
The poorest of families do not. They are stuck in a system that 
government controls and runs and almost always makes it substandard 
because of that reason.
  The same thing will happen in health care. The wealthy will figure 
out some way to get around this. We have offered amendments, as you 
know, Congressman, in this body to say for those people who either 
voted for it, or at least Congress, if they are going to have to pass 
this thing, should have to live under it themselves. Those amendments 
get voted down overwhelmingly because there are not too many Members of 
this body who want to live under a government-run health care system. 
But they are willing to put it on those people who have no choice, and 
there is something fundamentally wrong about all of that.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes. What we have seen in the highway system is where 
the money comes to Washington, it gets distributed unfairly, and it 
comes back to States with mandates on it as to where they will spend 
it.
  It is hard to believe. You send the money to Washington, and to get 
it back you have to have matching funds. So now they are also starting 
to impose taxes on the citizens of each of our States so we can 
actually get our own money back. So there is the infringement and the 
intrusion of the Federal Government on the highway system.
  The same thing on education. Michigan has now gone through a process 
and they are considering some spending bills. And part of the spending 
bill is, well, you know, if we do this, we can get more Federal 
education money back, or we can get more Medicaid money back.
  It is kind of like, why do we have to put up our own money to get our 
money back in the first place? And think if we left it in the States.
  I think this is where we as Republicans lay out our vision for the 
future. I think one of the parts we are going to see on health care, on 
transportation, it is going to be devolution. Leave the money in the 
States. Send a penny out of every dollar to Washington to let them 
maintain and, if necessary, expand the interstate highway system. But 
leave 98 or 99 percent of the money in the States.
  We ought to do the same thing with education. Devolve education 
responsibilities to the States. I don't need to send a dollar here and 
only get 65 cents back for the classroom.
  Do the same thing for Medicaid and health care. Don't take health 
care down the same failed road of moving all of this power away from 
individuals, away from communities, away from States, to bureaucrats in 
Washington who will distribute it unfairly. The powerful will take more 
to their States. They will give less to the other States. The powerful 
will then establish the mandates so that we will run health care the 
way they believe it should be run, not the way that markets or 
individuals who want to direct their health care want it to be run. And 
they will be inefficient.
  The bottom line is, it won't work. You and I know it. And we have 
seen the numbers. No Child Left Behind is not working. We are leaving 
more kids behind.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It is always amazing to me, if we just happen 
to be a cursory student of history, that we can look back and see the 
highway of history is littered with the wreckage of socialist 
governments that thought they could manage productivity and that they 
could create a better distribution system than the private market. I 
don't want to join that litany, and I know you don't either.
  You keep making the parallel in education. I think it is kind of 
interesting that, in Canada, they started this government-run system, 
and they ran into so many problems that people are now suing to get 
their freedom back. It is very difficult to get it back. It is the same 
thing with education.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. They also can opt out. They do two things in Canada. 
They cross the border and come across into Michigan to take advantage 
of our quality hospitals and our quality

[[Page H12574]]

health care; and for those that have a little bit more money, they fly 
down to Arizona, especially in the winter, and take advantage of your 
quality health care. They have got an escape valve.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. If they have a cold, they call a doctor up 
there. If they have cancer or something serious, they call a travel 
agent.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If they have the resources.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, what I would like to do, I hope 
in the next hour I will be afforded the opportunity to give my written 
comments, but I would like, if I could now, to yield to the gentleman 
from New Jersey, Mr. Garrett.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I appreciate the gentleman from Arizona 
yielding, and I will be listening on the edge of my seat to hear your 
written comments momentarily. But I wish to join in with the 
discussion.
  I commend your work. I have been watching for the last 45 minutes 
your discussion, and I know you have begun to make the shift over in 
the comparison with regard to No Child Left Behind.
  In reality, of course, maybe you have already said this, with the 
huge burden, intergenerational burden that this bill will create, of 
course, what we are really talking about is no child will be left a 
dime.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We are not going to educate them, and we are going to 
put a huge debt on them. Yes. Thank you.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. We are indeed going to be placing a huge 
debt. This is going to be an intergenerational travesty for the next 
generation, for our children and their children as well, and that is 
the interesting thing.

  Just yesterday, Thursday, at noon, there were literally tens of 
thousands of people outside, just outside the steps of this Capitol, 
people who are interested in freedom and liberty coming down here to 
have their voice heard. That despite the fact, I might add, I know 
there were some reports in the paper from Members of the other side of 
the aisle, the Democrat side of the aisle, that said, basically 
paraphrasing, I am not sure why people are coming to Washington and why 
people are calling, because they have made up their mind already, which 
is also a travesty.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The amazing thing is they have made up their mind. The 
bill has been around for all of 8 days, and we have never had the 
opportunity now to take it home to any of our constituents or whatever.
  But I was struck by reading the same comment. It was also laced I 
think with some profanity and saying, we don't care. We have made up 
our mind. The inference was, I think, we could have 100,000, we could 
have a million people out there. We don't care.
  Unbelievable. Who do these people think they work for?
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Right. I think you are being overly 
generous to the other side of the aisle when you said the bill has been 
out there 8 days. In reality, of course, as we sit here or stand here 
on the floor of the Chamber of the House of Representatives, the 
People's House, upstairs right now is the Rules Committee still 
debating, or not even debating, just listening to the Republicans make 
their arguments against the bill.
  The final bill, as you are well aware, has not been created. The 
final bill, as you are well aware, has not been put to text. The final 
bill has not been presented to the American public, which is really 
strange when you think about it. Because back on September 24th, 
Speaker Pelosi said to the media and to the American public that she 
would give the American public 72 hours to be able to read the final 
version of the bill before it came to a vote.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield one more time, I think 
maybe that is why we are doing this on Saturday, because they will 
finish the bill tonight, sometime tonight, and file it, I would guess, 
sometime through the night. And since most people have Saturdays off, 
maybe the Speaker is figuring that maybe everybody can have Saturday 
morning and Saturday afternoon to really study this bill, and if they 
have some input they want to give us, if they have some input they want 
to give us, they can maybe do it before 6 o'clock on Saturday night, 
when we are currently scheduled to vote.
  That is actually brilliant on the Speaker's part, because I think 
most Americans are going to be just eagerly waiting to get this bill 
and go online and read it tomorrow.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I think the gentleman is being entirely too 
cynical. I think the notion that any of the Americans are going to read 
a 2,000 page bill in the 6 hours that they will have, we have got maybe 
five speed readers in the country that can do that. So I think you are 
being too hard on them.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Cynical, or maybe overly generous to the 
other side of the aisle, that the majority and Speaker Pelosi would be 
so kind to allow the American public even that much time, when she 
specifically made the promise of 72 hours. Seventy-two hours, what is 
that? That is 3 days. And even at that, 3 days is a short period of 
time, I think we all would agree, to read 2,000 pages and get through 
it.
  Remember back just several months ago, when was it that we had the 
cap-and-trade bill on this floor. That was the end of July, I believe, 
or August.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, when they added 400 pages.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. When they added the 300 or 400 pages to 
the bill, and you had Members on the other side of the aisle say, well, 
they had read the bill. There again, you have to remember the somewhat 
disingenuous statements, because there again, looking at a 1,000 page 
bill, and you indicated it was 3 o'clock at night, and the Rules 
Committee was doing what they are doing right now, and then slipping 
the bill basically in the dead of night to us, 300-some odd pages, and 
then having us vote on that bill, when you know that no one had 
actually read and understood the bill.
  Just like that 1,000 page bill before, now we are looking at a 1,990 
page bill. Even if you are one of those speed readers that can actually 
get through 1,990 pages, you know you will not understand the bill. And 
I will close on this and yield back, that that 2,000 pages also cross-
references to a whole series of other pieces of standing legislation 
you have to understand as well.
  So no one who is about to vote on this bill tomorrow, if we do vote 
on it tomorrow, will have read and understood the bill, and that is a 
travesty to the American public.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.


 =========================== NOTE =========================== 

  
  November 6, 2009 on Page H12574 the following appeared: Mr. 
FRANKS of New Jersey. I think Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. I yield
  
  The online version should be corrected to read: Mr. FRANKS of 
Arizona. I think Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I yield


 ========================= END NOTE ========================= 

  Mr. ROSKAM. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  For those that are unfamiliar with the Capitol grounds here, it is 
really a thing to behold. Here we are, the four of us that have this 
great privilege of being in conversation, not just with one another, 
not with just the House of Representatives, but really with the 
American public, on this season of our life that we have really not 
seen before.
  I was walking outside a couple of minutes ago, and I glanced up at 
the dome, and the light on the top of the dome was on. And those who 
have not been to Washington, D.C., before know that that is really a 
symbol of freedom. When that light is on at the very top of the dome, 
that signals that freedom is under way, democracy is afoot.
  And I just decided, I literally have my trench coat, it is a cold 
evening here in Washington. My trench coat is literally over there. I 
walked up the stairs and walked in, and I thought, who is on the House 
floor? And I wasn't surprised to find the gentleman from Arizona. 
I wasn't surprised to find the gentleman from Michigan. I wasn't 
surprised to find the gentleman from New Jersey. Because I think what 
the four of us have an understanding of is that this is a time of 
choosing.

  We are all familiar with the book of Genesis and the story of Isaac. 
Isaac had two sons. One was Esau and one was Jacob. Esau was the oldest 
son; and, as the Bible tells that story and as we all know, in that 
culture at that time, the oldest son had the lion's share of the 
inheritance, right? Really, when the old man died, he had everything 
coming to him.
  As the story goes, Esau is out in the field. He comes in. He is 
hungry. He says to his younger brother Jacob, ``I am hungry.'' Jacob is 
making some stew. Esau says, ``Give me some stew.''
  What does Jacob say? ``Give me your birthright.'' And Esau, like a 
fool, gives his birthright away for what? For a pot of stew.

[[Page H12575]]

  The political left in this country is coaxing the American people 
right now, who are very uncertain. We are in uncertain economic times. 
They see health care costs that are skyrocketing out of control. They 
have concerns about preexisting conditions and jobs and a whole host of 
other things. And the political left is saying, give us your birthright 
of freedom. Give us your birthright of opportunity. Entrust it to us, 
who can't balance a budget, who are spending your children's prosperity 
away, and trust us.
  What I think I am sensing, and I think what all three of us are 
sensing, the American public is saying, whoa. Whoa. We are not going to 
trade a birthright away, for what? For nothing? To entrust the future 
to people that literally cannot balance a checkbook? People who have 
taken our national debt and will double that amount in 5 years and will 
triple that amount in 10 years? That is incredibly sobering.
  So here we are on the brink of Speaker Pelosi grabbing control of 
one-sixth of the American economy, one-sixth of the American economy. 
As we speak, the Rules Committee is meeting. They have not had the 
opportunity to fully vet this bill.
  It went from 1,000 pages that was fundamentally rejected by the 
American public over the August recess, fundamentally rejected by the 
thousands of Americans that showed up over the last couple of days, and 
yet now she has doubled down. With all due respect to the Speaker, she 
has doubled down and taken 1,000 pages and turned it into 2,000 pages.
  It takes away my breath. I think it takes away most Americans' 
breath, thinking about the amount of indebtedness being created and, 
ultimately, this generational theft.

                              {time}  2230

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I think we also put this 
in the context of already what's happened in this year. Very early on 
this year, we spent $800 billion to stimulate the economy. It hasn't 
worked. Today we saw the numbers. They came out, 10.2 percent 
unemployment. If you include those who have stopped looking for work or 
those who are maybe working part-time because they can't find a full-
time job, that goes up to 17.5 percent. So 17.5 percent of the American 
people are either unemployed, stopped looking for work or 
underemployed. You know, that's the effect of our stimulus bill that 
was passed. I don't think any of us voted for it.
  Then we put on top of that the cap-and-trade vote that my colleague 
was talking about, which is going to just hammer manufacturing and put 
a huge tax on every American again and every business out of this new 
carbon tax. Then you put the health care bill on top of it, $1.2 
trillion, and people are wondering, Why isn't the economy coming back? 
Because we put so much uncertainty into the business climate. We've 
loaded up the debt. People were talking about, you know, the debt under 
President Bush. In 1 year they've tripled the deficit from what, $450 
billion. And that was the deficit under the Democratic Congress. I 
think the last time Republicans had control, the deficit was around 
$250 billion. It was going the other way. It was going down. Ever since 
the Democrats have been in charge of Congress, it's been going up, so 
that we are now at $1.4 trillion in a single year deficit.
  All of these new taxes and new spending out there--the deficit is 
projected to be what, $1 trillion every year for as far as the eye can 
see, and people are wondering why there's not job creation? It's not 
hard to figure out. I yield back.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I will just put this in my own perspective the 
best I can here. I have always believed, as I know the three of you 
have, that the true statesmanship was the effort to try to look to the 
next generation. Someone said that a politician looks to the next 
election, whereas a statesman looks to the next generation. Some of 
those issues have been my life. I was the director of what Arizona's 
version is of a children's department. We've always wanted to try to 
look to the future and look to next generations. That's why I was so 
intrigued by the gentleman from Illinois' comments about our 
birthright, about freedom because I believe of all the tragedies in the 
Pelosi bill, that the loss in freedom is the big one.
  This is not the first time that we have struggled in this country 
about that. There was a time when the colonists were here that they 
were oppressed so badly by the Crown of England that they said that we 
have to somehow break free. But there were those who were afraid, and I 
understand that. See, they didn't have freedom at that time. They were 
trying to gain it. They were trying to go against all odds to try to do 
what they could. But some were afraid.
  I will never forget Samuel Adams' words because I think it should 
apply to all of us here tonight. I think it should apply especially to 
those on the other side of the aisle that are struggling tonight with 
how they're going to vote. He said to the colonists who were afraid to 
fight the King, he said, If you love wealth better than liberty, if you 
love the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of 
freedom, go from us in peace. We seek not your counsel or your arms. 
Crouch down, and lick the hands that feed you, and may your change sit 
lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our 
countrymen.
  And I would say today that we need that same call to liberty that 
they had back then that made them march with bloody feet in the frozen 
ground to find liberty for us. I have got two little babies at home 
that are just a little over a year old, and I don't want to throw away 
their birthright or the freedom that I hope that they will walk in 
someday. I want them to stand in the light of the freedom that we see 
on the top of this Capitol dome. May it be.

                          ____________________