[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 10 (Tuesday, January 26, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H375-H381]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Chu). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I appreciate the honor to be recognized to address 
you here on the floor of the House. I appreciate the previous hour, the 
gentleman from Virginia leading it, talking about the responsibility 
that we all have to provide a balanced budget here in this Congress and 
recognizing that the political forces that are at play here, let's say 
in Congress and across the country, everybody wants their measure. It 
has been something where Federal dollars have been distributed on down 
through the chain from the Federal Government to the State to the 
counties to the cities, other political subdivisions, parishes. Other 
examples of that, individual organizations get appropriations.
  It has been very, very difficult for this Congress to find the 
discipline to produce a balanced budget. So that's one of the reasons 
why I believe strongly that we have got to amend the Constitution so 
that we have real strict constraints, because Congress hasn't shown the 
discipline to balance the budget.
  That would not be the case for the individuals that are here on the 
floor tonight that are pushing so hard for this constitutional 
amendment. Every one of us that are cosponsors of the resolution led by 
Mr. Goodlatte would vote for a balanced budget, of course, and we would 
also and have supported a constitutional amendment.
  I wanted to transition the discussion just a little bit tonight, 
Madam Speaker, from this fiscal responsibility on over to the health 
care responsibility. First, I'd take us back to the President's 
statements and throughout the campaign and into his Presidency and 
after he was inaugurated as President over here on the west portico of 
the Capitol building, and that was January 20th of last year. That 
first anniversary just rolled around last Wednesday, Madam Speaker.
  The President of the United States, President Obama, said that we are 
in an economic problem--I don't want to overstate the language he used, 
but we couldn't fix the economy without first fixing health care, that 
health care is apparently a contributor. Too much health care spending 
is a contributor to the economic problems that we are in. So it didn't 
make sense to me and it didn't connect that when you have what was 
described as an economic meltdown, a chance that we might be losing the 
fiscal structure of currency and trade between the countries and the 
global financial structure, if we're risking a meltdown of the global 
financial structure, I don't know how we could think the problem of 
spending too much money on health care, solving that is going to solve 
the economic potential meltdown. But that was the position that the 
President took, Madam Speaker, when he said over and over gain we can't 
fix the economy without first fixing health care.
  So, even though it didn't make sense, that was the position that 
President Obama took, and here we are. The average industrialized 
country spends about 9.5 percent of their GDP on health care. Our 
numbers are about 14.5 percent of our GDP. Some will say a little over 
16 percent of our gross domestic product on health care. So the 
President's proposal is we spend too much on health care, but his 
proposed solution is spend more on health care. In fact, spend a lot 
more on health care, even to the point where he drew a line and said, I 
won't sign a bill that costs more than $900 billion.
  So the House went through a lot of logical contortionism and 
contrived a bill that tried to stay underneath that level and then sent 
it over to the Senate, where they went through a few more, let me say, 
accounting contortionist activities to try to be able to proscribe 
their bill from going over $900 billion, why? Because the President 
said he didn't want to sign a bill that costs more than $900 billion.

                              {time}  2220

  Well, it turns out that the accounting gimmicks were so stark that 
anybody else would have been laughed out of the Econ 101 classroom if 
they had proposed such a thing as, let's say, 10 years of revenue and 
5\1/2\ to 6 years of cost to get down to a number that's just slightly 
under $900 billion. When you look at the first real 10 years, according 
to Senator Judd Gregg from down this hallway in the Senate, the first 
real 10 years is $2.5 trillion. We have some other numbers out of the 
House side that shows around $2.1 trillion in cost for the first 10 
years. And when you look at what John Shadegg has put together, you 
really see some numbers that escalate all the way up to $6 trillion.
  So the President's problem is, we have an economic problem that he 
wants to solve by, first, fixing health care because we spend too much 
money, and we're going to fix it by spending a lot more money, 
trillions of dollars more, $1 trillion to $2 trillion to $3 trillion to 
maybe as much as $6 trillion more. Illogical? As I said, you'd be 
laughed out of an Econ 101 classroom to come up with an argument that 
you could do an accounting that showed 5\1/2\ years of cost and 10 
years of revenue and then claim that it only costs $900 billion under 
that.
  So we know that's, number one, a flawed premise, a flawed result. The 
American people understood that, even though the people in the echo 
chamber in the White House and the leadership chambers here in the 
House and in the Senate didn't seem to understand that. The second 
thing, the President of the United States consistently said that we 
need more competition in health insurance, that the insurance companies 
aren't competing, they don't have competition. So in order to do that, 
he proposed that we create a Federal health insurance program. A 
Federal health insurance program, that the Federal Government get in 
the business of competing against the private sector health insurance 
industry.
  Now I wonder if the President was briefed on how many health 
insurance companies we have in the United States. That number is 1,300. 
There are

[[Page H376]]

1,300 health insurance companies in the United States. Now that would 
seem to be a lot of competition to me, to have 1,300 companies and have 
the Federal Government get into this and create one more company--the 
Federal Government, as big as it is, as much advantage as it would 
have. Then we would have, though, 1,301 companies in the United States 
selling health insurance. How many policy varieties do we have? Well, 
Madam Speaker, that number falls in the area of 100,000 possible policy 
varieties out there in the marketplace.
  So 1,300 companies, 100,000 policy varieties that one could choose 
from if they could buy insurance across State lines. The President 
wouldn't go for allowing people to buy insurance across State lines. 
That would be a little bit too much liberty for an American to have. So 
instead, he would want to impose a single-payer--he said he was for 
single-payer many times during the campaign--a single-payer plan, which 
would be a Federal health insurance plan to supplant or replace all 
1,300 companies and 100,000 policies with the beautiful, wonderful 
Federal Government offerings that would surely be adequate for anybody 
in America and satisfy all of us, unless we just weren't quite 
enlightened yet. That seems to be the message I'm hearing from the 
White House.
  So we find out that we had two flawed premises. One was, if we spend 
too much money on health care, spending more doesn't solve that 
problem. The second premise was, if health insurance companies need 
more competition, the way to get it is not to put the Federal 
Government in the business and try to replace them and drive them out 
of business. The way to get it is to open up sales across State lines 
so that that young man that is paying $6,000 a year for health 
insurance in New Jersey can buy his health insurance from Kentucky, 
where a similar policy would cost him $1,000 a year, not $6,000. That 
would be an example of what's going on. If we took the House version of 
the health care bill, a young man in Indiana, would see his health 
insurance premiums go up 300 percent. His $84 a month would be $252 a 
month, almost exactly a 300 percent greater health insurance premium 
because of the mandates and the language that is in the House bill or 
in the Senate bill.
  So the American people watched this, Madam Speaker. They watched it 
all across America. We watched the reaction, the rejection of the 
American people of this irresponsible spending. It was discussed pretty 
deeply in the previous hour. The nationalization of these huge 
entities, which was discussed by the Democrats in the hour before. It 
sounded to me like George Bush had nationalized all of these companies 
and had taken over the private sector, and now here we are, President 
Obama is stuck with all of that, and that they don't really have any 
choice, except to go do a lot more of what it was that they said that 
George Bush did that was wrong.
  Well, I'm not here to make a statement into the Record that George 
Bush got it all right, Madam Speaker. He got a lot of it right. A few 
of the things history will judge that he didn't get quite as right. But 
what we have seen in the last 16 or 17 months--and at least 12 of them 
have been under the Obama presidency--we have seen the nationalization 
of eight huge formerly private-sector entities, entities that are 
making a profit and competing in the private sector. That's three large 
investment banks, AIG the insurance company, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, 
General Motors, Chrysler. And throughout all of that, put on one end 
the $700 billion worth of TARP and on the other end the $787 billion 
worth of economic stimulus plan that looks like maybe only about a 
third of that has been spent at this point, but they still want another 
$150 billion or more dollars in Son of Stimulus, or Stim II, some call 
it.

  This is Keynesian economics on steroids, and I have heard the 
President say--and I doubt if he will make this statement from this 
Well, Madam Speaker, tomorrow night--I have heard him say that Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt's New Deal actually did work, but the problem that he 
had was in the second half of the decade of the 1930s. He failed to 
spend enough money. If he would have just spent a lot more money, then 
the New Deal would have actually been a good deal, but FDR got a little 
nervous about spending too much money, so he pulled back. Those were 
the words the President used, ``pulled back.'' And then what we had, 
according to his description, was a recession within a depression, and 
it was brought about by the Federal Government not spending enough 
money. Well, this wild program, these Keynesian economics on steroids 
have been driven by this presidency--not driven by George Bush--driven 
by President Obama.
  And by the way, every nickel and dime, every nationalization, every 
single move that was taken in the last months of the Presidential 
campaign and in the last months of the Bush presidency, were all things 
that were approved by and supported by President Obama. He voted for 
TARP. He spoke for TARP. He sat at the table in the White House and 
spoke in favor of TARP. That's $700 billion, and you can't hardly say 
that it was not President Obama's responsibility when he spoke for, 
went to the White House and negotiated for it, voted for it and took it 
over--and by the way, that TARP was only--and I say only, Madam 
Speaker. The original TARP was $350 billion. That's half of what Henry 
Paulson asked for. The other $350 billion had to be approved and 
authorized by a President to be elected later, by a Congress to be 
elected later. That's this Congress, this 111th Congress. That's this 
President, President Obama. It's the Pelosi Congress, the Reid Senate, 
and the Obama presidency, all of this except $350 billion in spending.
  So it brings us to this point where the American people have seen 
that they thought that they had elected people that were responsible, 
that understood high finance and the whole big picture that a 
government has to do so well--that is this constitutional Republic, 
this representative form of government, Madam Speaker. And so when we 
saw the TARP plan come through and the nationalizations of a couple 
large banks and then AIG, and we watched how some of those insider 
deals worked out pretty good in the long run for those people that were 
inside, as we marched down this line--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--the 
American people were getting ever-more nervous at the spending and the 
nationalization, the government takeover of private business.
  But when they got to the takeover of the car companies, Madam 
Speaker, that, for sure, wasn't George Bush. That was all President 
Obama. When that happened, the American people's lightbulbs came on 
because they know cars. And when the car czar turned out to be a 31-
year-old fellow that had never sold or made a car--we don't know if he 
actually ever fixed one or what he drove--but in any case, he was not 
qualified to be the car czar, and I think that that was a universal 
opinion or he wouldn't have been gone.
  But the American people saw with that example that the Federal 
Government, that they really didn't know what they were doing inside 
the White House echo chamber, and they got ever more uneasy, ever 
closer to the civil type of a revolt that took place. We saw it happen 
in Virginia, and then we saw it happen again in New Jersey, and then in 
Massachusetts a little over a week ago when Scott Brown was elected to 
the United States Senate--the most improbable place. And when the exit 
polling was tabulated, and they asked people, Why did you go vote for 
Scott Brown? Over 70 percent said, I did so because I want to kill the 
bill.

                              {time}  2230

  I want to kill the socialized medicine bill. Madam Speaker, that bill 
may be dead. On the other hand, it might be a--I know it's a monster. 
It might be a cold-blooded monster. And on a cold day, and it is a cold 
day here, you can't tell if a cold-blooded monster is alive or dead. 
But I want to make sure that it's dead and that bill stays dead and 
that the American people are glad that it is dead, and they don't want 
to see it resurrected by the White House, by the Speaker of the House, 
by the majority leader of the United States Senate or anybody else.
  They breathed a big sigh of relief and a shout of joy went up all 
over America when Massachusetts elected Scott Brown, because people are 
going to be allowed to keep their liberty. And we

[[Page H377]]

want to make sure they're allowed to keep their liberty. And for that 
reason, some of us, and my colleague from Texas certainly in the middle 
of this, worked to put together a declaration of health care 
independence. We want to put a marker down that we all adhere to, that 
we can keep our word on because there remain people in government, I 
mean, at least in Congress, that do give their word and keep their 
word.
  As cavalier as it's been dealt with here in the last few months 
coming out of the White House, those of us that'll sign on this 
declaration of health care independence, we intend to lay our word down 
and keep our word. And I say that here, and I haven't backed up on 
mine. Neither has the gentleman from Texas. I think I'd get along 
pretty good in east Texas. There's some times I'd like to go down there 
and visit those folks because it's quite interesting the people that 
they send up here from that territory. And I'd like to yield so much 
time as he may consume to my friend, the gentleman from Texas, Judge 
Gohmert.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I thank my friend from Iowa (Mr. King). And I know 
from having visited Iowa, it's composed of extraordinary people as 
well. And I tell you, just in the last month we have seen extraordinary 
things across the country, from Massachusetts, for one, for, we saw 
when we had a Senator take--basically hold up the health care bill, 
many of us hoped it was going to be on good principle, but it turned 
out it was just for money to take back to his State.
  But here, again, you had to love the people in America's heartland. I 
think the gentleman from Iowa knows where Nebraska is. And here the 
Senator comes back and says, you know, gee, I negotiated hundreds of 
millions of dollars for you here in this State at the expense of the 
whole rest of the country. And what did Nebraskans say? The vast 
majority said, we don't want that dirty money. That's not ours. We 
don't want extorted money. We don't want dirty money. We just want 
fairness. And you've just got to love folks that have that sense of 
equity and fairness and justice and understand where the country came 
from.
  And so it's that spirit, that same spirit that started a revolution 
back in--going back to 1775 and 1776, with the production, as we know, 
in July, of the Declaration of Independence. And what a historic time 
that was. What a powerful time that was. And we know, going back to 
those days, that now we have the letter that John Adams wrote Abigail 
after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In the last part 
of the letter he says, talking about the celebration and the incredible 
event that had occurred, the coming together, the first draft of course 
that Jefferson did, and of course the first person he showed it to was 
then John Adams.
  They politically were at odds, but they were friends at that time, 
very close friends, even though they fussed and argued over political 
issues. And then Adams was just taken aback with how fantastic the 
document was. He may or may not have made some minor changes. And then 
second to see it was Benjamin Franklin. Now, Benjamin Franklin made 
more changes, the editor and publisher that he was. And then that was 
brought to the body, and they debated and they fussed and they came up 
with this, the final declaration. And after they had come together, 
they signed it.
  The last part of John Adams' letter to his wife, Abigail, was this, 
his words: I'm apt to believe that it, the day of the signing of the 
declaration, will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great 
anniversary festival. We call it July 4, Independence Day. It ought to 
be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to 
God Almighty. John Adams' words. It ought to be solemnized with pomp 
and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns--of course we use fireworks 
instead of guns quite so much now--bells, bonfires, illumination from 
one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever 
more.
  Then he goes on very seriously to Abigail, and he says, You will 
think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of 
the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this 
declaration and to support and defend these States. Yet, through all 
the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see 
that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will 
triumph in that day's transaction which I trust in God we will not rue.

  So that's basically the gist of the end of the letter, and that was 
quite an occasion. In other correspondence he had said, you know, we 
have within our grasp the opportunity to govern ourselves that people 
have only dreamed about, that theologians have written and talked 
about, but it's within our grasp to govern ourselves. But then we also 
know that one of Thomas Jefferson's great lines was, The normal course 
of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain. And that's 
what we've been seeing, particularly for the last year or so.
  Liberty has been yielding and government has been gaining. We know 
that government is where the jobs have been gained, not in the private 
sector, not liberty jobs, not jobs of freedom, but government taking 
more and more away from the private sector. And then we see this health 
care monstrosity, 2,000 pages, not about health care. You know, we've 
heard people say, it's about the government taking over one-sixth of 
the economy. But I like the way our friend, Tom Price, put it. It's not 
about taking over one-sixth of the economy. It's about taking over 100 
percent of every individual. That's what it's about.
  And so, as my friend from Iowa knows, we've spent many, many hours 
with friends like Michelle Bachmann and others, so many others up here 
on Capitol Hill, putting our heads together and working, giving and 
take, to come up with a document that really declares what we believe 
about health care. And I imagine my friend from Iowa is as sick as I am 
of hearing people, even here on the floor, come in and say, well, 
Republicans, they don't want reform. They're the party of no, no, no. 
We have over 40 bills that are good solutions to health care problems.
  And I know that my friend from Iowa agrees: we need reform. We want 
reform to health care. We cannot have the costs continue to skyrocket 
like nothing else in this country. We can't have that. We need reform, 
but we don't need more government. We need health care reform. And it 
was in that spirit of coming together, not with something as dramatic 
as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and those 
incredible intellects came up with with the original Declaration of 
Independence, but really with that, just a modicum of that great spirit 
of independence that they had and not wanting government to gain and 
liberty to yield, but wanting liberty to triumph and yet everyone have 
the opportunity for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

                              {time}  2240

  So in that spirit, the Declaration of Health Care Independence was 
put together. No one got shot. No one lost their fortunes, as did so 
many of those 56 signers of the original Declaration. We owe them so 
much. But we also owe them not to continue to allow liberty to yield 
and government to gain. They told us what would happen. Read their 
writings. Read their quotes. We owe them better than that.
  And that is why it's going to be so great to have so many people 
coming together and say, I am making this declaration. I am pledging 
that we are going to adhere to those principles of liberty and yet 
providing a better chance for health care with affordable health care 
under patient control where the relationship between a doctor and 
patient doesn't have a government intermediary, doesn't have an 
insurance company getting in between the patient and doctor.
  It gets us back to something that has been missing for so long, and 
that is a regular doctor-patient relationship. And to think in that 
2,000 pages, one of the biggest parts of it is we're going to bring all 
of the health care records to Washington and we're going to store them 
here for you because that way we will know all of your deepest, 
darkest, private secrets. There is nothing your government won't know 
once we get holed up every one of your most private medical records. 
That was a big deal.
  You hear them say, well, we'll cut this out, we'll cut that out, 
because they know when they have every person's medical records in 
Washington,

[[Page H378]]

D.C.--and under both the Senate and the House bill you make the 
Internal Revenue Service the enforcement arm for a health care bill, 
the worst of all world's--the government knowing all of your most 
private secrets about your own body and the Internal Revenue Service 
having access to them and to your finances to bring about, as Tom Price 
says, a hundred percent control over your body, that is something that 
should be intolerable. That is why we need a Declaration of Health Care 
Independence.
  And I know there are friends across the aisle who believe abortion is 
just fine; it's just tearing the tissue out. I know we have other 
friends like Bart Stupak who know what abortion is, that it's taking a 
life. But surely, surely we can get the vast majority in this body to 
agree that taxpayers should be protected from being forced to pay for 
abortion when they know and believe in their hearts it is taking the 
life of our most vulnerable people.
  There is just so much that needs to be done to drive a stake through 
the heart of this terrible monstrosity called the health care reform 
bill.
  With that, I yield back to my friend from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, listening to the gentleman from 
Texas recount the circumstances by which the Declaration of 
Independence was written, and I recall reading through a fair amount of 
that history and watching a movie or two, some of the frustration that 
Thomas Jefferson felt with John Adams' scrutiny of his language and 
later on Ben Franklin's and then the broader Congress, I've never been 
in a position where I could so sympathize with Thomas Jefferson as I 
do. But also I so much more appreciate the artful work of the 
Declaration of Independence because it was a product of a lot of 
fruitful minds that had to come together and to be able to take all of 
the ideas and patch them together and then turn it into something that 
is beautifully eloquent at the same time. It's pretty hard to do. It's 
like a piece of sheet music and trying to patch in different stanzas 
here and there and have it come out and have it actually play right 
before the orchestra.
  And the Declaration of Independence has stood up under the tests of 
time as one of the most beautifully written documents anywhere. But 
part of the reason is not just its eloquence but because it speaks to 
the heart of humanity. We know we hold these truths to be self-evident, 
that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
  I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think if he could go down do to 
the Jefferson Memorial and realize that of the four panels inside of 
the memorial, three of them--the quotes of Jefferson--three of them 
referenced his belief in God. It's hard for the people on this side to 
argue that Jefferson was a Deist when three of his quotes referenced 
God.
  And, by the way, there are two typos in there, Madam Speaker, that I 
would challenge the historians to go down there and check on them. One 
of them comes to mind right away. The other one I'll think of when I go 
back down there to read it.
  I wanted to take up this issue of our Declaration of Health Care 
Independence which will be rolled out tomorrow, and we will lay it out 
in more of a clear, concise form. But it's laid out on these principles 
that you've heard Mr. Gohmert talk about and the prediction of what 
would happen--let me say what would have happened if that horrible 
socialized medicine bill would have been sent to the President's desk 
where, if he could sign his name at all, he certainly would have signed 
the bill. He had no reservations about what was coming out of the 
Pelosi House and Reid Senate. The people of Massachusetts did; the 
President did not. And the American people line up against this in any 
form, any of these forms that have been proposed, at least 70 percent 
in opposition.

  And so here's why first the American people lined up against this 
socialized medicine proposal, either the House or Senate version or the 
ObamaCare as it's sometimes described, because we know that a 
Washington takeover--and the American people know, Madam Speaker, that 
a Washington takeover of American health care would deny fundamental 
personal and economic liberties, and it would devalue our individual 
liberties, and it would reduce the principle of limited government as 
established by the Constitution. That's number one.
  It would have increased costs and taxes upon every entity that we 
could possibly mention, and it would have crippled our American 
economy, and it would have created inescapable new taxes, mandates. If 
the Federal Government were for the first time in the history of the 
United States to produce or approve a product and then require every 
American to purchase that product--the people that couldn't afford it, 
send them a check and then say, Use this voucher to buy yourself some 
health insurance, or, by the way, If your employer has 50 or more 
employees, they have to provide your health insurance for you. Unless 
you're in the construction business, then it's five or more employees 
because of the exemption that was written in by the construction labor 
union. So all of these little construction companies that are sitting 
here with five and maybe tomorrow are going to have six employees, 
they're only going to have five--those that have six through 49 would 
be treated differently than every other employer because they were in 
the construction business, because somebody in the construction 
business had unions that were strong enough to leverage a piece of 
favoritism into the legislation.
  But if there is a mandate there, it is a tax. Whether it is a tax 
that is levied and you have to pay the tax to the IRS and they go out 
and buy your insurance for you or if the Federal Government mandates 
you go out and buy that insurance, the only difference is who actually 
handles the transaction. You handle it yourself to avoid the IRS levy 
against you, which would be the fine. The punishment for not paying it, 
the same thing. A mandate to buy insurance, to compel people to buy a 
product produced or approved by the Federal Government for the first 
time in history that that has ever been done is a tax, a new tax, and 
it's a new tax on everybody that has to participate that wasn't 
otherwise or wouldn't otherwise have been participating.
  That is one of the other bad things about this. It would 
institutionalize, Madam Speaker, a massive, ever-
expanding Federal bureaucracy that is impersonal and impractical. And 
that bureaucracy would devise new ways to grow and get more power and 
diminish the liberties of the American people. That's the nature of 
bureaucracies. They've always done that. And we've put people in white 
shirts and ties and sent them off in an expensive Federal building, and 
then they set about building empire. And they'll come back here and 
say, We need a little more empire, and they'll write rules that we'll 
never see. And those rules will have the full force and effect of law, 
because this Congress has abdicated a lot of our responsibility when it 
comes to rules.
  So the bureaucracy grows. The huge administration state grows.
  And it also would have--and I say ``have'' because I believe this 
bill is dead and I want to make sure it stays dead--it would have 
empowered bureaucrats to interfere with a doctor-patient relationship 
and that the process of doing so would have undermined quality, would 
have limited choice, would have increased the costs.
  These were the downsides that were coming at the American people that 
caused them to rise up and express themselves in two Governor races. 
Those were nationalized races in Virginia and in New Jersey. And when 
they had the opportunity to have a national election for a United 
States Senator in Massachusetts, they took it.

                              {time}  2250

  The American people appealed to the decency of the elected 
majorities. And their leaders here in this Congress did not respond, 
except to do more force-feeding of liberal, social engineering 
policies, expensive policies and things that people don't want. The 
level of elitism and arrogance is breathtaking. And I don't think it 
has ever reached this high in the history of America. That cavalier 
disregard for the Constitution, when someone would ask Speaker Pelosi, 
where in the Constitution do you see the constitutional authority to 
pass a national health care act such as you have done here out on the 
floor of the House of Representatives? A cavalier attitude, Madam 
Speaker.

[[Page H379]]

  We take an oath to this Constitution. And people will take the oath. 
They will do so with their hand on a Bible, and they will walk out with 
no other thought to it at all. There is a whole movement over on this 
side of this Congress that believes the Constitution doesn't mean what 
it says. They will make that argument. I sit on the Constitution 
Subcommittee. I have heard the argument over and over again, a living, 
breathing Constitution. Some time back in the 1930s, the Supreme Court 
had some language threaded into a decision that says that the 
Constitution is living and breathing.
  If the Constitution is living and breathing, if it doesn't mean what 
it says, then, Madam Speaker, I would ask the question, what is it for? 
Who is protected by a Constitution that is living and breathing and 
changing and can be amended by the whim of any judge in any Federal 
courtroom anywhere in America? I had an attorney tell me once, if you 
give me a favorable judge and a favorable jury, I will amend the 
Constitution in any courtroom in the land. And that happens by 
precedents that find their way up to the Supreme Court.
  I take this stand, Madam Speaker. That's this: This Constitution does 
mean what it says. The text of it means what it says. And it means what 
it was understood to mean at the time of the ratification, either the 
base document, or the amendments if things flowed through. And if it's 
something else, then the Constitution is no guarantee whatsoever. It 
simply is an artifact of history, or else it can serve as a shield for 
someone in a black robe to hold up and make the argument that you're a 
layperson, so you can't begin to understand what this Constitution 
means. Leave it to us. We're the professionals in the black robes. We 
dropped the powdered wigs; we still have the black robes.
  I don't think putting a robe on makes a person exclusive when it 
comes to understanding the English language. I think we have a lot of 
people--and I'm a ditchdigger by trade. A lot of people digging ditches 
can read this Constitution and understand what it means. I think we 
have a lot of TEA party patriots that do read the Constitution and 
understand what it means. We see a lot of people standing under 
American flags and yellow ``Don't Tread on Me'' flags with a 
Constitution in their pocket. They understand what it means better than 
some of the people who have taken an oath of the Constitution in this 
House of Representatives, Madam Speaker.
  This Constitution is threatened by socialized medicine, the bill that 
has to stay dead.
  We also offer solutions and a framework to go forward, a solution and 
framework to go forward, and we say, we the people and representatives 
of the United States, make this declaration, that as a matter of 
principle, we want to protect the doctor-patient relationship which the 
gentleman from Texas talked about. And we want to reject this national 
debt that gets heaped up on us over and over again that was the subject 
of the previous hour. And we want to improve quality of care, and we 
want transparency in the negotiations. And we want to treat every 
American citizen in this same fashion that we treat our public 
officials, and vice versa. If it's good enough for an American citizen, 
it ought to be good enough for an elected public official, wherever 
they might be serving.
  And I appreciate the discussion about the funding for abortion. When 
there's a policy that is seeking to be advanced by this side of the 
aisle in the United States Congress that would compel the taxpayers to 
fund abortions, something that is abhorrent to the value system of 
America, the majority value system of America, that is about as 
egregious as it can get, to be roped into being a citizen, held down to 
pay your taxes and have that money extracted out of your pocket to go 
to the Planned Parenthood or the abortion clinic.
  When you think of conscientious objecting taxpayers, that is about as 
close as you can get to having a complete revolt on your hands. And 
when I looked out last Friday at the March for Life, the numbers in the 
Mall here and standing on that stage, people as far as the eye could 
see. It was reported to be in the neighborhood of 200,000 pro-life 
people bussed from all over this country, and some flew in to come and 
stand up and march, pray and speak for life, as they do every year, as 
they do every day in these United States. That is the largest 
continuing demonstration in the history of this country. There's no 
movement that has brought those numbers of people here to Washington, 
D.C., year after year after year for 37 years. And to think what they 
would have had to say and do if there had been a socialized medicine 
bill passed that compels people to fund abortions or brokers policies 
that pay for abortions. Those people that came, I among them, would 
have been in even greater numbers than 200,000. And at some point they 
aren't going to be as polite as this good group of people are when they 
see that happening.

  So I'm glad that marker has been put down. The new mandates that are 
being proposed on patients, employers, on States--we've heard from the 
States. In fact, that is the Corn Husker Kickback. ``Exempt me from the 
cost of the new mandates'' is what that statement was. But in reality, 
there was a moral portion that was negotiated in that, too, and it was 
language that didn't hold up to the standard of the Stupak amendment, 
which wasn't good enough for me. I supported it, but I would have liked 
to have done more and better.
  It was an eroded standard that was offered in the United States 
Senate. And it was rejected by the pro-life organizations in the 
country. That moral position appeared to have been traded off for a 
monetary one, which is an exemption from paying the increases in 
Medicaid that would come about because of the socialized medicine bill 
in the Senate that brought about these special deals. Special deals, 
Madam Speaker, for--let's see, let's go to Maine. Was that $11 billion 
for community health clinics in Maine? Eleven billion dollars. Well, 
there's a kickback there. That didn't get a lot of publicity. But that 
is part of the deal.
  The exemption from the--say the elimination of the Medicare Advantage 
programs in Florida for that Senator Nelson, the Corn Husker Kickback 
in Nebraska, the Louisiana Purchase in Louisiana, the list goes on. We 
don't know what all is in the bill. Those we do know about. Those are 
all special deals. All those special deals are completely rejected by 
this declaration.
  Another one of those mandates that came would be setting up health 
insurance policies in the country that are funded by the taxpayer and 
that compel employers to insure their employees or individuals to buy 
the insurance if they are not working or if they have an employer that 
is not mandated to buy. And within all of that we would fund illegals, 
give them their own health insurance policies so we could put another, 
bigger magnet out here, a jobs magnet, a welfare magnet, and now your 
own private health insurance policy magnet, argued and defended for by 
Luis Gutierrez, for example, and Mr. Honda of California. Many others 
believe that it's a matter of social justice that American people would 
owe a health insurance policy, an individual health insurance policy, 
to people that break into the United States illegally.
  What a reach that is from a justice standpoint.
  We cannot be expanding any further benefits, health care benefits to 
illegals in America. We provide emergency services by law. And a lot of 
times, we don't backfill the bank accounts of the health care 
providers. For example, if you go down to Arizona, in Arizona the most 
southerly trauma center is the University of Tucson Hospital. That is 
at least 70 miles north of the Mexican border because the rest of those 
hospitals have closed. They can't afford to provide free health care 
services to the illegals. And the American taxpayers can't afford to 
pay them either. So those are some of the things that are on the list 
here and things that are important for us to talk about.
  I'm happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas to pick up where I 
left off.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate the gentleman from Iowa pointing these 
things out. And I do recall in the President's address here in this 
very Chamber back in September, I believe he said in that speech that 
there would be no funding abortion. Now the trouble for us was that 
some people in this body actually read and had been reading the House 
bill. And there was one section there, and I don't have the bill

[[Page H380]]

with me, I have got a copy all tabbed that I have gone through because 
I was reading the bill. And shockingly, even though, the President said 
there won't be a penny going for abortions, you turn right there, and 
there's a section title that says ``abortions,'' for which Federal 
funding can be spent or approved. And you go, whoa, I guess the 
President didn't know about that.

                              {time}  2300

  We heard the President say there is no money in this health care bill 
that is going to go for illegal aliens, and I think one of our friends 
hollered out about that time. When the fact is, as we know, when the 
House health care bill passed, one of the things that had been written 
up in the local papers were there were Members across the aisle that 
said: if you put a requirement in this bill that people show 
identification to show that they are legally here, they are legal 
residents and therefore legally getting the health care insurance 
benefits, then we are voting against the bill.
  Some of us think that should have been the motion to recommit, and 
that would have of course either gotten the bill pulled or it would 
have gone down in defeat if our friends across the aisle who said they 
would vote ``no'' if that was in there had been voted for and approved.
  But the way it stood, I think most everybody in here knew, except for 
the President--we know he wouldn't lie because the Parliamentarians 
told us that--but when he said that there would be no funding for 
illegal aliens, he didn't know, apparently, because if he did, it would 
have been a lie. So, obviously he didn't know that unless there was a 
requirement for identification in order to get the proceeds, then they 
are entitled to get the proceeds, illegally here or not. And obviously 
he didn't know that, or he wouldn't have said it.
  I have a dream that one day the President's promises are going to be 
kept. I have a dream it is going to happen. And I know when the 
President told America eight different times on television that we are 
going to have all these negotiations on C-SPAN, I know some day we are 
going to have all these negotiations on C-SPAN. It hasn't happened yet, 
because I have been trying to find out where the negotiations are going 
on so we could have true transparency.
  It was a great idea when the President said it, so that people all 
over the country can see who is negotiating for them, who is 
negotiating for the pharmaceuticals, who is negotiating for the 
insurance companies, who is negotiating for the plaintiffs' lawyers, 
who is negotiating for AARP, and who is really standing on the side of 
the retired folks. We would be able to see all that and it would be 
transparent.
  When I heard him saying that over and over on television throughout 
the Presidential campaign, I have to say, I thought, now, that is not a 
bad idea. That is a good idea. We will make this totally transparent. 
And even though I am a Republican, I have to say, the President had a 
good idea.
  Now, the trouble is we have got to get him to follow through. Once he 
won the election based on things he promised, we need to get him to 
follow through, because he did have some good ideas and the American 
people liked those ideas.
  If you go back and look at the exit polling data from 2008, November, 
when the President won, indications are two-thirds of the people in 
America said they voted for President Obama, and jobs and the economy 
was the number one issue. I believe it was about 10 percent who said 
that health care was a big deal to them, health care reform. So I think 
he misread the results.
  People wanted job assistance, get jobs going. We know that 70 percent 
of the jobs come from small business; yet his stimulus bill provided 
less than 1 percent in loans and assistance for small business.
  He told America, well, this is going to create infrastructure. Might 
as well do that. And it turns out less than about 7 percent of that 
bill went for infrastructure.
  So I think it is important that when the President has a good idea, 
this body follow through, whether the President wants to follow through 
or not. And these things should be transparent. It should be open.
  The 40 bills that we have as solutions and great ideas to helping 
reform health care, because we want reform, we need reform, they ought 
to be listened to. There are some great ideas. And one of them would be 
complete transparency, and that is one of the things we want people to 
pledge, that you need transparency.
  The President was right when he was a candidate. He hasn't been right 
on that point since he has been President, but he was sure right as a 
candidate. And you look at the Declaration of Health Care Independence 
that we hope that lots of folks will sign tomorrow, transparency is a 
critical issue.
  Now, when you have a health care system where the big insurance 
companies, whether it is Blue Cross or Aetna or any of them, where they 
get one really, really cheap price and the government pays a small 
amount, but if you come in and pay cash because you are a hardworking, 
lower-middle class person that is struggling to make every dime and to 
make every dime stretch, and then you come in and you pay several times 
what the insurance company or the government pays when you are paying 
cash, the system is upside down. It needs reform.
  And we do need to say, as candidate, now President, said, you have 
got to have transparency. You have got to see who is selling out whom. 
And so if there were a group that said, We are for retired persons, and 
yet they didn't care what their members said, and they were losing 
members right and left who were dropping their dues, but you found out 
they make a lot more money from selling insurance than they do from 
people paying dues and they are getting a special deal and have 
millions more buying their insurance, then you would have some idea.
  And they also maybe negotiate that their executives will not be under 
the same pay cap that most other executives under the Federal insurance 
exchange part of it, people would notice that if they are watching it 
on C-SPAN, and they might get upset at anybody who says, I am 
representing retired persons, publicly, but in negotiations they cut 
deals for their executives and not for their retired people.
  Those are the things that need to be brought out. Those are the kinds 
of things that I know folks tomorrow, when they sign the Declaration of 
Health Care Independence, will be thinking about. You need 
transparency. You need accountability and oversight.
  One of the things we saw with the Madoff scandal, with the credit 
default swaps scandal, with AIG overextending on selling those, Goldman 
Sachs selling themselves in with AIG, and then their former chairman 
getting them the massive bailouts so that they could have the biggest, 
most healthy profiting year in history this last year, all these kinds 
of things going on, you need transparency and you need somebody 
standing up for the people. You need reform. And the government should 
be about oversight. It should be about making sure there is a fair, 
level playing field.
  And then the government doesn't play. They are referees. We don't 
need them as players. We need them as referees. That is an obligation 
this body has fallen down on badly in the preceding years, and it is 
time we got back to it.
  Those are things that need to be part of reform. The government 
should be about making sure people play fair, not being the bully 
player on the field that muscles everybody else off of it. Those are 
the kinds of things we need to be about.
  And when you think of the things that have been represented and what 
turned out to be true, people were told, well, this group came out with 
a study that said if you are between 40 and 50 and you are a woman, you 
shouldn't get a mammogram. And then they are told, well, that wouldn't 
have the power of law. Then they get to finding out, well, gee, if this 
bill passes, what that body just said is going to be part of the law. 
And if you are 40 to 50, you don't get a mammogram.
  How many women have had their lives saved because they were able to 
get a mammogram between 40 and 50, and they found that little tumor 
early while it was still localized, at a time where they were allowed 
in the United States to have a 98 percent chance of success and no 
cancer at 5 years;

[[Page H381]]

whereas, in England, where they have the socialized medicine that some 
of our friends across the aisle are trying to drive us to, they have 
about 20 percent less success, and about 20 percent more die of cancer. 
They don't need to if you let them have the mammogram when they need 
it.
  And those are the kinds of things that need to come out. People need 
to know those. I yield back.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the judge from Texas.
  On the transparency side of this discussion, too, to broaden that 
out, Madam Speaker, when I address transparency, I am speaking of two 
things. One is transparency in the negotiations, so everything is out 
there in sunlight. And the other is transparency in billing, so people 
know what is being paid for health care services.
  The part about the negotiations that is so important, if they took 
place on C-SPAN out in the open, out in the light of day, if it is a 
big negotiating table that is there and in comes Big Pharma and here 
comes AARP, here is the health insurance companies, here is a doctor 
sitting over here. The patients, I would like to think they have a 
place at the table, but I am not sure just what entity speaks up so 
well for them.

                              {time}  2310

  But here's how a piece of legislation gets passed in this Congress 
today. This is what happens. Think of the scales of justice, 
blindfolded. Justice is blind, and here they are balancing these scales 
of justice. That's what I see. There's an image in that; that image of 
justice and equity. I'm reluctant to use the word ``fair.''
  But in legislation, it works out this way. It's kind of a scale, and 
somebody comes up with a bad idea. Let's just say it's cap-and-trade or 
it's socialized medicine. They put all their ideas over here and, 
clink, here's the way the scale sits. All the bad ideas weigh it down. 
And then people start to say, Well, wait a minute. I've got a couple of 
ideas that are pretty bad. Let's take them off the table and put an 
idea over here you think is a good idea. And then it starts to weigh a 
little bit. You don't see that scale move. It's still sitting there.
  Then one large entity after another starts to come to a conclusion 
that passage of this bad bill is inevitable. So they take away their 
opposition to a bad bill and they begin to negotiate for their own 
carve-outs and exemptions in a bad bill so it damages everybody but 
them. When they get their carve-out, the political capital over here 
that is on the ``no'' side either goes to neutral or over here on the 
plus side because they've agreed to support a bill now because they've 
got their exemptions so they're not affected by the bill. That might be 
the Cornhusker Kickback. That might be the Florida exemption for 
Medicare Advantage or the $11 billion in clinics in Maine or the 
Louisiana Purchase or it might be exemptions from executive pay 
controls in Big Pharma. It could be anything. They will add and add and 
add over on this side until all of this ``no'' political capital that 
knew it was a bad idea when it began, enough that has moved over to the 
plus side or moved to neutral to where if you put that final little 
weight on the scales--I like to call it the straw that breaks the 
camel's back--clink, it goes over this way.
  Now there's enough support to pass a bill. And that's when they ram 
it through and they don't let you up for air because they're afraid 
they will lose votes. When that little moment comes when they think 
they've got the votes, it comes through. That's why the United States 
Senate was doing business for 3 constant weeks without a break and 
that's why they were doing business on Christmas Eve, to pass 
socialized medicine with a 60-40 majority on December 24, Christmas 
Eve, because they finally stacked the scales to the point where, clink, 
it would go over on the side where they could barely pass the bill. 
That's what they did.
  If those kind of negotiations are taking place out in the open where 
the American people understand it, they would be revolted by the 
concept of how this is business, how very little of it is a discussion 
about what is the best policy for America and how much of it is a 
discussion about how you get the support of this group or that group or 
how you leverage to get the vote of a Member of Congress or United 
States Senator. Instead of evaluating the policy and stepping back and 
looking at it objectively and coming up with new ways to make something 
right for the American people, it becomes a political equation.
  If we could get it out in the sunlight, we could get rid of some of 
those political equations and come a lot closer to getting the right 
policy for the American people. That's why transparency matters so 
much. That's why C-SPAN in those negotiation rooms would matter so 
much. That is actually a very big part of this Declaration of Health 
Care Independence. And I am proud to be part of it, and I'm looking 
forward to our press conference tomorrow.
  I'd be happy to yield just a moment to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I understand we just have 1 minute left, but I 
appreciate so much Mr. King from Iowa taking this time to point out 
what we need in the way of health care reform. It isn't the massive 
2,000-page monstrosity. It's true transparency. It's true 
accountability. And I appreciate this discussion with my friend from 
Iowa tonight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank my friend from Texas 
for being up late at night and coming down here. When you have a friend 
that will stand with you like Judge Gohmert, in the end we can, I 
think, together, do some good things for the American people, Madam 
Speaker. So we'll be working to get to that point.
  We want to empower rather than limit an open and accessible 
marketplace of health care choice and opportunity. And if we're going 
to do business now, the rules have changed. There are new rules for the 
road. These are the new rules for road, and we're going to find out 
when people are serious. If they're ready to address lawsuit abuse, the 
people that are advocating for socialized medicine, if they're ready to 
address lawsuit abuse, we're ready to do business. If not, there's a 
new sheriff in town.

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