[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 22 (Monday, February 22, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H630-H636]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Speaker, it's a privilege to be here tonight on 
behalf of the Republican Party and on behalf of its members here in 
Congress. This evening we will be led by Judge Carter, Representative 
Carter of Texas, who is on his way to the Chamber at this point, but 
it's my privilege to cover for him until he arrives.
  We have just finished, Madam Speaker, a week in our districts where 
we were meeting with members of our constituency. I want to inform you 
that among the issues that I heard about when I was home were still 
concerns from automobile dealers about franchises that have been put in 
jeopardy due to the automobile issue with General Motors; I heard about 
people who are trying to build houses in Wyoming and would create jobs 
in Wyoming doing so and had the building permits and the need for the 
housing confirms but that financing for building construction in 
Wyoming remains impossible to get because of new bank regulations that 
require two-thirds more security for those loans than was previously 
the case. Banks are simply unwilling to lend under the same terms that 
they would before to risk-takers who hire people to create jobs to 
build wealth and value in this country and who have strong credit 
ratings themselves and solid track records of producing jobs and 
producing value in the housing and the construction market in this 
country. That remains an issue around the United States and certainly 
in my State of Wyoming. Jobs must be the main criteria as we go forward 
this year; and the looming debt and deficit concerns continue to be 
voiced by people in my State throughout the week as I met with them.
  As you know, we are preparing for more budget hearings now that 
Congress has reconvened after the President's Day recess. I'm on the 
Budget Committee, and we had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Orszag 
before the weather curtailed our activities and then the intervening 
district work period occurred. But we will be resuming those 
activities, hopefully meeting with Treasury Secretary Geithner soon and 
discussing the debt and deficit.
  I want to remind my colleagues that last year we were approached by 
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the need for the United 
States to come up with a plan, a long-term plan to address our debt and 
deficits. It is not possible for us to accurately and clearly address 
our debt and deficit issues unless we discuss entitlements: Medicare, 
Medicaid, and Social Security. There are components of those issues 
that will be discussed this week, hopefully, at the White House 
conference on health care.
  We are now joined by the secretary of the Republican Conference and 
an esteemed Member of this body, a former judge from Texas (Mr. 
Carter).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for the balance of the time as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentlewoman for being here to take over and 
for doing such an eloquent job of discussing issues in my absence. I 
apologize profusely that I was not here when my name was called. Thank 
you for taking this hour for us, and please stay and participate if you 
can. We're going to talk about the so-called health care summit that's 
coming up later this week and just exactly what it is and what we think 
it might be.
  We're hearing a lot of spin on this issue from a lot of sources close 
to the White House. I have a concern that what they are offering is 
nothing more than another press event.
  Let's start off by talking about what is proposed to happen. The 
White House this morning unveiled Senate bill 2, if you will, but not 
really, because they didn't give us a bill nor legislative language. 
They gave us about

[[Page H631]]

12 pages of things that they said that this was Obama's offer of 
compromising with the Republicans. But the starting point, it seems, 
from what it says because it references from place to place the Senate 
bill, it seems the starting point for this, quote, bipartisan summit 
that is being offered by the White House is going to be the Senate 
bill, which stands about 3 feet high, and I think we don't need to 
really go into that. Everybody in America has seen that bill and they 
have seen the House bill, too. It's so heavy that the average citizen 
couldn't lift it without a forklift. Yet this seems to be still the 
starting point that the President is going forward with. The starting 
gate has been opened now ever since the Senate bill has come out and 
that's the starting place.
  You hear people say, Why can't we have bipartisan effort? And we're 
hearing that this is an attempt at a bipartisan effort. Well, I would 
argue that there's a better way to show a bipartisan effort. But let's 
start with the work product that we have in place right now. We have a 
Senate bill and we have a House bill. What have the American people 
said about these gigantic intrusions into their private life?

                              {time}  2015

  They've said, We don't want the Senate bill and we don't want the 
House bill. We don't want something that is so gigantic and creates so 
many agencies and bureaus and groups and advisers and spends so much 
money, a trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there. We don't 
want that. We want some simple stuff we can understand. We would like 
to see something that we as the American people can clearly read and 
understand.
  They're asking us to let them be part of the process, to let them be 
able to read without the legalese, as we used to call it in the 
courtroom, which nobody can understand but the lawyer who wrote it.
  No, that's not what the American people want. The American people are 
worried about the cost of health care. They're worried about the 
coverage of health care. They want to see that we get what they're 
worried about and that we're trying to save money, not spend money; 
that we're trying to give them opportunity rather than give them 
regulation. They want to be able to pick up something about maybe the 
size of this half a dozen pieces of paper and read it and kind of get a 
concept of what the people they sent to Washington are doing to start 
down the road to trying to fix health care.
  They don't want a bill that stands this high. They don't want that, 
because they've gone by their Congressman's office and some of them 
have actually gotten copies of that thing and tried to dig into it and 
it's driving them insane as it is everybody that's tried.
  You say, well, Judge, how do you say that the people have spoken 
about it? Well, let's look at what we've got in the way of public 
opinion polls. Polls, you can take them or leave them. But right now 
the public opinion poll on health care stands at 58 percent of the 
voters nationwide oppose Obama's health care reform plan.
  Now when I say that, they're talking about resurrecting either the 
House or Senate bill. Quite honestly, I don't think they even know what 
he proposed as of this morning because quite frankly we didn't know 
until this morning.
  What they're saying is, We don't like the omnibus style of health 
care bill. That's what they're saying. It's confusing, it scares us, 
we're afraid we're going to go bankrupt in this nation; and why can't 
you guys narrow it down to the simple things that would bring down cost 
and get better coverage instead of this massive changing of 18 percent 
of the American economy?
  Fifty percent of the voters strongly oppose anything to do with the 
Senate or House plan, which is the Obama health care reform plan; and 
78 percent of the voters expect the plan to cost more than projected. 
When you're in a world where people are talking about, Will the people 
who are buying our debt be willing to continue to buy our debt if we 
continue to go so far in the hole? What are we going to do about all 
this spending? What are we going to do about all this huge amount of 
accumulated debt that we've accumulated in the last 12 months and is 
projected to accumulate in the future?
  These are questions that the ordinary guy on the street at the coffee 
shop on Monday morning is talking about. This is what the guy at the 
cafe in the small town after he finishes having his lunch, he and his 
friends sit around and they talk about. And they're worried about it. 
They know what happens to their lives when their debt is overconsuming 
and they're concerned, what is going to happen to our country when our 
debt is overconsuming. It's really telling when they are so afraid that 
this bill and this proposal that's going to come forth, we think, from 
the White House on Thursday at this summit of bipartisanship, they're 
afraid it's going to cost more than projected.
  One of the things I wondered about when I came to this place, it 
seemed to me as just an ordinary citizen out there watching what goes 
on in Congress that one group says it costs X and one group says it 
costs Y, and nobody is saying who's telling the truth. And X may be a 
trillion dollars off from what Y says. The American people look at that 
and say, That place is broken. One hand doesn't know what the other 
hand is doing.
  And then they say, Well, it's all politics. Well, they're fed up to 
here with all politics. The folks back home are saying, We're fed up 
with politics. We've got to get down to basics. It's time to go back to 
not spending money you don't have and creating jobs that are real jobs. 
We don't want all the jobs that are created to be jobs that exist in 
Washington, D.C. The only place in the country that's got positive job 
numbers is right here.
  Why is that? Because we're hiring a lot more Federal employees and 
those Federal employees are out there growing the size of this monster 
that we live in. The American people are worried about that. They look 
at health care and they look at this so-called summit and say, Why 
don't these guys kind of do what they say they were going to do and 
everybody push the stuff that nobody likes off the table? Let's lay new 
stuff or new concepts on the table and let's have a work-together 
session on coming up with solutions. That's what the American people 
thought was being proposed.
  But I would argue that that's not what we're seeing from the White 
House. I think that it's something that concerns all of us greatly. The 
number one worry right now, I think, of the American people when you 
cut through all the stuff that you watch on 24-hour news, the number 
one concern of the American people is, We don't trust you to listen to 
us anymore. We want you to listen to what we're saying. We've told you 
in our polls, but not just in the polls now. Somebody will say, well, 
one poll favors this group and one poll favors that group.
  There's another sort of a poll that has taken place in just the 
recent past and, that is, we have had three elections here and this is 
the American people casting their opinion in the media of public 
opinion--a vote. We used to tell jurors that the only thing more 
important than serving on a jury if you're a juror is casting your 
vote, because all of this freedom that we have depends upon your vote. 
All of this prosperity that we create depends upon your vote. So you 
should cherish that vote.
  Well, Americans do cherish that vote. And I would argue that in New 
Jersey, in Virginia, and most recently in Massachusetts the polls are 
in. What those polls say is, We don't like what's going on right now in 
the majority. Look at these colors. Red is the Republicans. This is 
arguably the most Democrat State in the entire country. And look at 
what the polls show, that the American people said, Enough is enough. 
What we're looking for, we don't care what party this guy's in; we're 
looking for a guy that will listen to us. And Brown is a man that will 
listen to them; and they voted for him.

  You can't have a State with the kind of Democrat numbers that 
Massachusetts has and not realize that Democrats voted for him. They 
had to. The numbers are overwhelmingly Democrat in that State. Which is 
a message to us here, that we're looking for somebody we can trust; we 
don't care what party he's in. I would argue that the same thing 
happened in Virginia which, if you look at those numbers compared to 
the Presidential numbers, or New Jersey which you look at those numbers

[[Page H632]]

compared to the Presidential numbers, there was a great shift in the 
public saying, We don't trust the folks that are running the show right 
now and we want something else.
  I really don't think that they were thinking like politics. I really 
think they were thinking like Americans. Our Founding Fathers never 
wanted us to make our decisions based upon what political party we 
belonged to. They wanted us to make our decisions upon what's good for 
the country, and what's good for the people of the country. And I think 
the message we're hearing from the tea party groups that you hear from 
and from the other groups that are making very vocal, loud outcries, 
saying to us, Just listen. Stop talking and start listening to what we 
are asking you. The driver right now that they're asking us to listen 
to is their outcry against massive change in 18 percent of our economy 
in the health care field. They want to make sure that they've got 
coverage for their families and that medical care is affordable. They 
don't need a million more bureaucrats to tell them how to do that; that 
new regulations don't solve their problem. Commonsense solutions solve 
their problem.
  The President has had, and I will argue still has but the time line 
is getting short, a golden opportunity to step up and make this a true 
summit on bipartisanship. But it should start at a minimum with him 
doing what John Boehner did on the floor of this House and dropping 
those two bills in the trash can and saying, Ladies and gentlemen, we 
are here to work out our issues, and all previous work is not on the 
table. We're here to start anew, and we can do it together. And, hey, 
if that's what's coming, that's the way it ought to be.
  I will tell you, I don't think that's what's coming, and I think the 
indications are clear. Just recently, the White House made a statement 
that the bill passage is one thing and the media event is another. So 
it is a media event that's being created by the White House. The 
campaign is over, Mr. President. It's time for us to sit down and act 
like we're supposed to.
  This is not a parliamentary government. This is a Republic. This is a 
separate but equal branch of government over here in the Congress and 
our voices should be heard, not played with. I have great concern about 
what we're getting ourselves into on Thursday.
  There's a couple of things that have been said by the media, and I'm 
not going to go into them in any detail, but they're all basically 
saying, Watch out. This is not really a bipartisan reachout. This is 
really a media performance. And because the bill--and let me make 
something very clear. I don't want to use the term ``bill.'' What the 
President brought out this morning is not legislative language; it is 
not a bill that says in black and white what changes need to be made. 
It is a series of suggestions and most of the references are to line 
and page and section of the Senate version of the health care bill. So 
you've got to start with 2,000 pages and then go in and tweak them.
  There's only one thing harder than trying to sit down and read a 
2,000-page bill. And seeing as I used to do this kind of stuff for a 
living, I can make this argument very effectively. It's much harder to 
go through and comprehend the whole bill and then reference a change on 
line 1, page 7, paragraph 2, because then you've got to read what was 
there, read what was not there, and then figure out how it fits the 
context of 2,000 pages.

                              {time}  2030

  So amendments are even more difficult for the person who's in the 
business of doing it, and we're in the business of doing it. But for 
the average citizen, it becomes--not that they're not smart enough to 
do it. It is so dad-blamed tedious that you don't want to do it. It'll 
drive you off a cliff. And that's the kind of thing that the American 
people are tired of. They want it to be simple. So we're starting with 
2,000 pages and tweaking 2,000 pages. This is not what we're asking for 
in the way of a summit.
  I see my good friend from Wyoming is back, and we're glad to have 
her. I'll yield to her for whatever comments she wants to make.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding, and I 
have many of the same questions that Americans have.
  I was on an airplane returning to Washington, D.C., today when I 
learned of the President's proposal; that it was not his intention to 
have a summit this week where members of the majority party and the 
minority party had an opportunity to bring ideas to the table; that it 
would not be an opportunity to take the House minority party bill, the 
Senate majority party bill, the House majority party bill, and find 
where the overlap is among all those bills, and then spend their time 
on February 25 concentrating on the areas of overlap.
  That's what the American people want us to do. That's what my 
constituents told me they hoped would happen on February 25. They were 
hoping that when we were home for the President's Day work period last 
week that there was an effort here in Washington to find out where's 
the commonality among all those bills and how might that common ground 
be front and center to the discussion on February 25.
  Now, today, as I have arrived back in Washington, I've learned that, 
although the Congressional Budget Office hasn't told us how much they 
believe President's proposal will cost, the President's own people 
believe that it will cost in the vicinity of $950 billion, just under 
the trillion dollar mark; that it will include over $600 billion in 
taxes; and that, even though it will provide opportunities for all 
States to be treated under Medicaid the same way that Nebraska is under 
the Senate bill, that, in fact, the special deals that were cut for 
Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and other States have not been 
altered. Furthermore, I heard one of my majority party House colleagues 
on another interview program this evening explaining that there's still 
hope that a public option, government-run health care is part of this 
package.
  So I would ask the gentleman from Texas or our colleague from 
Georgia, a physician, who has joined us to let us know and enlighten me 
and members of the public via C-SPAN this evening, do we know what's in 
the President's proposal? Has it received the approval of both the 
majority party people who will be attending the summit and the minority 
party people? Do we even know who's going to be in attendance at the 
summit? Do we know the format of that summit? Will the President be 
leading this group and only explaining his proposal or will all in 
attendance have an opportunity to bring aspects of the health care 
debate forward?
  For example, will there be a debate on what really are the issues 
that every one of us knows needs to be discussed: things like 
portability; things like addressing the problem of preexisting 
conditions being uninsured under many insurance policies today, and the 
issue of having an affordable insurance policy for high-risk 
individuals as well as the general population, and also, the issue of 
having a level playing field for tax treatment, whether you're self-
employed or you have an employer.
  These are the issues that I've heard about for the last 8 months, 
over and over, that people want addressed individually, bill by bill, 
debated, amended, and agreed upon in the House and the Senate; not 
these big, comprehensive omnibus bills that have so many provisions 
that have not been discussed, have not been vetted and are not well 
understood either by the Members here or by the general public.
  And I yield back to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. CARTER. And I thank the gentlelady for her comments. And I agree 
with you. You've nailed it, what the American people are looking for. 
That's just exactly what I was talking about. They're looking for 
something, they, for the first time in many generations, and it's a 
real joy for those of us who believe in our Republic. They are wanting 
to be involved, and they're doing it by stepping up at every level and 
saying, Give me something I can understand because I want to be able to 
comment. I want to be able to tell my Representative or my Senator how 
I feel about it, and don't hide it in a gigantic monster omnibus 
proposal. Put it out there on the table in a form that I can understand 
so I know what you're doing to my life.
  The President made some proposals, and this is a summary. I'm not 
reading

[[Page H633]]

from proposals, but some of the proposals' details that he's put 
forward are going to be $500 to $700 billion worth of new taxes, $500 
billion of Medicare cuts again, new taxes and insurance mandates on 
businesses during this recession.
  The White House says this bill will raise health--they admit it will 
raise health care costs. It'll probably cut millions of jobs over 5 
years, raise the insurance premiums is what they're doing, mandates 
individual coverage under threat of jail time, which is why the 
administration wants Gitmo cleaned out, and eliminates pro-life 
protections in the House bill. Those are just some of the things that 
they've more or less admitted that they've done with this bill.
  Now, that's not the kind of stuff the American people want to hear. 
And plus, they know, the American people have learned in this debate 
that the devil is in the details. And so, even if these were 
acceptable, the details are where these gigantic bills come from.
  So I've got my good friend, Paul Broun from Georgia. He is here to 
give us the wisdom of the physician, and I yield to him what time he 
may consume.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Judge Carter. I really appreciate 
you yielding to me tonight and appreciate you doing these Special 
Orders as we look at the President's proposal.

  I went on the White House Web site this morning and looked at all of 
the parameters that were put forth, and I was looking for some 
legislative language. There's no bill. All they've put out is bullet 
points. So I went down through all those bullet points to try to figure 
out what's going on so that I could help inform my constituents in the 
Georgia's 10th Congressional District what the President was all about.
  Now, let me back up a minute and say when the President announced 
that he was going to have a summit with Republicans and Democrats, that 
it was going to be televised, actually I was very hopeful that maybe we 
were going to get some bipartisanship, maybe we were going to get 
something done for the American people in the right way. But the more 
I've learned about that, the more I'm very fearful that this is nothing 
but political showmanship. It's a ruse.
  The President, in secret--we don't have any clue of who is involved 
in putting together all these proposals that he's put forward. But in 
looking at those proposals, he says, if you have insurance, you can 
keep it.
  Well, in the House bill, we saw that if you have insurance, you can't 
keep it. And we have a lot of people over here on the Democratic side 
that are very much in favor of nobody being able to keep their private 
insurance. They want to go to a single-party payer system, the 
government-run system. And, in fact, the President himself has said 
that the public option, or even the government exchange, is the first 
step toward getting the government to run everybody's health care. So a 
bureaucrat in Washington, DC, is going to tell my medical colleagues--
I'm a medical doctor, as you know, Judge--is going to tell my medical 
colleagues how to treat their patients.
  Well, in reading the President's proposals, nothing has changed. 
There's going to be a government exchange, and the vise is going to be 
put on small businesses as well as individuals so that they can't 
afford to keep their private insurance. It's going to run people away 
from their private insurance and run them into the government exchange 
so the government can control your health care, and that's not right.
  It's going to be extremely expensive. It creates all these new taxes. 
We hear about all these tax cuts, but the tax cuts have not been 
fleshed out. We don't have any clue what they mean. And frankly, we do 
know that there are going to be tax increases on virtually everybody.
  So it's going to destroy the quality of health care. It's going to 
mean that doctors, when they see their patients, can't make medical 
decisions because some bureaucrat in Washington, DC, is going to make 
those decisions for the doctor.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. Will the gentleman yield for just a second?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. You bet. Sure.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. You mentioned something that I'm curious about. In one 
of the little summaries that I read when I arrived back in Washington 
today, it said that they were reducing the penalty for noncompliant 
health insurance under the Internal Revenue Code, but that implies that 
you cannot keep your health insurance if you want to because it implies 
that there is still going to be a requirement under the President's 
proposal that your insurance comply with government approval.
  So, how can the President say, if you like your insurance you can 
keep it, when the fact of the matter is, if your insurance does not 
comply with government standards, that you will be penalized under the 
Internal Revenue Code for keeping that insurance?
  And I yield back.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, Mrs. Lummis is exactly right. And that's 
the point I'm trying to make is that if you like your insurance you 
can't keep it. It's going to be too expensive. And this plan that the 
President has put forward is going to push everybody out of their 
private insurance on to a government insurance exchange; thus, the 
government is going to eventually take over the whole health care 
system.
  But what I was fixing to say is that a patient can't make the 
decisions themselves either. So this is totally geared, it's a slippery 
slide into a government-run health insurance program so that the 
Federal Government is going to tell doctors and hospitals how to treat 
their patients, and tell patients, small businesses, individuals, about 
whatever kind of insurance. And if you don't take the government's 
insurance exchange, well, it actually mandates that you have insurance, 
which is totally unconstitutional.
  Actually, the whole bill is unconstitutional that we saw in the 
House. The whole bill that we saw from the Senate is unconstitutional. 
I don't find anywhere in this document, the Constitution of the United 
States, anywhere that the Federal Government has the authority to take 
over the health care system in America. So that's what the President's 
proposal will do. That's what the House bill does. That's what the 
Senate bill does.

  And the President said we're going to have this bipartisan meeting, 
and I was very hopeful, as I said previously. But our leadership, I've 
talked to them individually. They went to the President in a private 
meeting. The President said, You start with my plan. He's told our 
leadership, Republicans are going to have to accept some things that 
you don't like. He said that he would not take the ramrod over in the 
Senate of budget reconciliation off the table. And this is what they're 
talking about today.
  Just today the President's spokesman has said, We're going to run it 
through no matter how we can get it, over all of the public's wishes. 
Seventy percent of the American public, in the latest poll I saw, said 
that either we start over or do nothing, 70 percent.
  But why is this being forced down the throats of the American people? 
It's because this administration, the leadership in the House and the 
Senate, want to take over health care, and that's the only reason that 
they're doing this. And they think, I believe that they think that if 
they do it now, that maybe the economy will get better and they won't 
be punished so much at the ballot box in November.
  But this is going to be disastrous. It's going to destroy the quality 
of health care. It's going to take the choice away from patients, away 
from doctors. It's going to mean that everybody's health care cost is 
going to go up. And Mrs. Lummis, the reason CBO has not scored it is 
because they said today they cannot score it because of all these 
gigantic tax increases and other things that the President proposed.
  So this summit on the 25th is nothing but political showmanship. It's 
trying, in my opinion, to make it look to the American people like 
we're working in a bipartisan way, but we're absolutely not doing so. 
And it's a ruse. It's absolutely a ruse. And the American people 
deserve better, should demand better, should demand something totally 
different. And it's up to the American people to tell their Congressmen 
and their Senators, We're not going to have a government takeover of 
health care forced down our throats. We say no. And if you don't say no 
to this government takeover, we're going to say no to you in November. 
So I hope the American public will do that.

[[Page H634]]

  And I yield back to the judge.
  Mr. CARTER. Thank you.
  Reclaiming my time, you said something that I think is important 
because I'm going to tell you that I'm concerned that all this is is a 
media event and all this is--so I'm going to ask people to listen for 
some things that probably will come out of this event. I think you may 
hear that the President reached out a hand and the Republicans gave 
back a fist. I think you may hear that the Republicans continue to be 
the Party of No. Well, first, what's wrong with being the Party of No 
if it's bad policy?
  You got elected to come down here and represent people who expected 
you to stand up and say, This is bad. No.

                              {time}  2045

  Secondly, let's get this very clear. The Republicans don't have any 
way to stop this bill, especially in this House. They have an 
overwhelming majority. It's their party they can't get the votes from. 
It's not the Republican votes blocking this bill; it's the Democrat 
votes that are blocking this bill.
  So this whole thing, if we're going with the same work product 
they've already created, then it is a sham to go over there and deal 
with the work product that has already been created because they know 
they can't pass it, and they know the American people don't want them 
to pass it. So let's do what he said he was going to do and let's start 
over.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I submit the Republican Party is the party of 
k-n-o-w, know, because we know how to lower the cost of health care.
  I introduced a bill--that's H.R. 3889--which is a comprehensive 
health care financing reform, and we put doctors and patients in charge 
of their health care dollars, health care expenses.
  We know how to give patients the ownership of their insurance so that 
they can solve the portability problems. We know how to insure the 
uninsurable as well as the uninsured in this country. We know how to 
stimulate the economy and to create jobs. But every effort that we've 
made to do all of these things has been blocked by the leadership of 
the Democratic Party.
  We are the party of k-n-o-w. We do know how to do those things.
  I have sent the President a letter. In fact, I have reached out to 
the President. He said if anybody has any ideas, please contact him. I 
have made many efforts to reach out to him to stimulate the economy, 
create jobs, to solve the health care financing crisis, to lower the 
cost of health care. Guess how many times I've been responded to. Zero. 
The White House is not interested in hearing from this doctor. And in 
fact, there is not a single medical doctor that's been invited to the 
White House on the 25th of February.
  I am the vice chairman of the Doctors Caucus, the GOP Doctors Caucus 
here in this House. And nobody from the Doctors Caucus, the chairman, 
none of us vice chairmen--me and another co-vice chairman--have not 
been invited. Dr. Michael Burgess, who is on the Energy and Commerce 
Committee and the Health Subcommittee, he has not been invited as far 
as I know. So not a single doctor has been invited to this meeting on 
Thursday, the 25th of February. They don't want to hear from us.
  They have one agenda, and that is to force down the throats of the 
American people a government-run health care system. And that is 
actually what, if you read all of the parameters of what the White 
House put out on their Web site today, that is exactly where it's going 
to lead. And the President himself said that is what he wants to do.
  It's up to the American people to stop it, to contact their 
Congressmen, contact their Senators, and say ``no'' to this government 
takeover of health care. We will not fall for this trick, this ruse, 
this political theater that is going to come about on Thursday, not 
fall for that trick and understand that this is not a reaching out.
  And just like you said, Judge Carter, I think you're going to hear a 
lot of things: We reached out to the Republicans, but they're 
obstructionists. They have no ideas, no ideas whatsoever. They're the 
Party of No. Well, we are the party of k-n-o-w. We can solve these 
problems.
  And let me say one other thing before I yield back. I have challenged 
Democrats individually, as well as I wrote an op-ed with two of our 
colleagues, John Shadegg and Charley Dent, challenging Democrats to 
introduce a bill that would do four things: Number one is to have 
across-State-line purchasing for individuals and for businesses; number 
two, to establish association pools so that anybody could join any kind 
of association in this country and have these huge pools to offer one 
or more insurance products; number three, to establish State high-risk 
pools to cover the uninsurable; and number four, to have tax fairness 
to give 100 percent tax deductibility for all health care expenses.
  I've had Democrat after Democrat say, Paul, I'd like to do that. I'd 
like to introduce it. I told them we'd give them the legislative 
language. All they had to do is write their name in the blank, and the 
three of us Republicans would work it on our side. I think we'd get 100 
percent of the Republicans to vote for that bill, and we'd get most of 
the Democrats. But Democrat after Democrat after Democrat has told me 
individually, privately, I can't do it because my leadership will 
punish me if I were to introduce that bill and work it on my side.
  We need to step back, clear the deck. Let's go ahead and start off 
and work off in an incremental bipartisan way to find a commonsense 
market-based solution so that people's insurance is lower than it is 
today and that they and their doctors are in control of their health 
care decisions. And that is what we're trying to do on the Republican 
side.
  Mr. CARTER. I will yield to the gentlelady from Wyoming.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman for yielding because I have 
questions. My questions are the same kinds of things that my 
constituents are asking: Are Republicans just going to be window 
dressing in this event? Why were we invited if the President is going 
to take yet another bill drafted by Democrats just as the House-passed 
bill was, just as the Senate-passed bill was, and now the President has 
a bill? Why are the Republicans even being included now when the bill 
that the President is proposing is not yet in draft form, is only in 
talking points? How is it going to be a bipartisan summit when the 
party that makes it bipartisan is not really asked to participate in 
the crafting of the legislation?
  I yield back.
  Mr. CARTER. You brought up something that has bothered me about this 
whole process since the day it started.
  First off, I would argue, and I think that the evidence shows 
overwhelmingly, that we are being treated as--both the Republican 
minority and the American people--by a group of folks who believe that 
the elite of their party are just smarter than the rest of us, and they 
don't have time nor inclination to fool with us because they are, you 
know, the elite of our country, the great liberal masses and 
progressives they call themselves now, who have figured out all of the 
solutions to society's woes. And our opinions are not asked for.
  Now, what is the evidence that will prove that? I will submit my two 
pieces of evidence. To start off with will be the House bill, which 
basically was drafted behind closed doors by the Democrats and their 
elitist staff groups. I submit the Senate bill, drafted exactly the 
same way. I submit the rules which allowed almost no amendments offered 
from the Republican side in the piece of garbage that they created.
  And then I would submit the President has just done the exact same 
thing with his talking points he submitted to us saying, Oh, by the 
way, here's what we're going to talk about. That is not a bipartisan 
discussion. That is not working together on health care. That is 
saying, Yes, mama. What else can I do for you? And I am not there. I am 
not there.
  I believe it's our job as Members of this body to stand up to the 
White House and say, You got all of the playing cards. If you think you 
can get this thing done, act like a big boy and step up here and do it. 
But don't start laying off on Republicans, and if you want to say it's 
a summit, then let's have ideas.
  I see I am joined by two of the most courageous colleagues that we 
have, and one of them is bound to say something. So let me see what my 
good friend, Mr. Gohmert, has to say about what's going to happen on 
Thursday.

[[Page H635]]

  My good friend from Texas and a fellow judge, and he always has 
something good to say. I yield him what time he needs.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend yielding.
  This is such a perplexing time.
  The American people, the vast majority, have made clear that they 
don't want what has come through the House and what has come through 
the Senate. And you know yes, I came from east Texas. I've worked in 
some pretty nasty barns and fields. And one person said to me, So 
you're going to go in and compromise, you know, talk about the Senate 
and the House bill and try to work out a compromise? Because when you 
try to compromise between one type of horse manure and another type of 
horse manure, you're still not going to really like what you got unless 
you're going to use it for fertilizer.
  But the thing is we heard last week--I read that a representative of 
the AARP and unions had said that they had been behind the scenes 
privately behind closed doors working on a compromise between these 
bills that the vast majority of Americans said they don't want. And 
that was going to be unleashed today. Apparently, it was revealed this 
morning.
  So I am really struggling with this. We're going to have negotiations 
on C-SPAN, but we're not going to do it when it really counts because 
we got the bill.
  We heard from the representatives at AARP and this administration 
they've been working in secret behind closed doors, like the auto task 
force that wouldn't even come to Congress and tell us what had been 
going on behind closed doors. There is no accountability in that. We 
don't know, as the President promised, who was negotiating for whom. 
Did the AARP executives get another exemption in this bill so there is 
no salary cap on them even though they can sell millions in insurance? 
Did the unions exempt themselves from something else and get a 
sweetheart deal? We don't know because the C-SPAN cameras weren't 
there.
  But now that the bill has been revealed this morning that was all 
negotiated in secret, now we're going to have a meeting, and we're 
going to have Republican leaders and Democrat leaders come together and 
talk about the bill that was negotiated in secret?
  And I tell you, credibility, as my friend, the former judge, knows, 
whether it's in the courtroom as we dealt with or whether it's in 
public, credibility is everything. And this massive bill doesn't give a 
whole lot of time. Seventy-two hours is not much time to go through a 
massive bill like that and try to figure out the sweetheart deals that 
are in there because sometimes it's hidden by referencing another law. 
And then you've got to go chase down that law and see how this affects 
this, and whether that controls--like the references to ERISA in the 
big House bill. Well, that was a sweetheart deal to get some insurance 
companies on board. And then there was a sweetheart bill to get 
plaintiffs lawyers on board, and then there was a sweetheart deal for 
pharmaceuticals in there. But you had to know where to look, and you 
had to know the other references, and you had to know the effect of 
bureaucrats' rules on all of those laws. We hadn't had that chance.

  But going back to the issue of credibility. Right there at that 
podium as an invited guest in this Chamber the President of the United 
States came in here and said as a matter of record, ``There are those 
who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This 
too is false.'' That came out of the President's mouth. ``This too is 
false. The reforms I am proposing would not apply to those who are here 
illegally.'' Yet he knew, he knew when he was saying those things that 
this body passed a bill, and the Senate passed a bill, that did not 
require identification. And at every level Republicans tried to inject 
the amendment that you had to identify yourself in order to get access 
to this Federal taxpayer-funded health care insurance, the public 
insurance.
  Well, he surely had to know that those efforts were beat back at 
every turn. So there was no requirement to show your identification 
that you're legally here to get insurance.
  So giving the President the benefit of the doubt or just, you know, 
giving him the benefit of everything, then you'd have to figure, well 
if he didn't know that that's what had happened, then you're going to 
have to go in and negotiate with a man who doesn't know what's in a 
bill or isn't in the bill or what the effect will be, because clearly 
that bill was going to allow illegal aliens and will, if it's passed. 
And I haven't had a chance today because we've been so busy up here, 
haven't had a chance to go through the brand new bill.

                              {time}  2100

  But then the President also said, ``Under our plan, no Federal 
dollars will be used to fund abortions.'' But the very House bill that 
we had in here, was the only bill we had to work with at the time, and 
there was a provision in there that was titled, basically, ``Abortions 
for which Federal dollars may be used.''
  Obviously I am sure the President would never misrepresent things, so 
he clearly did not know what he was talking about. And you are going to 
come in and negotiate about a bill that people there don't know what is 
in it? You know, we dealt with that with the crap-and-trade bill.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time for just a moment, there is no bill. 
The President has given us no legislative language. He has only given 
us 12 pages of talking points of what he says he is going to propose in 
a bill. But I know you, and I know you very well, you are one of the 
guys around here who want to see the bill, see the legislative 
language. You go to the trouble to dig down in there. It is kind of I 
guess a weakness of being an old trial judge. We all want to see what 
is in the law before we want to rule on it. Well, there is no bill in 
this particular thing. There is only the President's talking points. 
And that is another thing. We have got to get this straight. They don't 
have a bill.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. That is what concerned me back in September. 
The President repeatedly said, my bill will not do this, my plan does 
this, my bill does that, my plan does this. And he says, if you 
misrepresent my bill, I am going to call you out. Well, I know what it 
means to be called out back in Texas, but I didn't know what the 
President meant by calling out. Well, I don't want to give the 
President rise to call me out because I have misrepresented something. 
So all I would ask for is what bill he was talking about.
  How can anybody say this bill, my bill, this plan, my plan, and they 
don't have a bill that they are talking about? How can you misrepresent 
what is in a bill that doesn't exist? It makes it rather frustrating.
  But I do know in this document here, and this was put together by the 
Republican Study Committee, it is a list of just different Republican 
proposals. This whole thing is one summary after another. And each one 
of these bills represents many pages. My bill in here is 25 pages. It 
has some great information, not that I dreamed up, but after visiting 
with real experts that deal with this stuff all the time, and some of 
the brightest minds in America. Newt Gingrich did me a favor, sending 
over some people to visit with me about some of the ideas. That is 25 
pages.
  There are some great ideas contained in all these many different 
Republican proposals. And yet we are told you can't make any 
preconditions for this meeting, and yet here is our 12-page proposal, 
and that is our precondition. You would meet with Ahmadinejad--and this 
is something my friend Mr. King pointed out--how could somebody agree 
to meet with a man who is proud of being the former President of a 
terrorist country and wants to destroy the United States, clearly wants 
to wipe Israel off the map, and you will sit down with a nut like that 
with no preconditions. But that is a terrorist, it is okay, we will 
meet with no preconditions with him. But with Republicans, they are 
worse than terrorists. We have got our preconditions, and you can't 
have any. That is really not right.
  It is not right when we are talking about something as important as 
not merely the health of Americans, but we are talking about government 
control of virtually every private aspect of your life. If this were 
just about health care, it would be rough enough. But you don't have 
over 2,000 pages, as we

[[Page H636]]

did in the health care bill here in the House, and not intrude into so 
many areas, including the requirement, a shall, one of the many shalls 
it required was a study by the Secretary of Health and Human Services 
with the Secretary of Labor shall conduct a study of businesses.
  And it goes through a list of different things they are supposed to 
look for, the kind of benefits the employees get. And one of them is 
whether or not particular companies are making decisions that will 
allow them to remain solvent. It is government at an intrusion like 
never seen before in this country.
  Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Gohmert. Reclaiming my time, Mr. King, I 
think we have about 3 minutes. Do you want to be heard very briefly?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge from Texas, and I appreciate the 
chance to address you, Mr. Speaker, here on the floor of the House.
  I tell you, I am full of amazement that the President of the United 
States can make a proposal that he wants to come out here and negotiate 
on health care, and yet he doesn't want to negotiate on health care. He 
insists on bringing forward one or another of the bills that passed the 
House or the Senate, but he apparently doesn't have a bill yet. Bill 
Clinton had a bill. Hillary Clinton actually had a bill. This President 
actually doesn't have a bill. He has a position.
  We asked him if he was going to keep his word and present his 
legislation at least 72 hours before it would be voted on. It is quite 
interesting that the platitudes that the President has released in 
bullet points this morning at 10 o'clock happens to be 72 hours 
precisely until such time as the meeting starts at the Blair House on 
Thursday at 10 o'clock in the morning. So there is 72 hours to digest 
some platitudes, but all the while that is going on, and you have 
spoken of it very well, then the secret meetings have been taking place 
in the White House and wherever. This is something that is clearly 
being done behind closed doors, in formerly smoke-filled rooms, with 
guards on the outside, albeit there for the security of the people 
inside the room. We don't know what went on in there.
  But the President is not coming to the table looking to negotiate. 
The President is coming to the table looking to put the reconciliation 
gun to our head, cock the hammer and say, you can say ``yes'' on 
Thursday or we are going to pull the trigger on reconciliation. That is 
the nuclear option. That is the thing that was intolerable when 
Republicans discussed it, and I would like to think it is going to end 
up being intolerable to the American people. I thank the gentleman.

  Mr. CARTER. That is a great summary. And that is exactly what the 
American people need to be looking for. They need to be looking for 
those words, reconciliation, because the truth is the real loaded gun 
that is going to be held to the heads of those who go to negotiate is 
reconciliation, which will mean we are not interested in Republican 
input, and we are going to bypass it.

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