[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 24, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H817-H823]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   POLITICAL DRAMA AT THE WHITE HOUSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. AKIN. Madam Speaker, this evening we stand just before a day--
tomorrow--of great political drama.
  I am trained as an engineer, and not much of an expert on drama or 
plays, but I have at least one theory about acting in plays and drama, 
and that is, usually it's very good or very bad.

                              {time}  1945

  As we take a look at the drama that faces people who will be watching 
tomorrow, the question tonight is: What drama are they liable to watch? 
Are they going to watch the Olympics, the last part of the Olympics, 
which will be very exciting, or the political drama of 6 hours of 
discussions or debate? I think there will be more drama that will take 
place tomorrow on the health care bill.
  Now, we have been talking about this health care bill for more than a 
year, and the subject has had a tendency to get a little bit stale, but 
tomorrow is an attempt to revive that discussion. One of the things 
that is required in good drama is the theme, or the major topic, and 
the different parts of that drama have to be believable. I think that's 
one of the things that may make the drama tomorrow more difficult in 
terms of its success. Let's just talk about what really is believable.
  The President claimed about a year or so ago--I guess it was in a 
State of the Union message--that this new health care was going to save 
money and that it wouldn't cost us a dime. Well, I guess that's true. 
It's going to cost more like $1 trillion. Is that believable?
  The President repeatedly said that Republicans had no ideas. Yet, in 
Baltimore, just a month or two ago, he said, not that the Republicans 
had no ideas, but that he'd read a good number of the bills that had 
been introduced by the Republicans. Is that believable?
  The President also pledged transparency and openness in the whole 
process of developing a health care bill. What we have seen has been 
that bills are developed behind closed doors, and for tomorrow, the 
bill that has been created behind closed doors is going to be revealed 
only for 24 hours. So is the transparency-openness pledge believable?
  In Baltimore, the President talked about the fact that he has a lot 
of economic experts scoring the bill and taking a look at whether it 
works financially or not, whether or not the different component parts 
come together and whether or not it achieves the economic results that 
he wants. Yet, when the Congressional Budget Office, which is 
supposedly and to a large degree politically neutral, scored the bill, 
they said that the Republican bill actually reduces premiums by 10 
percent while the Democrat bill makes them more expensive.
  Then there is a question about whether or not the meeting tomorrow, 
which is attempting to be billed as bipartisan and bipartisanship--does 
that really make sense? Because, if you write a bill behind closed 
doors, unveiling it at the last minute, within 24 hours, and then 
demand that the Republicans agree to it, is that really bipartisanship? 
I wonder if that is believable.
  The President promised us that the bill that he was going to present 
when he was in Baltimore would include tort reform. Yet the bill that 
we have seen did the exact opposite. The States that had already 
enacted tort reform were forbidden from using those tort reform laws. 
So, in effect, it would reverse tort reform and would go in the exact 
opposite direction. Is that believable?
  We were told that the special deals have been taken out. Yet, in a 
few minutes, we will take a look at those special deals which remain in 
the bill.
  Then last of all--and it is the one that I find most amazing--the 
Republicans are obstructionists. I find that hard to believe how 
anybody could even repeat that, let alone believe it. I wish it were 
true. I sorely wish it were true. The Republicans here in this Chamber, 
my Republican colleagues, are 40 votes short of a majority. There is 
nothing that we could obstruct if our lives depended on it. The 
Democrats could lose 20 voters and still pass anything that they choose 
to pass. So how we could be, as Republicans, obstructionists, again, 
seems very hard to pass the old sniff test.
  Now, it seems that the President, in setting up this great drama of 6 
hours of televised discussion on health care, has made a major 
assumption, which is, if people just knew what was in his bill, they 
would really like it. Probably the opposite is true. What we have seen 
is our constituents, my constituents, have called in, and they have 
read portions of these bills. They know what is in the bill. Guess 
what? They don't like it. In fact, this bill that is being proposed is 
ugly. It's so ugly it has to sneak up on a glass of water just to get a 
drink. Well, let's take a look specifically at why it is that we are 
going to have this great health care political drama tomorrow, and yet 
we are not really passing the believable test. Let's just take a look 
to see if anything has really changed at all.
  First of all, this bill imposes $500 billion in Medicare cuts. That's 
a whole lot of money. Five hundred billion dollars is going to be taken 
out of Medicare. The old Democrat bill took $500 billion out of 
Medicare. The President's new bill takes $500 billion out of Medicare. 
The Republican alternative takes nothing out of Medicare. Well, nothing 
seems to have changed here.
  This bill enacts job-killing tax hikes and government regulations, 
costing hundreds of billions of dollars. In the old Democrat bill, yes, 
that was true for it. The President's new plan, which is online, 
likewise enacts a lot of job-killing tax hikes and government 
regulations that cost billions of dollars. Yet the Republican 
alternative does not.
  It spends $1 trillion on a government takeover of the health care 
system. This is something that people are really conscious of. This is 
a government takeover of an entire sector of the U.S. economy--$1 
trillion. I think that number is short because it's not counting the 
unfunded mandates to States. The old Democrat bill does that. The 
President's new bill does it. The Republican

[[Page H818]]

bill does not. So what has changed here?
  It benefits trial lawyers by failing to enact tort reform. Well, the 
old Democrat bill did not have any real tort reform in it. In fact, it 
went the opposite way. The President's new bill is not different. The 
Republican alternative is the opposite. It protects backroom deals with 
Washington special interests. We've been told these deals have been 
taken out, but they've not been taken out. The old bill had those 
special deals. The new bill does. The Republican bill does not.
  It puts government bureaucrats in charge of personal health care 
decisions. This is something a lot of Americans are very concerned 
with. It's bad enough if some insurance company is getting between you 
and your doctor, but it's even worse if a government bureaucrat does 
because, if you don't like the insurance company, you can change 
companies. You can't change governments. So, again, the new proposal is 
no different than the Democrat proposal, and the Republicans are not 
doing that.
  It breaks President Obama's pledge not to raise taxes on those who 
make less than $250,000. Well, certainly, the old Democrat bill did 
raise taxes on people making less than $250,000. The new proposal still 
taxes people more who make less than $250,000. The Republican proposal 
does not.
  It forces individuals to purchase government-approved health 
insurance. That's something that people are pretty sensitive to--the 
government's telling you that you must buy health insurance. The old 
Democrat bill does that. The President's proposal still does it. 
Republicans reject that idea. It forces employers to choose government-
approved health insurance or they are going to have to pay a new tax. 
So the government is going to tell you what kind of insurance you have 
got to purchase or you are going to have to pay a new kind of tax. The 
old Democrat bill did that. What the President is proposing continues 
to do it. The Republicans don't.

  So is this great drama that is supposed to take place tomorrow really 
something new? I'm not so sure that it is in that it seems to follow 
the same pattern.
  Now, if we take a look at the proposal, the proposal is still pretty 
much the same thing. Here is a picture of what this bill looks like. 
You have got a 2,000-page bill, and it is pretty complicated. To try 
and read 2,000 pages in 24 hours is quite an undertaking. The only 
advantage that some of us have is that it's so much like the other 
proposals that it is not really that different. You don't have to read 
all 2,000 pages of it to know what's in there.
  As I mentioned, the President makes an assumption, which is that, if 
people just understood the bill better--now that's obviously something 
that he could talk about for 6 hours, I think, if it's that 
complicated. If people just understood the bill better, they would like 
it.
  What I would propose is that the President is mistaken in that 
regard. What I would like to talk about for just a few minutes are the 
people who are not going to like this bill when they see what it has 
got in it, because there are a lot of these groups of Americans, 
various groups, and I will tell you which groups they are and why 
they're not going to like this bill. I think, the more that this bill 
is talked about and the more that people read it and see how it works, 
what's going to happen is that you're going to see these numbers 
change.
  Right now, in the public opinion of health care, 58 percent of voters 
nationwide oppose the Obama health care reform plan; 58 percent oppose 
it; 50 percent of voters strongly oppose the plan, and 78 percent of 
voters expect the plan to cost more than projected. So it's not very 
popular now. The question is: If they see 6 more hours of drama, are 
they going to like the plan any more? I would suggest that there are 
all kinds of groups of people who are not going to like this plan. Let 
me talk to you about some of those groups of people.
  The first is a category that I am increasingly putting myself in, and 
that's the group of people who are older. I just hit 62 years old, so 
I'm feeling a little bit older, and older people aren't going to like 
this plan for a couple of reasons:
  The first reason they won't like it is because of something we 
mentioned just a minute ago, which is that this is going to take $500 
billion out of Medicare. Now, when I was first getting started in 
politics years ago, the Democrats always accused Republicans of taking 
money away from Medicare. Yet, ironically, this bill which is being 
proposed by the President is taking $500 billion out of Medicare. So, 
if you're an older person, you probably won't like it for that reason.
  If you are an older person, there is a bigger and more serious reason 
that you will not like this bill. If you are older, you will go to see 
the doctor more. If you go to see the doctor more, what this bill is 
going to do is it is going to harm the quality of American health care. 
It will harm the quality. This has been the experience of every nation 
that has had its government take over health care. It has also been the 
experience of two States--Massachusetts and Tennessee--which have had 
their State governments try to take over health care. In every one of 
those experiences, the quality of health care has gone down, and the 
cost of health care has gone up.
  So, if you are an older person and if you see the doctor a little bit 
more, first of all, you're not going to like that great big cut to 
Medicare. Second of all, the quality of your health care is going to go 
down.
  Now let's say, instead of being older, you're young. Certainly you 
would like the bill if the older people don't like it. No. Wrong. If 
you're young, you won't like the bill because this bill forces you to 
pay for government insurance which is written the way the government 
says you have to buy the insurance. If you don't buy that insurance, 
you're going to be penalized. You're going to have to pay a penalty.
  If you are a young person, if you like freedom and if you don't want 
the government telling you what kind of insurance to buy or if you have 
to buy insurance, you won't like this bill for those reasons.
  The next group of people that will probably not like this bill is the 
group of people who are married. What this bill does to married people 
is it says, if you're married, you're going to have to pay more money 
for your health insurance than if you're single. So there is a marriage 
penalty in this bill.
  In other words, if you have two individuals who are both making the 
same amount of money--say you have two individuals making $32,000 a 
year. If you take a look at what those two single individuals have to 
pay, because they get all the subsidies under this bill, they are going 
to have to pay a lot less than the two people, as husband and wife, who 
are making the same amount of money. Those people will have to pay 
$2,000 more. So this bill contains, for that example, $2,000 of 
penalties for people who are married. So, if you're married, you 
probably won't like this bill.
  Now, if you happen to fall in the category of being pro-life, or at 
least if you fall in the category of not wanting government money, your 
tax money, to pay for abortions, you won't like this bill because the 
bill that's being proposed is the Senate bill, and it allows in these 
insurance policies, which are government funded, for people to get 
abortions through the policies.

                              {time}  2000

  So there is not a strict and clean line in the bill the way the House 
version of the bill was passed which says that there is absolutely no 
using these government policies to do abortions. So if you're pro-life, 
you will not like the Senate version of this bill, and you will hear 
people who are involved in the pro-life cause standing and arguing 
vigorously that the Senate version is unacceptable.
  Now, if you own a small business, you're not going to like this bill. 
If you own a small business, this is going to cause you trouble in a 
number of different ways. First of all, you're going to be taxed a 
tremendous amount of money to help pay for this whole thing. If you 
think about small business in America as being people who have 500 
employees or less, that is, 80 percent of the jobs in America are small 
business people, those companies are not going to like this bill, the 
people that run those companies, because of the fact that it requires 
those companies, first of all, to pay a great deal of increased

[[Page H819]]

taxes to help pay for the trillion-plus-dollar bill in this package, 
but also it requires those companies to buy the insurance that the 
government tells them they have to buy, and if even one employee 
doesn't like it, then there are going to be additional penalties. This 
is going to cost small businessmen a lot of taxes and a lot of 
regulations and red tape. If you're a small businessman, you're not 
going to like this bill.
  If you're unemployed, you won't like this bill because this bill is 
going to cost jobs. It will make it harder for you to get your next 
job. How is it that this bill will make it harder for you to get your 
job? We'll get into that in a little bit more detail later, but the 
basic elements of creating jobs in our economy is allowing the small 
businesses to create the jobs by creating an environment in the small 
business that makes jobs.
  How does that happen? Well, one, you don't want to tax the guy that 
owns the business because you want him to put his money back into the 
business to expand it, to buy new equipment, to put a new wing on the 
building in order to create more jobs. This bill does the exact 
opposite. It buries the small business owner in taxes and red tape and 
a lot of unknown costs for health care. When you do that, it's going to 
make the small business less likely to hire people, and, therefore, if 
you're unemployed, it's going to make it a lot harder to get a job 
because this is a job-killing proposal. So if you are an unemployed 
person, this is not something that you want to see passing right away.
  The people in America who own health insurance are not going to like 
this bill. If you own health insurance, what this bill is going to do 
is it's going to charge you more money for your health insurance to 
help pay for the people who haven't bought any health insurance. So 
this bill is going to cost you more for the health insurance if you own 
health insurance.
  Let's just run through the list of who wouldn't like this bill. If 
you're older, you won't like the bill. If you're young, you won't like 
the bill. If you're married, you won't like the bill. If you're pro-
life, you won't like the bill. If you're a small business owner, you 
won't like the bill. And if you're somebody looking to get a job from 
that small business owner, you still won't like the bill. Then also if 
you have health insurance, you're not going to like the bill either. So 
there's a whole lot of people that just naturally when they take a look 
at what all of this complicated maze means to them, those are all 
people who aren't going to like this proposal.
  Is that all there are who won't like the proposal? Oh, no. There are 
a lot of other people who won't like the proposal as well. Let's take a 
look at some of the others.
  If you are concerned about illegal immigration, you won't like the 
bill because this bill provides no guarantee that illegal immigrants 
cannot come in and get health care and get the subsidies to health care 
that will have to be paid for by the American public and all the people 
who are taxed to pay for this measure. So if you're concerned about 
illegal immigrants coming and getting a free ride in terms of 
government-paid-for health care, this bill does not contain the 
protections. If you're worried about illegal immigrants coming into 
this country and getting subsidized health care, this bill does that 
and there is no protection against it.
  If you're one of 36 States who do not want the Federal Government to 
mandate that everybody in your State has to buy government-certified 
health care, if you want the people in your State to have some 
sovereignty, if you care about State sovereignty and you want the 
people of your State to make their own decisions how they'll spend 
their money and you don't want the Federal Government to force the 
people in your State to pay for insurance, then this bill is something 
that you don't want. And there are 36 different States, out of 50, 36 
States that have legislation that is in the process of moving in those 
States essentially banning the Federal Government from requiring 
citizens of those States to have to buy health insurance product. So if 
you're one of those 36 States where the legislators are saying we don't 
want the Federal Government butting into our business, telling our 
citizens that they have to buy insurance, then this is something that 
you certainly wouldn't want.
  The other people that might not like this, and this probably goes 
almost without saying, are people who make a fair amount of money. 
People who make a fair amount of money are going to be taxed very 
heavily in a number of different regards to try to help subsidize this 
new health insurance plan. If you're well-to-do and you don't like huge 
taxes, then you certainly are not going to like this plan.
  If you happen to be somebody that's concerned with doing things in a 
just way, that is, if you're concerned that every State gets the same 
deal, that there are no special deals in this legislation, you're not 
going to like it. We've been told that the special deals have been 
taken out. But, unfortunately, that's not true. Here are some of the 
special deals in this proposal that are still there:
  One of them is what they call Louisiana Purchase No. 2. And that is 
something for, I believe, Mary Landrieu out in Louisiana. The cost is 
$300 million, and it provides a special assignment for States 
recovering from a major disaster. It's written just to include this one 
State, and it's $300 million to add to the State Medicaid program. So 
that's a $300 million special deal for Louisiana.
  How about for Connecticut? Yes, there is a special deal for a 
Connecticut hospital, $100 million, which appears to apply only to some 
Connecticut hospitals.
  There's millions of Medicaid dollars for Vermont and Massachusetts, 
that's $1.1 billion total. It helps with the Medicaid program and gives 
about $600 million to Vermont; Massachusetts $500 million, for those 
States.
  Cash for New Jersey drug companies. New Jersey's getting a deal. The 
cost is $1 billion for special deals for New Jersey.
  Extra cash for union health care plans. This is a deal of $5 billion. 
It says that there's going to be a reinsurance program to defray the 
medical costs of union members. So that's $5 billion for union member 
health care costs.

  Are there other special deals? Yes, in fact, there are. We don't have 
to pay any Medicare Advantage. Remember how I said this bill is going 
to cut $500 billion from Medicare. But it won't cut Medicare Advantage 
for people in Florida. So if you're in Florida, you won't get that 
Medicare Advantage cut; the other States will.
  Special funding for coal miners in Montana. Yes, it does. The cost, 
we're not quite sure what that is, but it's Medicare coverage for 
workers exposed to environmental health hazards.
  There is a fee exemption for politically connected insurers, in 
Michigan apparently. Higher Medicare payments for North Dakota 
providers. Hawaii hospitals are getting exempt from the cuts. And 
longshoremen are exempt from tax or health plans. There is a whole 
series of special deals. So if you don't like special deals for various 
States that your State doesn't get, you won't like this plan.
  I think one of the groups, and this is probably not exactly small 
that doesn't like this plan, would be doctors. Why would that be? Well, 
what does a doctor do? Why does a doctor become a doctor? Many of them 
will say that they really wanted to take care of people and help them 
with their health care. Why, then, would a doctor dislike this plan 
other than its great complexity?
  Well, one of the things that's extremely frustrating to doctors, as 
well as patients, is something that we don't like but has happened, and 
that is you allow an insurance company to come between a doctor and a 
patient. I think most people consider that doctor-patient relation--
certainly my Republican colleagues would say if there's anything in 
health care that should be principally sacred, it would be the fact 
that the doctor and the patient need to make the final decisions on 
health care. That's something that we don't want to have disturbed, and 
if an insurance company is allowed to come between the doctor and the 
patient, we don't like that. We don't want somebody that's not a doctor 
getting involved in medical decisions.
  Unfortunately, in versions of this plan, what you have is you have 
insurance companies who are allowed to

[[Page H820]]

make medical decisions and are not held legally accountable for the 
outcome of those decisions. That's bad enough, but a doctor 
particularly won't like this plan because, instead of an insurance 
company, which you can always change or at least you have some chance 
to change, you have no chance to change the Federal Government if the 
Federal Government is the one that is coming between you and your 
doctor. So if you're a doctor, a lot of doctors do not like this plan. 
In fact, there have been a dozen different Republican doctors on the 
floor over the period of the last year talking about the fact that they 
don't like this plan. They think it's terrible, and that should tell us 
something. There is another constituent group that does not like the 
plan.
  There's another group of people who will not like this plan, I happen 
to fall into this group, and it's one that you might not think of off 
the top of your head, and that would be people who have cancer. Why 
would people who have cancer not like this plan? Well, one of the 
things that has been done is to take a look at the survival rate in 
people who have cancer in various countries. What you find in England 
is the survival rate is much, much lower than the survival rate in 
America. The survival rate of cancer patients in Canada is lower than 
the survival rate of cancer patients in America. So if America, then, 
changes our medical system to be more like England or Canada, we have 
to assume also that then the survival rate of cancer patients is going 
to be less. It's going to be harder to try to survive cancer when you 
have a State-run system doing cancer. So there's cancer patients.
  The list does seem to be getting a little bit long. And is it really 
such a good idea on this great drama that's supposed to take place 
tomorrow, in competition, by the way, with the Olympics, this great 
political drama, is the assumption really true that if the American 
people see this bill more closely, they're going to love it more, or is 
it possible that in this drama, the real villain in the drama is this 
very bill itself? Is it possible that all of these different groups of 
Americans really do have it right?

                              {time}  2015

  Let's run through this again. This is a pretty significant list as I 
go through it. I would like you to ask yourself, do I fall into that 
group myself? Is this something that is going to affect me in a bad 
way? Certainly a great majority of Americans believe it will hurt them, 
and it is not a bill that they want. But let's take a look at who these 
people are that wouldn't like it.
  First of all, if you're old. Then if you're young. If you're married. 
If you're pro-life. If you're a small business owner. If you're 
unemployed. If you have health insurance. If you're concerned about 
illegal immigration, and they are getting health insurance. If you are 
one of the many States who are concerned with a government mandate that 
every citizen has to purchase government-certified health care. If you 
are well-to-do. If you are those who don't like the special deals that 
some States get and other ones don't get. If you are a doctor, you are 
not going to like this plan. And if you care about the doctor-patient 
relationship, you particularly won't like this plan. And if you happen 
to be a person with cancer, you're not going to like this plan. But 
then again, you may be dead, so you might not care as much.
  And then you have other people, leaders who are in State government, 
governors, legislators, various senators or house members in State 
government. Why would they not like this plan? Well, here, this is 
another group that has a pretty good concern; and that is the trillion-
dollar bill that has been attached to this plan, that trillion-dollar 
bill is not the full cost of the plan. A lot of cost is going to be 
passed down to the various States. So this plan contains unfunded 
mandates on the various States.
  Now, a lot of States, because of the recession and the high level of 
unemployment, their State revenues are very tight. In fact, some of 
them are in the red. And if we, through this plan, produce something 
that first of all is going to create more unemployment and going to 
cost more money to the various States, people who have to manage the 
State budget, unlike the Federal budget, many States have a balanced 
budget requirement. And so if you keep adding more costs to those 
States, they are going to have to cut other things on the State budget 
in order to pay for this big government-run program. The exact numbers 
on what unfunded mandates this includes are not entirely known, 
particularly when a plan is being released and you have 24 hours for 
different economic experts to look at it.
  Now, is it possible that the reason that this bill, after it has been 
put together behind closed doors, is trotted out for only 24 hours, 
that the reason for that is people really don't want a good economic 
look at what this is going to cost? I hope that is not the case, but it 
is very hard in 24 hours for the Congressional Budget Office to come up 
and say, well, here is what it is really going to cost.
  And even if you take their best estimates, which I think they try, in 
the past their estimates of Medicare were way, way off by a factor of 
two or three or as much as seven times off. Those numbers tend to be 
much lower than what the real costs of the programs are. So there are a 
lot of people in various State leaderships that are not going to like 
this plan.
  People who do not like red tape. I don't think we need explain that 
one very much. If you don't like red tape, you are not going to like 
this. This is a simplified version of a 2,000-page bill. And every one 
of these new boxes is some government creation to try to make this 
thing work, because the government is taking over, you have to 
remember, almost a fifth of the U.S. economy. And when they do that, 
they have got to create a lot of bureaucrats and boxes and flow charts 
and all that kind of stuff. If you don't like red tape, you are not 
going to like this bill.
  And then people who don't trust the government to run the economy. 
Well, I think there are a lot of people who think that the government 
is not proving to be very efficient in the way it runs a lot of things. 
Even the premise behind this bill is, well, we've got a problem with 
Medicare, so we're going to take the money out of Medicare, and 
Medicare isn't working quite right, so therefore what we need to do is 
to replace Medicare with the government taking everything over. There 
is something about that logic.
  If you take a look at the overall finances of the U.S. Government, 
what you find is it is not a big problem with earmarks, the real big 
problem is with three entitlement programs which are growing because of 
the demographics in our country and because of the nature of those 
entitlement programs. The entitlement programs are Social Security, 
Medicare, and Medicaid. Two of those are medical entitlements, Medicare 
and Medicaid. Both of those are growing to the point that over time, 
and people disagree exactly what year it happens, but they bust the 
entire Federal budget. They grow so big, they balloon so large that you 
can't derive taxes any more, and they basically shut out all of the 
money that Congressmen are supposed to spend on different things like 
defense or all other kinds of government programs. So these things, 
like a cancer, are growing so big that they threaten to break the 
Federal budget and the Federal piggy bank. In fact, right now those 
three programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, have almost gotten 
to the point where they are taking half of the disposable budget of the 
country.
  So now we have got Medicare and Medicaid out of control. And so what 
are we going to do? Oh, well, we're going to have the government take 
over all of health care. That doesn't seem to be a credible solution to 
that problem.
  This is an article from the New York Times. ``As a result,'' this is 
talking about this great meeting, this great political drama that is 
supposed to take place tomorrow, ``Democrats now are considering a plan 
to use a parliamentary maneuver called budget reconciliation to attach 
changes to the Senate health care legislation as a budget measure which 
cannot be filibustered and requires only a simple majority for passage 
in the Senate.''
  Now, does this look like a bipartisan effort to cooperate on health 
care? I don't think so. What this is is a call by the captain of the 
ship to go to ramming speed, to take the bill which a majority of 
Americans do not support

[[Page H821]]

and to try to jam it through. Now, there can be a nice political drama 
tomorrow, but is it really working in a cooperative spirit to go behind 
closed doors, put together a bill, pop it out within 24 hours, and then 
demand that the Republicans all go along with it? Is that really 
working in a bipartisan way or is it really just more of my way or the 
highway? I will leave that to your decision. But that is what the New 
York Times, not exactly a conservative oracle, is saying this is the 
plan, is to take the bill that went through the Senate, which a great 
majority of Americans do not support, and push it through anyway.
  This is where the public is now. Fifty-eight percent of voters 
nationwide oppose this health care reform plan. Will 6 hours of drama 
tomorrow change that? Is this going to change? Is it really going to be 
drama, or does it lack credibility? I would suggest that when I take a 
good look at this, I think people may yawn and say, this sure looks 
like the same old same old, we haven't seen very much changing, and 
the Olympics is a whole lot more exciting.

  As I started by saying, I have observed things about drama and plays. 
And the things that I have observed are that they tend to be either 
really good or really bad and boring. And so that is my concern about 
the high level of drama tomorrow.
  Now, one of the connections that I think we need to make, and it is 
something that has been made, is the connection to something that I 
think is on the minds of Americans maybe more than a government-run 
health care program, and that is the problem of unemployment. I would 
like to connect these two because these two do connect together.
  I see that I am joined by my good friend from Georgia. Jack, were you 
interested in joining our discussion?
  Mr. KINGSTON. I certainly am. I wanted to ask the gentleman from 
Missouri something.
  Mr. AKIN. I yield.
  Mr. KINGSTON. As I understand it, this theater tomorrow, this summit 
at the White House about health care, I want to make sure I understand, 
is it health care only? Certainly they're going to talk about jobs. We 
had the stimulus program when the unemployment was less than 8 percent. 
It is now over 10 percent. The stimulus program, which was over $800 
billion, was spent over a year ago, it's deficit spending, it's 
borrowed money, and it was supposed to keep unemployment from going to 
8 percent, now it's up to 10 percent. Certainly tomorrow at the White 
House the topic isn't going to be more spending for a government health 
care program. Certainly they do plan to talk about jobs.
  Am I correct or incorrect?
  Mr. AKIN. What you just said, Congressman Kingston, I would wish that 
that were true. I think the American public is concerned about 
unemployment. Somebody made the comment that unemployment is an 
important issue, but it really becomes critical when you are the one 
that is unemployed. Yet my understanding is that this drama, this 
political drama, is basically rehashing the same old play, which is, 
here we go again with this health care situation.
  You made the comment that they had, I think it was a $787 billion, 
some people called it a stimulus plan.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield a second.
  Mr. AKIN. I do yield.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Actually, as price tags tend to expand after 
legislation is passed in Washington, the Obama stimulus plan was $787 
billion, but they revised it now another $75 billion, so it is well 
over $800 billion.
  Mr. AKIN. Over $800 billion?
  Mr. KINGSTON. Yes.
  Mr. AKIN. Some of us stood here and said, This is not going to work. 
I was standing on this floor a year ago and I said, This stimulus plan 
will not work. It wasn't because some of us were such geniuses. It is 
because we had learned from Henry Morgenthau back in the 1930s, who 
stood before the House Ways and Means Committee and said, we tried this 
idea of excessive government spending, money that we didn't have, and 
we tried to spend money like mad. This is the guy who was Little Lord 
Keynes's buddy, he was FDR's Secretary of the Treasury, and he said, it 
doesn't work.
  Now, I don't think you had to be a rocket scientist to figure that 
when you and your family are in trouble economically that what you do 
is don't go spending money like mad. If spending money was going to 
give us a good economy, boy, we would have a great economy right now.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I'm glad you brought that up. Because as you know, as 
Republicans we overspent.
  Mr. AKIN. We did.
  Mr. KINGSTON. We spent way too much money. Now, I will point out this 
year's deficit alone at $1.4 trillion is more deficit than George Bush 
had in the entire 8 years. Let me repeat that. Eight years of Bush is 
still less debt than 1 year of President Obama.
  Mr. AKIN. Let me just toss that number a different way. George Bush's 
worst debt year was with a Nancy Pelosi Congress, and that was about 
$400-something billion. I agree with you that was too much debt. And 
that was '08. You go to '09 with President Obama, and his very first 
year was $1.4 trillion, three times more than President Bush. And then 
they want to say, yeah, but it's Bush's fault. Wait a minute.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Actually, also there might be something to it if the 
President had not been Senator Obama. Because Senator Obama voted for 
every single appropriations bill; and the Bush stimulus program in May 
of '08, about $168 billion; July of '08, Fannie Mae, $200 billion; Bear 
Stearns, $29 billion; AIG, $85 billion going to $140 billion, done by 
the Federal Reserve.
  Mr. AKIN. What you are saying, Congressman Kingston, a billion here 
and a billion there, that starts to add up, doesn't it?
  Mr. KINGSTON. It absolutely does. But the thing I am saying on this 
Federal Reserve spending is that neither Senator nor President Obama 
has spoken out against that. He embraced the TARP bill, the Wall Street 
bailout, with both arms. That is $700 billion. Then there was $410 
billion for the omnibus spending bill. And then, as you pointed out, 
$800 billion for the stimulus bill. Now he is proposing $950 billion 
for this government health care plan. And yet he still says that he 
wants to reduce spending.

  I'm on the Agriculture Committee. We had a hearing today with the 
Secretary. I think the Secretary is a very decent Secretary. But the 
proposal of the administration is to freeze agricultural spending. 
Agricultural spending has gone up 26 percent since 2007. Yeah, you have 
a run on the bank----
  Mr. AKIN. Wait a minute. This is one of these ones just like we are 
talking about in that health care plan. This doesn't compute, does it? 
We say we are going to freeze something that we just raised by over 25 
percent in a year or two. That's incredible.
  Mr. KINGSTON. There is no end to this. Today at the Business 
Roundtable the President said something like, I am a staunch 
capitalist, I believe in the capitalist system. And yet let's look at 
the last record. There is not a government regulation that this 
administration hasn't embraced and said, look, we need the government 
to do this.
  Mr. AKIN. Government to do more and more things. You know, if we go 
back to that whole thing you are talking about on that supposedly 
stimulus bill, this is such basic stuff, and yet somehow the 
administration doesn't understand it. We have a lot of unemployment, we 
have a whole lot of Americans that would like to get jobs, and so the 
question is what can the government do to try to get those jobs going? 
And I have made a list of all the wrong things to do. These are the 
things that are job killers.
  Now, if you take a look at what are the things that kill jobs, first 
thing off the bat, we score the stimulus bill you are talking about, 
the health care bill that is supposed to be the centerpiece of this 
great political drama tomorrow, and it is supposed to be something new, 
and they are going to open the box and it is going to be the same old 
ugly thing that was there before. What is it that kills jobs? This 
stuff is not complicated. Anybody who ran a lemonade stand as a kid is 
going to understand what these things are.
  The first thing is economic uncertainty. If a guy that owns a 
business, because you think all these jobs, most of them are in small 
businesses, 500 or less, that is 80 percent of the jobs in America, if 
you take a look at those

[[Page H822]]

guys and if you say, hey, I don't know what in the world the future is 
going to bring, you are going to go, boy, I don't want to take any 
risks because we just don't know what's going to happen. You've got 
this huge tax for the socialized medicine bill, you've got this global 
warming deal, which is a tax on energy, tons of red tape that go along 
with it, a lot of uncertainty.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman is right. Investment money is going to 
sit on the sidelines until the government sets the rules and keeps 
them. Businesses can adjust. Even if the rules are a bit excessive and 
high and unreasonable, business will adjust to it. But if you keep 
changing it, they can't adjust. So of course investment capital is 
going to sit on the sidelines. That's just economic common sense.
  Mr. AKIN. So the first thing is if you take a look at what we have 
been doing, we have injected a whole lot of uncertainty into the system 
to begin with.
  Mr. KINGSTON. With more to come. More to come. As you said, cap-and-
trade, but you did not mention the banking bill. This is another 
financial takeover. And you know, I haven't seen a lot of wisdom behind 
the government-knows-best mentality of the Pelosi House.
  Mr. AKIN. Congressman Kingston, I am glad you mentioned that, because 
when I take a look at some of this uncertainty, I think of three nets 
that are being thrown over free enterprise. The first was a net on 
everything that has to do with energy. And as an engineer, energy is 
very pervasive in everything.

                              {time}  2030

  So, if the government is regulating energy all over, that's, as you 
say, a government takeover of a type.
  The next net is over all of health care. But the third net most 
people don't know about, and I'm very thankful that you brought that 
up, and that is the net over all the financial transactions. Now, you 
put those three nets in place and you don't have very much of free 
enterprise anymore, because the government is tinkering and tampering 
and adjusting and fiddling around with the rules in all of those areas. 
And that really builds that economic uncertainty, and that's a job 
killer.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, you know, it's interesting the way the Pelosi-
Reid-Obama triumvirate always is coming back to government and 
Washington solutions because, as I see it, looking at the government 
performance, Republican or Democrat, it hasn't been effective. Just 
think about Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, shut down because of snow. 
Now, you know it might be worth 48 hours, but this was a town where, 
essentially, everybody in the government took off for a week.
  Now, it's interesting. My son works in Washington, D.C., in the 
private sector. Somehow, his roads were open. And I saw that over and 
over again, the private sector people could get to work 2 weeks ago in 
the snow. Not every day, not every hour, because it was a bad storm. 
But for government employees----
  Mr. AKIN. My friend, you've mentioned that snow. I heard--I wish you 
could tell me if it's true. I heard that the snow was going to continue 
unless Al Gore said ``uncle.'' Is that true?
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, let's just say the global warming campaign has 
been a great disappointment except for the Vice President's 
pocketbooks. He's done real well on this financially.
  But, you know, you think about the government efficiency. Think about 
Katrina. What was that, $120 billion to rebuild New Orleans? I would 
think Democrats and Republicans share the blame. Government did not do 
a very good job.
  Think about the war in Afghanistan, now going into its eighth year. 
We have not executed the war very well.
  Think about Social Security. It's going broke. I look at my 24-year-
old son and your children. They are not going to get it. That's a 
mathematical reality. That's not political spin. It runs out of money 
in 2030, period. Now, we could tinker around the edges and postpone 
that maybe a year or two, but it needs working.
  Mr. AKIN. Now, one of my favorites there is the Department of Energy. 
Did you know why the Department of Energy was originally created? Quiz 
time.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I have a feeling it was Jimmy Carter trying to get us 
off Middle East oil. Is that----
  Mr. AKIN. You go to the head of the class. The whole purpose of the 
Department of Energy was to make sure we're not dependent on foreign 
oil.
  Mr. KINGSTON. And I think, at the time the export or the import 
amount from the Middle East was maybe 50 to 60 percent, or, no, excuse 
me. It was about 35 percent, and now it's up to the 50 or 60 level.
  Mr. AKIN. Of course the Department has grown tremendously as we've 
become more dependent on Middle Eastern oil. What was it they said? The 
compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the post office or 
whatever.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Yes. But let's talk about the Department of Education. 
Boy, I tell you what. School systems have really done well, haven't 
they, since the Department of Education. I mean, there's no way you 
could argue that.
  Mr. AKIN. Did you know there was a report that was done on the 
Department of Education? I think it was during the days of Ronald 
Reagan. Their conclusion in the report was that if a foreign country 
had done to America what the Department of Education had done to 
education, we would consider it an act of war. I thought that was kind 
of an interesting report that we're paying money for a department that 
has done what would be considered an act of war.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, you know, the old expression, I'm from the 
government, I'm here to help. I haven't found a school board or a 
school board member back home or a teacher in the classroom who can't 
spend the money more efficiently and more effectively because, you 
know, there's an old Loretta Lynn song about raising children. One 
needs a spanking, one needs a hugging, and one's on his way. And you 
know, that's the situation with education. It's the teacher in the 
classroom who knows how to teach Johnny, not some bureaucrat on the 
sixth floor three offices down at the Department of Education in 
Washington, D.C.
  Well, you know, what about Medicare?
  Now, Medicare's a very important health care program for our 
seniors--my mom's on it and I think your parents are--and yet it's 
going broke. $36 trillion in unfunded assets? What are we doing to 
senior citizens? The program is going broke, and yet we have our head 
in the sand.
  Mr. AKIN. What I was just talking about here on the floor a little 
bit with this great drama that's supposed to take place tomorrow, the 
question is, you know, drama, there's supposed to be some element of it 
being credible. A science fiction movie, it's a cheesy movie if it's 
unbelievable. And yet what's going on tomorrow is we're going to take 
$500 billion out of Medicare.
  Now, and then the idea is that after people watch this 6-hour great 
debate, that they're going to be happy and they're going to like the 
bill when they find that they've taken $600 billion or $500 billion out 
of Medicare. And I'm thinking, I'm not sure that people aren't going to 
just say that bill is ugly.
  Mr. KINGSTON. You know, there's a joke about the guy asks his friend, 
he says, Why don't you ever read the Bible? And he says, Well, you know 
what? I just don't understand all that stuff that's in there. And the 
guy replies and says, Well, I don't think it's the part that you don't 
understand that is bothering you.
  And the President says over and over again, I guess this is maybe his 
background in, you know, Ivy League schools or, you know, the circles 
that run around in the Northeast that, well, the American people, bless 
their heart, they just don't understand this health care bill. You 
know, what has he given, 50 speeches? I don't know. I know I had 19 
town hall meetings. The people understand the health care bill. If 
there's one certainty in the whole debate it is that the American 
people understand the Obama-Pelosi health care bill.
  Mr. AKIN. That's what I find is almost comical in this whole thing 
because, you know, you take a look at the American public--and this is 
my 10th year in the U.S. Congress, and I've got constituents that are 
reading this stuff, and they know the bill. And you can't tell me these 
people don't know what's in this bill. People know what's in it, and 
they don't like it. They think it's ugly

[[Page H823]]

  Mr. KINGSTON. You know, the town meetings that you and I had, the 
town meetings where you did not have to have an invitation, the town 
meetings where you invited Democrats, Republicans, Tea Party members, 
independents, out-of-towners, nonregistered voters, the kind of town 
meeting where you had open mikes and anybody could stand up and say 
anything they wanted----
  Mr. AKIN. Those meetings seemed to have been pretty exciting this 
last year.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, you know what I found though? The people were 
reading the bill. And I've got to say this to the people who supported 
the bill, they found some good stuff in there and said to me, you ought 
to support that. And there were some things in there that I think are 
worthy of supporting.
  But I still think it's very difficult to make a bad bill a better 
bill. I think it would be better to start all over, pick and choose 
some ideas from Republicans. You don't have to start at Ground Zero as 
if you've never heard of health care reform ideas, but you should start 
all over in this legislation.
  What if this was the Pelosi-Boehner-Reid-McConnell bill? What a 
different thing. And I think that's what we want to do. We want to work 
with the Democrats.
  We were shut out of the stimulus bill. We were shut out of the 
omnibus bill. We've been shut out of health care. Maybe tomorrow isn't 
just theater. Maybe it's the turning point. I hope that it is. You 
know, I'd like to see something get done. But a lot of times, you know, 
these things are just positioning.
  Mr. AKIN. Let me just respond to what you're saying because maybe I'm 
being too pessimistic about this. But let's take a look at the format. 
The format is we're going to huddle behind closed doors. We're going to 
produce a bill. You get 24 hours to look at it, and then we want you to 
come and tell us how much you like it. That doesn't seem to me to be 
sort of an open the kimono and let's work together as a team. It's more 
like, if you don't support me, then my way or the highway.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, let me ask you this now. Who gets to look at it 
in 24 hours and when? Who is this group of people and when?
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I'm not exactly sure of that. My understanding was 
the bill was supposed to be released 24 hours from the day that they're 
talking about it, and the only thing I'd seen earlier this morning was 
outlines, and the outlines, of course, the Congressional Budget Office 
can't score it. And it appears to be very much the same thing as the 
Senate health care bill is everything we can tell. We've been told that 
there aren't special deals in it, and yet as we take a look at it, we 
find that there are. Somebody managed to take a look at the ones that 
were there before and a lot of them are still there. The Louisiana 
Purchase is still in it, as I understand.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I understand there's some special interests for 
Louisiana, Connecticut, Michigan, and those are the deals we know about 
because those were a little bit more visible. But you can imagine all 
the other oddball stuff in there, the hospital wings that will be built 
here and there.
  Mr. AKIN. Hospital's in--my understanding is the hospital is in 
Connecticut; Medicaid dollars, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey; drug 
companies; extra cash for union health care plans. I have a list of 
some of these. Montana coal miners. Florida seniors don't have to pay 
that Medicare Advantage. You know, Medicare's being cut, but you don't 
if you're a Florida senior. It's not cut there, but in other States it 
is. If you're a union guy, it's not. But if you aren't, you know. And 
then there's North Dakota Medicare payments. Hawaii hospitals are 
exempt from the cuts. And longshoremen. I didn't know about 
longshoremen. But there are, of course a bunch of these special deals 
in the program.
  Mr. KINGSTON. So special interest groups have clearly been on the 
inside of this and their fingerprints are all over the health care 
bill.
  Mr. AKIN. Yeah, exactly. That's the situation.
  And I guess the other thing is, I think the American public is 
worried about this job thing. Excessive taxation is a big deal, because 
if you own a small business and you tax that guy really heavily, the 
small business owner is not going to have any money to invest in new 
equipment or new plants and things, so heavy taxation on a small 
business owner is going to be a job killer. And yet, this bill on 
medicine puts a heavy, heavy tax on small business owners. So, in that 
sense, it's a job-killing bill.
  Mr. KINGSTON. And, you know, not to mention there will be a new tax 
on individuals because, you know, when you're forced to buy something, 
that is a tax. And so there would be less money for customers of small 
businesses on a discretionary basis. Whether they're buying hamburgers 
or clothes or tires or whatever, they'll have less of it in their 
pocket.
  Mr. AKIN. Did you know that there are supposedly 36--I know Missouri 
is one of them. That's my home State. There are 36 States that have 
legislation moving exempting the States from having to be required to 
purchase health care when the government demands that everybody has to 
buy federally approved health care? There are 36 separate States moving 
legislation to stop that. That doesn't say something's popular.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, again, the American people do understand this 
Pelosi-Obama-Reid health care package. And, you know, I think one of 
the great examples of government efficiency we saw in August, Cash for 
Clunkers. It was a program, actually pretty simple program. You turn in 
your old gas guzzler, you trade it in for a more fuel-efficient car. We 
give you a tax credit. They take your old car, put it out to pasture 
and put it down. And, you know, it's kind of an easy thing to follow. 
Stimulates the car dealerships.
  Well, that program was supposed to last from August to November. It 
was a $1 billion program. I think they hired 100 employees, came back a 
week later and said they needed 1,100 employees and $3 billion. And 
even doing that, Cash for Clunkers was dead and defunct within a matter 
of weeks.
  So you now feel that that same government that brought us Cash for 
Clunkers, a $3 billion program, is going to be able to run a $2 
trillion health care bill.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I thank you, gentleman, for joining me today. And the 
question at the beginning was is this going to be a credible theatrical 
performance tomorrow or are people just going to tune in to the 
Olympics. I guess we'll see tomorrow what's going to really happen, but 
I'm not sure there's much new, from what we can see about what's being 
proposed from the White House.

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