[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 24, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H823-H831]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2045
                              HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Owens). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address 
you here on the floor, and I appreciate the dialogue that came from my 
colleagues the previous hour discussing this health care issue that has 
so consumed this Nation.
  And we are here now on the eve of the 6-hour meeting that is 
scheduled at Blair House that the President has invited both Democrats 
and Republican leadership to join. And Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor 
to talk about this issue and help to put it in a perspective so that as 
the American people watch what's going to happen tomorrow, they 
understand it in perhaps a better perspective than they might 
otherwise.
  Now, I would lay it out this way. I think there are two points, Mr. 
Speaker, that need to be addressed by Democrats. And these are 
significant points of vulnerability where there has been a persistent 
criticism from the public. They have made the point that of all of the 
agonizing national debate that's taken place on health care, that the 
Democrats have first of all shut Republicans out. They shut Republican 
out of the room, shut them out of the negotiations, shut them out of 
the office.
  And the second thing is, the Democrats haven't had transparency. 
They've been cooking up these health care deals in secret. And as this 
thing unfolded, some time in early September was the last time that I 
am aware of that a Republican senator or

[[Page H824]]

a House Member was sitting in a room talking with Democrat leadership 
about how to come about this health care policy.
  From that time forward, it became secret back-door meetings, and it 
became secret deals and combinations of secret deals that brought about 
in the end the American people were repulsed by what they saw. They 
were repulsed by the special deals that came down. They were repulsed 
by the idea that if you live in Nebraska, if you live in Florida, if 
you live in Maine or Vermont, you've got a different deal a different 
cost.
  I would interrupt what I am about to say and yield to the gentleman, 
Mr. Kingston.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
  I was looking at the Tea Party list of priorities, which they call a 
contract from America, which you know, this is a grassroots deal, just 
popped up. And there are even different Tea Party groups. But they have 
nationally been surveying their members on what their priorities are.
  The number one priority is to cut the size of the Federal Government 
spending. The number two priority, would the gentleman from Iowa like 
to guess? The number two priority of all of these thousands of 
participants on a grassroots' basis is, do not put something in the 
bill that doesn't belong in the bill.
  So as the gentleman talks about these secret deals to the senator in 
Nebraska, the senator from Florida, the senator from Louisiana, people 
don't like that at all. If it's such a great deal for the good people 
of Nebraska, maybe it ought to go for the rest of the 49 States and 
maybe it doesn't need to be brokered in some smoke-filled back room.
  So what you're saying is very important. It can't be understated. If 
this bill is such a great deal, why do you need to have all of those 
special interest side deals in order to get the votes from Nebraska or 
from Florida or from Louisiana?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, of course that is what it takes 
to get the votes for a bad deal. That is what the American people know, 
that's what the Tea Party patriots know.
  I would go further. When you start out and you have a good idea. 
Let's say it's a stand-alone idea. What about the idea of putting an 
end to the lawsuit abuse in America? We've passed that legislation out 
of this House, and Republicans were in charge, and we sent it over to 
the Senate, where it was blocked in the Senate. But it was a clear, 
concise idea that makes everybody whole that has been actually the 
victim, perhaps, of medical malpractice. Three hundred million people, 
some things are going to go wrong. It allows for them to cover all of 
their health care costs, allows for someone who is a victim to receive 
their loss and income. And actually it established pain and suffering 
and an additional $250,000 on top of that. And in Texas, there's three 
different increments that go to three-quarters of a million, but that's 
it.
  Trial lawyers don't walk away with pockets full of money. It's a very 
simple concept that can stand alone, that the American people can look 
at and see that it isn't a special deal.
  But if you put an idea out for health care and then you have to patch 
something else to it, and something else to it, and when you get this 
whole toxic stew that I've talked about so many times, and you still 
can't sell that to get 218 votes in the House or 60 votes in the 
Senate, and you have to go out and get a special deal in Nebraska to 
get a vote from the Nebraska senator and a special deal in Florida to 
exempt Florida from Medicare Advantage cuts, or if you go up and you 
build a bunch of public health clinics in Vermont out of that deal, or 
Louisiana--the list goes on and on and on.
  The American people know that when you're buying votes with their 
taxpayer dollars, they reject that concept, Mr. Speaker. The American 
people know that if you have a good idea, it should stand alone, it 
should be able to be passed on its merits and move through the House of 
Representatives on an up-or-down vote so everybody knows what's going 
on.
  We're not at that point. This is a conglomeration of a bill, and this 
is frustrating to me that we can't put a good idea out in front of the 
American people and vote up or down and go on to the next idea.
  Mr. AKIN. When you start talking about what you're saying, the 
American public does not like these special deals--and special deals a 
lot of times happen in the darkness, in little dark corners, like the 
kind of places where cockroaches breed. And these special deals, people 
aren't real proud of them. And so they're done behind closed doors. 
They're done when people can't see it. And when they get all put 
together in a great big piece of legislation, those special deals are 
rolled out in a big hurry. Hurry up and look at it so that we can pass 
it before anybody reads it too closely because sometimes they're 
disguised in little ways so you won't see them.
  So the public, they're starting to get wise to this. The idea is that 
if the public sees more of this health care bill they'll like it. No. 
If you see something that's ugly, the more you look at it, the uglier 
it's going to get. And when you put all of these special deals in it, 
then people have a tendency to want to bring it out in a hurry and 
don't bother to look at it too closely.
  If some used car salesman says, I want you to get this car but don't 
bother to look under the hood, you're kind of thinking, I wonder if 
there is an engine under there or not. And that is what's going on. And 
the public is wise, and they're sick of this special deal kind of 
stuff.
  And we do this in a lot of different ways. We'll put two things 
together that would never pass, and then we pass it on a regular basis.

  I don't mean to step on toes, but the farm bill is an example of 
that. You take the farm bill, and there is a farm piece and there is 
all of this food stamp stuff, and neither one could pass on their own. 
But you put the two together, and you can pass something. And I think 
the public is starting to stay, Time out. We're tired of this because 
we can't afford it any more.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I will bring this back to that, 
that time they had 51 votes counted in the Senate on the health care 
bill. I went back to the Midwest, and I usually fly into Omaha. Well, 
Omaha, of course, is a central metropolitan area for the State of 
Nebraska.
  And as I went in, I did a whole number of meetings around on both 
sides of the river, the Nebraska and the Iowa side, did a lot of media 
around there and took phone calls on a call-in radio show. And this was 
the day before the agreement was made for the Cornhusker kickback. And 
the senator from Nebraska was the linchpin that could put together, 
hold together the entire health care package up or down. If the senator 
from Nebraska decides to pull the pin, the whole thing falls apart.
  So the day before, people were calling in and they understood that 
the Nebraska senator held the future of this socialized medicine bill 
in his hand. They didn't know what was going to happen. In the middle 
of the night, there was some kind of agreement that got made. There 
were accommodations that were made. All of a sudden there was an 
announcement that Harry Reid had 60 votes and he could break the 
filibuster in the Senate and they could pass the socialized medicine 
bill. And what does it include?
  First of all, it includes a provision that will allow for Federal 
funding of abortion, and it exempted Nebraska from the increased costs 
in Medicaid in perpetuity. Now, no one should ever sign a document or 
make a pledge for anything in perpetuity. Actually perpetuity probably 
lasts longer than forever.
  I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I can't imagine what the Harry Reid U.S. Senate was 
thinking. How stupid do they think the American people are? How callous 
can they be to the sense of fair play? What kind of almost thuggery is 
it when you do that to people? It just doesn't sound right for the 
taxpayers all over the country to have to float the bill for one State. 
And as the gentleman from Missouri pointed out, there was also a 
special interest deal for Florida.
  And I think the presumption was people are Christmas shopping, 
they're getting ready to have their families in. They're not paying 
attention. Let's just push through whatever we can.

[[Page H825]]

  Well, a funny thing happened in Massachusetts. They were apparently 
paying attention, and I think that that has woke up a lot of people 
around here.
  We have a group in the House called Blue Dog Democrats. I am not 
exactly sure what a Blue Dog is because they certainly vote like the 
yellow dog Democrats from what I can understand. But I don't think 
there is any distinction except there is a lot of Democrats right now 
who are saying, Hey, I saw what happened in Massachusetts, and if this 
bill comes back, I think I am going to vote ``no'' and maybe make up 
for my ``yes'' vote previously.
  Mr. AKIN. I just have a question if I could jump in.
  Tomorrow there is going to be this big drama, I guess, 6-hour--maybe 
it will be pretty boring. I don't know. But it's supposed to be 
dramatic. Six hours of people sitting around a table talking about this 
same old health care plan basically.
  And there were different people that were chosen to go to participate 
in this. And I am just wondering if you know--I know there were a few 
Republicans invited, but were there any Democrats that voted ``no'' on 
the bill that were invited to participate? Do you know of any?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I can't name a single one. I 
haven't looked over the list of the Democrats but that would be quite 
unusual. It would be unusual to see Democrats in there negotiating a 
vote of ``no'' on the bill. I'd be very surprised if there was even a 
token Democrat that voted no.
  Mr. KINGSTON. How many Democrats did vote ``no'' in the House, do you 
remember? It was 220. You need 218. So there were two votes over 218.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would guess that was nearly 32 Democrats that 
voted ``no.'' It would be in that neighborhood somewhere.
  Mr. KINGSTON. You would think they would probably have something to 
say at the White House. They would be a little more moderate and have 
some good productive contribution to make.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Wouldn't you want to know what their objections 
are? I would think that would be important.
  Bart Stupak on the pro-life amendment worked very closely with Smith 
and Pennsylvania Representative Joe Pitts. They worked very hard to 
pass, and they received 64 votes on a pro-life amendment to that.
  I understand that Bart Stupak is not on this negotiation either. And 
what we're seeing come out and what came out of the Senate, it looks to 
me like the package that's there--there's going to be a bill that still 
funds abortion and compels Americans to fund abortions through their 
premiums in one fashion or another, or brokers them through an 
exchange, and also one that funds illegals. And those are two things 
that are completely egregious to me, to think we compel taxpayers to do 
that.
  Mr. AKIN. I got another question for you.
  After tomorrow, after this 6 hours of drama, do you think people are 
going to say that you and I and my good friend Congressman Kingston, do 
you think they're going to say that we're obstructionists? I am trying 
to figure out--I wish it were true that we could be obstructionists, 
because if we were obstructionists, that meant if we vote ``no,'' it 
would stop the bill. But they have got 40 more votes than we do, so how 
in the world could we be obstructionists?
  I need some help on that because the logic seems to be very hard for 
me to grasp.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. There are a lot of things that get spun around this 
thing, as you know in this town. It's been, Republicans are blocking 
the bill. We have no capability of doing that, obviously, not from a 
vote-count standpoint, when the Speaker of the House has 40 votes to 
burn, a 40-vote advantage, and they're sitting behind closed doors 
cooking up a closed-door deal. They can't get enough Democrats to pass 
218 votes here. I don't think today they can bring a bill to the floor 
and get it passed.
  This is about, though, the public criticism of shutting Republicans 
out and about this bill being negotiated in secret. Those are the two 
things that the President seeks to resolve tomorrow. Six hours of C-
SPAN time, and then he'll say, Listen, we're doing what I promised we'd 
do. We're negotiating this bill out in public, and, by the way, we're 
doing it with Republicans, so who can complain?
  Well, for me, it controls the entire format.
  Here's the real centerpiece that I don't think anybody has 
articulated at this point yet.
  The President of the United States, as Senator Obama and as candidate 
for President, said to the Iranians, If you just simply unclench your 
fist, we will offer our hand. We will negotiate with the people that we 
have been at odds with since 1979, the Iranians and Ahmadinejad--with 
no preconditions whatsoever--and offer an open hand to the guy with the 
clenched fist.
  And yet the President of the United States refuses to come to the 
negotiating table with Republicans with a blank slate. The President 
has insisted and demanded upon preconditions. He has to have his 
conditions of his bill that has failed, his concepts that have failed. 
And he also puts out there the threat that they have been putting 
together behind closed doors, too, of reconciliation. Reconciliation is 
what President Obama and others called ``the nuclear option'' when it 
was Republicans looking at a 51-vote opportunity on the other side of 
the aisle.

                              {time}  2100

  In fact, this is posted today on the Web site, biggovernment.com. 
This is a statement of our President, and we think about 
reconciliation. This is what blows things up in the Senate. This is the 
nuclear option. This is how they would circumvent the anticipated and 
very legitimate legislative process by taking a Senate version of the 
bill that sits over here on the calendar of the House, pass amendments 
to the Senate version of the bill in the Senate called a reconciliation 
package, then both bills would be here on our calendar.
  Then the House, under the direction of Speaker Pelosi, would take up 
the fixes that the House Members have insisted on which is called the 
reconciliation package, pass it first, and then pass the Senate version 
of the bill, message them both to the White House where the President 
would sign them in the proper sequence, one bill amending the first 
bill. Then this would be, as far as I know, the first time in history 
that the White House has replaced a legitimate conference committee, 
which would be the Members of the House and the Senate, Democrats and 
Republicans, having an open dialogue about resolving the differences. 
And what did President Obama say about this reconciliation nuclear 
option?
  Here is what he said: Passing a bill with 51 Senate votes is an 
arrogant power grab against the Founders' intent. That's what President 
Obama said. The point is, he said that in 2005, not 2010.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, I would say if the gentleman is saying it's an 
arrogant power grab, he certainly is accurate, and that's apparently 
the model that he wants to have. The gentleman may also have quotes 
from Senator Joe Biden, who denounced using this nuclear option, as 
well as Harry Reid.
  When they were in the minority, I think they were right. When we were 
in the majority, I think we were wrong. I don't think you should do 
that. I think that it is a desperation thing. And if you can't get the 
requisite number of votes, maybe you need to start all over on the 
legislation. But you do have very strong, unequivocal statements by 
Senator Obama, candidate Obama, Senator Reid, Senator Biden and yet 
total hypocrisy, that's what it is, is hypocrisy at this point.
  The gentleman was talking about needing Republican votes. They do not 
need a Republican vote to stop anything or to pass anything. It's not 
just with this $950 billion health care bill; they could pass a jobs 
bill without a Republican vote.
  They could pass the tax-and-trade bill without it. They could get out 
of Iraq or Afghanistan without a single Republican vote. They could 
have energy independence without a Republican vote. They could pass 
that card check, that special interest bill for unions, without a 
Republican vote.
  Why aren't they doing it? I just think that they had no idea that 
America was not asleep at the wheel. They found out in Massachusetts, 
and they're scared to death, hey, this

[[Page H826]]

might not be an isolated election. So we are seeing a lot of 
backpedaling right now. It's hilarious when you see some of these 
people, like the Senator from Nebraska who had the special interest 
deal on the health care bill. Now, he is all over this jobs bill. Oh, 
too much spending. You've got a $950 billion health care bill which he 
supports and a $15 billion jobs bill that he is against because of the 
spending.
  Only in this town.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me suggest to the gentleman from Georgia that 
the problem is, no, Republicans can't stop anything that Democrats 
decide they want to get together and vote for because of the margin of 
40 votes to burn here in the House, 19 in the Senate.
  But the problem is, Democrats can't agree among Democrats on what 
they want to push for policy. If they can't find the votes among all of 
these extra Democrats that there are and they still point their finger 
back over at Republicans and say, you guys, you wouldn't vote for the 
stimulus package, you won't support a health care, most of us wouldn't 
support that abysmal cap and tax, that cap and trade bill that, by the 
way, passed off the floor of this House. A bill that didn't exist 
passed off the floor of the House of Representatives and a bill that 
didn't exist was messaged to the United States Senate. That's another 
part of this component.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield quickly, a bill that was 
still being amended at 3:30 a.m. before we started debating it at 9 
a.m. in the morning, a bill which you could say truthfully in your 
heart of hearts believe that not one single Member in the United States 
House of Representatives had read.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. To the gentleman, in fact, I can say that with a 
factual knowledge, and I don't have to ask any of the 435 Members, did 
you read this bill, because I was here on the floor that night when we 
suspended the debate for 35 minutes to resolve, where is the bill? I 
mean, sometimes they will say to us, you don't have any ideas, where 
are your bills?
  We have a lot of bills. We have 40 some bills that we've filed on 
health care. But we said, where is the bill that we are debating? This 
is actually Louie Gohmert from Texas that deserves a lot of credit, and 
Joe Barton also was very good on that night. So we looked down here at 
the well. The bill didn't exist. There was an old bill. There was an 
amendment that had never been integrated. Actually, even the amendment 
wasn't here. It wasn't findable.
  So what was going on was we were debating a bill that didn't exist, 
so it was impossible for anyone to have read a bill that didn't exist. 
That bill was then passed and messaged to the United States Senate. A 
bill that didn't exist was passed and messaged to the Senate, so no one 
read the bill.
  I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.
  Mr. AKIN. The funny thing is, a number of us have served in 
legislative bodies for a number of years. One of the rules has always 
been the public never pays any attention to the process of how we go 
about passing legislation. You can complain about different stuff like 
we had a bill that was done here, where we had a choice of voting for 
either a big tax increase or voting for a cost of living and we had to 
take a choice between the two. The process or the procedure there is 
unfair. Anyway, we got this bill here, 300 pages of amendments passed 
at 3 o'clock in the morning, and we're here on the floor. The 
Congressman from Texas, he has sort of the sense of humor of Eeyore, 
and he just asks in this plaintive kind of way, is it normal procedure 
that we have a copy of the bill on the floor when we are going to be 
debating a bill?
  There is muttering and talking to the Parliamentarian and he says 
yes, indeed there is supposed to be a copy of the bill on the floor. So 
he comes back a couple of minutes later and says, I've been wandering 
around the Chamber and I'm having trouble finding it. Is it north, 
south, east or west or something like that. Pretty soon the Speaker 
starts laughing and we go back and forth about four times in a row. 
Finally he says, I've come up to the podium, and the place where you 
say there is a copy of the bill there isn't because the Clerk is still 
trying to stick 300 pages of amendments in this bill. So here we are 
passing a bill that doesn't even exist.
  And the funny thing was--I guess it wasn't funny--the public was 
paying attention. They understood that we passed a massive tax increase 
on energy that's affecting very many small people who have to pay that 
power bill. Everybody who flips a light switch is going to get taxed, 
along with a massive amount of red tape. And it was done, they thought, 
in the secret and in the dark of night. But the public was paying 
attention, and, in my opinion, that started a lot of that Tea Party 
movement, that very event that we actually were standing here on the 
floor for.

  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me just ask both of you, should Republicans take 
over this House, would you be willing to change the House rules to say 
any bill has to be posted online at least 72 hours before it's voted 
on; would you support that?
  Mr. AKIN. I would support that in a heartbeat. If you're not proud 
enough of it to put it out there, then you shouldn't be sticking it out 
there at all.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Not only would I support that, but I would go 
further, and I would have a lot more bills come down here under an open 
rule. I would sign the pledge and the oath that every appropriations 
bill would be open rule.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I am an appropriator, and I can tell you, generally all 
appropriation bills have been open rule. There have been a few rare 
occasions when we were in the majority that we had maybe a modified 
rule or a closed rule, but traditionally open rules were always the 
case on appropriations bills. When all else failed, at least there were 
appropriation bills to allow the minority party an opportunity to put 
in some amendments.
  But the iron hand of the oppressive majority has closed down that 
system. It's not about Republicans versus Democrats; it's about 435 
people who have been elected by 600,000 people to represent their views 
in their Nation's capital.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Another thing that happens around this town is the 
hole in the wall gang, the Rules Committee, sits up here on the third 
floor in a place where you very seldom see any press from the room. And 
only on one occasion have I seen a television camera in the room. They 
control what gets debated here on the floor and what is voted on on the 
floor. The last time we had a legitimate open rule on our 
appropriations process was in the spring of 2007. That was when Speaker 
Pelosi first came in and got the gavel before this draconian shutdown 
of the open debate process.
  In that spring period of time through the appropriations process, I 
was successful in getting passed--not those I introduced--but those 
that actually passed this floor, nine amendments. As far as I know, 
that's the most amendments of any Member of Congress during that period 
of time.
  Yet I have taken dozens of amendments up to the Rules Committee and 
submitted them, and I can't think of a single one that they ever 
allowed to be debated. That process has to change. That's got to be out 
in the open. We need the Rules Committee on television, out front, 
meeting in a published hour so that they can be watched by the press 
and the public and then, additionally, while we are here watching what 
goes on with the rules and the shutdown of what's going on, we need 
more sunlight.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield, I want to tell you one of 
my rules experiences at the Rules Committee. Now, remember, the Rules 
Committee, when the bill is passed by, say, the Agriculture or the 
Education or the Energy Committee, it goes to the Rules Committee and 
they determine how long it's going to be debated and what amendments 
will be allowed and what amendments won't be allowed. That's why 
they're called rules. Four hundred thirty-five Members, you've got to 
have rules, strict rules, or you won't get anything done.
  I was going to the Rules Committee. I had submitted an amendment, and 
I was waiting my turn to present my amendment to the Rules Committee 
for their consideration. And a staffer wrote me an e-mail and said, 
Your amendment has been rejected. Do you still want to sit in here and 
present it?
  I said, Well, how could it be rejected? I haven't presented it and 
until I present it they can't reject it.

[[Page H827]]

  And my staffer said, I have some inside information. I've got a 
friend on the majority. Your amendment is not on the list.
  I said, Well, what list?
  The list of amendments they're going to allow.
  I said, Well, this is just a total farce. You have Members of 
Congress sitting in a crowded room waiting their turn to present an 
amendment, and the Rules Committee behind closed doors had already 
decided which ones they were going to take and not take.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Because they got a list from the Speaker as to what 
amendments to approve and which ones not to approve. And on this health 
care bill, this monstrosity here, I was before the Rules Committee at 
1:30 in the morning, I offered 13 separate amendments, to ask to be 
able to debate them and get a vote on to approve this health care bill. 
And I was chastised by members of the Rules Committee because I had 
wasted paper and staff time to have them drafted up, because I should 
have known, as the gentleman from Georgia apparently should have known, 
that they weren't going to allow these amendments, so why should I try.
  But any Congress that can pass a bill that doesn't exist, debate a 
bill that doesn't exist here, pass a bill that doesn't exist here, and 
message that bill to the United States Senate, I suppose can also put 
out a list and say, we're going to reject the amendment that you never 
offered in advance.
  Another thing that happens in this Congress--and it happened on this 
floor today--is committee action. And the committee action that goes on 
is designed to take this language apart, take a look at it, examine the 
ramifications, hold hearings, get educated, evaluate the impact of 
legislation and then bring that legislation through the committee and 
amend it and perfect the legislation when you have a debate where you 
can focus it with people that are experts on the subject matter.
  The legislation that came through today on this insurance across 
State lines political bill that came to the floor, had been amended in 
the Judiciary Committee with an amendment by Dan Lungren, passed by a 
majority of members, Republicans and Democrats voting for the Lungren 
amendment. The bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee, and on its 
way to the Rules Committee it magically became a different bill without 
the Lungren amendment language in the bill. That's what we voted on on 
the motion to recommit today.
  So we have committee action that's a farce, as well as the Rules 
Committee which is a farce, as well as the debate here on the floor of 
the House, which is a farce, when we are debating a bill that doesn't 
exist. That's just three egregious things that need to change in a 
Republican-run Congress. I will stand to change all of those with 
anybody else that will stand with me.
  Mr. KINGSTON. You know what's interesting about that bill, though, is 
dispute that strange route that it went for the strange product that 
wasn't passed by the committee, we still had a decent debate on it and 
passed the bill.
  The importance of that is if you want open debate on health care, we 
now have an example that shows, hey, you know what, it works. This was 
a health insurance related piece of legislation. We had an open debate 
on it. It didn't have special deals for Nebraska or Louisiana. It did 
not have a big price tag on it. It had some Republicans against it, 
some Republicans for it, and the thing passed.

                              {time}  2115

  Oh, hey, what about doing that on everything else about health care? 
Wouldn't that be an interesting experiment in democracy?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, I hope, as I reclaim, that what we see 
tomorrow is more than a dog and pony show. I hope it's not just a show 
that's designed to resolve the two things that seem to be giving 
Democrats and the President heartburn, which are the very legitimate 
point that they have shut Republicans out of the process and the very 
legitimate point that the President has promised that negotiations will 
take place on C-SPAN. That seems to be what is going to be presented 
tomorrow.
  But I'm going to say again, the requirement of preconditions that the 
President wants to negotiate from his position--and by the way, he 
doesn't have a bill yet that I know of. He just has platitudes and 
bullet points that are out there. But to start with his platitudes and 
bullet points--and maybe we'll be guessing at the amorphous combination 
of the Senate and the House version of this, that all needs to go off 
of the table, and this threat of reconciliation, the nuclear option 
needs to be renounced and rejected by the President of the United 
States.
  I would be just as happy if he would just read his 2005 statement 
verbatim tomorrow. He should start out the meeting and say, Well, all 
in good faith, I want to talk about health care with you on C-SPAN. I 
know I made a campaign oath. It probably wasn't the best promise, but 
it was good political leverage and good theater at the time, so I'm 
going to try to follow through on that so that I can resolve some of 
the criticism. And by the way, I know we've shut you Republicans out of 
this thing. We've done so since clear back last September, but I'm 
going to open this up at least so we can have the semblance of 
negotiations take place, and to demonstrate my good faith--and then 
read from the 2005 statement.
  Then the President should say, ``Passing a bill with 51 Senate votes 
is an arrogant power grab against the Founders' intent.'' That's what 
the President should say tomorrow. That's actually what the President 
said in 2005. That would demonstrate good faith. And then we would have 
a blank slate, a blank piece of paper, however you want to characterize 
it, except Republicans have their package bill. I'm suggesting we 
should concede that too. Slide that off the side of the table, really 
start with a blank slate, and then bring up, as the gentleman from 
Georgia said, a stand-alone idea can be debated and it be perfected and 
it can be passed. We need to do it with tort reform in a real way that 
takes the money out of the pockets of the trial lawyers as opposed to 
taking it out of the pockets of our senior citizens.
  The gentleman from Missouri.
  Mr. AKIN. It seems like, to me, what you're talking about is, in a 
way you are defining something that's bipartisan, where people in good 
faith come to the table, they all have some ideas, they talk about them 
and say, Well, I don't like this part of your idea, and they say, Well, 
I don't like this part. Well, what part can we all agree to and put 
together?
  Now, my understanding is the way the President is defining 
bipartisanship tomorrow is that what he's going to do is go behind 
closed doors, come up with a legislative product, then give the 
Republicans the chance to agree with him. And Republicans aren't 
allowed to bring anything they have in, but he has something that he 
has concocted. He's going to kind of spring it on them and say, Now are 
you going to go along with me?
  Is that your concept of bipartisanship?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. You know, I think they have been sitting up behind 
closed doors cooking up this reconciliation/nuclear option. They've 
been doing this for over a month. Senator Harkin announced, after Scott 
Brown won the election in Massachusetts--again, thank you, 
Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker--announced that they had already reached an 
agreement within a couple of days before Scott Brown was elected in 
Massachusetts. This is a continuation of it, and the strategy was what 
I've described with reconciliation/nuclear option.
  So, yes, they have worked behind closed doors. They are operating in 
secret, and they have cooked up this and they are going to say take it 
or leave it.
  Mr. AKIN. Is that bipartisanship or is that ramming full speed ahead? 
That's what it seems like to me.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, it's truly not bipartisanship; it's only the 
show of bipartisanship designed for two things: so they can say, Well, 
we've negotiated with Republicans on C-SPAN. We didn't shut them out. 
That's really it.
  The gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. You know, the amazing thing is, I was in the State 
legislature, and we had, out of 180 members, 26 Republicans, and yet 
the philosophies were still reflective of the State of Georgia. You 
could roughly say one-third of the people were fairly liberal, one-
third of the people were

[[Page H828]]

fairly conservative, and then another third were either right of center 
or left of center. And so you had to have the legislative deliberations 
to get a bill in order to get, for the Georgia House, 91 votes to pass 
something. So I assumed that Congress would be the same way, where you 
would have some people from really safe hard left, hard right 
districts, and then people maybe from more swing districts where it's 
reflective of the American people, but every bill would have the mark 
of both parties on it.
  I was shocked when I came here and saw that it's full speed ahead 
with the majority party. I think that's why, when we took over the 
House in the 104th Congress, we had open rules. And you know what, we 
strayed from that. That was one reason the people threw us out and put 
the Democrats in. But now they've seen the Democrats, and they are sick 
and tired of this partisan stuff. They do want open debate on C-SPAN 
and amendments.
  So you know what would really be nice? If Mr. Akin offers an 
amendment and I vote against it and you vote for it--and it's okay to 
vote against your party members. And maybe you prefer a Democrat one. 
But you know, once you understand something, you have the opportunity 
to debate it, as we did today, you get a better bipartisan product.
  And so today, I don't know if the Speaker is in town, but perhaps she 
saw that and said, Oh, my goodness, so this is the way democracy works? 
Maybe we should do this on another dozen bills and cobble together a 
collection of health care reforms. Because it seems to me somewhere in 
the town meetings that's what people were saying; fix what's broken. 
Don't throw out the entire system. And if you did some one-shot bills, 
you could have targeted health care reform without some $950 billion 
government takeover of health care.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, reclaiming my time, I would label the 
gentleman from Georgia as not necessarily right or left or center, but 
perhaps an optimist on the grounds that the Speaker has been around 
here for a long time, and she surely would have seen this over and over 
and over again over the last 20 or more years that I believe she has 
been here. So I actually don't think that it is about trying to arrive 
at a means to get Democrat and Republican votes. I think it's about 
trying to move a hard-core left-wing agenda.
  The President has said he is for single payer. The Speaker is for 
single payer. Harry Reid is for single payer. That's all socialized 
medicine. That's government-run health care. Now it's a matter of--it 
isn't necessarily, in my view, what's right or wrong with the way 
they're looking at this.

  I had said before the election--a year ago last November--if we elect 
President Obama, the most liberal President in American history, the 
most liberal Senator in the United States Senate, if we elect him, with 
a strong ideology--and by the way, he told us in Baltimore, the 
President said, I am not an ideologue, I am not, but I am not aware of 
anyone that actually believes that. A strong left-wing President 
standing with the Speaker of the House from San Francisco, Harry Reid 
from Las Vegas, those three are the ruling troika in America.
  And I said before Mr. Obama was elected President that the three of 
them could go into a phone booth and do what they would to America--and 
they wouldn't have to ask any Republicans for sure--and the only thing 
they would have to do is be able to verify that they could produce the 
votes within their own Democrat Party to pass any bill. And what 
happened? Just what I said, essentially. The ruling troika cooked up a 
bill. They just couldn't agree in the House and the Senate and they had 
trouble finding enough Democrats to get it to pass. Now they come back 
to Republicans.
  I would remind the Speaker of this, Mr. Speaker, and that is, Thomas 
Jefferson's quote, when he said, ``Large initiatives should not be 
advanced on slender majorities.'' This is a large initiative and it 
should never be advanced on slender majorities. It should be something 
that is debated and deliberated and perfected in a legitimate process, 
not a partisan process, which the committee markup actually was.
  The gentleman from Missouri.
  Mr. AKIN. Gentleman, this is my 22nd year--I hate to admit it--in an 
elected office, and I have seen 22 years' worth of bills, 12 in the 
Missouri legislature, and this is my 10th year here. I have never seen 
a bill like this that is going to affect so many different Americans so 
profoundly. This is larger than anything we've dealt with before. And I 
know there are a number of us that believe that if this bill were to 
pass the way it stands now, not only would it destroy health care in 
America, it would destroy our budget and would be tremendously 
detrimental to the lives of Americans from coast to coast. This is a 
very big deal and it is right for the American people to be very 
exercised about it.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I will make another point of 
this that I think has been completely understated--if stated at all, 
Mr. Speaker--here in the House of Representatives or across the 
dialogue of this land, and that is this: This President and this 
administration participated with--the beginnings of this during the 
Bush administration--the nationalization of a huge chunk of our private 
sector. We have seen three large investment banks nationalized: Fannie 
Mae and Freddie Mac, General Motors, Chrysler, AIG.
  According to The Wall Street Journal last August, they printed that 
one-third of the private sector profits had been nationalized, and most 
of it by the Obama administration, depending on how you actually pick 
the dates that it is declared to be nationalized. But one-third of the 
private sector profits, and now we are looking at another 17 percent of 
our economy nationalized. That takes, at 33 percent, you add it up and 
you're at 50 percent, right there at half.
  But the important thing, the part that seems to be missed in the 
dialogue of this debate is, when the government nationalizes and takes 
over the private sector economy, which they have done, and they want to 
take over the health care and take over the management of everybody's 
health care in America, this unique thing happens. When we look back to 
1973, the decision of Roe v. Wade, and since that time when the Supreme 
Court made their ruling--which I think is not grounded in the 
Constitution and I reject the rationale of Roe v. Wade--we have 
continually heard every year since then, people on this side of the 
aisle primarily, a few on this side of the aisle, say the government 
has no business telling a woman what she can and can't do with her 
body. That is not the government's business. That is between the woman 
and her doctor and her priest. It is not anybody else's business. No 
one can tell a woman what to do with her body. That is what I heard 
from these folks over here mostly since 1973.
  Now the same people, the same voices are saying government should 
tell everybody what they can and can't do with their body. Government 
should take over and nationalize everybody's bodies, our health care, 
and determine whether our health insurance is the one that they will 
approve; determine what tests we get at what age; what age you get a 
mammogram; how long you're going to wait for a hip replacement or a 
knee replacement; the government taxing the nondiet pop to try to tell 
you don't buy anything or eat anything or drink anything but diet pop; 
the government punishing trans fats so that we can have a healthier 
diet, managing our diet, managing our health care. They've done 
everything except promise to run us across the scales, check our body 
fat index and tax us for our fat and tax us for failing to exercise.
  They already tax about every sin that you can put in your body by 
trying to control our behavior. This nanny state is wanting to fund the 
takeover of the private sector, our bodies. They want to do this, and 
it is the most private thing we have, the Federal Government taking 
over our bodies. The very people that said that the government has no 
business telling a woman what she can do with her body, they want to 
tell everybody in America what we can and can't do with our bodies.
  Gentleman.
  Mr. AKIN. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency there, 
does it? We've got 36 States that have legislation they're considering 
trying to protect their citizens from us demanding that those citizens 
have to buy the

[[Page H829]]

government-approved package of health care. I mean, there are a whole 
lot of people fighting back, and they're sick of the nanny state 
telling people what to do.
  I think, gentleman, when you talk about the Federal Government taking 
things over, what I have seen in the last year seems to me to be three 
nets that are being tossed over our economy.
  The first net is the net that government is going to make all the 
decisions about energy. And energy is a key component of almost 
everything, so the government wants to regulate in all kinds of very 
fine ways the use of energy.
  The second net says we are going to control all of health care. Now, 
that affects everybody because everybody has a body.
  And the third one, which has not received a lot of attention but is 
equally insidious, is that the government is going to throw a net over 
all financial transactions. In fact, the bill that was proposed would 
allow the government to determine the salary of a teller in a bank.
  So when you put a net over energy, a net over health care, a net over 
financial transactions, talk about Big Brother looking over your 
shoulder. No wonder people are exercised.

                              {time}  2130

  Mr. KING of Iowa. In reclaiming my time from the gentleman from 
Missouri, it causes me to think about what I have talked about for some 
time here on the floor, and I'll see if I have the notes on this. I can 
also speak from memory, however. I have long talked about the 
Democratic Socialists of America and their Web site. It seems as though 
Americans just don't seem to want to take a look at what's going on at 
dsausa.org.
  I got to wondering on one of my nights that I wasn't sleeping very 
well. I guess it was bothering me that the liberals are deconstructing 
our Constitution, so I was doing a little research to figure out what 
they were thinking.
  I went to their Web site, the Socialist Web site, and I just typed in 
``Socialists in America,'' dsausa.org. What I came up with was this Web 
site that said, Here is what we want to do. At first, the definition in 
there says, We are Socialists. We are not Communists.
  Now, I always want to trust those people who start out their 
introductory paragraphs with ``I am not a Communist.'' Okay. Well, tell 
me why you're not. Now I'm really interested, and I'm not actually sure 
after I read it.
  Well, Communists, they say, want to nationalize everything right down 
to the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. Socialists really 
don't want to do that. They just want to nationalize the Fortune 500 
companies and anything else that's in their way. So they say this is 
the difference. So we're not Communists; we're Socialists. We do want 
to nationalize the Fortune 500 companies, and we also want to 
nationalize the oil refinery industry and the energy industry in 
America. We want to take that all over, and we want to manage these 
corporations ``for the benefit of the people affected by them.''
  Now, I read that, and I might have been a little blurry-eyed because 
I thought: Let's see. You'd run a restaurant for the benefit of the 
customers. That wouldn't be profit-based. You'd run a bar the same way. 
Oh, you can't benefit people by serving them a lot of drinks because 
they might hurt themselves or somebody else.
  No. Really what it is is the benefit of the people affected by them 
will be the trade unions. They'd run the corporations for the purposes 
of creating jobs for trade unions to work in there, and they'd put the 
unions into the management of the companies. That's what they say at 
dsausa.org, Democratic Socialists of America.
  So then I read further, and it reads, Yes, we are Socialists. We're 
not Communists, remember. We're Socialists, but we don't run anybody, 
any candidates, on our banner. We don't have a party that advances 
candidates to go on the ballot, because our legislative arm is the 
Progressives, the Progressive Caucus in the United States Congress.
  If you go to their Web site--and they're quite proud of this, and 
they put a poster up over here on a fairly regular basis--there are 78 
of them listed. There are 77 House Members who are proud Progressives, 
and the one other is Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont, who is a 
proud Socialist. He is a Socialist. He is a Progressive. He is on the 
list with the others.
  The Socialists say the Progressives are Socialists. I don't hear the 
Progressives saying they are not Socialists. I'm going to take all 
their word for it. They are Socialists, and their agenda is the same 
agenda that has been advanced on the Socialist Web site, and we hear it 
on a regular basis here, and the agenda that is being advanced by the 
President of the United States is an agenda that, for all the world, 
looks like the one I read on the Progressive Web site and that I read 
on the Socialists Web site.
  I yield to the gentleman from Missouri before I yield to the 
gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. AKIN. You know, it was interesting to me that there was a 
country--it was the U.S.--and they had a theory. Their theory was that 
the government should provide you with a job, with an education. They 
should provide you with health care. They should provide you with food 
and with clothing and with a place to live. That was the job of the 
government to do those things. We watched that country. It was a big 
country. After a while, it collapsed. It wasn't just the U.S.--It was 
the USSR.
  Aside from the fact that they just hated people of the Christian 
faith, aside from that sort of prejudice, that was their operating 
philosophy--that the government was going to provide things that were 
necessary for your survival. You've got to have food to survive, so the 
government is going to give it to you. You've got to have health care, 
so the government is going to give it to you. You have to have 
education, so the government is going to give it to you. That was their 
operating premise. We sat there, as I was a young man, and we went 
``yuk, yuk, yuk'' when the whole thing fell apart, because we knew it 
was a dumb idea.
  So what are we doing in America here under the Pelosi and Obama 
leadership? The government is not only providing education and housing, 
but now they're going to jump into expanding to take over all of health 
care, and they are going to tell you where to work.
  I guess my question is: How come we are doing the same thing we knew 
that wouldn't work before? I think that's what a lot of American 
citizens are saying. Time out. What is going on? We need not just to 
get the budget in control. We need to deconstruct Washington, D.C., and 
we need to remove them as a threat to the freedom of this country.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. In reclaiming my time, I have a remark to the 
gentleman:
  Free enterprise capitalism is what defeated the Soviet Union and is 
what ended the Cold War, because our economy could outproduce their 
economy, and they eventually collapsed. I don't know why we are trying 
to emulate them.
  I have a very brief question to the gentleman from Missouri before I 
yield to the gentleman from Georgia, which is: In the Akin household, 
when you serve breakfast to those kids growing up down there, to that 
whole conservative family, do you serve them grits on a regular basis, 
or do you not?
  Mr. AKIN. Well, you know, now, when you get to the State of Missouri, 
that's one of those things that just kind of depends.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Am I going to have to go down there and have you 
show me?
  Mr. AKIN. Yes. We're going to have to do some showing down in the 
State of Missouri. We're not too bad on oatmeal, but I'll tell you what 
is something, I think, of a little bit of New England that I would want 
to recommend, and that is that you'd get that cornbread and put maple 
syrup on top of it and then homemade apple sauce over the top. I'd even 
stack that up against grits in spite of what my good friend from 
Georgia might say.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, I'll reclaim my time, and yield to the man 
who does have grits for breakfast, the doctor from Georgia, Mr. Broun.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. King. I appreciate your 
yielding.

[[Page H830]]

  I think the American people need to know that socialism never has 
worked, never will work, and we've got people here in Washington who 
are so arrogant, so ignorant, so incompetent that they will think that 
their brand of socialism is going to work, but it will not. It never 
has worked. It never will work. I don't care who is trying to force 
socialism upon our people; it's still not going to work.

  In fact, the Progressives, as Mr. King was talking about recently, 
said way back years ago with Theodore Roosevelt, who was the first 
Progressive and started the Progressive movement here in this country--
the Progressives back a century ago were saying, The best way to 
socialize America would be to socialize the health care system. They 
have been trying for 100 years now to socialize the health care system.
  We have a sham of a meeting tomorrow at the Blair House that the 
White House has set up. When it was first announced, I was very hopeful 
that maybe the President had seen the light from everything that the 
American people had been saying, in that they don't want to have the 
government take over the health care system. Maybe he was beginning to 
see the light and reach out a hand to try to work with us as 
Republicans. I'm a medical doctor, and I was hopeful that my input and 
even my health care reform bill, H.R. 3889, which is a comprehensive 
health care and financial reform bill, which totally looks at the 
private sector, would maybe be considered.
  No, that's not what the White House wants to do. In fact, they've 
stacked the deck, actually, the final chapter of this whole sham--of 
the ruse, of the dog-and-pony show--that's going to occur tomorrow.
  Now, I've challenged Democrats individually--in fact, many of them--
to introduce a bill that would do four things which are totally market-
based, which would give patients many options and which would literally 
lower the cost of health insurance for every American. Four things.
  One is to have cross-State purchasing for businesses and individuals 
so that people could go out and buy their health insurance anywhere in 
this country.
  The second thing is to develop an association pool so that people 
could join an association and could have a choice of one or more 
multiple products in the way of health insurance that they could buy.
  The third thing is to stimulate the States to set up high-risk pools 
to cover those people who are uninsurable.
  The fourth thing is to have tax fairness for everybody so that 
everybody could deduct 100 percent of all their health care expenses. 
We don't have that today.
  In fact, last night, I led the Doctors Caucus discussion about health 
care. Just following us, the Democrats came to the floor, and they were 
talking about a bill that passed the House today. It's a big insurance 
company protection bill, is actually what it is. Betsy Markey from 
Colorado, a Democrat, said she has had a small business, and she was 
remarking, as to her small business in Colorado, that she only has two 
choices of buying health insurance, and that she would like to see her 
employees be able to get insurance across State lines. I've had 
Democrat after Democrat tell me they'd like to introduce this bill, but 
they said that their leadership would punish them if they were to 
introduce it and promote it.
  John Shadegg, Charlie Dent and I, all Republicans from different 
parts of this country, wrote an op-ed that was published in The 
Washington Times to challenge Democrats to introduce that bill. If we 
were to have it on the agenda tomorrow, we could introduce that bill. 
The Democrats could take control of it and could claim the bill as 
theirs.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. In briefly reclaiming my time, to the gentleman 
from Georgia, I'd make the point that, as to what's going on tomorrow 
that you referred to as a dog-and-pony show, I don't take issue with 
that statement.
  I just think that the American people need to know that this isn't a 
negotiation taking place tomorrow. This is about putting up the front 
and the show that there will be C-SPAN discussions taking place and 
that there will be Republicans in the room.
  By the way, there hasn't been any dialogue on our part about the 
dynamics of what happens with the faces of the Democrats who will be in 
the room or whose job it will be to enhance the image of the President 
of the United States. This is the President's image. He has lost his 
mojo, and he cannot get it back by simply continuing to work in the 
backroom with Democrats. That's how he lost it in the first place. So 
the President can't get his juice back. He can't get his mojo back 
unless he gets Republicans in the room--and he has got to have some of 
them either looking silly or nodding their heads, one of the two--and 
I'm going to suggest going cheek-to-cheek with the President of the 
United States after we've come all of this way.
  The American people have won the debate, and we are with them. We've 
now recovered the fumble in Massachusetts. We've got the ball. We're 
playing offense. They're playing defense. This is the best that they 
can come up with--allowing the President of the United States to set 
conditions on the negotiations by which we are going to consider his 
defeated bill, to which 47 percent of the people say scrap it and start 
over, to which 23 percent of the people say just throw it out and do 
nothing--don't start over--and to which about a quarter of the people 
say, We'll pass the President's bill. Well, that's how far down he is 
when 25 percent of the American people think that might be a good idea.

  So I think that we need to understand that this is about the show. 
It's not about getting anything negotiated. But if it were, I'd do tort 
reform.
  The gentleman from Missouri.
  Mr. AKIN. That's what we called it during the last hour. We called it 
``Political Drama.''
  You know, there isn't anything, first of all, that the Republicans 
can do that could block his bill. The problem he has got is he doesn't 
even have enough Democrats who want to do this thing, so he is trying 
to drum up, as you say, support for this thing to make it look like 
there are people who are supporting it. Yet he goes behind closed 
doors, puts some deal together, comes out, and says, Now are you going 
to agree with it?
  There is nothing bipartisan about that. It's just a scam. I just 
don't think the American people are going to buy it.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. In reclaiming my time, in addition to this 
reconciliation package is the, figuratively, gun to the head of 
Republicans. They've been cleaning their gun all weekend and spinning 
the cylinder. They'll put it to our heads tomorrow, and they'll say, We 
have cooked up this reconciliation package. We've got our deal.
  They're going to think we believe they have the votes.
  They'll put that gun to our heads, and they'll say, Now, you can 
either accept the terms we're going to offer at the Blair House 
tomorrow or we're going to drop the hammer and go with the nuclear 
option and try to push this thing through the Senate.
  I don't think they've got the votes in the House to do it. I don't 
think they've got the votes in the Senate to do it. I will say, Mr. 
Speaker, if they try to move that, they're going to be looking at a 
whole stack of amendments in the Senate that will take an awful long 
time, with more exposure on the Senate votes than there will be at the 
Blair House tomorrow.
  The gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you.
  I believe the American people know what's going on up here, and 
they're going to say ``no'' to ObamaCare. The American people have 
already spoken. They're going to say ``no'' to all of this sham, this 
secrecy, this putting things together with just a few people who won't 
let Democrats or Republicans be engaged in setting things up. It's all 
a show. It's a joke. It's a bunch of clowns who are just trying to make 
something look different than it is. It is nothing but trying to ramrod 
a health care takeover by the Federal Government, by this 
administration, and by the leadership.
  The American people need to stand up and tell their Congressmen, 
their Senators ``no'' to this sham, ``no'' to ObamaCare--and we can 
defeat it. I encourage people all over this country to start calling 
first thing in the morning, Mr. Speaker, every Congressmen in this 
Congress and every Senator and

[[Page H831]]

say ``no'' to this sham, ``no'' to ObamaCare and ``no'' to a government 
takeover of the health care system. My patients and my patients' 
families depend upon it--the American people just saying ``no.''
  With that, we as Republicans are not the party of N-O; we are the 
party of K-N-O-W. We can lower the cost of health care if our issues 
will get on the table and if we can discuss those.
  I yield back.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. In reclaiming my time and in thanking the gentlemen 
from Georgia and Missouri, in our last minute here, Mr. Speaker, I'd 
make the point that I'm happy to say ``no'' to bad ideas, N-O to bad 
ideas. The American people are glad of that. They were glad when Nancy 
Reagan said, ``Just say `no.' '' We're just saying ``no'' to socialized 
medicine.
  We're saying ``yes'' to good ideas, including ending lawsuit abuse, 
selling health insurance across State lines, full deductibility, HSAs, 
portability, and transparency.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________