[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 36 (Friday, March 12, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H1384-H1390]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate this opportunity to 
speak here on the floor. The topic again will be health care because, 
even though most of Americans are more concerned about the economy, as 
am I, and jobs, because the President keeps trying to shove this thing 
into the lap of Americans--actually, it will control the lap of 
Americans--we have to deal with this until we can start over, start 
fresh, get the special interest groups, the unions, AARP, those people 
who have been meeting in the last few weeks behind closed doors, away 
from C-SPAN cameras, getting special deals for themselves, we start 
over and start fresh. And the number one most important aspect is not 
the unions. It is not AARP. It is retired people. It is seniors. It is 
Americans across the country. It is the poor. It is the wealthy. It is 
everybody.

                              {time}  1245

  Those people who are United States citizens, those are the number one 
concern, should be, under a newly negotiated bill.
  I just got sent a copy of an e-mail that has gone all over the 
country apparently from a group called Organizing Against America--I'm 
sorry, Organizing for America, it just sounds like they're organizing 
against America--and it has an individual's name, first name. It says: 
``President Obama has called for the House to vote to move health 
reform forward as early as next week. Your representative''--in this 
case, Louis Gohmert--``voted last fall to allow insurance companies to 
continue to jack up rates, drop coverage when folks need it the most, 
and discriminate against people with preexisting conditions.'' You 
know, the rules of the House do not prevent me from calling this what 
it is: that's a lie; that's simply not true.
  But it goes on to say: ``We're in the final margin, one last chance 
to do the right thing.'' It says: ``Call Representative Gohmert 
today,'' and it says: ``Let them know''--that's not correct grammar, 
but that's not the only thing that's not correct--``know that there is 
a political price to favoring big insurance companies over the American 
people.
  ``Organizing Against America''--I'm sorry, ``Organizing for America 
supporters in Texas have pledged 506,830 volunteer hours to fight for 
candidates who support reform.''
  So, anyway, what they're not apparently aware of is that the vast 
majority of Americans, the vast majority in my district, they know what 
this bill--I've got four volumes to get it all, that's the bill that 
was passed in the House--they know what this represents. It's a 
government takeover not just of health care, but a whole lot more than 
that. Anyway, that's the stuff that's going out in this hour of 
desperation to try to cram this bill through, cram it down on America.
  I heard our valiant Speaker Pelosi, I saw and heard the video of the 
Speaker saying we've got to pass this bill so that we can find out 
what's in it. I understand that she was talking about apparently 
there's a big fog around the bill and we really won't see what's in the 
bill until we pass it and then the fog is lifted; but some of us have 
been concerned that we need to look at this

[[Page H1385]]

bill, and everybody needs to know what's in it now and not wait until 
later.
  We also know that secretly negotiated--I saw an AARP rep and union 
rep saying that before this summit the President was going to have his 
health care bill that would be discussed at the summit between 
Republicans and Democrats. I know my friend, Eric Cantor, brought a 
copy of the bill, and it seemed like that made people mad. I suggested 
that they have a copy of the Senate bill and the House bill there so 
that when somebody made a representation that wasn't accurate as to 
what was represented in the bill, you could immediately turn to the 
bill during the summit and correct whatever inaccuracy was painted.
  Well, one of the problems with the President's health care bill, like 
my friend, Ms. Foxx, pointed out earlier, is that there is still no 
President's bill. He came in here and spoke from the second level up 
there and kept referring to ``my bill,'' ``this bill,'' ``my plan,'' 
``this plan''; but as I asked Secretary Sebelius later, I said, I've 
been trying to find a copy of the President's bill; he keeps referring 
to it, said he was going to call us out if we misrepresented it, and I 
just want to know where I get a copy of it. And that's when she told 
us, Well, actually, I think he was talking about a set of proposals or 
principles.
  Well, I was told by CBO that they could not score my plan until I had 
it in a hard and fast bill. So we did, we got it in bill form. And that 
took a lot of work because legislative counsel, who prepares the bills 
in legislative form, were so tied up with all the Democratic bills that 
were being filed and being shoved to the front so quickly. But we 
finally got it done. It took, I think, around 6 weeks or so. And then 
we got it filed. And then we couldn't get a CBO scoring. We were 
finally told in August, well, you know, you don't have the request from 
the highest-ranking Republican on the committee of jurisdiction, Energy 
and Commerce. So I talked to Republican Joe Barton, and Joe said, yeah, 
it sounds great; let's get it done. He said to send a request that my 
bill be scored.
  Then, about 1 month later, we were told, well, we haven't scored it. 
You still don't have the approval of the highest-ranking Republican on 
the Joint Tax Committee. So I got Dave Camp, told him about the bill, 
showed him what I had. He said, sure. He sends over a letter saying, 
Please score Gohmert's bill. That was in September, I think September 
19, something like that, 20th, somewhere around there.
  In the meantime, anytime a Democratic leader doesn't have a bill, 
just has an idea, a plan, wow, they can rush that in to CBO. Every now 
and then CBO will say, you know, you just don't give us enough to work 
from, we're making presumptions, but here's a score usually is what 
they get to anyway. That is something that is so grossly unfair.
  There is a summary of 70 health care bills in this document here that 
have been filed by Republicans to help reform health care. So if 
someone bothered to read that before they sent out a false e-mail 
saying we don't want to do anything to reform insurance, they would 
find out they're wrong. We've got all kinds of good proposals because 
the truth is, and I'll say it again, all the people I know want health 
care reformed. They don't want insurance companies between us and our 
doctors or between any American and their doctors. And they don't want 
government in between them and their doctors. That's what we're trying 
to get to.
  And even though CBO hasn't been kind enough to, after all these 
months--and we have the data here that shows what CBO has done. There 
have been 50 total health care bills formally scored in the 111th 
Congress, and six of them--six--have been Republican plans. We've got 
70 others we'd like to get scored, but they're not going to get to 
those, they're not even going to get to mine. In the 111th Congress 
there have been a total all together of 530 bills that have been scored 
by CBO: 442 were for Democrats, 88 were from Republicans. But we didn't 
even get that good of odds as far as the health care scoring. So we are 
obviously working at a severe disadvantage here.
  I know that there are so many things the President said that even 
though they're inaccurate, he has no intent to deceive. It's just that 
when you're President of the United States, obviously you can't have 
all the facts at your fingertip. You have to rely on people who work 
for you to give you accurate information. Unfortunately, our good 
President has not been given all the accurate information he needs in 
order to address things properly.
  I've been joined by my good friend from Georgia, and I would like to 
yield such time as Mr. Lynn Westmoreland might need.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for 
taking this Special Order to come talk about the health care bill that, 
regardless of what anybody says, is actually being rammed through the 
process. And the reason it's being rammed through, as I think my friend 
from Texas mentioned, the American people are not in favor of this 
health care bill. It also, I believe, is unconstitutional that we're 
going to require our citizens to buy health care. That should be a 
choice that every individual makes on whether they buy health care or 
don't buy health care. They may be in an economic situation to where 
they don't need it, or they may be young and they may be doing health 
savings accounts. We need to be promoting the health savings accounts 
and other ways that young people can do things to provide health care 
for themselves without their government forcing them to buy a health 
insurance program.

  The other thing that I think is interesting is the unions get a 
special break out of this. You know, I thought that everything that we 
did in this body was supposed to be fair to everybody, but what they're 
doing is they're making a difference in this health care proposal that 
if you have neighbors living beside one another and one is a union 
employee and the other is a nonunion employee and they're making the 
same amount of money, their health benefits are going to be taxed 
differently. Now, why should that be? I mean, I think that's one of the 
disservices that has come about through this bill is there is so much 
inequity between individuals. It all depends on how much money you 
make, where you live.
  There is also going to be a czar that we don't know who that's going 
to be and we don't really know what his or her full capability is going 
to be and what they're going to regulate. But I would say to my friend 
from Texas that they may tell you that the current health care plan 
that you have that you're happy with does not meet the Federal 
requirements.
  This plan also establishes about 111 new commissions, boards, and 
agencies that we have no idea what their responsibility or what their 
rules or what their regulations are going to be and what other type of 
impact they're going to have on our freedom and our privacy.
  The interesting thing is that the leadership continues to talk about 
how many jobs this is going to create. If it creates any jobs, they 
will be government jobs. We need to create private sector jobs. We need 
to be concentrating on the economy. All the political capital that has 
been spent on health care--and not only on health care, this most open, 
honest, ethical Congress that we were promised by then-Minority Leader 
Nancy Pelosi, now Speaker Pelosi, is the fact that they've been tied up 
with ethics investigations of Congressman Rangel. We've had the tickle 
wrestling controversy that just came up lately about young people being 
allowed to be subject to sexual harassment.
  Now, we need to be concentrating on jobs. Most of my constituents are 
calling me saying, look, where are the jobs? You passed a $787 billion 
stimulus package that was supposed to keep unemployment from going from 
8 percent any higher, well, it's at 9.7. The only jobs that have been 
created have been government jobs. We created about 5,000 jobs with 
Cash for Clunkers. We have created over 120,000 government jobs since 
this President has been in office. We need to be concentrating on our 
economy and on creating jobs from the private sector. We need to be 
freeing up credit. We need to be making it so small business has an 
initiative to hire people.
  The jobs bill that we passed through here was really a joke. And my 
friend from Texas, I'm sure you talk to many of your small business 
people who said,

[[Page H1386]]

Congressman, do they really think that I'm going to go out and hire 
somebody for $30,000 or $35,000 a year to get a $1,000 tax credit? Do 
they not understand that you can't survive in small business doing 
something that silly? I said, well, the problem is only about 7 percent 
of the people in the President's administration have ever even had a 
private sector job, and I don't know how many or what percentage of 
that ever created any jobs or actually was responsible for job 
creation.
  What we have got to do is remove the uncertainty that's out there to 
the small business world, to that employer that is ready to create, to 
expand, to put infrastructure in our communities. We've got to make 
sure that he has some certainty. The small business people I talk to 
go, look, I'm not going to do anything until I have some certainty, and 
the one thing that the 111th Congress has brought to the American 
people and to the people that create jobs in this country is 
uncertainty. They don't know what their energy cost is going to be; 
they have no idea. Is cap-and-trade going to pass that would raise, 
just on individuals, energy costs of about $3,200 a year? Is that going 
to pass? I don't know.

                              {time}  1300

  Are we going to raise taxes on the small business people? Are we 
going to raise taxes on the people who make over $250,000 or over 
$200,000 or over $150,000? Most of these subchapter S corps that create 
the jobs are under those individual guidelines.
  They ask, Am I going to end up paying more taxes? I don't know.
  I can't answer that for you.
  What are our health care costs going to be? Are you going to mandate 
these health care prescriptions on us?
  I don't know. I can't answer that.
  We don't know about any free trade agreements. This administration 
has refused to act on free trade agreements. We need to remove the 
uncertainty for business in this country. We need to crank up our 
economic engine without starving it for the fuel that it needs to stand 
and to create those jobs that we so desperately need.
  So this health care plan is going to be rammed through regardless of 
what you say. The rules are going to be adjusted to fit what they need 
to do. But I've got something to tell the majority: The American people 
are not that stupid. They understand smoke and mirrors and hocus-pocus 
when they see it. I promise you they're not just going to hold the 
majority accountable; they're going to hold every Member of this body 
and every Member of the body across this Capitol accountable for taking 
this country in a direction that the majority of people does not want 
to see it go.
  With that, I yield back my time to the gentleman, my friend from 
Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate so much the insights from the gentleman 
from Georgia. You make such good points.
  Madam Speaker, I've heard people say before, Well, you know, I see 
you go down to the House floor and just pour your heart out, and you're 
really trying to convince people of what's right. I wonder. It has got 
to be pretty frustrating when there's not more than a handful of people 
around on the House floor.
  I think what a lot of people don't realize is, since C-SPAN came 
about, every Member of Congress whom I know has a television in his or 
her office, and they watch C-SPAN. A lot of folks will have more than 
one so that you can monitor C-SPAN and watch the news. You can monitor 
what is being said, and you can monitor debate. We've been told there 
may be 200,000 or there may be many more people watching on C-SPAN. Yet 
this is a chance, under the Constitution, under the Speech or Debate 
Clause, to come in and to try to bring light. Light is the best 
disinfectant to any kind of infection. That's what we're trying to do, 
to shed some light on this.
  We have been joined by my dear friend, Ms. Virginia Foxx. When you're 
talking about someone who has been the president of a university 
before--and I know her work hours as they're not unlike my work hours--
I know that she comes to the floor informed.
  I yield such time as Ms. Foxx may need.
  Ms. FOXX. Well, I want to thank both of my colleagues, my classmates, 
actually--my colleague from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) and my colleague 
from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for their insights and for their sharing of 
information in this Special Order today.
  Instead of going home to be in our districts, we stayed in town today 
to vote on a bill on algae, which we could have voted on yesterday, but 
our colleagues across the aisle are twisting arms every minute of every 
day in order to get votes. They understand that the American people 
don't want this health care bill that they're trying to ram through and 
pass. They're trying to be responsive to their constituents, but 
they're being forced, in many cases, to vote for something by their 
leadership.
  I want to talk for just a minute about two problems here. We have a 
problem with the bill, and we also have a problem with the process, or 
the rule, that is going to be governing this bill.
  I serve on the Rules Committee. Up until this year, people have 
always said, Oh, we shouldn't try to talk about process because the 
public's eyes glaze over. They don't really want to know about that.
  Yet more and more Americans have awakened and are paying attention to 
what is going on in Congress, and I find that people are concerned 
about the process here because they understand the process is sometimes 
as important as the substance of what we're doing.
  The Rules Committee is the committee here that establishes the rules 
for debate and the procedure on legislation that's being considered by 
the House. Unfortunately, our colleagues will not allow the Rules 
Committee to be covered by C-SPAN, so very few people have seen the 
Rules Committee in action. We meet in a tiny room up here. Really, 
there are no seats for the public, or almost no seats for the public. 
There are seats for Members; there are seats for the press, and there 
are seats for staff, but there are almost no seats for the public. So 
very few people have observed the Rules Committee, but it is doing 
extremely important work in the House.
  The Rules Committee establishes the length of the debate and which 
amendments, if any, will be allowed to be debated. It has nine Members 
of the majority and four Members of the minority, so they have it 
stacked pretty good against the minority. We meet at all times of the 
day and night, lots of times in the middle of the night. Last year, on 
the cap-and-trade bill, we got the manager's amendment at 3 a.m., an 
almost 400-page amendment at 3 o'clock in the morning. Then we voted on 
that bill just a little later on that day.
  Well, what is being talked about to get a health care bill passed 
some people are calling ``the Slaughter solution,'' but I call it the 
Slaughter sleight of hand. Ms. Slaughter, from New York, is the Chair 
of the committee, and she has come up with a really, really clever way 
of having the Members of this body not vote on a bill but say that the 
bill has passed.
  I said a few minutes ago that we are facing a major crisis in this 
country, a crisis with our debt and deficit, but the more immediate 
crisis is this very cynical attempt to pass a bill without having the 
Members vote for the bill. That has never happened in this House 
before. This is a complete cynical approach to this, and they have to 
do that because their Members don't want to vote for it because they 
know their constituents don't want them to vote for it.
  They believe they're going to be able to send their Members home to 
say, Oh, I didn't vote for that horrible bill. I didn't vote for that 
bill you don't want. I only voted for the rule, or I only voted for 
this reconciliation bill, and I didn't vote for that bill.

  Now, folks, they're trying to go from passing bills they haven't read 
to passing bills they haven't voted on. I think any high school 
youngster in this country who has taken civics knows how a bill becomes 
law. You pass a bill in one House, and you pass exactly the same thing 
in the other Chamber. It then goes to the President. The President can 
veto it or sign it. Yet that's not what the majority party is about 
here. They want a procedural vote that would simply declare the measure 
to have passed at the moment the Senate passes what they are calling a 
reconciliation bill.
  As I also pointed out earlier, we have no reconciliation process 
here. We have

[[Page H1387]]

straight up-or-down votes. The majority rules. Because there are four 
vacancies in the House, and because nobody is in the House of 
Representatives unless he or she is elected, as you don't appoint 
people to the House of Representatives, the Speaker only needs 216 
votes. So what we have again is a sleight of hand going on.
  You know, I've seen a lot of cartoons representing the President as 
the Wizard of Oz, and I think that's a pretty apt description. The 
President and the people in charge here have been talking a lot about 
this reconciliation bill because they want people's attention on that. 
They don't want people to pay attention to the bill that has to be 
voted on in order for it to become law, which is the Senate bill.
  Now, a few minutes ago, the majority leader said, Oh, everybody knows 
what's in these bills. They've been out there for months. We've 
discussed them for thousands of hours.
  That is not true.
  What's going to happen next week is the Budget Committee is going to 
meet on Monday. They're going to pass what amounts to an empty vessel, 
which is going to come to the Rules Committee. Sometime next week--and 
we don't know what time of day or night--we're going to execute an 
amendment in the Rules Committee that will be seen for the very first 
time by anybody in a position to vote on it. The staff will have seen 
it, and perhaps those in charge will have seen it, but my guess is they 
will not have seen it either. We'll be asked to vote on that 
immediately in the Rules Committee. That's going to be the first time 
anybody will have seen it.
  As my colleague from Texas talked about, and as I mentioned earlier, 
we don't have a bill from the President. He presented an 11-page set of 
principles, which he called a proposal, and he has got a 19-page 
summary of the 11-page proposal on the Web site. There is still no 
legislative language, and we have to have legislative language.
  The Democratic majority is engaging in such extraordinary legislative 
chicanery to get this bill passed that it is a clear indication they 
cannot pass the bill without doing that. They don't have the votes 
within their membership to pass that bill, so they've got to do all 
this sleight of hand to get it passed.
  These people have exposed themselves as willing to abandon the most 
fundamental element of legislating, a transparent up-or-down vote, in 
order to achieve an unpopular, partisan objective.
  This is very disturbing, and it should be an alarm to every American. 
This is what banana republics do. This is not what the greatest Nation 
in the world does. This is not what the greatest deliberative bodies in 
the world do. The American people do not want this health care bill, 
and they don't want their democratic process turned on its head to pass 
it over their objectives.
  I said it before: I was ridiculed. I was ridiculed for saying that I 
feared this health care bill almost more than anything else. I want to 
tell you the American people need to fear it because it undermines our 
entire system of laws. It takes us from being a nation of laws to being 
a nation of people who will do anything to pass their ideological 
program, and they will go out to attempt to destroy what is great about 
this Nation, and that is our Constitution and our rule of law.
  With that, I yield back.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate the comments of the gentlelady, Ms. Foxx. 
They were really on target. Thank you so much.
  When she mentions banana republics, I actually had the experience in 
1973 of being an exchange student to the Soviet Union for a summer, and 
I got to see firsthand how the former Soviet Union operated before, of 
course, it went broke. It couldn't borrow enough money. It couldn't 
print enough money, so it went broke.

                              {time}  1315

  In looking at the President's comment in his speech on March 3 of 
this year, it was after the so-called health care summit, and I am 
quoting: ``My proposal would give uninsured individuals and small 
business owners the same kind of choice of private health insurance 
that Members of Congress get for themselves, because if it is good 
enough for Members of Congress, it is good enough for the people who 
pay their salaries.'' And there was applause on that.
  But apparently he hasn't read the bill that was passed in the House 
that he is trying to join and mesh up in his so-called proposal. This 
is in the first volume. Let me get over here to that, the benefit 
package levels. It says, ``The commissioner,'' this is another czar-
type person he will appoint, ``shall specify benefits to be made 
available under the exchange participating health benefit plans.''
  Then subparagraph B, ``Limitation on health benefit plans offered by 
offering entities.'' I haven't seen anything in the President's 
proposal that changes this. It says, ``In every area of the United 
States,'' and it will be cut up into different service areas, it says, 
``the entity only offers one basic plan.''
  The commissioner will designate what has to be in the health care 
insurance policy. Then their idea of that is you will have a slew of 
insurance companies that will offer the same policy, one basic plan. 
And then you could, if you wanted to, as an insurance company, offer an 
enhanced plan. But the big deal is the same exact plan will be offered 
by different insurance companies.
  I had an experience that this reminds me of so much when I was in a 
city stay in Moscow. We had read and heard that the largest department 
store in the world was in Moscow, and the Russian letters in the 
English equivalent are GUM, which stood for governmental universal 
store or department store.
  I needed some 110 film for my little camera. There were probably a 
dozen camera stores on three or four different levels, and there were 
several different sections. It was enormous. I went to every one of 
them, and every single one had the exact same products, the exact same 
prices. And that is what we are talking about in this plan. There is no 
choice. And it won't be long, there will only be one insurance company, 
and that will be the Federal Government.
  We have been joined by my good friend from California, former 
attorney general, former Member of Congress before coming back, who has 
always terrific insights. I yield to Mr. Lungren.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. I thank the gentleman for 
yielding. I actually came down because I was listening to the debate 
and I wondered whether there would be room for someone who spoke with 
the absence of an accent on this floor.
  Mr. GOHMERT. There is nobody talking with an accent that I have 
heard.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. I appreciate that. I thank the 
gentleman for yielding.
  I would just say that there is a fundamental proposition that is 
before the House that is often forgotten in the discussion of the 
procedure, as strange as the procedure might be for consideration of 
this bill, and that is, if this bill were to be brought to the floor, 
the Senate version, or the House version that already passed, and it 
were ultimately to be signed by the President, it is my understanding 
that for the first time in the history of the United States we will 
condition your legal status in the United States, that is, your ability 
to remain a legal citizen in good standing in the United States, on the 
mandated purchase of a product provided by a private entity, but as 
determined by parameters established by the Federal Government.
  Is that the gentleman's understanding as well?
  Mr. GOHMERT. That is indeed my understanding.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. It is sometimes easily called an 
individual mandate, but no one really talks too much about that, where 
we have the authority to mandate your continued legal presence in the 
United States. There has been a lot of debate, some even engendered by 
comments during the President's speech before a joint session, on 
whether or not people who are here illegally will be covered by all of 
the government health programs that will be established by law. In 
fact, that has been at least a matter of contention, whether or not the 
language contained in the versions would have any meaningful limitation 
on the provision of health care to people who are in this country 
illegally. The gentleman is aware of that debate.

[[Page H1388]]

  But here we have a situation where those who are born in the United 
States would be rendered an illegal status if, in fact, they did not 
purchase a product mandated by the Federal Government. Of course, in 
the House provision, that mandate is enforced by way of criminal 
sanction, first by way of a fine, and then failure to pay the fine 
could bring one a criminal sanction.
  In fact, in one way, they are attempting to get around this question 
of whether or not the Federal Government has the authority to mandate 
this. They have introduced it by way of a section of the Internal 
Revenue Code. We know that if one commits fraud in terms of not paying 
a tax, and they are trying to qualify the definition of the fine as a 
tax, that you can go to prison for committing fraud on the government 
in your failure to pay the tax. So it is not a reach, as some have 
suggested, that the penalty would be, in fact, a criminal penalty, 
which includes incarceration for failure to follow this mandate.
  Is that the gentleman's understanding as well? I know the gentleman 
is a former judge of the State of Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. A judge, and was briefly chief justice of an 
intermediary court filling an unexpired term. And that is my 
understanding. But I also know the gentleman from California was the 
highest ranking legal officer in the State of California and very 
articulately has set out his, as well as my, understanding.
  But I am curious as to the gentleman's opinion of whether or not this 
really meets constitutional muster. Nobody knows what the Supreme Court 
would do. Some project maybe 5 or 6 years before it got there, since we 
were unsuccessful in getting any fast track in the House version or the 
Senate version.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. In other words, an expedited 
consideration of the legal matters up to the Supreme Court, which we 
have done on other legislation in the past.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I am curious about the gentleman's opinion.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Here is my concern. There are 
those who say these bills are justified under the expansive reading of 
the commerce clause, and it is true in the past the Supreme Court has 
found a rather expansive view of the commerce clause. But if one 
suggests that one's own health and the decision on how one provides for 
one's own health is, in fact, a part of interstate commerce, which then 
grants the authority to the Federal Government to act, then the 
question I would ask is: What is left that is not covered by Federal 
authority? What part of your life is not covered by the Federal 
authority?
  In other words, if we can do this for the purpose, admittedly a good 
purpose, of ensuring that people have health care in this country, but 
if we can extend the reach of the Federal Government in this way, would 
it be out of the realm of possibility that one could argue it would be 
constitutional for the Federal Government to say, in light of the 
impact of obesity on certain health conditions, and in light of the 
fact that when one develops those health conditions one has a call on 
medical care in this country, and that impacts all of us, because that 
is the argument that is being made, would it not then be logical that 
we, on the Federal level, could mandate that you must belong to a 
federally approved fitness program? Is that so much of a reach?

  Wouldn't that be less of an interference in one's life than to 
mandate precisely how one has to prepare for one's own health and pay 
for one's own health, and then dictate exactly what coverage one might 
have, even though you might not want to have that particular coverage?
  So I think it goes beyond just the health care question. It goes to 
the question--and I have had this discussion in my town hall meetings 
as recently as this last Monday, where I had 250 people in Rancho 
Cordova. It goes to the question of what is the proper relationship 
between the individual and their Federal Government, and the greatness 
of our Founding Fathers was to say that would be a limited 
relationship; that is, the Federal Government's call on us, because we 
recognize that government did not extend rights to us. Those rights 
were God-given rights. And we the people--those are the words that are 
found in the Constitution. We the people formed a United States of 
America, but we decided what authority we would give that government, 
and they should not go beyond that.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Would the gentleman yield? I thank the gentleman 
from Texas.
  This argument about the commerce clause and the Federal Government 
being able to regulate interstate commerce, I take this to the other 
side of the scenario that Mr. Lungren has laid out and take it down to 
the assumption that is in this bill that everybody in America is 
engaged in interstate commerce is relevant to health insurance.
  I would submit that in Texas or California or Georgia or Iowa, there 
is likely to have been, I will say certain to have been, and likely to 
still be, individuals born in those particular States that never 
participated in a health care program of any kind, lived within the 
State, didn't cross the State line to get an aspirin, and died, and 
never engaged in health care that could be even described as interstate 
commerce in any way. Yet this commerce clause would be broadened to the 
point of being so inclusive that not only would that, by inference, 
give Congress the authority to require a person to join a health club, 
but also to show up and exercise, tell us what we can and can't eat, 
and the commerce clause then would have no limits whatsoever.
  I am going to say that the individual that is born in one of those 
States, or any State in America that doesn't participate in a health 
care program that links the interstate commerce, is completely exempt 
under the commerce clause, and therefore that is one of the bases for 
which I believe this is an unconstitutional bill.
  Mr. GOHMERT. We have a friend from Georgia, Mr. Westmoreland. Do you 
have anything to add on that point?
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, I don't have anything to add on the 
constitutionality of the legislation, because I have already expressed 
I think it is unconstitutional, but I did want to make one comment 
before I had to go to my friend from Texas.
  I believe you said the President had put out an 11-page summary and 
then had put out a 19-page summary of the 11-page summary, so I wanted 
to quote from the 19-page summary of the 11-page summary. And anybody 
within the sound of my voice, Madam Speaker, if they believe this, then 
they need some help and some counseling.
  This is the new affordable choices where the 19-page explanation of 
the 11-page explanation says, ``paper reduction and simplified forms 
will begin to reduce costs.''
  Anybody that has ever dealt with the government knows they do nothing 
to reduce paperwork.
  ``A new Web site to help consumers compare different insurance 
coverage options, along with State-by-State consumer health care 
assistance and assistance for any of their health insurance 
questions.''
  To my friend from Texas, you can't call a government agency now and 
even talk to a real human being, and now they are going to answer 
questions for 300 million people?
  Here is the final one. ``Clear and easy-to-understand insurance 
documents to help Americans make decisions when shopping for health 
insurance.''
  The government has never had any documents that were clear and simple 
to understand. The majority of Americans today cannot even fill out 
their own 1040 personal income tax.
  This is a sham, and I hope that the American people will wake up and 
understand that what is fixing to happen to them is not only 
unconstitutional, but will be something that will not be easily undone.

                              {time}  1330

  Mr. GOHMERT. I want to yield more time to my friend from California.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. I think the gentleman from 
Georgia made a point about a summary of a summary being larger than the 
original summary, and we're talking about a 2,000-page bill at least in 
both the House and the Senate, which will then spawn thousands, tens of 
thousands, of pages of regulations which will then be interpreted by 
thousands of people employed by the Federal Government, which will then 
finally get to

[[Page H1389]]

you and your doctor. And I think that is one of the problems that we 
have.
  I would just cite the Speaker of the House who recently said in a 
press conference: We must pass the bill so we can find out what is in 
it. Now, I don't make that stuff up. It almost sounds like a comedy 
routine from ``Saturday Night Live.'' But that was essentially the 
statement: We must pass the bill to find out what was in it.
  I used to think that good legislation was you knew what was in it 
before you voted on it, and if you had problems with it, you didn't 
vote on it until you fixed the problems, and you didn't say, well, we 
know we have problems in the bill, but we are going to reconcile those 
problems later on. And particularly when ``reconcile'' is a special 
term of art in the United States Senate, and it allows you to fix some 
things but not others, and those that you cannot fix in the arcane 
notion of the reconciliation process in the Senate, you will then have 
to take to the floor of the House, and that will be then subject to the 
possibility of filibuster, which means essentially you will have to get 
60 votes to pass it.
  So I would ask the gentleman on an issue that is of immense 
importance to the American people, as they have expressed at town hall 
meetings, in polling and everything else, there has been a 30-plus-year 
consensus in this Congress and in this country about the limits of 
Federal funding for the procedure called abortion. That law, that line 
of laws, has been encapsulated in what was known as the Stupak 
amendment in the House of Representatives.
  We know that the Stupak amendment is not in the Senate bill. There is 
another provision which Mr. Stupak and others have said is insufficient 
to maintain the current law, therefore meaning that it will establish a 
new law allowing Federal funding of abortions for procedures that have 
not been allowed that is paid for by the taxpayers for over 30 years.
  Is the gentleman aware of whether the history of the voting pattern 
in the Senate would lead one to conclude that there are 60 votes for 
the Stupak amendment in the Senate?
  Mr. GOHMERT. I thank the gentleman for the question. It's a great 
question because we know when Scott Brown was elected, he said, I'm the 
41st vote against this. There are not 60 votes to do what they are 
saying, which as you're pointing out, the Stupak amendment--if our pro-
life friends across the aisle were to get talked into voting for the 
Senate bill as is, on the promise that, oh, gee, we will bring that 
amendment up, and we are sure it will pass--I just don't see how 
anybody can make that claim because it has already been made clear at 
the other end of the Hall that they are not getting 60 votes to do it.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. If you have an animal control 
officer come to your house and say that your dog or cat hasn't been 
neutered or spayed, and you say, well, wait a second, I'm going to let 
my dog or cat out for the next month, but I will get him fixed, do you 
think the animal control officer would trust you?
  Mr. GOHMERT. No, they don't. And there is no reason to believe that 
anything could happen other than what we've already seen. They're not 
going to have 60 votes to do it, which is why they are trying to do it 
on a reconciliation gimmick.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Is the gentleman aware of 
whether or not the language that articulates the Stupak amendment or 
the language that would articulate something close to the Stupak 
amendment would be allowed under the tight controls of reconciliation?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, it is hard to know; but I believe if the Speaker 
tells Bart Stupak, we are going to get the amendment, your Stupak 
amendment passed in the House through reconciliation, we'll get it 
done, and we should get it done in the Senate, I'm sure if she tells 
him that she will get it done in the House, then she probably will. But 
there is no way on this Earth that she can guarantee what will happen 
in the Senate because it's not going to happen.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. In other words, if one were to 
preserve the Stupak amendment, it would be to take the House bill over 
to the Senate, have the Senate accept the House bill, and then perhaps 
try and reconcile it later on if you were going to preserve the intent 
of the Stupak amendment and thereby preserve 30 years or 35 years of 
the consensus of this Congress and the consensus of the courts and the 
consensus of the American people.
  Mr. GOHMERT. The gentleman is exactly right.
  And I want to emphasize how important the Stupak language was. We did 
hear our friends across the aisle say, look, there is no money that 
will be allowed under the House bill for abortion. And I know they 
believe that when they said it or they really wouldn't have said it. 
The trouble is one of the problems in this body is we have ended up 
having such massive bills come so fast that people do not read the 
bills, because on page 110 of the very bill that was under debate that 
the Stupak amendment was to address, this is page 110, subsection 4b, 
the subsection titled, ``Abortions For Which Public Funding is 
Allowed,'' then it goes on to say the services described in this 
subparagraph are abortions for which expenditure of Federal funds 
appropriated for the Department of Health and Human Services is 
permitted, and then it goes and sets out conditions.
  The point is they hadn't read that bill or they would never have 
gotten up and said, there is no money in this bill for Federal tax 
dollars for abortion. It was there, and it is there if you don't have 
the Stupak amendment.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. If I might ask the gentleman to 
yield again, the point we're making is this has nothing to do with Roe 
v. Wade. This has nothing to do with a woman's right to choose. It has 
to do with the question of whether Federal taxpayers are required to 
pay for the procedures, and there has been a consensus in this country 
with a limitation on federally funded abortions except for the life of 
the mother, rape and incest. There have been those kinds of limitations 
on that. And this changes that, changes the consensus that has existed 
for 30-some years.
  Again, if you wanted to protect that consensus that was repeated on 
this floor in the nature of the Stupak amendment, you would take that 
up in the Senate and you would pass that. Now, why are they not doing 
it? We hear they are not doing it because they couldn't pass it in the 
Senate.
  Mr. GOHMERT. That is exactly right.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. So we are supposed to believe 
that if they can't pass the Stupak amendment in the Senate, we should 
pass the Senate bill here because then there is a promise that they 
will pass a virtual Stupak amendment with a requirement of 60 votes.

  Mr. GOHMERT. That they can't get on any other bill itself. It makes 
no sense.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. So people should understand the 
conundrum we are in, not of our own making, but precisely because of 
the bill that was brought to this floor and the bill that was brought 
to the Senate. And those are basically the two options that are out 
there. And the question is, How can you get a majority vote in either 
body while finessing that issue?
  I would suggest you cannot do that if, in fact, that issue is as 
important to people as they stated it was during the consideration of 
the bill both in the House and the Senate.
  And of course that goes far beyond the question we had before, which 
is, What about the constitutionality of the underlying principle that 
we will now mandate that you must purchase a product, in this case, a 
health care policy, or if you do not, you will find yourself in illegal 
status in the United States? We are not talking about you having 
entered the United States illegally. We are not talking about you 
having overstayed your visa. We are not talking about you committing 
some fraud on the United States to come here.
  We are talking about you already being an American citizen, someone 
with legal status in the United States, and now you are going to be 
rendered illegal because you will not purchase a product imposed by the 
Federal Government for the first time in our Nation's history.
  Mr. GOHMERT. That is such a great point. I was talking with some of 
my

[[Page H1390]]

constituents this past weekend who are scared to death this thing is 
going to pass. Some of them work for lower wages, and they are on their 
spouse's insurance with their employer.
  There are companies that exist only because they are able to hire 
people who don't need health insurance, and so they are able to hire 
them without providing health insurance. Under the bill, they are going 
to get hit with an 8 percent tax. And I'm hearing employers say, we 
can't pay the 8 percent tax. They've either got to take an 8 percent 
cut or lay people off.
  There's been one estimate confirmed by a number of people that if 
this bill passes, if this bill becomes law at the worst time 
conceivable, more Americans out of work than ever in history, it will 
put 5\1/2\ million people out of work. This is incredible. I have heard 
friends across the aisle talk about how important it is to help the 
working poor, the lower middle class, that is who we really want to 
help. Under the bill, if they can't afford the mandated type of 
insurance, then they are going to get hit with an additional tax, the 
very people that can't afford it. In addition to that, they are going 
to be hit with other taxes to help pay for this bill. It is not a 
friend of the working poor in America.
  I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  I point out an additional 5\1/2\ million people resulting unemployed 
over this bill, but it provides access, according to calculations from 
the Congressional Budget Office, to health insurance policies for as 
many as 6.1 illegals. So there's your trade-off: 5\1/2\ million 
unemployed Americans, 6.1 million illegals having access to their own 
health insurance policy.
  Additionally, picking up on the point of the gentleman from 
California, not only does it render an illegal status to someone who 
wouldn't, could not perhaps or would not, purchase health insurance 
policies that are mandated by the Federal Government. It levies a fine 
against them, as we have said, and it takes us into the realm of what I 
think is a definition of debtor's prison. You levy a fine against 
someone, and if you don't pay the fine, and when it gets to $250,000, 
then the original bill adds a prison penalty in there.
  And it would be for the first time in the history of this country 
that the Federal Government had either produced a product or certified 
a product to be produced by the private sector, required every American 
citizen to purchase that product; and if they didn't do so, levy a fine 
against them and then have them facing a jail term. That's the kind of 
debtor's prison that our Founding Fathers rejected. I use stark terms, 
but that's where it takes us up in our logic.
  I will say, Mr. Speaker, that we are at this point now where the 
nuances of these bills, we know what's in them, that anything that is 
likely to pass this House and go to the President's desk, he will be 
sitting there with pen in hand to sign. He is salivating to sign 
something that is called national health care that he can call 
ObamaCare and does call ObamaCare. He is for single-payer. He is for 
socialized medicine. He has said that he is for single-payer. So has 
the Speaker, and so has Harry Reid. So this is about whether we keep 
our freedom, whether we keep the Federal Government from nationalizing 
and taking over our bodies like they did at General Motors and 
Chrysler.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. I think a very, very basic 
question is this. There is a notion of healthy skepticism within our 
government and our view of government. We grow up with that. That is 
part and parcel of the Constitution. But if you move from healthy 
skepticism to destructive, not skepticism, but cynicism, then you have 
really ruptured the relationship between the American people and their 
government.
  And if we were to ignore the voices of the American people as they 
have been articulated in town hall after town hall after town hall 
throughout this country, not just in August--I had my last town hall 
meeting this Monday; 250 people in one of my communities, overwhelming 
opposition not to some changes in health care--they are not arguing for 
the status quo--they are arguing against these two visions of health 
care reform. And they ask me, they beg me to bring a message here from 
them directly: scrap what you're doing, start over, give us the right 
medicine, not the wrong medicine.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I thank the gentlemen. My time has expired.

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