[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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