[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 37 (Monday, March 15, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H1422-H1423]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       MORE GOVERNMENT WON'T WORK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Himes). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, today I had the great pleasure of holding a 
town hall meeting in one of the towns in the Fifth District in North 
Carolina, Statesville, North Carolina.
  I didn't count the number of folks there, and I haven't had a chance 
to ask my staff exactly how many were there, but I think probably about 
175 people were there.
  We let these folks put in questions or their names into a box, and we 
pull their names out randomly and let them speak about the health care 
bill. This was a health care town hall. And to a person who spoke, and 
there were probably about a dozen who had a chance to speak for about 2 
minutes, and I answered their questions, they all are very upset about 
what is going on here in Congress. They are upset about many, many 
things, but they are particularly upset about this government takeover 
of our health care system, and they just don't understand why the folks 
in the majority continue to push this issue knowing that the majority 
of the people in this country are very much opposed to it.
  They very much are concerned about what they have heard and read 
about the way this is going to be pushed through this week. They hate 
it when bills are put together that aren't germane to each other or 
that aren't related. They heard about the education bill being put on 
the health care bill, and they are very concerned about that. They just 
don't like that.
  They said over and over again they know that the government does not 
do things more efficiently and effectively than the private sector. One 
businessman talked about how he has been struggling for the last year. 
He has used up all his savings, all his equity in the last year to keep 
his business going because the economy is so bad, and he wants to know, 
where is that stimulus that he thought that we were getting?
  So it was a great town hall, because they talked about what was on 
their mind and got a chance to ask me questions.
  When I told them about the plan to do this reconciliation bill, where 
the folks on the majority side are going to go from passing bills 
without reading them to passing bills without voting for them, they 
understood what a threat that is to our entire way of life. They 
understand that that is a threat to the rule of law, and they are very 
much concerned about that.
  I told them of the President meeting with us at our retreat and 
saying, You know, I was wrong when I said over and over again that you 
can keep your health insurance if you like it. But, he said, I made a 
mistake by saying that, because some cats and dogs got into that Senate 
bill that we weren't planning to get into that bill. But we are going 
to take care of that.
  But guess what. That is not going to get taken care of. And the 
President, I understand, made that comment again this week, saying out 
on the stump, If you like your plan you can keep it--when he told the 
Republicans at our retreat that is absolutely not true.
  We have a major problem, Mr. Speaker, in this country. We have people 
trying to establish a takeover of our lives from birth to death. They 
want the government to run our lives and to make all of our decisions 
for us.
  I have an article, Mr. Speaker, from The Washington Times, Wednesday, 
January 20, 2010, that says ``More Government Won't Work.''

               [From the Washington Times, Jan. 20, 2010]

                 Editorial: More Government Won't Work

       Government is bigger than ever and controls more aspects of 
     American life than at any time in U.S. history. Last year, 
     the federal government ate $3.52 trillion out of a $13.2 
     trillion economy. With the current trajectory of big 
     government under the Democrats, the federal bureaucracy will 
     devour as much as 50 percent of this nation's economic 
     activity by midcentury. To illustrate how wasteful that is, 
     take a look at the empty space above this editorial. That's 
     what government creates--nothing.
       A basic problem with a future dominated by ever-expanding 
     government is that bureaucracies are hobbled by waste, fraud 
     and abuse. Government simply does not work well. Freedom 
     works, but the more government that exists, the less freedom 
     we have. Under President Obama and the Democratic Congress, 
     the United States is heading in the wrong direction. The big 
     spenders are on a joy ride, and we're stuck in the back seat 
     on the road to dramatically less freedom.
       The main battleground of the war between freedom and 
     government is the marketplace. Markets work for a simple 
     reason: They give people choice. Consumers know what they 
     want, and businesses try to figure out how to produce and 
     deliver the goods and services the best way, considering 
     price, quality and service. Only the best firms survive.
       Today is the first anniversary of the start of Mr. Obama's 
     term in the Oval Office. For the past year, Americans have 
     been told that government is smarter than private industry 
     and that more government intervention is needed to fix 
     problems in the market. Central to this agenda is the canard 
     that private for-profit companies have to charge higher 
     prices than nonprofits to recoup enough to earn profits, thus 
     making for-profit firms less competitive. This explanation is 
     wrongheaded because it ignores that profits give an incentive 
     to lower costs and improve quality. The greater the incentive 
     to reduce costs, the less waste there is. That is why, 
     despite all the tax advantages given to nonprofits, the 
     economy is dominated by for-profit firms.
       Politicians and bureaucrats in Washington don't know what 
     individual consumers want and certainly shouldn't be the ones 
     to decide what individuals need. If the government decides 
     everything, elections will determine what businesses can 
     produce and what options consumers will have. In a healthy 
     market system, consumers wouldn't have to persuade their 
     neighbors to use the ballot box to determine what type of 
     toys, computers, books, houses or cars they can buy. Those 
     products will be produced as long as the value consumers get 
     is greater than the costs of producing them. The government 
     should stay out of the way of these inherently private 
     everyday decisions.
       A common justification for government intervention is based 
     on the notion that individuals and firms don't bear the full 
     costs and benefits of their actions and that taxes and 
     regulations are needed to correct the imbalance. The debate 
     over global warming is an example of this idea. Climate-
     change activists argue that markets don't take into account 
     damage purportedly caused by carbon dioxide. Yet even if they 
     were right that carbon emissions cause global warming (which 
     is unlikely), there are many stumbling blocks that prevent 
     effective government intervention. First, there is the pure

[[Page H1423]]

     numbers-crunching aspect: Government must figure out how much 
     to tax carbon emissions to alter behavior, which is a 
     difficult and error-plagued challenge. Other than taking 
     wealth out of private hands, all the negative impact of 
     higher taxation is rarely clear, and it's a fair question 
     whether the outcome is likely to cause more damage than the 
     original problem.
       Second, politics is a dirty business. Special interests 
     twist programs into dole-outs for favored groups. Political 
     machinations are behind every dollar of federal spending, and 
     the interest of the taxpayer usually doesn't have a seat at 
     the table when the spoils are divvied up. Consider all the 
     special favors to unions and particular constituencies in 
     everything from last year's $787 billion stimulus package to 
     the Democrats' government health care bills. So much of 
     federal spending amounts to nothing more than a big slush 
     fund.
       Regulations are the second edge on the knife government 
     uses to cut the heart out of private initiative. Bureaucratic 
     red tape ties up markets with little consideration about its 
     impact. Take the health care debate. Amidst government's 
     attempt to take over health care, politicians are telling 
     American families that the suits in Washington know how to 
     run health care at a lower cost and with better quality than 
     what is currently being produced. If that were true, 
     government wouldn't need to pass a regulation. If Democratic 
     ideas had any merit, companies would pay Mr. Obama, House 
     Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid 
     for advice to help provide customers a better product at a 
     lower price. Democrats wouldn't have to scheme behind closed 
     doors to figure out how to ram through legislation to force 
     Americans to accept a system they don't want.
       This gets to the heart of the matter. Markets are 
     fundamentally different from government programs in that 
     market transactions are voluntary. Government's main tool is 
     coercion. Consumers don't buy a product unless they think it 
     makes them better off. Firms don't sell a product unless they 
     think they can make profits. Telling people what to do 
     doesn't make them want to do it or like doing it. There's no 
     question which way works best. Countries with the most 
     market-based economies have enjoyed the largest growth in 
     wealth. The innovations generated in these places benefit the 
     entire world. Messing with the market-based model slows the 
     pace of progress for our children and grandchildren.
       The massive ``tea party'' protests all across the land 
     reveal how outraged Americans are by the direction of 
     government. President Obama and Democrats in Congress are 
     making government bigger than ever because they think 
     bureaucracies make smarter decisions than individuals and the 
     government is better than private business. But taxpayers 
     aren't hitting the streets for so-called smarter or better 
     government--they want less government. A lot less. A new 
     Congress will be seated a year from now. Hopefully that will 
     bring real change to the nation's capital.

  The Senate bill that the House is about to pass this week under a 
very, very, shaky rule is going to let people vote on the rule and then 
say the bill is passed. It has major problems with it. It is not 
addressing the cost of insurance and health care. It has a tax on 
hiring low-income workers. It funds abortions. It has the Cornhusker 
kickback, the Louisiana purchase, the Gatorade. It has a new Federal 
mandate to buy insurance. There is a penalty enforced by the IRS that 
is going to require an additional 40,000 IRS agents if we don't buy 
insurance. And there will be a job-killing 8 percent tax on employers 
who don't offer government-approved health insurance. This is wrong, 
Mr. Speaker.
  The people in my district want jobs. They want to be able to work. 
And they want to see our country continue to operate the way it always 
has, under the rule of law, not with the majority abusing the rules. 
They want us to do the right kind of thing here.
  What do Republicans support? We want legislation that will reduce the 
cost of health care. We want to force insurance companies to compete 
with each other across State lines and let people buy insurance across 
State lines if they choose. We want to cover preexisting conditions. We 
want medical liability reform, which would save tens of billions of 
dollars each year. And we want to expand health savings accounts, which 
put Americans in charge of their health care and their health dollars. 
We can do that, Mr. Speaker.
  We passed a bill the other day in a bipartisan fashion, a 1\1/2\ page 
bill taking away the antitrust exemption for insurance companies. Folks 
on the other side said we couldn't do it, but we can.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back.

                          ____________________