[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 42 (Saturday, March 20, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H1794-H1795]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bonner) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BONNER. Mr. Speaker, here we are on the verge of one of the most 
significant votes that Congress has ever taken. The only time that I 
can think of which perhaps rivals the importance of this vote has been 
when we have had to decide to send our Nation's finest young men and 
women off into the perils of war. And yet it is mind-boggling, 
literally unconscionable to think that we are about to slap the 
American people in the face and have the audacity to say, We know 
better than you.
  In town meetings, at TEA Party rallies, from emails, faxes, letters, 
and literally millions of phone calls that have jammed the Capitol 
switchboard, the voices of America have spoken out, begging, pleading 
with their elected Representatives, Please, slow down, start over, and 
do this the right way.
  Sadly, instead of listening to the American people, the Democrat 
majority, at least most of them, have chosen to tune the people out, to 
ignore the angst, the fear, the frustration, and the anger and hope 
that somehow this will all go away. Let me assure you it will not.
  This whole process has been an insult. It is an outrage. It is an 
all-out

[[Page H1795]]

attack on freedom and liberty, on fiscal responsibility, and on the 
sanctity of human life.
  On Thursday afternoon, right after work a man from my district left 
his wife and children, drove all night some 998 miles all the way from 
Fairhope, Alabama, to Washington, D.C., just to go door-to-door to 
those Members who were still on the fence to encourage them to do the 
right thing. When I thanked him for making the trip, he said, 
Congressman Bonner, I just couldn't sit back and look my children in 
the face and tell them one day years from now I didn't do everything I 
could do to keep this from happening.
  Earlier this morning, another man from Mobile walked into my office. 
He had stopped in Knoxville, Tennessee, to pick up his mom, and 
together they came for the same reason: to thank those of us who are 
saying ``no,'' and to reach out to every last undecided Member of 
Congress and beg them to listen to the American people.
  All day long we have watched people come into our offices from towns 
in Monroe and Escambia Counties in my district to folks from New 
Jersey, all the way to the coast of California. All of them, literally 
thousands, who descended on the Hill today came for the same reason, to 
leave no stone unturned before the vote tomorrow afternoon.
  Common sense tells us that with a bill this big and with so many 
last-minute deals that have been made, there are going to be a lot of 
angry people, a lot more throughout the entire country when all the 
details of this legislation are known in the coming weeks and months.
  Isn't it ironic that just the other day the Speaker of the House told 
a group, ``We have to pass this bill to find out what is in it.'' Well, 
earlier today we found out how true that promise was with the 
disclosure that Democrats have now added a new 3.8 percent Medicare 
surtax that will hit average middle-class taxpayers who have invested 
in real estate. Just what an already depressed real estate market 
needs.
  Or the fact that just a couple hours ago on this very floor the House 
attempted to fix another little problem that we discovered in this 
bill, a provision that, if left unchanged, could have taken more than 
9.5 million veterans out of TRICARE. Once again, just another example 
of the dangers of passing legislation on the fly.
  While the outrage of the American people did help succeed in taking 
``deem and pass'' off the table earlier this afternoon, we are still 
left with reconciliation, a process that leaves many Americans dizzy in 
terms of the ever-changing rules that are being rewritten to try to 
pass this bill.
  The American people remember reconciliation. Back in October of 2007, 
then-Senator Obama said of reconciliation, and I quote, ``We are not 
going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-1 strategy.'' And a 
couple years earlier then-Senator Biden said, and I quote, ``I say to 
my friends on the Republican side, you may own the field right now, but 
you won't own it forever. And I pray to God, when Democrats take back 
control, we won't make the same kind of power grab that you were 
doing.''
  Back home this might sound like doublespeak. Sadly, in Washington it 
is just another day at the office.
  Mr. Speaker, while many people understandably are focusing on the 
vote that will take place tomorrow on the third Sunday in March, trust 
me, the vote that will be taken on the first Tuesday in November is the 
vote that will allow the American people to have the last word.

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