Congressional Record, Volume 156 Issue 67 (Thursday, May 6, 2010)

[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 67 (Thursday, May 6, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H3263-H3270]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

TAX CUTS

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Adler of New Jersey). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa
(Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be
recognized here on the floor of the House, and I appreciate my
colleague from Texas

[[Page H3264]]

holding the ground until I come here to hold a little ground with him.
I always stand on the same ground as my friend, Judge Gohmert. In fact,
all of the way from wading to shore on a free Cuba to climbing a
mountain in the Himalayas, and all that free country in between and a
bunch of it that is not.
I came tonight to talk about a couple of subject matters. One of them
that is on the front of my mind is the tax situation here in the United
States. We are watching and we watched as the two Bush tax cuts were
passed over the last 8 or so years, the 2001 and then the 2003 tax
cuts. May 28, 2003, is when the effective ones were passed, the
reduction in capital gains, dividend taxes and a series of things. And
of course the language that is there on the estate taxes which are
suspended for this year, and they go on in full force at the end of
this year, and nothing has yet been done. Something does need to be
done.
I am for a complete abolishment of the estate tax, Mr. Speaker, and I
am for the reinstatement or the extension of the Bush tax cuts, if we
can get them. But we have watched as the former chairman of the Ways
and Means Committee, as he was coming in to be the chair, the gentleman
from New York (Mr. Rangel), traveled around through all of the talk
radio circuits and the talk television circuits, and they asked him
over and over again, Which of the Bush tax cuts would you like to
preserve and which ones would you like to see go away or end?
There never was a definitive answer, Mr. Speaker, but the process of
elimination brought people to a conclusion over the period of November
2006 until about February of 2007 that there really wasn't a Bush tax
cut that soon-to-be Chairman Rangel would support. So we are watching
now the eventual sunset of those very effective economic stimulating
tax cuts that went in on May 28, 2003.
Capital understands when it gets more expensive and less of it gets
invested. When less capital is invested, then there are fewer
technological advances and the productivity of the American worker goes
down and it makes us less competitive as a Nation. It is awfully hard
to measure that, but what we can see from that period of time of
November 2006 until mid- to late February of 2007, we saw industrial
investment go down and the decline in industrial investment was
precipitated, the economic decline that came about, about the time that
Speaker Pelosi first took the gavel. We can see the data that indicated
that there was less capital investment because in part--not entirely
but in part--Chairman Rangel signaled to the investment world that
taxes were eventually going to go up, and the cost of capital would go
up. There would be less capital invested, and that means with less
capital invested, it reduces the productivity of the American worker.
Reduction in American worker productivity means we are less competitive
as a Nation. That means other cultures, other economies, other
civilizations would be ascending and the United States would either
slow or diminish its ascent economically or decline. And then we saw
the economic crisis.
The calamity that goes back into the seventies with the passage of
the Community Reinvestment Act and then on the heels of that came, with
the Community Reinvestment Act, the effort to encourage bankers to make
bad loans in bad neighborhoods and deal them off on the secondary
mortgage market to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who had underwriting
requirements that were a little too stringent for some groups in the
country, particularly a group know as ACORN. And so ACORN came to this
Congress and lobbied for a couple of things in the early and mid-
nineties under the presidency of Bill Clinton. They weren't having a
lot of success under Ronald Reagan, but under Bill Clinton they were
successful enough that they were able to get the Community Reinvestment
Act rewritten that put even more requirements for the lenders to make
more bad loans in more bad neighborhoods and prop up real estate whose
asset value couldn't support the mortgage on it.
While that was going on, ACORN was also lobbying here in this
Congress, by their view successfully, to lower the underwriting
standards for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And they succeeded in doing
that. Some in this Congress wanted to tighten the standards and wanted
to move them toward complete privatization, which they used to be. And
some in this Congress wanted to move Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to
complete nationalization. There was a debate here on this floor. There
were several debates on this floor. The one that comes to mind for me
was October 26, 2005, when at the time Congressman Jim Leach from Iowa
had an amendment on the floor to raise the underwriting requirements
for Fannie and Freddie, raise the capitalization requirements for
Fannie and Freddie so that they would become a more viable economic
institution and to move them away from what appeared to be coming,
which would be the Federal Government, the taxpayers, eventually having
to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Well, that amendment that was offered by Mr. Leach and supported by
myself and also Mr. Latham of Iowa and others, did fail here on the
floor in the face of a very aggressive rebuttal that came to the floor
in the form of the current Financial Services Committee chairman Mr.
Frank, who said during that debate, if you are going to invest in
Fannie and Freddie, don't count on me bailing them out, I will never
vote to do a government bailout of Fannie and Freddie.
Well, ``never'' is a word that shouldn't be used by people in this
business, Mr. Speaker. And I don't bring it up to be particularly
critical of the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Mr.
Frank. I point it out because ``never'' didn't last very long. It
lasted maybe 4 years, moving on 5.
But when President Obama signed the executive order that finally
swallowed up all of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and we had to go in and
bail them out at the end of the Bush administration, that is true. The
Executive order before Christmas swallowed up the rest of this, and the
Federal Government, the taxpayers of America, took on $5.5 trillion in
contingent liabilities with Fannie and Freddie. Now they are
completely, no longer a quasi GSE, but they are completely owned
entities within the Federal Government and the taxpayers are on the
hook for all of it.
Now, let's presume that Fannie and Freddie could be operated at a
profit. Gee, that would be nice. But we know how government works when
it comes to profit. They don't have the right incentives, and
eventually it can't work.
So the Community Reinvestment Act was passed in the seventies,
refreshed in the nineties under Clinton which put more pressure on
lenders to make bad loans in bad neighborhoods. ACORN lobbied for that.
ACORN also lobbied to lower the underwriting standards so that Fannie
and Freddie could swallow up the secondary market. Fannie and Freddie
did that, and today the Federal Government owns more than 50 percent of
all of the home mortgages in the United States and the taxpayers are on
the hook for the default of those mortgages in the United States.
We also had mark-to-market accounting which was put in place during
that same period of time. Mark-to-market accounting is a system whereby
on your balance sheet you have to write down the marks and what the
actual bids are for those commodities.
So, Mr. Speaker, I would put it this way. I happen to know a bank in
the area, in the Midwest, that had $60 million worth of commercial
paper. That commercial paper had always performed, it had always paid
and drew a reasonable interest rate. It would be the equivalent of a
very effective, well-established company that had an operating loan
that they funded through this commercial paper. It had a market and a
value to it, and the value was $60 million. And that was on the balance
sheet of the lending institution.
But when we saw the downward spiral and the threat that could have
been a crisis in credit in America, there was not--temporarily there
was not a market for that commercial paper. So that lending
institution, even though commercial paper had always performed, even
though the company was viable and made their loans, the value of that
had to be marked from $60 million down to zero, let me just say,
figuratively speaking, overnight; $60 million down to zero. Now there
is no asset value. We had lenders that were being pressured by FDIC
regulators coming in to turn up the capitalization requirements to the
banks and require

[[Page H3265]]

them to, let's say, solidify their balance sheets and to make up for
the missing $60 million. It was a temporary situation.
And to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that people can understand what mark-
to-market accounting is, I would use this example. I think whether you
are a city person or whether you are a country person, whether you are
a farm or some other type of economics, you can understand this. I come
from corn country, and so let's just say that under mark-to-market
accounting rules it would work like this: If a farmer had 100,000
bushels of corn in his bin, stored on his farm, dried, 15 percent
moisture in good condition, he would look at that, and let's just say
the market price for that corn was $4 a bushel. So in those bins on
storage in the possession of this farming operation, there would be
then $400,000 worth of corn. That is 100,000 bushels at $4 a bushel.
That could go on the farmer's balance sheet at that amount, and you may
want to mark it down less shrink and less the basis to the marketplace.
But for simplicity sake, $400,000 worth of corn on the balance sheet,
stored in the bin in good condition.

{time} 1830

Now, that's all real fine, but along comes a flood, maybe a flood
like we've seen in the tragedy in Tennessee, who the folks down there
our hearts go out for, Mr. Speaker. But along comes a flood, and it
washes out all the bridges all the way around the farm, and it washes
out the bridges in the area. So the grain elevator where the bids were
coming from at $4 a bushel is shut down. They're operating. They're in
good shape. They've got their generators running, and their grain
storage is okay. But no trucks can go to haul any grain. Nothing can
move. And so magically, there would be no bids for the corn a day after
the flood washed out the bridges, and there would be no bids for corn
until the bridges were put back in place. That could take months, or it
could take days, depending. Well, let's just say a couple of months
before the bridges can be put back together. In that period of time,
that corn would sit there. It would be in good condition. It would be
worth $400,000 someplace else, but not $400,000 sitting there, because
he didn't have a bid where he delivered the corn. He can't get it out.
So this farmer that had $400,000 worth of asset value would have to
write that down to zero on his balance sheet.
Meanwhile, the bridge is still open to go to the bank. You need to
borrow money to operate from so you can pay your bills. But he couldn't
borrow the money because his asset value had gone from $400,000 down to
zero, even though that corn would have some value when the bridges were
put back together. That's what mark-to-market accounting does. It
accelerates the downward spiral with market trends going down and
distorts them and takes us down into the economic decline, or it
accelerates the upward spiral and distorts the markets that way,
because when you get temporary upticks in the market, then the assets
go up almost immediately in direct proportion, which increases the
borrowing capacity of that balance sheet.
We need a better system. The mark-to-market accounting system was
abolished in 1938. It came back on us again in the Clinton era, and
when it did so, it helped set the foundation for the economic crisis
that we have been in. And now here we are with the President having
spent a couple of trillion dollars or more, taking over the economy of
the private sector in the United States--not all of it, but certainly a
majority of the private sector activities have been taken over. It
started the end of the Bush administration, accelerated in the Obama
administration, and we have three large investment banks--AIG, Fannie
Mae, Freddie Mac. You've got all of the student loans swallowed up in
America, and General Motors and Chrysler were taken over by the Federal
Government, with 61 percent of the shares of General Motors owned by
the Federal Government. That's the taxpayers' investment.
And when General Motors is running an ad that says they've paid off
their loans, yeah, they did that, all right. They paid off a loan. I
don't remember the exact amount of that, but it was in the low few
billions of dollars. Meanwhile, the taxpayers are still holding 61
percent of the shares. The Canadian Government's holding 12.5 percent
of the shares. The unions were gifted 17.5 percent of the shares of
General Motors. And we're watching ads that say that General Motors
paid us back?
Well, then, why didn't Tim Geithner sell those shares of General
Motors into the open market? Why doesn't he divest the Federal
Government from their ownership in General Motors? If this
administration doesn't believe that they should be in the private
sector, why are they running banks, insurance companies? Why have they
taken completely over Fannie and Freddie? Why are they running two car
companies? Why did they take over the student loans? Why did they
nationalize our bodies?
Mr. Speaker, that's not a misstatement, and it's one perhaps for
those who have not heard of this before, they should pay attention a
little to the description. But the most sovereign thing we have, the
most valuable thing we have is our health, our physical body. And part
of our freedom is to be able to buy a health insurance policy that
suits our needs and make the demands of the insurance companies that
there's a market for what we want to buy so they produce a policy that
meets our demands.
Up until a month ago, there were 1,300 health insurance companies in
the United States and approximately 100,000 policy varieties that could
be chosen from. So if you're a consumer out there on the market, you
could look around at those 1,300 companies and decide which one you'd
like to do business with, weigh the merits of their policy, settle on
the company, look through the variety of policies, and between all
those policies, 100,000 policy varieties, choose your policy. That's a
lot of choices. You don't have that many choices in the grocery store
on how many different kinds of food you want to buy, but it sure looks
like choices when you walk into the grocery store. Health insurance in
America has a much, much larger selection--or it was--than you find
seeing single individual items in the grocery store, because the
markets had demanded those kinds of varieties and the companies were
seeking to meet the demand.
But now under ObamaCare--in effect, by the year 2014, every health
insurance policy in America will be effectively canceled by this
government. They will all have to be refreshed and requalified, and
there isn't a single policy that exists today that the President of the
United States can point to and say, Joe, Sally, your policy, the one I
told you, Don't worry, you get to keep it, you can't say that you get
to keep it.
Have you noticed that? Have you noticed, Mr. Speaker, there hasn't
been a single policy that's been pointed to by this administration, let
alone the President of the United States, that they can say to any
consumer out there, This is your policy, and you can keep it. And even
if they could find a policy that they could tell you you could keep,
they can't tell you that it's going to not cost you any more money.
They can't tell you that the premium's not going to go up. And when I
make that statement, they will throw up their hands and say, Well,
obviously we can't because health care costs are going up. It's a
natural thing for them to go up double digits while inflation is going
up single digits. But the followup to that is, Yes, you can throw up
your hands and say that.
But the other thing that cannot be stated by the President's
spokesman or by the President or by this administration or by Speaker
Pelosi or Harry Reid or anyone else, no one can make the statement that
health insurance policies are not going to be increased because of
ObamaCare's passage. Yes, they will be. They certainly will be.
We see a community rating of seven to one today. That means that the
cheapest policy is going to be one-seventh the price of the most
expensive policy. This pushes it into three to one. That means that
that young person that's paying for a health insurance policy that is--
let's say, if it's $100 a month, the most expensive policy out there
would be $700 a month by that comparison. But with this new legislation
that's there, for the $100 a month, the highest then can only be $300 a
month. So we know what happens. The person down on the lower side with
the

[[Page H3266]]

cheaper premiums that is a lower risk will pay a lot more for their
premium because the upside of this thing has got to be ratcheted down
some.

We saw some numbers, and I can only go to a generalization now
because it's far enough back in my memory. These are numbers that had
to do with Indiana. We saw a 23-year-old healthy young man's insurance
go up almost triple, and we saw the family of four at age 40, two kids
and a mom and a dad, we saw their insurance go up a significant amount,
and the only people that had a lower premium would be the couple in
their early sixties with marginal health that would see their premiums
drop off perhaps 11 percent, which is a number I do have confidence is
a correct one. So the people with the highest premiums might see an 11
percent reduction. The people with the lowest premiums might see as
much as a 300 percent increase in their premiums, and that's why the
President can't point to anybody's policy and say, We're not going to
increase your costs.
And he can't, either, guarantee that you're not going to lose your
policy, because a lot of companies are going under in this. There will
not be 1,300 health insurance companies doing business in the United
States 5 years from now or 10 years from now. And if the President had
his way, there wouldn't be anybody doing business in health insurance
in America except the United States Federal Government. And if you
wonder if that's a stretch of the imagination, Mr. Speaker, I can give
you two examples. One of them is the Federal flood insurance program.
In the early sixties, all the flood insurance in America was private
sector. Property and casualty, if you wanted to insure yourself against
a flood, against the river waters coming in and filling up your
basement, you went to a private property and casualty insurance company
that would write you up a policy and set a premium. But this Congress,
``in its wisdom''--and I say that in quotes that this Congress, ``in
its wisdom,'' decided that the premiums were too high and the varieties
of policies for flood insurance in the early sixties were not great
enough, and so they decided to set up a Federal flood insurance program
that would provide one more alternative for the consumers to put some
competition into the property and casualty business with regard to
flood insurance.
Does that sound familiar, Mr. Speaker? I'll submit that it clearly
does, because the President said he wanted one more health insurance
company to provide competition for the other health insurance
companies. He said we didn't have enough competition in health
insurance. I don't know why he's forgotten about that. I have not, and
I will not. So when the President of the United States says, We just
want to add one more competitor, we don't have enough competition, and
that competitor will be the Federal Government, as soon as you inject
the Federal Government into the private sector--or what was the private
sector in this case--then you have an unfair competitor with a
comparative advantage. They don't have to be profitable. The Federal
Government doesn't have to be. If they run up short, they just tap into
the pockets of the taxpayer, and we run up an IOU that might be raiding
the Social Security Trust Fund in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where
every single dollar has been raided by this Congress. It might be
borrowed money from the Saudis or the Chinese, provided they are
willing to loan it to us and jack up the interest rates. They will. But
the Federal Government does not have to be profitable. And they
wouldn't have to be profitable with health insurance, which is an
unfair comparative advantage that would drive some of the health
insurance companies out, probably lots of them, and take this where the
President wants it to go, single payer.
The President, as a candidate, consistently argued that there should
be one entity that paid for all health care in America. That would be
the Federal Government taking over all of those 1,300 health insurance
companies and those 100,000 policy varieties and those hundreds of
millions of Americans that have legitimate health insurance programs.
Eventually, the President wanted to take it all over, but he had to
fall back on an argument of just providing some competition because the
American people rejected that.
So we're supposed to believe that the idea of wanting the Federal
Government to sell insurance was just an innocent thing that was
designed to provide more competition. Well, we rejected that. And by
the way, the United States Senate rejected that. So we didn't end up
with an ObamaCare package that has a Federal health insurance component
to it other than they're regulating every single policy in America,
canceling every policy in America, deciding which ones they want to
renew, setting up community ratings that go from seven to one down to
three to one and driving up the premiums.
But what comes from all of this, Mr. Speaker? I'm taking you then
back to property and casualty insurance. The private sector that used
to insure all flood insurance in America saw their competitor come in.
I think the year was 1963, plus or minus a year. I'm real close. And
1963 is going to hit it, actually.

In 1963, the Federal Government came in and provided us one more
flood insurance company to provide a little more competition to level
the playing field for the people who lived in the floodplain that
didn't have enough alternatives. That sounds exactly like the argument
that we have today. So the Federal Government got into that business.
And over a few years, the property and casualty companies, those
private sector insurance companies that reflected the risks and the
market in the premiums that they charged--and yes, they're in it for a
profit. Thank God for profit. It's done more for the world than all the
missionaries that went anywhere. As much as I believe in faith and the
Lord's hand in everything that goes on on this planet, free enterprise
capitalism has been a wonderful contribution to the well-being of all
humanity, and it was a contributor in the flood insurance and property
casualty insurance.
But the Federal Government got in the business in 1963, and over a
period of time--and not a very long period of time--slowly those
private sector companies realized they couldn't compete with Uncle Sam
because they had to make a profit and they had to charge premiums that
reflected the risk. So they dropped out, and for a long time, and
certainly today, we cannot--no one in America can go out and buy flood
insurance from the private sector. It all is sold by the Federal
Government.
The Federal Government has taken over the flood insurance program in
America lock, stock and barrel, root and branch, all of it. Every
single vestige of flood insurance is all controlled by the Federal
Government today. They set the premiums not by risk. They set the
premiums by whatever bureaucrats think they ought to be, and they don't
have to be profitable.
So that would explain why they are $19.2 billion in the red in the
Federal flood insurance program, and it would explain why in my
district, FEMA has come out and has a new ruling that broadens the
floodplain dramatically. It's just breathtaking to look at the map of
the floodplain that was in blue--and, by the way, national banks that
are making loans on mortgages that go into these floodplains require
flood insurance to be paid and premiums to be paid.
So when they're in the red $19.2 billion and they can't figure out
how to charge premiums that reflect the risk and be able to get by with
it because people probably can't afford those premiums, but they've
expanded and developed their real estate in the floodplain based upon
those premiums, having trouble raising the premiums on the people that
owe the national banks money that had to buy them, so FEMA puts out a
new map, a new map that widens the floodplains dramatically. These tiny
little narrow areas become wide areas in the whole river valleys. And
in one area, just one area within one of my 32 counties, there are
2,200 individual real estate parcels, most of them rural, that are now
in a new floodplain created by FEMA's map and ruling, 1,100 property
owners, 2,200 new properties, all of them now in a situation where
they're going to have trouble expanding and building.

{time} 1845

A lot of them are going to have to pay increased premiums for flood
insurance that they didn't even have to buy before because they were
out of the

[[Page H3267]]

floodplain, and the Federal Government cashes in. If I take this plan
that they're trying to implement in my district and if I multiply it
across all the real estate in the United States where it is awfully
hard to use, the model that they use goes clear back to the early
1970s. It's nearly 40 years old, this model. The technology that they
use is nearly 40 years old, so I can only guess.
If I use what they have in one of my counties as a measure, it looks
to me like FEMA will be able to collect enough premiums that they can,
maybe, recover their $19.2 billion and more. Maybe FEMA will make so
much money off of this that they'll be able to help subsidize Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac. Don't hold your breath, Mr. Speaker, but this is
40-year-old technology.
We know this: anybody who has ever filled any sandbags and who has
fought a flood knows, first, that the adrenalin rushes up in your
blood. As the water is coming up, your adrenalin boils up in you, too,
and you work harder and more feverishly as the water comes up. Many
times, those sandbags along there are just, maybe, high enough, an inch
or two, because you're stacking them on there as the water comes up.
They're maybe 5, maybe a half an inch or a half a foot, maybe 5 inches
or a half a foot--or even a foot.
Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that the FEMA model is so imprecise and of
such ancient technology that their accuracy is within plus or minus 10
meters? That's 10 meters. Now, I didn't do the precise multiplier on
it, but let's just say it's 30 feet, plus or minus. Let's just say
they're right on the average. Let's just say I stand on this floor, and
they say, Well, the flood might be here or it could be 10 meters up.
Well, in looking at the ceiling of this Chamber, they could be that far
off. They could be off more than 30 feet on the elevation of the water
that they're predicting.
Meanwhile, we have the Corps of Engineers, which has hydraulic models
that can tell us whether we can build in a floodplain and what the flow
is and how we might have to construct our structures so that we don't
constrict the flow when we have a flood. They can tell us where the
100-year flood event is and where the 500-year flood event is.
Yet who should be surprised that FEMA and the Corps of Engineers
can't get together on this and use modern technology? I'm wondering if
they have the will or if it happens to be that someone decided that
they could just use this 40-year-old model that is plus or minus within
10 meters and impose flood insurance premiums on a whole bunch of
Americans, who are unsuspecting and who are probably unable to pay
these premiums, to make up for the $19.2 billion in loss that they've
got in flood insurance.
Now, I tell this long story to describe what is in store for us if
ObamaCare is not repealed 100 percent--every single bit of it--and done
in the shortest order possible at the will of the American people.
Though, before I get to how ObamaCare will transform out, it is really
worthwhile for us to look back and see how the Federal Government
swallows up other formerly private entities.
Back during that period of time when the Federal flood insurance was
passed, it was also true that education loans were private sector. If
you wanted to go off to college, you went and borrowed the money from
the private sector. Then they set up the student loan plan as a means
to provide other alternatives so that private lenders weren't handling
all of the student loans. The Federal Government came in and did that,
by my recollection, at about that same period of time.
What is predictable about this? What is predictable is, if the
Federal Government gets into a business to compete, they have an unfair
advantage, an illegitimate comparative advantage. They don't have to
have profit. They don't have to balance their books. They don't have to
be good at it. They just have to drive the competition out. They do
what a monopolist would do. If somebody is trying to become a monopoly,
they try to drive all of their competition out by underpricing, and
they distort it to the point where nobody else can stay in the
business. Then they're the only one in the business. Then they start to
jack the prices up again.
Well, it took the Federal Government a long time, but in the dark of
the night, in the heat of the ObamaCare battle--in the recision
legislation that slipped through this Congress without an opportunity
to evaluate it--there was the sneaky piece of legislation that
converted what was left of the student loan plans from the private
sector into completely the maw of government, itself.
So, in this period of time that I have described, we have seen the
transformation of a completely private, independent-standing property
and casualty flood insurance that faced a Federal Government that
wanted to provide just one more competitor into the marketplace so that
people had more choices and a Federal Government that swallowed it all
up and that drove everybody out of business and a Federal Government
that has done so, the same thing, with the student loan program in the
United States. They had to hitch it onto ObamaCare to do it.
What a bunch of cynics that they couldn't do something like that in
broad daylight in front of all of America. No. They had to stick it in
when they had the major diversionary tactic of another swallow-up of
the private sector--remember, a month ago or 6 weeks ago, whatever that
date was--of all of the health insurance in America.
Some will say that there are exceptions--Medicare, for example.
Medicaid would be another. Then you can argue whether those are
insurance policies or government programs to pick people up when
they're destitute and to take care of them when they reach retirement
age. But for those folks who are under Medicare eligibility or who have
incomes outside of Medicaid, we didn't see a Federal health insurance
program except for SCHIP, which is the State Children's Health
Insurance Program. This was another effort to try to close this gap.
There has been effort after effort for the liberals, for the
progressives--for the people who just simply deny the liberty of the
American people--to take over the health care in America.
Bill Clinton stood here, I believe, on September 13 in about 1993,
and he gave his health care speech. He wanted to take it all over then.
He turned Hillary loose with HillaryCare, and Hillary began meeting in
private and in public. She actually had more public meetings, I think,
than we had this time around. Although, we were quite critical of the
private meetings she had, too. She wrote a bill, and that bill was the
government takeover of health care. Well, they couldn't get that done.
Bill Clinton came back, and he said, You know, we can't get this done,
but we're going to do it incrementally.
I believe in that September 13 speech he actually made the proposal--
and I know I can find it in his speeches during that era--when he
wanted to lower the Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. That's when
they brought the idea of SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance
Program, which is set up to buy very, very cheap health insurance for
kids. They put that out through the States. In Iowa, it is known as
Hawkeye with a little better than a 2 to 1 Federal match.
So, when you're sitting in a State legislature, the Federal
Government says, You know, help out with some of these cheap health
insurance premiums for these kids who can't afford them. Otherwise,
here's what we'll do. If you'll put $1 down out of your State tax
coffers, we'll put $2 and change down. Let's see. I think it's 70
percent funding by the Federal Government and 30 percent by the States.
The States adopted it because it was--do you remember the phrase?--
free money, Mr. Speaker. Well, nothing is free. We know that, but it
was viewed as free money by the State legislatures. They adopted SCHIP.
In Iowa, it was Hawkeye.
Then at the same time that Bill Clinton would have liked to have
dialed the Medicare eligibility age down to 55, you can see what's
happening. If you reduce the age of eligibility for Medicare and if
they're seeking to expand Medicaid--and they've been doing that and
have been lowering the standards for eligibility to Medicaid from the
lower income side of the scale--and if you make these kids eligible for
SCHIP, you're squeezing this from the outside, from the middle. You're
lowering the senior age to 55, and you're making sure you're insuring
the kids--pick your age--well into their 20s.

[[Page H3268]]

We had States that had as high a percentage as 66 percent of people
who were not kids but adults who were on the SCHIP program. Wisconsin
would be one of those States. There was another State that went higher
than that. It may have been Minnesota. They had a number that went up
into the 80s. I think it was 87 percent. So they were using SCHIP to
expand it where they could provide health insurance premiums for people
because they wanted to have a single-payer plan eventually. That's what
was going on with the strategy of trying to establish this single-payer
plan.
In the middle of all of this, you know, the Republicans came in, and
we fought some of that back. Then Nancy Pelosi was finally elected as
Speaker of the House. What did she bring to us here on this floor but
an SCHIP program, which had been set at 200 percent of poverty so that
a family of four at 200 percent of poverty in my State would be set at
about $52,000, in order to turn it up to 400 percent of poverty. It
passed the House at the insistence of the Speaker, and I was the only
member of the Iowa delegation to oppose it. It would have gone to 400
percent of poverty, which would have meant that a family of four in
Iowa who was making $103,000 a year would have had the health insurance
for their kids paid for by some taxpayer who would probably not be
making that much.
While that was going on, there would be people who would have to pay
the rich man's tax, the Alternative Minimum Tax. There would be 70,000
families in America who would be paying the rich man's tax, the
Alternative Minimum Tax. I have trouble saying ``AMT'' these days. It's
the Alternative Minimum Tax. There would be 70,000 families who would
be paying the Alternative Minimum Tax who would still be eligible for
the SCHIP funding for health insurance for their children.
Do you see where this goes? If you have the subsidy at the means
testing side of this where lower income people are multiplied from 100
percent of poverty, to 200 percent, to 300 percent, to 400 percent--and
by the way, we ratcheted it back down to 300 percent--and allowed $3
billion or more worth of Medicaid funding to go in and fund illegals
into the market of all of that, it squeezes it against the middle.
Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, someone who would be about 45 years old
who would watch the eligibility of the Medicare age drop down to 55,
who would watch somebody who is collecting SCHIP who is now 35 years
old and who would watch those at 400 percent of poverty--families with
$103,000, families of four--having their health insurance premiums paid
while they would still be paying the Alternative Minimum Tax? People
are looking at this, thinking, Well, the people 10 years older than I
get free health care, and the people 10 years younger than I get free
health care. I'm the one who's working, who's paying for my own
premiums and raising my own family, and everybody else is, too. Why do
I try? Do I do that because I'll have higher quality health care?
Yes, that would be a good answer. The people who are responsible
should live a little better than those who don't in this country. We
have got to leave incentives in place.
That was the strategy--to squeeze the middle, to put such a load on
the people who were still paying for their own or who were earning
their own health care, their own health insurance at their workplace or
wherever their deal might be, that they would just capitulate, throw up
their hands and say, Give me the European model. I've got it anyway.
I'm paying for it for everybody else. Why am I buying my own with
after-tax dollars? That is the strategy.
It is so cynical to crush the spirit of people, to take away their
constitutional rights and to impose upon them a national health care
act. It was rejected during the Hillary era. They called it
HillaryCare. They rejected it in Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker. The people
in Massachusetts rejected ObamaCare. Still their hearts were hardened,
and still they were determined to come down here and impose the policy
on the American people.
Well, I'm not letting it go. I will not let it go for a whole series
of reasons, but the constitutional reasons are the most important ones.
It is unconstitutional to require any American to buy a product that
is either produced or approved by the Federal Government under penalty
of law. It has never happened in the history of this country. It is a
violation of a series of components within our Constitution--and don't
think I can't come up with them, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, I know what
they are. They are four places.
It is a violation of the Commerce Clause because there will be and
always have been babies born in States who didn't advantage themselves
of any kind of health care whatsoever. They didn't participate in any
commerce when it came to health care, and they maybe didn't travel
outside of their States at all, so there wasn't even the risk of their
going out to be eventually, potentially, picked up by ambulances in
other States. The risk didn't exist, so they didn't use health care in
the States they lived in. They didn't go outside the States they lived
in. They lived lives long or short, healthy or not, and passed away
into the next life never having engaged in interstate commerce that had
anything to do with ObamaCare, which means it's a violation of the
Commerce Clause, swift and certain, without a lot of hard analysis
required.
If the Commerce Clause doesn't apply to say that the passage of
ObamaCare is verboten under the Constitution, if the Commerce Clause
doesn't apply on ObamaCare, then it doesn't apply whatsoever for
anything imaginable, and it's no restraint whatsoever. You would
believe that if you were an activist judge. I reject that.
The second part is that it's not in the enumerated powers. There is
nothing there in the Constitution that defines any power to impose an
obligation by any citizen or any person in the United States to buy a
product that is produced by the Federal Government or approved by the
Federal Government. That's the second thing.
The third thing is that it violates the Equal Protection Clause of
the Constitution.
We're going to go to four here, Mr. Speaker.
The Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution says that all
citizens whatsoever shall be treated the same regardless of race,
ethnicity, national origin or the color of their skin, which is the
whole list of the things that are there within title VII of the Civil
Rights Act.

{time} 1900

Well, people are treated differently in the States. The Cornhusker
kickback notwithstanding, still the legislation treats people
differently in Louisiana than it does in the rest of the country,
Florida than it does in the rest of the country, several other
jurisdictions or something like eight to 11 different areas in
ObamaCare that treat people differently depending upon the geography of
where they live. That's forbidden under the equal protection clause of
the Constitution.
Fourth thing, and this is where we get to, it's a violation of the
10th Amendment. Not only is it not in the enumerated powers to impose
this ObamaCare on Americans, but those powers that are not specified in
the enumerated powers of the Constitution are reserved for the States
or to the people respectively. And this is a violation of the
separation of powers doctrine, which is in the 10th Amendment.
Four places, Mr. Speaker. It's not in the enumerated powers; it's a
violation of the commerce clause; it's a violation of the equal
protection clause; and it's a violation of the 10th Amendment. This
Supreme Court will see these cases eventually, and when they do, an
honest reading of the Constitution compels the Supreme Court to
overturn the ObamaCare legislation. And I understand, and I have not
read every word in there, that there's not a severability clause in
that. And if that's the case, any component most likely that's found
unconstitutional throws the whole business out.
I wish we had a provision that would put all of that paper back in
the tree, Mr. Speaker, and give people back their liberty because
that's what this bill does. It violates the Constitution and it takes
people's liberty.
It takes our freedom to buy a policy that we want. It nationalizes
our body. It takes over the most sovereign thing that we have, that's
our skin and everything inside it; and the Federal

[[Page H3269]]

Government manages when we get the tests, what policies we will be able
to buy, what the premiums will be. They'll regulate the premiums. They
will decide what's offered in the policies, and the Federal Government
will impose mandates on those policies that we don't even see in the
legislation.
There will be mandates there for contraceptives. There will be
mandates there for mental health. There will be mandates there for drug
treatment. There will be mandates there probably for physical therapy.
And we see also an effort to tax your pop if it's not diet pop, tax
your soda if it's not diet soda. They want to tell you what you can eat
and what you can drink. The next thing they'll be doing in this super-
uber nanny state is run us across the scales and tax our fat. That will
actually be the simplest way. If they're going to tax our diet, I wish
they would just let me alone, run me across the scales and tax me by
the pound.
But I want the freedom to eat what I want to eat, buy what I want to
buy, live the way I want to live. And I want to be able to make my own
decisions on whether I am going to exercise or whether I am going to go
to a health club. And if my insurance company wants to set up an
incentive for that because it's cost effective and they can offer me a
lower premium, I'm quite likely to take advantage of that, and I think
many Americans would do the same.
But this Federal Government cannot be allowed to continue on becoming
even more of a nanny state than it already is. We've got to reject
that, Mr. Speaker. We've got to abolish ObamaCare. We've got to pull it
out root and branch so that there's not one vestige of it left behind,
not one particle, not one cell, not one DNA particle of ObamaCare left
in this Federal code because if we leave it, it's the equivalent of
going in and removing a malignant tumor and leaving part of it there.
It still is at great risk of metastasizing; and when that happens, it's
the death knell to freedom and liberty in the United States of America.
We are not some other people. We are not the mirror of Europe with
the stirring in of the later generations of more newly arriving
immigrants, legal and illegal. We are a unique people. We have a unique
character and a unique quality about us where we stand alone, apart
from the rest of the world, for a lot of reasons, Mr. Speaker. Some of
those reasons are self-evident, and some of those reasons are in the
Declaration, and some of them are in the Bill of Rights. Some of them
are actually in the Constitution in a broader sense.
But just to enumerate some of those reasons for American
exceptionalism, and it's not politically correct to remind people but
it's necessary that we do this, that we talk American exceptionalism, a
number of them are these: we have the rule of law. The foundation for
that is the Constitution. The philosophy for the Constitution is in the
Declaration. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. And life is the paramount right, and it is paramount to
liberty, which is more important than the pursuit of happiness.
So working from the bottom of the scale up, Mr. Speaker, it works
like this: someone in the pursuit of their happiness cannot infringe on
someone else's liberty because liberty trumps pursuit of happiness.
And, by the way, pursuit of happiness, it was understood by our
Founding Fathers to go back to the Greek meaning, which the Greek word
for pursuit of happiness is eudaimonia, which in its definition speaks
to a search for knowledge, a search for truth, and it implies both the
physical and the mental. So to be sound in body and mind and in a
search for truth and a search for knowledge, that's the pursuit of
happiness because they believed that out on the other end of that scale
that ultimate knowledge would provide that ultimate level of happiness.
And there's some wisdom in that philosophy. It's Godless, but there's
some wisdom in the philosophy of achieving ultimate knowledge. Pursuit
of happiness was eudaimonia, that search for knowledge.
But someone in their search for knowledge, in their pursuit of
happiness/knowledge, cannot travel on someone else's liberty. Liberty
is more important than the pursuit of happiness. And someone in the
search for their liberty cannot use that liberty to take someone else's
life. Individual life is too precious. It cannot be taken by someone
because they say they have a liberty. Neither can someone who is in
pursuit of their happiness take someone else's liberty because it makes
them happy. Our liberties are guaranteed here, and the infringement
upon them is that we have to respect life more than liberty. We have to
respect liberty more than the pursuit of happiness. Those are
prioritized rights that are self-evident that come from God, endowed by
our creator.
And here we sit in the United States with that philosophical
foundation in the Declaration that was basis for our Constitution and
the rights that are there that made America a great country--freedom of
speech, religion, press, the right to peaceably assemble and petition
government for redress of grievances, the right to keep and bear arms.
Moving up the line, the right to be free from double jeopardy and to be
tried by a jury of your peers.
And the right to property in the Fifth Amendment, which has been
amended now in the Supreme Court of the United States in the Kelo
decision where they struck the words ``for public use'' out of the
Fifth Amendment, which says ``nor shall private property be taken for
public use without just compensation.'' Now the effect of the
Kelo decision was that Fifth Amendment has been usurped by the last
nine people that should be amending the Constitution, the Supreme Court
Justices--it wasn't nine, by the way, and I applaud those that opposed
it. But now the Fifth Amendment reads: ``Nor shall private property be
taken without just compensation.''

Mr. Speaker, I know mentally you put ``for public use'' in there, but
they took it out. Local governments now occasionally, and I hope not
routinely, confiscate private property, individual private property,
and they give it over to other private property owners because they
think they will get more tax dollars out of it.
But property rights are a foundation of the success in America. And
along the way, free enterprise capitalism is another foundation for the
success in America.
So you can buy a piece of property and it's yours. As long as you pay
for it and pay the property tax on it, you get to keep it. And that can
be the basis for your equity that you engage in starting businesses,
setting up factories, building homes, expanding farms. Those things
that have been the basis of our prosperity are rooted in the rule of
law, the right to property, free enterprise capitalism. Also the moral
foundation that came over for the freedom of religion rooted in our
Judeo-Christian values, which are the thread of our culture today. All
of those are reasons why America is a great country.
Another reason is because we have skimmed the cream of the crop off
of every donor civilization that has sent legal immigrants to the
United States. The cream of the crop, the people with the vigor and the
vitality and the dream. And they found a way to get onboard a ship or
whatever means they could to come here and enter into the United States
through a legal port of entry to chase their dreams.
And some of them came with a significant amount of capital to give it
a go. And a lot of them came with the clothes on their back and the
possessions they had in their bag, like my grandmother. And as they
arrived here, they began to carve out their American Dream with the
kind of vision and the kind of vigor that gave them the idea to come
here in the first place. This America, this land of almost unlimited
natural resources, a land that has the very foundation of liberty and
freedom as the essence and the core of its being, welcomed legal
immigrants here who were called by that clarion call of liberty and
freedom and property rights and unlimited natural resources and
unlimited opportunity in a moral society that was rooted in Judeo-
Christian values. And they came here and built a Nation in the blink of
a historical eye, settled the North American continent, expanded
manifest destiny from sea to shining sea. And all of this has attracted
people to come to America.
Now, we are either the first generation immigrants that came here,
hopefully legally, with that vigor of that dream or the second, third,
fourth,

[[Page H3270]]

fifth, or multiple generations, the descendants of that same dream,
imbued with American self-confidence and American can-do spirit and a
confidence that we can face any challenge, we can bear any burden.
That's the American spirit.
And we cannot be capitulating to the European utopian version that's
going to have a social program to fix any ill. We can't be trapped into
this idea that we can sit down and produce some kind of a policy that
will solve every problem. All we need to do is have our default system
come back to the Constitution, come back to free enterprise, come back
to individual responsibility. If we do all of those things and adhere
to the Constitution itself, free enterprise capitalism, maintain our
moral foundation, nurture the family unit as the means through which we
pour all of our values, if we do all of that, America will be just
fine.
But Jimmy Carter, when he was running for President and as he was
exploring the first-in-the-nation caucus and establishing that as a
viable route to the Presidency in Iowa, I read in an interview back in
those years in the mid-1970s where Jimmy Carter said the people that
work should live better than those that don't. Now, I don't know that
Jimmy Carter ever actually acted on that, but that's what he said, and
it caught my attention. It was a very simple way of describing this.
The people that work should live better than those that don't.
Well, that's not the prevailing philosophy in this Congress any
longer. It is the people that don't work need to live as well as
anybody. So we have 72 different welfare programs, according to Robert
Rector of the Heritage Foundation. In the mid-1990s when we reformed
welfare--I wasn't here--but when this Congress reformed welfare in the
mid-1990s, there wasn't the dramatic drop in the cost in welfare. It
reduced it a little bit and then it stayed on a plateau and then it
climbed again. The welfare has been climbing at a rate that's
comparable to or greater than the rate that it was climbing going into
the mid-1990s. And we have accepted this. I don't accept it but this
society has.
This society has also accepted rampant drug abuse so that there's a
huge demand for illegal drugs coming out of Mexico, from or through
Mexico. That is the core of the problem that we have with the border
today and the violence on the border today, and whatever we do to help
the Mexicans and seal our border, we need to do that. We need to stop
the bleeding, but as long as there is a powerful demand in the United
States for tens of billions of dollars in illegal drugs, then there
will always be the illegal traffic coming across the border.

{time} 1915

Mr. Speaker, this is a bit of a rendition on where America is today,
a little bit on how we got here, a little bit about the economics of
it, a little about the history, a fair amount about what's going on
with ObamaCare.
This is my statement and my commitment, that I will not rest. I will
continue to turn the pressure up to get the passage of the repeal for
ObamaCare that I have introduced in this Congress and now should have,
if I can add this up, 66 cosponsors on this legislation today.
Mr. Speaker, the number of the legislation, should you choose to look
it up and sign on is H.R. 4972. That's the legislation that will one
day, at least the language of it if not that particular bill number,
arrive at the President's desk, where this President would veto it. But
with a new majority in 2011, we will have the votes in here to shut off
any funding of ObamaCare so that it cannot be enacted.
It doesn't become fully enacted until 2014. So 2011 and '12 this
Congress, has to start all spending, by the Constitution. We say, no,
there won't be any funding for the implementation of ObamaCare, so we
will put it on ice for 2011 and 2012. While that's going, we will put
the repeal on President Obama's desk and make him veto it. And when he
vetoes it, we can take a look and see if we can override it. That will
be very hard, but it's not completely impossible.
But in 2012 we elect a new President and a new Congress. And that new
President and new Congress need to take the pledge that I have taken,
which is plank number one, full 100 percent abolishment of ObamaCare,
all of it, without any hesitation, without any caveats.
And let's put that on the desk of the new President, Mr. Speaker,
that will be sworn in January 20 of 2013. And while he stands on the
west portico--we will gavel in on January 3, 2013, in here. That's what
the Constitution says we do. We will be thy then in a position where we
can pass the repeal of ObamaCare, have it sitting there so that when he
takes his oath of office January 20, 2013, and puts his hand down as
the President of the United States, his first act, Mr. Speaker, can be
to put his pen to the bill that repeals ObamaCare and sign that
legislation on the spot at the podium on the west portico of this
Capitol building and give America back our economic freedom, but more
importantly, give us back our human liberty.
That's the goal that we have to follow if we are to achieve the
greatness that America has ahead of us. If not, we will be trailing in
the dust the golden hopes of men and forever diminishing our
opportunities, forever diminishing our potential, taking away human
potential, discouraging individual entrepreneurs, people that would
never realize their dreams because they would be growing up in a nanny
state that has taken over the banks, the investment companies, the
insurance companies, the car companies, Fannie and Freddie, the student
loans, nationalize our body, our skin and everything inside it, and, by
the way, put a 10 percent tax on the outside if you go into a tanning
salon. All of this taken over and the financial institutions. I want it
all back. I want it back for the American people, the American workers,
and the American entrepreneurs. I want our spirit back.
I am going to work to get it back, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your
attention.

____________________