[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 95 (Wednesday, June 23, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H4770-H4777]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BROKEN PROMISES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Markey of Colorado). 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. Madam Speaker, it's an honor to have the
opportunity to address you here on the floor of the House of
Representatives, and picking up where my colleagues left off, they have
given, I think, a good presentation over the last 60 minutes that
covered a lot of important territory with regard to the budget and the
spending. I think they've made the point that since the rules of the
House required a budget resolution, this House has never before failed
to pass a budget. There are political reasons for that.
I happen to see a quote over on the wall that I hadn't picked up
before, and it didn't attribute it to anyone, but I am pretty sure it
wasn't a Republican, Madam Speaker. It was a quote that, generally
speaking, was this, that, well, until the deficit reduction commission
would meet and produce a decision, we couldn't possibly pass a budget
here in the House. And that would be--oh, let me see, a week or two or
so after the election in November. Imagine, Congress can't do its work
unless the President appoints a deficit commission, and that deficit
commission couldn't possibly return a recommendation to this Congress
until after the people have spoken.
It's amazing to me, Madam Speaker. The people have spoken. The people
in this country have elected their Representatives that serve on this
side of the aisle over here in the majority, on this side of the aisle
over here in the minority. We have a responsibility to step forward and
bring a budget, and that budget needs to be the reflection of spending
discipline and the spending priorities of the House of Representatives.
According to the Constitution, all spending starts here--not in the
Senate. It starts here. And traditionally, the House has received the
President's budget, his budget recommendation. We've evaluated that
budget in the process of moving a budget resolution here in the House--
in a responsible fashion when Republicans were in charge at least. I
think in a less responsible fashion, but at least it got done before
when Democrats were in charge, until now.
{time} 1930
But the spending has been so irresponsible that even the
irresponsible overspending Democrats don't have enough will to bring a
budget to the floor and allow it to be debated and voted upon here on
the floor of the House, where the rules require us to do so. Because
why? Because the President has appointed a Deficit Reduction
Commission, after spending trillions of dollars irresponsibly, and now
he has put these brains to work to figure out how to solve an
unsolvable problem.
I know what that feels like, Madam Speaker. I remember going through
the farm crisis in the eighties. I remember when asset values were
going in a downward spiral and opportunities for increasing revenue
were also going in a downward spiral, and the customer base that I had
was doing what was happening to me. My bank was closed down by the
FDIC. All accounts were frozen. Commerce came to a halt. I had two
pennies in my pocket, a payroll to meet, kids to feed, a business to
run, bank loans to pay even though the bank was closed by the FDIC,
opened up next Monday by new owners. I know how that thing works.
[[Page H4771]]
You set your priorities. You step up to your responsibilities. But I
have sat there at my desk during those years with my legal pad and my
calculator trying to figure out how to make it work. And I know what it
feels like when you think that there is something wrong with your brain
because you can't solve a problem.
Well, there is something wrong with the people's brains that spent
all this money all right. And now the problem they can't solve is how
to present a budget to the Congress because they have created an
intractable, unsolvable budget problem not by being caught in an
economic downward spiral exclusively, but by going into a downward
spiral where Federal revenues are being reduced in proportion to the
downward economic spiral while they are increasing the spending like
they are in an upward economic spiral. These two things are going
opposite directions. Federal revenues are going down; Federal spending
is going up.
The divergence of these two lines, the income and the outgo, have
gotten so far apart that even the people without a conscience towards
balancing a budget, and I mean the Democrats in this Congress, they are
having a little trouble selling the idea to the Blue Dogs. Yes, Blue
Dogs have gone underground. They have been quiet. They haven't been as
active as they were in the past. They are certainly not as bold as they
have been when I used to stand here and take lectures from the Blue
Dogs that said, We want to balance the budget. What's wrong with
Republicans that they can't balance the budget?
Well, nothing wrong with me, because I voted for every balanced
budget that's been offered on the floor of this House since I came
here. And I don't know why I wouldn't continue to do that. And we are
looking for a chance to bring a balanced budget to the floor again, and
we will. We will if we can break the mold here.
But this House, led by the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has so kowtowed to
the President's spending priorities and spent trillions unnecessarily.
The number that I had added up in my head standing on the floor here a
week or two ago was $2.34 trillion of unnecessary spending, $2.34
trillion.
And the President's budget as he presented it, it's the only budget
we've got to go with. No conscience to try to balance it. No conscience
to try to limit it. Today a baby born in America, their share of the
national debt--you just might say that here's the IOU that that little
old baby, when their footprint goes down on the birth certificate is an
acknowledgement that their share of the national debt that they owe
Uncle Sam is $44,000. And we worry about that little child, all the
money that it takes to provide health care and education and clothing
and housing and nurture and love to bring that child up into
responsible adulthood. That little old child that grows into
responsible adulthood, we worry about them carrying a student loan debt
that might be, oh, let's say--pick a number in the ballpark. It's not a
statistical number. It's a ballpark number. Maybe $40,000 worth of
student loans when they finish college.
That burden of servicing the interest and the principal on a $40,000
student loan, we worry about that. Well, I would be happy to take that
$40,000 loan and a guarantee of a college degree and think that child
could pay that off.
But for nothing. They don't get a college degree. They don't get an
education. They just get access to citizenship of the United States of
America for their $44,000 that's their share of the national debt, a
little baby with ink on their foot stamped right there on the birth
certificate. There is one in this country we haven't seen, but the
footprint on those we have seen, those little babies owe Uncle Sam
$44,000.
And, Madam Speaker, when that little child enters into fifth grade,
and I picked fifth grade because that's the budget cycle. We do 10-year
budget cycles, and we calculate our revenue stream. We calculate our
outgo over a 10-year period of time. We put a number figure on
something like, oh, let's say ObamaCare, what does that cost? That's
over a 10-year period of time. So when that little child, from 10 years
to the time they are born, they will be starting fifth grade. When they
start fifth grade, that little child that owes Uncle Sam $44,000 that
was born today owes Uncle Sam at that point, starting in the fifth
grade, $88,000 under President Obama's budget. Doubles the individual
national debt share just projecting the President's budget. And that,
Madam Speaker, is with the President's own numbers. It's that bad.
There isn't going to be a solution coming out of the deficit
commission because there is an intractable problem that's been created
by irresponsible overspending and a myopic, wrongheaded view that John
Maynard Keynes had the right idea when he came up with this cooked-up
theory back before the Great Depression began that if you wanted to
recover from an economic downward trend you would just take a lot of
government money and borrow it from somewhere and dump it into the
economy, give it to people, and get them to spend it. That's the
Keynesian economic theory.
Government would put money into the hands of people; people would go
spend the money, and spending that money would stimulate the economy.
That was his plan coming into the thirties. When FDR was elected,
that's what they did. They overspent. They spent the country into more
deficit than they had seen before, and borrowed money and put it into
the economy in all kinds of programs. The WPA, the CCC come to mind as
some of those programs.
Now, that was nice for the people there that got the government jobs,
and it was nice to have the soup lines. But here's what I know. When
government is putting out borrowed money to pay people to do something
else that's in competition with the private sector or pay people not to
work, it's awfully hard to recover economically, because it takes the
private sector to bring us out of this economy.
So this White House now has taken a look at the model of the
thirties, and the President of the United States, his lesson, his
takeaway from the whole lesson of the Great Depression was this: FDR
lost his nerve. That's what the President said, February 10, 2009,
before our conference, ten feet away from me, said FDR lost his nerve.
He should have spent a lot more money. If he had spent more money, the
President's opinion, this country would have come out of the Great
Depression almost before it--he didn't say this word--but you know,
before we got into the depths of it. And he argued that FDR lost his
nerve, should have spent more money. If he had done that, we would not
have had the depression that lasted a full decade and more.
And he argued that because FDR lost his nerve and failed to spend
enough government money, what we had was--and this is according to the
President's words--a recession within a depression, and unemployment
numbers that went up during that period of time instead of down. And
then he said along came World War II, which was the greatest economic
stimulus plan ever.
I would even take issue with that statement. But I am going to
concede his point there and not make an argument about it, Madam
Speaker, because there is some basis for that statement. It's not
completely off base at all. There is just a different perspective that
I would emphasize.
But I would argue that sending this Nation into debt and borrowing
money and putting it into the hands of people not in exchange for
production, but just in exchange sometimes for make-work or doing
something was not the right way to come out of a depression or a
recession. What we need to do is increase productivity. We need to get
the private sector more competitive. And he has done everything but let
the private sector get more competitive.
But this Keynesian economist on steroids, which is our President, has
not made what he considered to be the same mistake that Franklin Delano
Roosevelt made. Remember, Roosevelt lost his nerve. He didn't spend
enough money. The President hasn't lost his nerve. He spent a lot more
money than FDR would have thought of spending. He spent a lot more
money than John Maynard Keynes would have thought of spending.
Keynes's argument was this. He said, I will solve all the
unemployment in America for you, and here is how I will do it. We will
go get a whole bunch of American cash--now, I am paraphrasing here;
there is an exact quote that does take this message out--a
[[Page H4772]]
whole bunch of American cash, American dollars, and I will find an
abandoned coal mine. And we will go out and we will drill holes with a
drill rig all over into that abandoned coal mine, and we will stuff
these holes full of cash. And then we will haul garbage in there and
fill that abandoned coal mine up with garbage--this is before the EPA,
you might remember--and then we will just turn the entrepreneurs loose
to go in and dig up the money. We will solve all the unemployment
problem.
People will go in and dig up the money. There will be a whole
industry involved, almost like mining it for gold. I am adding an
embellishment here, because I have included Keynes's image of this and
I am adding the embellishment beyond. So his idea was, though, that
people would go in, dig through the garbage, dig up the money out of
the holes in the abandoned coal mine, and it would become an industry.
And they would probably need some equipment. They would need shovels at
least, and there would be people industriously digging through garbage
and pulling the cash out and taking it to town. It wouldn't even be
like gold where they had to go to the assay office. Cash was just as
good.
It reminds me of the movie that was produced that had the Beatles in
it years and years ago called ``The Magic Christian.'' And in ``The
Magic Christian'' movie, they wanted to emphasize that there were a lot
of greedy people in the world. And they filled this swimming pool full
of all kinds of sewage and garbage and junk and things that would be
revolting to jump into. And then there is a scene in the movie where
doctors and lawyers and professionals and probably gangsters and every
character that you can think of that they wanted to denigrate--they
filled it full of garbage and junk and sewage and then dumped a bunch
of cash in there. They had people diving into that, fighting over the
cash. That image in ``The Magic Christian'' is the same image, a
similar image that's created by John Maynard Keynes. But those things
don't produce an economy. They don't produce wealth.
We have to be an economy that produces goods and services that are
essential first for the survival of humanity and then essential to
improve the productivity of humanity. And the next level is so that
there is a savings or disposable income component to this so that we
can go do the things we enjoy doing. But if an economy compresses down
to the essentials, it will be a survivalist economy where our effort
and our industry goes towards staying alive.
The next level is the level of productivity where our endeavor
increases our productivity so that we can be competitive and we can
compile wealth and use that wealth to increase our productivity that
then increases our standard of living and our quality of life. And if
the survival component of the economy and the increased productivity
component of the economy gets high enough, then there is disposable
wealth for us to spend to enjoy life, like go to the ball game, go on a
vacation, take the kids fishing, go to Disney World, take the family
out to Washington, D.C., see the monuments, go to the National Archives
and to Arlington Cemetery. Those things, that's from disposable income
that comes out, the recreational travel, the nonessential things that
we spend money on, and that creates another industry.
But as you chase those industries down, you will chase them down to
those components that are essential for the survival of Homo sapiens on
this planet. That's the real economy. That's the economy we've got to
stimulate. That's the one we have to let grow. It's stimulated by low
taxes; it's stimulated by low regulation, and it's stimulated by
entrepreneurs that understand the idea that they can invest some money
or create an endeavor that will produce a profit for them that feeds
their family and builds up some capital that can be used to increase
their productivity so that the business can grow and they can hire
employees and people have jobs. That's the economy we are supposed to
support.
I think it's completely outside the understanding of the White House.
I look around and I wonder who in the White House has actually signed
the front side of the paycheck. Who's had employees? Who's started a
business? Who's bought a business? Who's maintained and expanded an
existing business that's in the White House circle? Who thinks like a
free enterprise capitalist or like an entrepreneur? Is there anybody
there that has an instinctive understanding of what it's like to start
with something or maybe even start with nothing and create jobs and
wealth? That's what America has done.
We have had the scenario that lets us do that. We have had the
entrepreneurs. We have had the people with the dream that came to the
United States because they knew this was a place where they could be
allowed to succeed, and no one could come and take away the fruit of
their labor and their endeavor. That's been the American Dream and it's
been the American guarantee.
And now, now the White House can go in and order the terms of a
bankruptcy for Chrysler or General Motors and direct that 17.5 percent
of the shares of General Motors be handed over to the labor unions, the
United Auto Workers who didn't have skin in the game except the
potential for a future job. And yes, they had a benefits package out
there, but their skin in the game wasn't conceded. They didn't concede
a single point. Maybe some outside claims on insurance that could come
in later years that all of them at the table believed was going to be
replaced by ObamaCare anyway. There was no risk on UAW. They got handed
17.5 percent of the ownership of General Motors at what, the expense of
the secured creditors, the stockholders, the bondholders that had the
first mortgage on the asset values of General Motors taken out by the
White House.
{time} 1945
Never before in America have we seen a scenario like that where it
was testified under oath by the Treasurer of the State of Indiana that
in the case of Chrysler, the Obama White House went into the bankruptcy
court and dictated terms going in, and the terms that came out after
chapter 11 were exactly the terms dictated by the White House. Of the
testimony that took place in the chapter 11 bankruptcy hearings, there
wasn't one jot or tittle that was changed as a result of the testimony
because the White House dictated the terms.
The Obama administration were the only ones that were evaluating the
assets of Chrysler going into chapter 11. And who is the only buyer on
the other side? Well, the White House. Never before in a bankruptcy
court. That is unjust. You can't get justice out of a scenario of a
chapter 11 bankruptcy court that allows the same entity that is setting
the terms to be the entity that is buying.
The White House is saying here is what the value of Chrysler is and
here is what we are willing to pay and nobody else gets to be a bidder.
And in the case of General Motors, take these shares away from the
shareholders, take the assets away from the secured bond holders, push
them over there and turn them over to the United Auto Workers.
So what, so they can run the business of General Motors for the
benefit of the people affected by it. Doesn't that sound good. Doesn't
that sound great, Madam Speaker. Run a Fortune 500 company for the
benefit of the people affected by it. Where have I heard that language
before? Run a business for the benefit of the people affected by it.
Oh, yes, I know where I have heard that language before, Madam Speaker.
I read it on the Socialist Web site. You can go read it yourself,
dsausa.org. They want to nationalize the Fortune 500 companies which
would include General Motors and Chrysler. I don't know if it includes
BP, but I imagine they are in their sights today.
And they say we are not Communists; we are Socialists. We don't want
to nationalize every business in America; we just want to nationalize
the Fortune 500 companies and a few others that catch our attention.
And we want to manage them for the benefit of the people affected by
them. That is a quote: manage them for the benefit of the people
affected by them. Dsausa.org, it is the Socialist Web site, who, by the
way, tell us they don't run candidates on the Socialist ticket as if
they were Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians or Communists. They run
candidates on the Democrat ticket as
[[Page H4773]]
Progressives, and they say the Progressives are the legislative arm of
the Socialists.
So I read this and I am thinking, all right, but why would I take
that seriously? They are attaching themselves to the Progressives in
Congress, so I research a little more. I find out that there is a Web
site for the Progressives here in Congress. The gentleman from Arizona
(Mr. Grijalva), it is a Web site that has his name on it now. It is
often up here on a blue board with white letters that is presented by
Keith Ellison of Minnesota. I see him constantly advertising the
Progressives.
So I go back and do a little research, and I find out that the
Socialists were the ones that managed the Progressive Web site until
1999. Yes, they are an offshoot. They are joined together at the hip.
They are Siamese twins. The Progressives here in Congress are the
Siamese twin of the Socialists of America. The Socialists ran their Web
site until they took a little heat in 1999, and then they decided the
Socialists running the Progressive Web site was a little too obvious a
link, so the Progressives took over their own Web site and started to
run it from there. But the Socialists still have on their Web site the
proud bond between them and the Progressives in the United States
Congress.
The last time I looked at the list of the Progressives on the
Progressive Web site, there were 77 Members of Congress that were
listed. Of these 77 Members, they would be obviously among the most
liberal left wing Members of Congress. But the people in America don't
think of liberal left wing Democrats as Socialists. They think of them
as people who are for a little more social justice, but they don't
think of them as Socialists. If they would read the Socialist Web site,
I think that would be a pretty good description of what a Socialist is.
When you read on the Web site that they want to nationalize the
Fortune 500 companies, and then you can minimize your dsausa.org Web
site, and then open up the Progressive Web site and read on there what
they want to do. Well, let me see. They want to nationalize the energy
industry in America. They want to nationalize the oil refinery in
America. Those would be statements written and said, stated by Maxine
Waters of California and Maurice Hinchey of New York respectively. I
read those statements through the press, and I hear them make them. I
go back and look at the Progressive Web site, and it says on there:
Proud Member of the Progressive Caucus, Maxine Waters, Maurice Hinchey.
And then I go over to the Socialist Web site and I read on there, We
want to nationalize the Fortune 500 companies. We want to nationalize
the energy industry. We want to nationalize the oil refinery industry.
You see the pattern here, Madam Speaker. What is on the Socialist Web
site is an agenda. It is on the Progressive Members of Congress caucus
Web site as an agenda. And this agenda is being carried out by the
White House and people are proudly advocating for these ideas while
never admitting that they are a Siamese twin of the Socialists, who
brought this out, and they have done this for a couple of decades or
more and made this advocacy.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the one member of the
Progressive Caucus, at least on the list, he is not in the House but he
is in the Senate, Madam Speaker, Senator Bernie Sanders. He is a self-
avowed Socialist. I know of no one who has tried to rebut his statement
that he is a Socialist. He is a proud Socialist United States Senator.
He remains, I believe, a member in good standing as a member of the
Progressive Caucus over here. Bernie Sanders advocates many of the
things that are on the Progressive Web site, and certainly they are
tied together. I have explained how that works. He is the highest
profile Socialist in the United States of America, and no one has
challenged his position that he is a Socialist. That would be like
someone saying Steve King is not a Republican, Madam Speaker. And so I
take him at his word. Senator Sanders from Vermont is a Socialist. They
have elected him; that is how it goes. I don't like it, but that is how
it goes. I don't dislike him; I just disagree with him philosophically.
But that is how it goes in America.
So he is a Progressive and a Socialist, and we have 77 Progressives
in this Congress. Well, are they Socialists? I think many are. I don't
know if all are. But I know this: if you look at the voting records of
President Obama when he was in the United States Senate serving with
Bernie Sanders, it is clear that President Obama voted to the left of
Socialist Senator Sanders of Vermont, consistently to the left.
So, Madam Speaker, the argument is not what is the ideology of our
President. It is what is to the left of a Socialist. That is the
argument that is out there and what we need to consider and
contemplate. I believe this, that if you want to declare something not
to be Socialism, however it is Socialism, you have to figure out how to
redefine something to the American people. They are smart enough to
know what words mean. They know what Socialism is. They know what
irresponsible overspending is.
They know when a President and a Congress, led by Speaker Pelosi and
Majority Leader Reid, disagree with the will of the American people.
They understand that it is free enterprise that has driven the economy
of this Nation to success, and economically has been the component that
allowed for the United States of America to be the unchallenged
greatest Nation in the world. They understand that the bogged down
economies, managed economies, whether it was central planning in the
Soviet Union that finally collapsed in 1991, or whether it is the
unstimulating economy that has bogged down Western Europe for a long
time, that the vitality in this American economy that keeps chugging
along is rooted in the individual entrepreneurs that are the invisible
hands that are making decisions every day that turns this economy and
makes it move.
We are not about to give up on free enterprise even though we have
people that don't believe in it that own the gavels today, even though
we have a President of the United States and a White House staff and a
lot of the Cabinet that don't understand, nor do they appreciate or
believe in free enterprise capitalism. I doubt if there is anybody out
there in the White House that can say, Yes, I read ``Wealth of
Nations.'' I understand it. I understand the division of labor. I
understand the comparative advantage that Adam Smith wrote about. No,
they understand Karl Marx, but they don't understand Adam Smith.
This is where we are, and it is why we have to push the reset button
in November. This Nation is resilient. We can come back from this. We
have a lot of debt and deficit that we have to pay off. We have a
lowering national image abroad. We have a military that took a serious
reset today, and I pray that it gets turned out for the best.
I think that some of our tasks are very difficult, but finding our
soul is going to be the most difficult one. America will produce and
bring us to a greater level of greatness yet if we find our soul, if we
redefine and identify the pillars of American exceptionalism and chart
ourselves down that path that goes beyond the shining city on the hill
that Ronald Reagan so well spoke of and take us to the level that we
can achieve, that we can see just beyond our horizons now.
Truthfully, I didn't come here to speak about any of the things I
have spent the last half hour discussing. I wrote a number of subject
matters down on a piece of paper, and I would like to refer over. I
mentioned, Madam Speaker, the ObamaCare issue. And here is where we
are. Whether it was 2 months or 3 months ago today that ObamaCare
passed, I think this is a monthly anniversary of that tragic day when
this Congress refused to use its common sense and refused to listen to
the will of the people. Somehow they seem to be shut up here in
Washington, and the constituents couldn't get to them and they hammered
through and force fed an ObamaCare bill on the American people that
today is the law of the land.
There was a cry that went out for almost a year from this country of
the people that said I don't want my health care taken over and
nationalized by the Federal Government. And bills that came in, 1,994
pages dropped on us near the end of October. It was a Thursday, 1,994
pages. We held a quick meeting a couple of hours after the bill was
out. We didn't get a warning. Nobody is
[[Page H4774]]
working with our side of the aisle. This is all drop the ambush on them
if you can. Don't give them time to regroup their forces. We are going
to bring this ObamaCare bill and try to turn it into law.
Well, a couple of hours after it was electronically available, our
very astute staff put together an analysis of ObamaCare. And after that
2 hours, they presented us in the period of about an hour what they
thought was in it in a quick cursory example. They broke it apart in
titles and went down through the titles and told us what they thought
we had. I thought they did a very good job of it, and it was very
accurate. I appreciate the work that was done. We understood this: we
had to kill the bill. We put all kinds of effort into that. People from
every State came to this city to lend their voices in trying to kill
ObamaCare because they wanted to keep their freedom.
{time} 2000
I want to keep my freedom, and I joined with them.
We came very, very close in November, December, right down to
Christmas Eve when Harry Reid, the old scrooge, put the bitter pill out
there on the floor of the Senate and America was force-fed that bitter
pill that took away the liberty of the American people and nationalized
our skin and everything inside it. That passed the Senate on Christmas
Eve, and then it still had to face a cloture vote in the Senate. The
people from Massachusetts rose up and decided they were going to do the
improbable and the impossible, and they elected Scott Brown to the
United States Senate, who said, I will oppose ObamaCare, and he came
here to do just that. And in an unusual and in an unexpected and a
unique tactic, they circumvented the vote in the Senate and shoved a
vote here on the floor of the House on a promise that there would be
another package passed through the Senate.
So we had this scenario that happened. When ObamaCare passed--and I'm
talking about the bill, not the recissions package that came along
afterwards--at the moment that ObamaCare passed, it could not have
passed the Senate. When it passed the House and went to the President's
desk, it could not have passed the Senate. And it did not enjoy a
majority support here in the House unless there was a promise that they
would pass a recissions bill afterwards that would give some of the
holdouts the things that they thought they needed to amend the bill.
So they toyed with the idea of actually amending a bill that hadn't
become law. That was the effort. There couldn't be an honest effort to
put together a bill that was debated and perfected and amended in
committee and on the floor so that it could become the will of the
House or the will of the Senate. Neither the will of the House nor the
Senate was passed that day when ObamaCare was passed. Maybe that's
inside baseball, Madam Speaker, but here's where the American people
are today. Wherever I go in this country I hear people say, ``I want my
country back.'' They have seen this administration--and, yes, some of
it started in the previous administration--but it had everything that
I'm about to list, it had 100 percent support of Barack Obama whether
he was a United States Senator, whether he was the President-elect, or
whether he was the President of the United States, had most of it under
his guidance as President of the United States.
Here's what happened. This Federal Government took over,
nationalized--and when I say nationalized, I mean ownership,
management, or control of--three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie
Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, Chrysler--where am I going? There's
more to this. All the student loan programs in America, all of that
swallowed up by the Obama administration. And I'm going to go through
that, that's one-third of the private sector activity according to
Professor Boyles at Arizona State University, one-third.
And then, along came ObamaCare, which passed. The gentleman earlier
talked about that being 17 percent of our economy. The number I see is
17.5 percent. Well, we're close, we're within half a percentage point,
who really knows? But when I add it up, I added 18 to 31 percent, that
takes us to 51 percent. The question is, whether it's 50.5 percent or
51 percent of the private sector activity taken over by this Federal
Government--three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac,
General Motors, Chrysler, all the student loans in America, now the
nationalization of our bodies, of our health care, taking away a
person's individual choices on how they will manage their health care,
what insurance policies they will buy because, after all, the Health
Choices Administration czar--they call him a commissioner, I call him a
``commizarissioner''--will write the rules later.
There isn't a single health care policy in America that the President
of the United States can say I guarantee that this policy will be
available to you when ObamaCare is implemented, not one. Remember, he
promised America that if you like your health insurance policy, you get
to keep it. He promised that over and over again. It was no guiding
light, it was no promise, except a broken one. And I began to wonder--
there's a Web site out there that's a whole list of all of the broken
Obama promises. It goes on and on and on. I wonder if he doesn't have a
czar that's charged with keeping track of all of the Obama promises and
making sure that he can break every single one of them in his first
term. He's got a great start. But I know the American people don't see
a guarantee and a promise from the President anymore.
If you like your health insurance policy, you get to keep it, I
promise. Well, so what? Your promise means nothing because what we know
today is there isn't a single policy in America that anybody believes
that they get to keep on the other side of the implementation of
ObamaCare.
And so if I'd stitch this back together, the list that I've gone
through--the banks, AIG, Fannie and Freddie, General Motors, Chrysler,
student loans, all of that, a third of private sector activity--
ObamaCare, 17.5 percent of the private sector activity of the health
care swallowed up, taken over by the time this is implemented in 2014.
And so now we're at 51 percent of the former private sector activity
now nationalized, taken over, under the ownership, management, or
control of the Federal Government.
The gentleman earlier talked about Hugo Chavez. I remember seeing a
picture of the President glad handing his handshake with Hugo Chavez
almost a year ago. And I said at the time, when it comes to
nationalizing companies--Hugo Chavez had just taken over a Cargill rice
plant in Venezuela, but when it comes to nationalizing companies, Hugo
Chavez is a piker; he cannot hold a candle to the President of the
United States. And that's just a fact, Madam Speaker, it's not an
embellished fact, it's just a fact.
So today we've lost 51 percent of our private sector activity to the
nationalization of this Federal Government. They have nationalized,
under ObamaCare, our skin and everything inside it. The most sovereign
thing that we have, now we can't manage it the way we managed it
before. It will be that we can only manage our health care in the
future under the permission of the Federal Government. And by the way,
nationalize our skin and everything inside it. And let's just say that
if your daughter is getting ready for the prom or a wedding and she
wants to go to the tanning salon, ObamaCare taxes the outside of your
skin too, to the tune of 10 percent. What is that about? Couldn't they
restrain themselves? Why do something that's so blatant as that that it
embellishes the argument that the nanny state is going to prevail? Are
they really worried about somebody's health?
They wanted to tax a non-diet pop. They want to manage behavior, they
want to control diets. They're involved in an effort to take 1.5
trillion calories out of the diet of kids because one-third of our
youth are obese. And Secretary Gates, I believe, has spoken about this,
our Secretary of Defense, that there is a higher percentage of young
people that don't qualify to go into the military because they've got
too much blubber around their belt, so they can't qualify. I would say
this then: If they're healthy otherwise, bring them in. If they meet
all other standards but they're a little too fat, bring them into basic
training, just keep them there a while longer. By the
[[Page H4775]]
time you run them around the field in combat boots a few more times and
put them on a diet and exercise plan, you'll get them where you want
them to be. They're still good shells of physical specimens, they just
need to be cracked into shape. It doesn't mean we have a national
security problem because too many kids are fat. I think we do have a
problem, though, a nanny security program if this Federal Government is
going to try to control the diets of our kids in this country. Taking
away our liberty, taking away our freedom, disregarding the vitality of
America that comes from our individualism, from being able to make
choices, being held responsible for choices.
So ObamaCare has got to go, Madam Speaker. And there are those who
think, oh, we can't get it done. It's hopeless now, the bill is passed,
let's move on. We need to look ahead, not backwards. Well, listen, if
we're going to look ahead, we have to look backwards and determine that
ObamaCare is a terrible idea. It's an unconstitutional thing, it's an
unconscionable thing to do to a free people.
{time} 2110
America, with its vitality, loses a chunk of its vitality when you
take away our individualism and our liberty, and if people think we
can't repeal ObamaCare, let me lay out this scenario. It works like
this:
Every single Republican voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. There were 34
Democrats who voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. There was only one thing
bipartisan about ObamaCare, and that was the opposition to ObamaCare--
in the House and in the Senate. So ObamaCare is the law of the land,
but the implementation of it doesn't get completed until 2014. That's
when we are really saddled with the juggernaut of this ``taking our
decisions away from us and creating the dependency on people so that
they no longer think about the freedom and liberty of making their own
choices.'' So here is how we repeal ObamaCare.
First of all, there is Michele Bachmann, Parker Griffith, Bob Inglis,
I believe, Jerry Moran--and there may be Todd Akin--and I. Those people
I can think of have all introduced legislation to repeal ObamaCare, a
standalone repeal of ObamaCare that is simply this: A 100 percent
repeal of ObamaCare. Pull it out by the roots. Pull it out root and
branch and lock, stock and barrel so there is not one particle of
ObamaCare DNA left behind. This has become a toxic stew that we have
ingested now, and it is turning into a malignant tumor that will start
to metastasize in 2014 when ObamaCare is fully implemented. So here is
what we do:
Of my bill and others' bills, we have 90-some cosponsors on this
legislation. I have introduced a discharge petition. I think it's
discharge petition No. 11. I'm not certain of the number. I think
that's the number. I've signed it. A lot of others have signed it. A
lot more need to sign it because of this: If a discharge petition gets
218 signatures on it here in the well of the House, it has to come to
the floor for a vote unamended. That means we can force a vote even
over the will of the Speaker of the House, who, surely, would do
everything she could do to resist the repeal of ObamaCare. We could
force a vote, but the process of getting to 218 signatures on a
discharge petition identifies--separates, let's say--the men from the
boys and the women from the girls.
Now, if you really were sincerely against ObamaCare, it's one thing
to vote against it, and 34 Democrats did. Nancy Pelosi let them off the
hook because they were afraid they would lose their seats in their
districts, but who knows how many of them were serious. When we
actually had the motion to recommit on no mandates, on no Federal
mandates to buy insurance, there were only 21 Democrats who voted with
that as opposed to the 34 who voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. So you've seen
the conviction drop by 13 just in that little exchange.
How many of those 21 really have conviction?
We'll find out because the discharge petition is here, and I
challenge those 21. In fact, I challenge those 34--and everybody else
who is opposed to ObamaCare--to sign the discharge petition. Let's
bring that discharge petition to the floor and repeal ObamaCare. Let's
pull it out by the roots. Let's send it over to the Senate. Let's see
what Jim DeMint and others can get done over there. That's what we need
to do here in the House of Representatives.
Now, maybe that doesn't get itself accomplished and get ObamaCare
repealed, because people in America, Mr. Speaker, can think in
sequences, in logical, multiple sequences. All of the solutions are out
there in America. I trust the judgment of our voters. They know this:
If we are successful in getting 218 signatures on a discharge petition
and if we pass the repeal of ObamaCare and if it goes down the hallway
and across, through the Rotunda and over to Harry Reid, of course he'll
do everything he can to kill it.
Maybe they'll find a way to get that done over in the Senate. Then it
would go to the President, and we know what would happen. He would veto
the bill. So it would come back to the House or to the Senate for an
opportunity to override the Presidential veto.
It's not something you would consider to be politically possible
today. Maybe there is an outside chance that it could be possible by
the time we get to November. I doubt it, too--I'm skeptical about
that--but we'll have put the marker down, Mr. Speaker. We will have
separated the women from the girls and the men from the boys with the
discharge petition. We'll have set the stage for the other side of
November, the other side into the next Congress, when, I believe, the
gavels will come into different hands from our side of the aisle, in
which case we can move a repeal of ObamaCare as a standalone, a 100
percent repeal of ObamaCare as a standalone. We can do that. When that
would happen, we would recognize President Obama would veto that, and
we would have to figure out how to come up with a two-thirds majority
to overturn the Presidential veto.
Again, that's a very, very high bar, but this Constitution here in my
jacket pocket tells me all spending has to start here in the House, Mr.
Speaker. All spending has to start here in the House. So a House
controlled with a gavel in the hands of Republicans would simply refuse
to fund any dollars. Any American taxpayer dollars would be prohibited
to be used to implement ObamaCare. That could work really well in a
Republican majority in 2011 and in 2012. So ObamaCare wouldn't be
implemented. It would be sitting there without implementation, and
Republicans would have passed a repeal of ObamaCare at least once
during that period of time, maybe more times. Then we elect a President
in 2012 who takes, as a matter of his campaign and his oath, his number
one priority, which is to sign the repeal of ObamaCare. Pull it out by
the roots.
So I have this vision of a President of the United States taking the
oath of office, Mr. Speaker, with pen in hand: I swear to the best of
my ability to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
United States, so help me God. Pen in hand.
Normally, the President will turn and shake hands with the Chief
Justice and with the outgoing President, and there will be a great
celebration up there on the west portico of the Capitol. I would like
to see him interrupt that for one thing. I'd like to see that pen in
his hand when he takes the oath. I'd like to see the repeal of
ObamaCare right there at the podium on the west portico, right by the
bible that he chooses to take the oath on, and I'd like to hear him
take that oath ``so help me God'' and bring his hand right down to the
document that is the repeal of ObamaCare and sign the repeal of
ObamaCare right there in the first instant of the new administration
that begins on January 20, 2013.
Don't tell me we can't repeal ObamaCare. Yes, we can. We have to move
a discharge petition now. We have to separate the women from the girls
and the men from the boys on that subject. We've got to identify it so
the voters know what to do when they go to the polls in November. When
the time comes that the new majority is here and is being sworn in in
January, probably on January 3 of 2011, we will refuse to fund
ObamaCare, because the funding has to start here, and you can't get
around that. No President can get around that. No Senator can get
around that. The Constitution says it starts here. We control all
spending in this House. There will be no funding to
[[Page H4776]]
fund the implementation of ObamaCare. We hold the line in 2011 and
2012, and we elect a President who will sign the repeal of ObamaCare on
January 20, 2013, right there on the podium at the west portico of the
Capitol. It's right through those doors. Take a left. It's out on the
portico where great events takes place.
That's what needs to happen--the full repeal of ObamaCare. Move this
discharge petition now so we can separate those who are for a
standalone, 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare and those who seem to lack
the will to put their markers down and to be clear with the voters in
America. That has got to happen.
Now, I didn't leave a lot of time for some of the other subject
matters that I felt the urge to address, but I'll go through a list of
them. A lot of them have to do with immigration, Mr. Speaker.
One of them is regarding the Secretary of Labor, who is using our tax
dollars to run ads to tell people: Call this number. If you're legal or
illegal, it doesn't matter. You deserve a reasonable wage, so we'll
protect you with our labor laws. If you're working in the United States
illegally, we're not going to ask you for your Social Security number
or where you were born or what your lawful present status is or whether
you are legal to work in America. If you're illegal and if your boss
isn't paying you a going wage or is not treating you right under
America's labor laws, call us. We'll keep you confidential, and we'll
go punish the employer.
They're spending--it has to be millions of dollars--out of the
Department of Labor budget to tell people who have broken into this
country, who have unlawfully entered the United States or who have
unlawfully overstayed their visas and who cannot lawfully work in
America, that they are going to use the law to punish the employers if
they don't treat them right.
Now, I don't say that an employer should be able to abuse their
employees, but I do say the Secretary of Labor gets this way wrong if
she thinks that she is going to use my tax dollars, Mr. Speaker, or is
going to use your tax dollars to advertise to people working in America
illegally, who are taking jobs away from Americans and from people who
can work legally in this country, and reward them with the objective of
their crimes by bringing the force of the Department of Labor against
their employers.
{time} 2020
I tell you, I don't know where they find these people to appoint them
to the Cabinet. This is one. I want to look at the full text of her
remarks and come on tomorrow with a decision on what position I want to
take. But this is a marker that needs to be down. We don't use American
tax dollars to advertise and reward illegals for coming into this
country. That is a form of amnesty being advertised in the television
airwaves across America, with American tax dollars, at the direction of
the Secretary of Labor; her face up there saying, Trust me. I will
protect you. I won't enforce the law against you.
Amnesty. To grant amnesty is to pardon immigration lawbreakers and
award them with the objective of their crimes. That's what she's
saying. She's saying, We're not going to bring the law against you. We
won't enforce the law. We'll keep your name confidential. Trust us. If
your objective is a good job, we'll make sure we come down on your
employer, not on you. But all the while she knows that anybody working
in the United States illegally had to falsify their identification to
get the job in the first place. And they probably did an identity theft
or purchased the theft product from someone's identity in order to work
in America. That is a serious crime. When someone's identity is stolen,
they never get it back again. It is being implicitly encouraged by the
Secretary of Labor. And that's got to stop, Mr. Speaker.
Now, Arizona law. Let's just say Arizona. Fox News today ran a
story--I think they started it last night in some text that I read--
about the spotters down in Arizona that occupy the mountaintops along
the transportation routes coming up through Arizona. Now what is going
on is drug smugglers, people smugglers, contraband smugglers, occupy
these locations on top of the mountains in Arizona. A lot of mountains
in Arizona are shaped like volcanoes. Some is volcanic, as I notice,
anyway. They come to a point. They're a cone.
And up on top of them--or whether it's a ridge--they will pick a spot
where they can see an intersection of highways coming from two or three
different directions or more, and the employees--these are paramilitary
armed personnel that are organized as a military force taking position,
strategic positions on top of mountaintops in Arizona, and they will
take the stones and they'll stack them around like a gun emplacement
and hunker down with optical equipment and they will watch the traffic.
And they have communications equipment with scramblers and
descramblers in it so they can talk to their people and we can't listen
in on them. We know the frequencies. I've heard it on the radio. I've
flown over there in a helicopter and listened to the excited chatter as
we fly toward some of those mountaintops to try to pick those spotters
off of there before they come off the mountaintop and go hide in the
desert. You can hear the chatter intensify up to a fever pitch and then
all of a sudden it goes dark. Silent. That's because they come off the
mountain right before you get there and they go down and hide.
I have pictures. I have hundreds of pictures from the top of these
spotter locations. These are tactical positions in America. They're
used to facilitate the smuggling of drugs and people, all kinds of
contraband, and some of those people may well be terrorist suspects.
They're from nations that we should be concerned about.
That traffic is going on through Arizona and other States. And these
locations aren't just sitting along the border. These locations go all
the way up the highway. Not just to Tucson. All the way to Phoenix.
They control the transportation routes there. They tell them when to
go, when to stop. They run decoys with a small amount of drugs in them.
When the Border Patrol and other law enforcement officers converge on a
vehicle, they sacrifice one of their people for the means of bringing a
truckload through while they're diverted. That happens. It happens
regularly.
We have a massive number of illegal border crossings. We have
backpackers that are marching through the desert. We have 110-pound
guys with 50-pound packs or more on their back and they march for a
hundred or more miles sometimes. You look at some of those guys with
calves like that on them. They're in shape because that's what they
do--they walk back and forth in the desert and get paid to smuggle
drugs in and out of the United States. And we sit here and we allow
drug smugglers to occupy tactical positions on the tops of mountains,
controlling the transportation routes in America, all the way up to
Phoenix, and we're not able to go snap those people off those mountains
and lock them up or put them through the shakedown and find out who
they're affiliated with.
And we can listen in on the radio, but we can't understand it because
it's a scrambled chatter and their equipment is at least as good as
ours--and maybe better. And they supply them and they bring them food
and drink and other things they need, as well as weapons. And I've been
there to see these locations and optical equipment.
Mr. Speaker, we've got to take the spotters off the top of these
lookout mountains. We cannot have the drug smugglers in tactical
positions that control our transportation routes, however difficult it
is. And there are tactical ways to do this. Our Special Forces know
how. A lot of our law enforcement officers know how. They just need a
mission. And last year I was able to get an appropriations amendment
that directed a million dollars to take the spotters off of the
lookouts in Arizona. And that appropriation went over to the Senate,
where it was killed and died, Mr. Speaker.
So we've got to wake up. We've got to defend this country. We've got
to shut off this border; build a wall; build a fence; stop the bleeding
at the border; take the lookouts, the spotters off the lookout
mountains in Arizona; shut off the magnet on jobs; get back to the rule
of law. Let's reward people that respect the law and punish the people
[[Page H4777]]
that violate the law without regard to race, creed, color, ethnicity,
or national origin. Take it right out of title 7 of the Civil Rights
Act. By the way, without violating Arizona law or Arizona's
Constitution or the United States Constitution or any other State
Constitution, for that matter.
Those are a number of the things on my mind, Mr. Speaker. And I'm
very well aware that within the next 60 seconds I will have reached the
balance of my time. And so I want to acknowledge and appreciate being
recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of
Representatives.
And I would yield back the balance of my time.
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