[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 111 (Tuesday, July 27, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H6140-H6147]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE YEAR IN REVIEW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized to 
address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. It is 
always an honor and one of the reasons I try to come down here often 
and convey the values that emanate from the Midwest; and hopefully some 
of the people across the rest of the country that don't adhere to those 
values can index with the things that we believe in.
  But what I have found out, Mr. Speaker, as I have traveled around the 
country is that we have a tremendous amount of common values, from 
corner to corner of America and up through the Midwest as well. When I 
think of the States that I have been to in helping other candidates in 
trying to convey a message, from the Northeast to the Southeast to the 
South, up through the Midwest, down to the Southwest and off to the 
West, what I have found is that the people that show up, that care 
about our Constitution, the constitutional conservatives, the newly 
energized Tea Party groups that are out there, the 912 Project people 
that

[[Page H6141]]

are there, the independents that aren't affiliated that care a lot 
about America and fiscal responsibility, when they show up, they show 
up with their American flags, they show up with their yellow Gadsden 
flags, the Don't Tread on Me flags; they carry a Constitution in their 
pocket or on their heart; and they know that if this country is going 
to be refurbished and put back together again, that we need to go back 
to the Constitution and this Congress needs to adhere to our oath to 
the Constitution. We have to ensure that our road map, and a road map 
is not someplace out there in Never-Never Land of progressivism that 
has always failed. We have a century and a half of progressivism that 
we can look at that goes clear back to the shaping of those kind of 
ideals in the utopian segments of non-English speaking western Europe.
  We've watched what's happened. They have been at each other's throats 
in wars. They've killed tens of millions of each other. Their economy 
and their industry has collapsed over and over again. They've propped 
it back up. Their growth has been slower than ours. We've provided them 
the global defense from the enemies to enemies that are still lined up 
against each other. The Soviet Union imploded because Ronald Reagan was 
right. He was right because he decided that we could press the Soviet 
Union to the point where their economy would collapse before they could 
keep up with us economically and build themselves up militarily. All of 
that has taken place.
  When we saw the Soviet Union go down, I thought, now it will be 
obvious even to the most leftist American that you can't grow and 
prosper and move on into the 21st century and lead the world 
economically, culturally, politically, militarily, every measure that 
there is, unless you have a free enterprise system.
  Free enterprise. Free enterprise. A simple thing. It's so simple that 
on the flash cards that are produced by USCIS, the United States 
Citizenship and Immigration Services, the services that provide the 
path for legal immigrants to become citizens of the United States. When 
you're training and you're studying to become an American citizen, 
there are a lot of things there. You have to learn a little about our 
history; you have to be able to have a command of the English language 
in both the spoken and written English language; and there are a number 
of questions in the test. And the flash cards that are proposed, that 
stack of flash cards produced by USCIS, Citizenship and Immigration 
Services, glossy flash cards, red cards, about like that, they will ask 
questions. They would be questions such as, Who's the father of our 
country? You snap that card over and the other side says--you know the 
answer, I trust, Mr. Speaker--George Washington. Another one will be, 
who emancipated the slaves? Abraham Lincoln. What is the economic 
system of the United States of America? You flip that flash card over, 
if you study and you want to be a citizen of the United States, and it 
says free enterprise capitalism. How about that? Now that's one of the 
questions we would consider to be basic, rudimentary, something that 
any third grader--well, they may not know that, but a sixth grader 
will; an eighth grader will for sure, or should. It should be taught in 
all of our schools: The vigor and the vitality that comes from free 
enterprise capitalism. It is a basic question. If you want to become an 
American, you have to understand our economic system; free enterprise 
capitalism.
  I wouldn't say that the President doesn't understand the system, but 
I am not convinced that he adheres to the free enterprise capitalism 
system that we have. I have yet to see a single move on the part of the 
President of the United States or this administration or the 
progressive leftists in this Congress, House or Senate, that supports 
the underpinnings of free enterprise capitalism as the engine of our 
economy. And I've seen move after move after move that undermines free 
enterprise, over and over again.
  Nobody over here is going to stand up and say, ``You're wrong, Steve 
King. You're wrong. I'm a free enterprise capitalist.'' You can't say 
that. If you're going to raise taxes, if you're going to raise taxes to 
the tune of something in the area of $1.5 trillion? If you're going to 
be part of a $1.5 trillion deficit on top of it? A deficit that we have 
never seen in this country. And be part of punishing--they say 
punishing the rich. What about the job makers? What about the job 
givers? What about the employers in America? What happens when you 
punish the people that produce the jobs? What about big employers, big 
job givers? Do we punish them?
  Yes, you guys want to do that. You're doing it every day. You're 
advancing regulations. You're advancing taxes. You think that the goose 
that lays the golden egg which is free enterprise capitalism, that 
somehow if you slaughter the goose, you find all of those golden eggs 
inside. Well, it doesn't work that way. It's one egg at a time by the 
economic engine that is out there struggling to make some profit. And 
the people over on this side of the aisle, I wish somebody would stand 
up and tell me that they created a job, that they signed somebody 
else's paycheck on the front, not the back; somebody that had invested 
capital to establish a business, that had a chance to make some profit. 
And out of that, you're only as good as the employees that you have and 
you're not going to make money in business if you don't have good 
employees. So you want to hire the best employees you can hire and get 
the most production out of them that you can. And in today's world it's 
not good enough, Mr. Speaker, to work hard. Hard workers are respected, 
certainly. But this is a technological era. You've got to work hard and 
work smart; do both of those things together. If you work hard and 
don't work smart, you're going to be down there in the lowest income 
levels in America, the under-skilled jobs. And then those folks are the 
ones that are receiving public benefits in greater percentages and 
numbers than anybody else.
  Here's how this works out. And tomorrow morning, Mr. Speaker, I will 
have a guest at the Conservative Opportunity Society, an organization 
that was founded in 1984 by Vin Weber, Newt Gingrich and others for the 
purposes of identifying the roots of our prosperity; the Conservative 
Opportunity Society. I happen to be the chairman of the Conservative 
Opportunity Society. Over the course of the last 6 years or 5\1/2\ that 
I have had the honor of that task, we've had a whole variety of 
excellent educators and speakers that have come forward. Tomorrow 
morning it's Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation.

  Robert Rector is one of those guys who goes back in the back room and 
does that deep due diligence research to try to come up with the 
numbers to quantify and identify what is actually happening in America, 
economically, socially, culturally. Robert Rector is one of the people 
that I think if you take him out of the equation in 2006 or 2007, that 
grand coalition of the President and Teddy Kennedy--President Bush and 
Teddy Kennedy and others--would have passed a comprehensive amnesty 
piece of legislation on us. But Robert Rector gave us the facts that 
showed us the cost to illegal immigration in America. And now he's done 
a new study. This is a new study that identifies what's happening with 
welfare reform in America. This study goes back and looks at that time 
in the mid nineties when this Congress went into showdown mode on 
welfare reform. And for a time the government was shut down because the 
Republican majority in the Congress refused to knuckle under to the 
demands of President Bill Clinton at the time and he demanded that they 
spend more money and he demanded that they not reform welfare, that we 
let people continue to be paid not to work in the same numbers as 
before, because of his sense of compassion. But Republicans persisted, 
and we got a welfare reform bill. In the end, though, they blinked when 
it came down to who was going to give in. It's kind of like a street 
brawl when whoever's standing there when it's over is the one that won. 
Well, in that case Bill Clinton won the final showdown on who would 
give in to put the government back at work instead of leaving them shut 
down.

                              {time}  2000

  But we got some welfare reform. America thinks that there was a real 
model of welfare reform that was accomplished, and some of that was a

[[Page H6142]]

model that came out of Wisconsin from Governor Tommy Thompson, who's 
done an outstanding job in Wisconsin and set a pace here for 
Washington. A lot of that actually was done in the neighboring next-
door Iowa without that level of fanfare, but that came here to the 
Capitol. That's where our federalist system that leaves the decisions 
as much as possible to the State had manifested itself. And the model 
of Wisconsin and Iowa--as some will say, it's a better program even 
than Wisconsin--was reflected here in Washington with welfare reform.
  Well, we thought we reformed welfare in the mid-1990s. But when you 
track the dollars that are handed out in welfare benefits, you look and 
you find out it's not just that handful of welfare components that we 
might think of such as food stamps and rent subsidy and heat subsidy 
and aid to dependent children and some others, but it's 72 different 
programs. And these programs are so myriad in their number and 
disparate in their varieties that it's impossible for a citizen that's 
sitting at home reading the newspaper or tracking--maybe they're 
tracking the Internet now. If you're a student now, you could figure 
this out. Seventy-two different programs, many of them, most of them, 
maybe even all of them, growing.
  And so what we've seen, if you chart the graph, is welfare spending 
was going up. You hit the mid-1990s, the reform came and it leveled 
off, dipped down just a little bit. And then it went up again at a pace 
that accelerated at a level greater to or equal to what it was in the 
mid-1990s, because they added so many programs in, blended so many in 
that it crept in on us before we knew what was going on. Robert 
Rector's nailed that down.
  Now I'm looking forward to hearing him at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning, 
and I hope there will be a good number of Members that will arrive down 
at the Capitol Hill Club at that 8 o'clock breakfast, and we will get 
into this subject matter. This is one of the things, Mr. Speaker, that 
goes on in this Congress that doesn't get any press, that we're back 
behind those doors constantly sticking our nose, our eyes, and our ears 
into programs trying to find ways that we can better configure this 
government, ways we can save money, ways we can get more productivity 
out of the people in this country. And our job, our job, Mr. Speaker, 
is to increase the average annual productivity of our people.
  Average annual productivity. That doesn't mean everybody is going to 
be producing. Some people are going to be in a hospital bed, some are 
going to be in a nursing home, some are going to be shut-ins at home. 
Some will be retired because of their age or maybe they've earned it. 
Maybe they're retired because they have earned the kind of wealth that 
let's them retire. Their capital is still working.
  But we need to have the able-bodied people and the able-minded people 
in this technological era--doesn't always have to be able-bodied; able-
minded--that are contributing to this economy, that are producing 
something on a daily basis, that are proud of what they do, that are 
creative. And when you add that all up, 306 million Americans. And just 
think, if every single one got up every day and did something that's 
constructive and productive in the private sector, how much difference 
that would make.
  Think of this. If we're all on a great ship sailing out across the 
ocean back in the era where you had to grab ahold of the oar and pull 
on the oar to go anywhere, you're in the calms. Sails aren't helping 
you. You can man the sails when the wind is blowing. So if everybody 
goes down there and grabs ahold of an oar and pulls on that oar, you 
sail through the water without a lot of effort. But every time somebody 
let's go of the oar and goes up and sits in the steerage passage, in 
the steerage compartment and watches as the ocean goes by and watches 
everybody else work and pull on the oar, do you know what that does? 
Every time somebody lets go of an oar, it's harder to keep that ship 
going at the same speed. In fact, it must slow down because you've got 
fewer people pulling on this economic engine.
  And the more people that quit and give up or are provided an 
incentive--let's just say it pays the same to pull on the oar as it 
does to sit up there in steerage. Let's just say the food is the same. 
The service is the same. You get a bunk that's just as good. Why would 
you pull on the oar? If you're living as good a life without having to 
go down in the hold and do your share of the work and carry your share 
of the load, why would you do it? Just out of good conscience because 
you like to row the boat?
  Mr. Speaker, that's not the way it works in the real world. Some 
people do like to row the boat. Some people work just out of 
conscience. Some of them give from an altruism from within their heart. 
But that's not what keeps the economy going. What keeps the economy 
going is--it contributes. But what ensures that the economy goes is 
people are rewarded for their labor. People are rewarded for their 
creativeness, for their entrepreneurial spirit, for inventing, for 
producing, and for marketing.
  People that add to this economy need to be rewarded for what they do 
in proportion to their contribution. And only the markets can determine 
that; not some government bureaucrat, not some pay czar, not somebody 
that decides this CEO should get paid X and this CEO should get paid Y. 
Or like the President who can decide this CEO needs to be fired.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm not making that up. That is a fact of history, 
undenied by the President of the United States or any of his spokesmen 
in the White House. The President fired the CEO of General Motors a 
year ago, a little more, fired him. Came out in the press. President 
eliminates the CEO. There was no denial out of the White House. He 
essentially took a bow.
  Remember how many times he said Barack Obama or President Obama or 
just put ``Obama'' in there and then put in quotes in your Google 
search ``I'm the President.'' How many times has he said ``I'm the 
President'' in the last year and a half or a little more? A number that 
I can think of. He constantly reminds us that he's the President. But 
no President in America should ever have the authority to fire the CEO 
of a Fortune 500 company or anything else. Let him fire his own staff. 
Let him fire his own Cabinet. Let him fire his own executive branch 
right on down to the lowest person on the totem pole. That's fine with 
me. That's his shop.
  General Motors and Chrysler were private companies taken over by the 
Federal Government, and the President of the United States fired the 
CEO of General Motors and approved the replacement hire, and he fired 
and replaced all but two of the board members on General Motors. And he 
ordered, his people ordered, the elimination of 3,400 car dealerships. 
Why? Because his car czar and his people in the White House had some 
off-balance idea that, if you eliminate dealerships, you can sell more 
cars.
  Now, I come to this office with, I think, maybe a gift of the common 
sense that comes from the Midwest, and I'm sure that it exists in all 
of the rest of the country, too. But here's what I know from where I 
come from. If you want to manufacture widgets, especially if you invent 
a widget, but if you want to manufacture them--let's just say you go in 
your little shop and you go and create and you manufacture a widget, 
and you decide, ``I can make these things pretty good and I can mass 
produce them, even, so now I want to sell them.'' What would you do? 
Simple. You'd go to the county fairs. You'd go to all of the county 
fairs and you would show these widgets to all of the people walking by. 
And when they stopped and showed a little interest, you'd say, ``Hey, 
I'll tell you what. You should be a franchisee. I want to let you be my 
dealer, and you can take this widget home with you--pay for it, of 
course--stock it in your inventory. I'll give you the material and you 
can sell widgets out of the window of your shop or out of the implement 
lot'' or whatever the widget might happen to be.

  And you would know that if you want to sell a million widgets, you 
can't stand there and sell every one of them. There's not enough time. 
But if you can get enough dealers out there, if you can get 3,400 
dealers out there with enough widgets on the lot, you can sell a whole 
lot more widgets than if you don't have any dealers.
  So do 3,400 less car dealers sell more cars than 3,400 car dealers? 
The answer

[[Page H6143]]

is obviously no. It is a stupid decision to believe that you can 
eliminate car dealers and sell more cars. And what's happened? The 
company that was not dictated to by the White House is the one that's 
selling the cars and growing and turning a profit--Ford Motor Company. 
And I've not been one that went out and bought a Ford as the first 
vehicle. In fact, it's been hard for me to buy a Ford in the past. But 
it's looking a little more attractive to me now because they're 
American cars, American made, that are not propped up by the taxpayers. 
And they're proving what free enterprise does. When you get out there 
and compete, you can build a good product.
  Now, I'm not saying necessarily that I'd go out there and change the 
brand that I currently drive. I'm happy with that. But, Mr. Speaker, my 
point is the White House has been dictating to the private sector. They 
have nationalized and taken over General Motors and Chrysler and three 
banks, three large banks; AIG, the insurance company, to the tune of 
$180 billion; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--this just popped up a couple 
of days ago--in addition to that, the $145 billion that has been poured 
into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prop them up.
  We also have the other agencies--FHA, Federal Housing 
Administration--and some other loans that are rolled down through other 
Federal agencies. The loans that have been issued throughout those 
other agencies, now the no down payment and the very low down payment 
loans, and that means the low down payment of 3\1/2\ percent.

                              {time}  2010

  From 3\1/2\ percent down to zero, that's $1 trillion in loans that 
the Federal Government is the guarantor of, $1 trillion. Fannie Mae and 
Freddie Mac give the taxpayers a contingent liability of $5.5 trillion.
  So what happens if these loans all blow up? That means the taxpayers 
are stuck at 5\1/2\ plus one, and I know the math on that: $6.5 
trillion in contingent liability for the American taxpayers because the 
people that don't understand free enterprise think somehow the only 
reason that somebody that doesn't have an income, doesn't own their 
home, is because nobody's offered them a no down payment loan, and 
somehow they're going to figure out if they don't have any money how 
they're still going to pay mortgage payments on a house.
  Now, that means here's your house, you have no skin in the game, and 
it takes at least 6 months to foreclosure in most of the States on a 
loan like that. Well, who wouldn't take a home? I wouldn't actually, 
but there are many people that would take a home for no down payment, 
you get to live here for 6 months without making payments before we 
figure out how to evict you.
  We had a bankruptcy clawback bill that was brought through the 
Judiciary Committee and here to the floor of the House that exempted 
some people and gave them breaks in whose homes are being foreclosed 
on. And I offered just a simple amendment in the Judiciary Committee, 
and it was this. If someone had defrauded their lender or attempted to 
defraud their lender, they wouldn't be able to take advantage of the 
special provisions in this special bankruptcy clawback law. That 
amendment passed the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Speaker, by a vote of 23-
3.
  But guess what happened? The will of the committee was reflected in 
the vote, the recorded vote, but by the time the bill got to the floor 
the language was changed miraculously. By whom? Well, maybe the staff 
of the Judiciary Committee, with the consent of the chairman of the 
Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, with the complicity of the Rules 
Committee chaired by Louise Slaughter, and I think that at least in the 
silence of it all, within the arrangement of the Speaker of the House's 
method of running this place, Speaker Pelosi.
  So this franchise that as every Member of Congress, each of us that 
represents about 700,000 people in this Congress, we come here to carry 
the values of our constituents, and out among our districts we have all 
the solutions for America. We have all the answers that man and woman 
can devise out there among our constituents, 700,000, I have the 
privilege to represent, added to the other 305.3 million or so that are 
represented by the other 435 Members of Congress.
  We have an information network. We gather input, we gather data, and 
we have those voices coming into my office constantly. That's what we 
do, and it's part of my job to weigh those ideas, place them in the 
right place, get them to the subcommittees, get information before the 
hearings, get them to the subcommittees for the markups, and get them 
to the full committee for the secondary markup, get them to the floor 
with amendments, before the Rules Committee, if it's just that they go 
there, and get this into the debate. If we don't get it solved, we want 
to go down the hallway to the Senate and weigh in over there and use 
whatever kind of influence we have because it's so important that we 
collect the wisdom of the 300-plus million Americans. That's what a 
constitutional republic does. That's what it's designed to do, Mr. 
Speaker.
  But we have a draconian House of Representatives that has shut off 
the input from the citizens of the United States, has shut down the 
process to the point where an amendment can be offered and passed in a 
markup of a bill before a full committee like the Judiciary Committee, 
or the Energy and Commerce Committee would be another example, Mr. 
Speaker, where this has happened on ObamaCare, on cap-and-tax as well, 
where the will of the committee is just ignored and they go rewrite the 
bill and bring it to the floor. They don't say anything to anybody. 
They don't ask permission. They don't ask for a signoff or a consent 
from the people that recorded their vote in support of those 
amendments. They just simply ignore the entire will of the committee or 
defy it and rewrite the bill after the fact and send it to the floor 
without notice.
  And when caught red-handed, their answer is, well, it was so obvious 
we knew you'd catch us. That really gives me a feeling of comfort. How 
many were not obvious, how many didn't we catch when they changed a 
little word like a ``may'' to a ``shall'' or vice versa, something that 
can completely transform the meaning of an entire piece of legislation. 
If you're looking at every word, I suppose you would catch it, it's 
obvious a ``may'' to a ``shall'' or a ``shall'' to a ``may'' or a 
``notwithstanding'' slipped in somewhere or was taken out.
  But it should have the integrity that the will of the group as 
brought out by the chairman of the committee and that decision of the 
committee must be sacrosanct and honored, and it should not ever be 
changed unless it's changed by a vote, not of the Rules Committee, to 
change the language of a bill that goes up there. If there's something 
that's been a mistake or there's a change of opinion, then whoever 
wants to change that conclusion of a committee should have to bring an 
amendment to the floor of the House of Representatives and debate it 
here. That's how a constitutional republic is supposed to work. That's 
how it was designed to work, and in fact, it's dysfunctional if it's 
not run that way. This is a dysfunctional Congress, Mr. Speaker. The 
will of the people is not being reflected in this Congress in many, 
many ways. So this takes me to a couple of issues.
  Cap-and-tax passed this House almost very close to a year ago today. 
Looks like it's balled up in the Senate, and I hope that it stays 
buried there. They will keep trying. That didn't reflect the will of 
the people. That was a high-handed leverage operation, and I won't go 
so deeply into that because I actually don't expect we will see that at 
least before the election.
  And after the election, if there's a lame duck session--and there 
likely will be--it better be just pro forma activity of this Congress 
to get the business done that must be done so this country can 
function, because the people in November will have spoken, Mr. Speaker, 
and their will needs to be reflected after the election. A lame duck 
session that brings transformative pieces of legislation breaks with 
the trust of the American people. It would be a defiant action, and it 
should be met with the defiance of the American people, and anything 
they should try to do in that kind of environment should be repealed, 
and the President of the United States ought to say so. He ought to say 
no transformative legislation should be brought before this

[[Page H6144]]

Congress in a lame duck session. A President that honored the 
Constitution and the will of the people would reinforce that position 
right now and do it today, Mr. Speaker.
  But another one of those pieces of legislation that was brought 
before this Congress that defied the will of the people is ObamaCare, 
and I will just tell you what ObamaCare is. It is what the President 
has identified it. He's referred to it as ObamaCare. I happen to 
remember February 25 at the Blair House this year when President Obama 
talked about this health care plan as ObamaCare. That's the moniker he 
would like to have on it, and that's what he would like to have for his 
legacy. The American people can't have ObamaCare and have freedom too. 
It has to be one or the other. It cannot be both. They are not 
compatible with each other. Freedom and liberty cannot coexist side by 
side with ObamaCare, Mr. Speaker.

  This ObamaCare that was contrived and recontrived and manipulated and 
remanipulated and sent up to the Congressional Budget Office for 
another CBO scoring after another CBO scoring turned logical 
contortionism inside out to get to a conclusion that ObamaCare wasn't 
going to be expensive, and the assumptions that were made defied 
rational thought.
  One of them was, well, we'll save $532 billion by cutting Medicare 
$532 billion. Think of it. Here we are, the senior citizens are now the 
baby boomers arriving at retirement age, and in my district--I have 
Iowa--Iowa has the highest percentage of its population over age 85 of 
all the States, and there are 99 counties in Iowa. Ten of the 12 most 
senior counties in Iowa are in my district, western Iowa, the Fifth 
District of Iowa, which is 32 counties. Draw a line from Minnesota and 
Missouri and put a third of the State on the west side of that, that's 
the Fifth District.
  In those 32 counties, we have 10 of the 12 most senior counties in 
the most senior State in America. So I will submit by that standard 
that I represent the most senior congressional district in America, a 
district that would have most likely the highest percentage of its 
people on Medicare and Social Security.

                              {time}  2020

  This President and his administration proposed and force fed 
legislation on the American people that would slash the already tight 
undercompensated budget of Medicare by $532 billion because of a couple 
of things. One is they allege that there is fraud and corruption and 
waste, fraud and abuse in ObamaCare. We don't know whether that's true 
everywhere in America, but we know or I am confident that it's not true 
in the small towns in the rural areas, especially in the Midwest where 
I happen to have the privilege to serve. And so the idea is slash the 
budget of Medicare and then if you do that it will magically find the 
corruption and the waste and chop it out.
  Well, the people that are involved in gaming the system are the best 
at gaming the system. So those that are simply working on a stable 
budget providing services that aren't waste, fraud and abuse, they are 
likely the ones that get their budget cut because they are not going to 
be gaming the system. They are just honest people that are trying to 
provide services to senior citizens that need the help.
  A $532 billion cut, now here is where we find out also that 
ObamaCare, if you look at the real numbers, the numbers that are 
emerging, it's a trillion-dollar deficit, a trillion dollars over the 
budget projections. We are also seeing that they are putting things in 
place to ration our care; they are putting a CEO in place who is 
convinced that the United Kingdom, their socialized medicine is the 
best plan, worships at the altar of socialized medicine.
  It looks like the British are starting to repeal their socialized 
medicine plan, and we have just adopted one in the form of ObamaCare. 
The American people don't yet know what all of this means.
  The Speaker tells the Americans we have to pass ObamaCare, we have to 
pass the bill, she said, in order for you to learn what's in it. As if 
we can't read 2,300 or 2,400 pages and figure it out. Well, it's true, 
it isn't possible to read the bill and figure it out because you have 
to be able to understand and predict what the bureaucrats will do to 
write the rules in the aftermath, and that is just beginning.
  But here are some things that I have seen and things that I know, Mr. 
Speaker, and that is that the President said he wanted to provide some 
competition into the health insurance industry and the problem was 
there wasn't enough competition for health insurance. So he wants to 
set up a public option. Do you remember that public option?
  His public option would be Federal Government setting up an insurance 
company that would compete with the private sector health insurance 
companies. All right, so if there isn't enough competition, the first 
question the President should have asked and the first question that 
the pundits should have asked would be, Mr. President, do you have any 
idea how many insurance companies, health insurance companies there are 
in the United States?
  If you want one more company to provide more competition, wouldn't 
you at least, before you came to such a conclusion, as the President 
has, wouldn't you ask the simple question, this is like the dumb 
question, how many insurance companies are there in America selling 
health insurance? I know it sounds a little dumb, Mr. Speaker, but 
there are a whole lot of people out there that made decisions on this 
that don't know the answer to this question.
  So I checked it out: 1,300 health insurance companies in America, 
1,300; 1,300 health insurance companies selling insurance in America 
and the President says we need more competition, so let's have a 
government company to compete against--I don't know what's in his head, 
one or three or five or so health insurance companies--1,300, Mr. 
President. That's a far cry from not having enough companies, I would 
say. And if you add one more and it's a government company, it's 1,301 
companies. Is that really the bright, perfect balance number?
  His motive isn't to provide more competition. His motive is to 
replace the private sector. He campaigned early on for the public 
option and also for a single-payer. The President is on record being 
for a single-payer. Single-payer is the government takes care of 
everything. They take care of providing all of the health insurance and 
all of the health care that there is.
  By the way, where they get to the point where they would have a 
monopoly, it would wipe out the insurance component of this by arguing 
that we are wasting money administratively by helping people's health 
insurance policies. Why don't we just give them the health care? Why 
would we tell them you have to own your own policy, carry your own 
insurance card, pay your premium and we will back-fill your account. We 
will subsidize your premium if you aren't making enough money. We will 
tax you if you are making too much money.
  This is a share-the-wealth Robin Hood strategy. The only thing is the 
President's idea that we are not going to increase taxes on anybody 
that is making less than $250,000 a year turns out not to be true. It 
turns out to be false.
  The question that needs to be asked there with the President is, Was 
it a mistake, Mr. President, or was it a willful misinformation to the 
American people? That's the question.
  I remember during the campaign in 1996, when Charlton Heston at the 
time was the president of the National Rifle Association, ran 
commercials against Bill Clinton, the President. Charlton Heston said, 
you know, the question was did President Clinton tell the truth or did 
he lie, Mr. Speaker?
  Charlton Heston's comment was this. He said, Mr. President, if you 
say something that's wrong and you don't know that it's wrong, that's 
called a mistake. If you say something that's wrong and you know that 
it's wrong, that's a lie.
  The question becomes what did the President believe when he repeated 
to the American people that he would not raise taxes on the American 
people if you made less than $250,000 a year?
  ObamaCare raises taxes on many people that make less than $250,000 a 
year. It imposes an individual mandate that requires everybody to buy 
insurance or be fined and punished and penalized for doing the same. 
That's never been a requirement by the Federal Government

[[Page H6145]]

in the history of this country that the Federal Government would 
produce a product or approve a product and compel the American people 
to buy it.
  So if they are going to approve the health insurance policies that 
are produced by, let's say, Wellmark or some other company, we say, we 
like your policy and your policy and your policy and our health choices 
health administration czar, I call him the commaczarishioner, will pick 
some of these 1,300 companies that exist when ObamaCare was passed and 
say, I anoint these policies but you have got to adjust them all to 
match the demand of the rules to be written by the Health Choices 
Administration commaczarishioner.
  Once we approve all this, then it will be a decision of how many 
companies will be left to do business and the Federal Government 
injecting themselves to compete directly against that, and then every 
health insurance policy in America under those standards--
well, actually, every health insurance policy that is effective today 
will be effectively canceled by the Federal Government under the law 
and under the rule.

  They will have to requalify. Actually, they will have to qualify 
under Federal standards yet to be written.
  There is not a single policy in America that the President of the 
United States himself, even if it was at a beer summit back in the 
South Lawn of the White House, of all 100,000 policies in America, Mr. 
Speaker, there is not one that the President of the United States 
himself could pull out of that stack of 100,000 policies. That's a 
pretty deep stack, maybe that high, and point to it and say this 
policy, Mr. or Mrs. American, is your policy and you get to keep it, 
and the substance of the benefits on it will not be changed, and your 
premiums will not increase or be altered dramatically different than 
the markets would normally move it. Not one policy out of any one of 
the millions of Americans that are insured and not one policy out of 
the 100,000 varieties that are out there to be sold can be guaranteed, 
even by the President of the United States.
  The man who fired the CEO of General Motors, replaced the board of 
directors, all but two, reminded us that he is the President and he 
gets to do these things. Maybe he is also the one that has brought 
about the firing or the elimination, the replacement of the CEO of BP. 
I think he would be pretty proud of that if he could get right down to 
the inner soul of who he is.
  But there is not one policy in America that he can point to and say 
this is yours, you get to keep it; the premium is not going to be 
altered substantively and neither will the terms of the benefits that 
are in it, not one. They will all get canceled. All of them that will 
be viable on the other side of the implementation of ObamaCare after 
2014, all have to qualify.
  You know, that's like, that's like going to the racetrack and having 
the fastest car and you have been around and around the racetrack, and 
you set your standards. And when you pull on there with that nice, 
fastest car, and you have got to go back and you have got to run the 
laps and go again and qualify again and again and again, that's what it 
is.

                              {time}  2030

  That's what it is. Everybody's got to qualify. Many won't. Many 
companies will be broke. They will be driven down. A lot of these 
policies will have to be rewritten, premiums will go up, but that's 
also part of the equation. There's more to that. Employers will look at 
the penalty, the 8 percent penalty on payroll, those that employ 50 or 
more, and they will decide, many of them, I can pay the 8 percent 
penalty for not insuring my employees cheaper than I can pay their 
premiums, so why would I knuckle under and comply with a Federal 
mandate when it's cheaper to do something else?
  And then you will have individuals that will be self-employed, those 
who will be working for companies that don't have 50 or more employees. 
Those companies are going to be providing health insurance less and 
less, and those employees that don't have health insurance are going to 
be more likely to just pay the penalty because they know this: They've 
got guarantee issue. They've got preexisting condition language that's 
there. So why would you buy insurance if you could just simply buy the 
insurance when you get sick, on your way to the hospital, in the 
hospital, from intensive care? Sign the application, pay the premium 
like somebody that's completely robustly healthy and pay the same 
premium.
  This is the myopic thinking that comes from the White House and from 
the other side of the aisle. They don't understand how business works. 
They don't understand how insurance works. They understand how 
socialism works, and they're seeking to drag us there.
  Now, I used to refrain from saying such things, Mr. Speaker, but the 
evidence is so replete, and it's a constant out there among the 
American people. They understand this. Some of this actually began at 
the end of the Bush administration--all of this, though, with the 
blessing of now President Obama. But we had a $700 billion TARP program 
that was a mistake; $350 billion of that was passed in the lame duck of 
the Bush administration. And then there was the nationalization of 
three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, General 
Motors/Chrysler, a takeover of the student loan program in the United 
States that not that many years ago was all private. Now it's all run 
by the Department of Education, every bit of it. And if you're 
wondering about this pattern, this isn't something that they don't 
understand. They know what they're doing.
  Back in 1960, 1960, 1961 and 1962, in that era, the only flood 
insurance that you could buy in America was sold at the private sector, 
property and casualty flood insurance. So if you lived in a floodplain, 
you could pay the premium to a private sector company and you could 
protect yourself from floods. But the Federal Government decided they 
would get involved in the Federal flood insurance program and they 
passed that. Just a few years later, there was no longer any private 
sector property and casualty flood insurance in America. There hasn't 
been any for almost 50 years. Almost 50 years since we've had private 
sector property and casualty insurance, because the Federal Government 
got in the business and they couldn't compete well enough in the 
beginning, but then they passed legislation that required that anybody 
that had a loan through a national bank had to buy flood insurance. So 
the flood insurance premiums were compelled as a condition of the loan, 
and so they imposed a requirement to pay those premiums. And over time, 
they pushed out the property and casualty people, the private property 
and casualty people, and the flood insurance program became 100 percent 
Federal Government.
  Now, you can't go out in the market--and for years you have not been 
able to go out in the market--and buy flood insurance. You have to buy 
that through the Federal flood insurance program. And curiously, that 
program is $19.2 billion in the red, Mr. Speaker, and they're looking 
for ways to compel more people to pay premiums because the value of 
those premiums hasn't reflected the risk or else they paid out the 
benefits in such a way. I think it's a combination of the two, but 
mostly the premiums haven't reflected the value of the risk. They 
haven't run their insurance company very well. They're the government, 
after all. And if they fail to meet a casualty, they don't go broke. 
They just run deficit spending or come back to this Congress and ask us 
to borrow money from the Chinese to backfill their business 
inefficiencies, and that's the model.
  So we've got a Federal flood insurance program that is a bust--$19.2 
billion. We've got the student loan program now taken over by the 
Department of Education and done so in the dark of the night as part of 
a reconciliation package that circumvented the filibuster rules in the 
Senate and was attached to the last-minute deals that were made in 
place on ObamaCare. And now we've got ObamaCare, and it will move 
itself towards the nationalization of our health care. In fact, I'd say 
it is the nationalization of our health care, because there isn't 
anybody in America that will be able to manage their health care 
anymore at their own choice.
  The markets will not establish the demand. You will not be able to go 
to an insurance company and, say, if you and a million other people in 
America want to be able to buy low-premium catastrophic insurance--
let's just say

[[Page H6146]]

you're 22 or 23 years old, in robust health and you've got an income 
where you're making $25,000 a year and your employer is not providing 
your health insurance, but you want to be responsible and you want to 
pay for catastrophic insurance and you say, I want to have a $2,500 
deductible premium that only pays catastrophic.
  You should be able to buy that really cheaply in the marketplace. And 
what's going to happen? I guarantee you, it will not exist. It will not 
exist because the community ratings at 3-1 already eliminate 
catastrophic, low-premium health insurance for young people, which 
means they have to pay a disproportionate share of the premium.
  And when they look at that, they wonder, What am I getting back for 
my money? Well, they're getting the privilege of paying somebody else's 
health insurance premium that levels this out a little bit, as if the 
generations has an equal shot at it.
  But here's what happens. Young people that are healthy don't have 
very many health insurance and health care claims. Their premiums 
generally have reflected the risk in the States where the States allow 
them to do that, and it's many--in fact, it's most. But under 
ObamaCare, with the 3-1 community rating, now that premium can't be 
anything less than one-third of the highest premium that's charged out 
there.
  So if you have somebody with, let's say, a bad health record that you 
would charge a high premium to, your low-income guy has got to 
subsidize the high-claims guy. And the world doesn't sit there just so 
that a younger person with low health care claims can't afford to pay a 
lot more premium than that. Well, they're not a lot more risk than that 
either. But somebody that gets on upwards to their income peak earning 
level--I don't know what that number is but I'm just going to say 55 
just to pick a number. Your income earning capacity increases 
throughout your lifetime to a certain point and then it tends to level 
off as people start to retire. So let's just say mid-fifties. That's 
the time also that health tends to cost more, in the aftermath of the 
mid-fifties. So the premiums go up, and that's a higher income time of 
life.
  Why would we go down to the younger people and discourage them from 
buying insurance, people that will drop off and pay the penalty instead 
of the premium because we've rigged the game in favor of the people at 
the upper age group and the upper claims group of this? Again, it 
defies logic.
  We could go on and on about how bad ObamaCare is, Mr. Speaker, but I 
just want to make this point. I brought legislation to repeal 
ObamaCare. I could not sleep the night this passed. I typed up a 
request for the bill draft and I sent it to leg. counsel at the opening 
of business that morning. It was a Monday morning. That draft came back 
to me completed in legislative form within 3 minutes of the time that 
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's repeal bill also came down. Within 3 
minutes. Each of them were 40 words. They were verbatim to each other, 
pieces of legislation that were pure in their simplicity, 2,000-plus 
pages of ObamaCare ripped out by the roots, lock, stock and barrel if 
we pass this legislation that is so simple that repeals all of 
ObamaCare, 100 percent of ObamaCare, lock, stock and barrel, not one 
vestige of it left behind, not one particle of ObamaCare DNA left 
behind.
  It has become a malignant tumor in our society. It is metastasizing 
as we speak, and it has got to be repealed. Every single word of it, 
every component of ObamaCare has got to be repealed. Michele Bachmann's 
legislation does that. Mine does that. Connie Mack's of Florida repeals 
it. Also, Parker Griffith's of Alabama, Bob Inglis of South Carolina, 
all--those are the ones I can think of. I think Jerry Moran will be 
another one--have introduced legislation that repeals ObamaCare, all of 
it, lock, stock and barrel. That needs to happen, Mr. Speaker, if we're 
to have our liberty back, if we're to have our freedom back. If we're 
to have our American vitality back, it's got to go, all of it.
  Now, what I have done is worked that legislation pretty hard. I ended 
up with 89 signatures, and I'm still taking more if they will sign them 
on, to the repeal legislation.

                              {time}  2040

  Most of those people who signed onto my bill I asked to sign onto the 
bills of the others, especially onto Michele Bachmann's, because she 
had worked it so hard, but it ended up there were a few more signatures 
on my bill than on the others, so I introduced a discharge petition 
some 5 or 6 weeks ago.
  A discharge petition, Mr. Speaker, is the one single tool that the 
disenfranchised majority opinion in this Congress can use to bring 
legislation to the floor over the will of the Speaker of the House, 
Nancy Pelosi. Any other method that we might have to move legislation 
here in the House is blocked by the iron fist of the Speaker. Any 
legislation we try to move through committee will go nowhere. No matter 
what the support is for a bill, if the Speaker doesn't want it to move, 
it doesn't move. If you want a hearing for a piece of legislation 
before a committee, you will not get that hearing. If you want a markup 
before a subcommittee or a full committee, you will not get that 
markup. The Speaker will decide whether it moves or whether it doesn't. 
It is an iron fist, a draconian hand, that shuts down the opportunity 
for the will of the people to be manifested in a recorded vote on the 
floor of the House of Representatives.
  There is only one tool--only one tool, Mr. Speaker--and that is a 
discharge petition. It is there to give relief for the will of the 
people in America reflected in this republican form of government that 
is guaranteed to us in the United States Constitution.
  It is a discharge petition.
  When a bill has been introduced here into the House and has been 
allowed to cure for a minimum of 30 legislative days, then it can be 
converted into a discharge petition on file right over here with the 
Clerk of the House, and that requires a signature on that document and 
an initial of the Members of Congress who support it. Now, those 
signatures are accumulated here on this discharge petition, Mr. 
Speaker, and it is discharge petition No. 11 that repeals 100 percent 
of ObamaCare. That discharge petition that is on file has my signature 
at the top. It has Michele Bachmann's right there with mine and with 
Connie Mack's at the top, and it goes right on down the line.
  When I first filed it, some of the critics out there in America said, 
Well, there's an act of frustration. He won't be able to get anything 
done on this. They aren't going to sign onto that discharge petition.
  Well, we can take a look and see what has happened today, Mr. 
Speaker. In fact, we can check it currently, and I might be able to do 
that, actually, on the fly. We are at least at 159--I think at 160--on 
the discharge petition. When we get to 218, then we will be able to 
bring that bill to the floor for an up-or-down vote. No amendments. It 
cannot be blocked by the Speaker of the House. That is what a discharge 
petition does.
  Let me see. There we go. I'll get this going and try to give you a 
report, Mr. Speaker.
  This discharge petition No. 11 is here in the well. Republicans have 
lined up to sign that petition, and they have done so repeatedly and 
consistently. It is a logistical difficulty to get that many people to 
go to the well and sign a discharge petition, but we are up to 159 or 
160 on this petition, and there are others who have agreed to sign.
  Of the Republicans, Mr. Speaker, there are only 14, by current count, 
who haven't either signed this discharge petition or haven't agreed to 
sign the discharge petition. All of the elected leadership has signed. 
In fact, I am seeing a notice here that all of the appointed leadership 
has signed. The entire leadership team has agreed to sign the discharge 
petition. Actually, the entire leadership team on the Republican side 
has signed the discharge petition. That's 100 percent support by the 
leadership team and by the Republican Conference. That is Leader 
Boehner. That is Whip Eric Cantor. That is Republican Conference Chair 
and master communicator Mike Pence. That is everybody along the line 
who you will see who line up at the microphones to lay out our 
Republican policy.
  One hundred sixty of us altogether have signed. There is at least 
another four who have agreed to who haven't quite made it down here to 
put their John Henrys on the discharge petition. That is very, very 
close to a full court effort here in the House, and I think

[[Page H6147]]

that the Republican numbers have an opportunity, by the end of this 
week, to be signatories on the discharge petition, totaling perhaps all 
but maybe four who have a little difficulty getting there. I'm 
expecting that we'll have a chance to get to that point, and maybe, 
just maybe, on the best day, every Republican will have signed the 
discharge petition. I hope we get there because here is what it is 
about, Mr. Speaker.
  Thirty-four Democrats voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. Every single 
Republican voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. It was universal. Every 
Republican opposed it and 34 Democrats opposed it. Why did they vote 
``no''? That question is out there. The American people are wondering 
this, Mr. Speaker. Why? Did they oppose ObamaCare? Did they do so on a 
philosophical basis? Was it a policy question?

  Every one of them would like to tell you it's a policy question. 
Well, is it ever a policy question in some of their cases? I think 
we're going to find out. Were they voting ``no'' on ObamaCare because 
the Speaker of the House said, ``I don't have to have your vote. Go 
ahead and vote `no,' and then you can posture yourself back in your 
district as someone who is against ObamaCare and as someone who is not 
necessarily doing the bidding of the Speaker of the House from San 
Francisco''?
  Well, this San Francisco agenda has been driven through this House 
because every single Democrat voted for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker--every 
one. All 34 of those Democrats who voted ``no'' on ObamaCare voted for 
Nancy Pelosi.
  So, when you think about how this fits together, if they voted for 
Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, they enabled the San Francisco agenda to be 
driven through this House of Representatives. That includes cap-and-
tax. It includes ObamaCare. It includes Barney Frank's financial reform 
legislation that sets the Federal Government up to be in a position to 
take over our lending institutions, or at least the larger ones if they 
decide to do so. All of that agenda and more has been driven by the 
Speaker of the House--Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco, a San Francisco 
agenda imposed upon America--because every Democrat voted for Nancy 
Pelosi for Speaker.
  Now they'll be going back home at the end of this week, and they're 
going to say, I voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. It was a tough vote on cap-
and-tax. I was doing something because I had a little nuance here.
  I know one Member of Congress, who is part of the Iowa delegation, 
who said, Well, I think the bill has gotten better here in the House, 
and I'm going to vote for cap-and-tax because I think they're going to 
fix it down the hall in the Senate.
  You'd sell out your franchise like that? If you had any leverage to 
fix anything, you just lost it when you voted for it and sent the bill 
down to the Senate. You stand here, and you hold your vote ``no.'' You 
don't hold your nose and vote ``yes'' and say you've done something 
responsible.
  Where we are, Mr. Speaker, is this: ObamaCare has got to be repealed. 
There are 34 Democrats who said they were opposed to it who will have 
an opportunity to prove it right here at the well by signing discharge 
petition No. 11. Thirty-four Democrats voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. If 
they are sincere, they will sign the discharge petition. They will be 
added to the Republicans who have signed it and to those who will. 
There will be more tomorrow, and there will be more the next day. I can 
guarantee that, Mr. Speaker. When we get to this point, we will find 
out the separation between the women and the girls and the men and the 
boys.
  Were they for the repeal of ObamaCare? If they opposed it in their 
votes, they shouldn't be for it in policy today. If they are going to 
duck and cover and try to have it both ways, a discharge petition will 
help separate that. In fact, it will separate it, and the American 
people will know the difference. We will gavel out of here perhaps on 
Thursday night, and most every Republican will have signed the 
discharge petition. I am hopeful there will be a handful of Democrats 
who will step up to it, who will take a stand and say, I really meant 
it when I voted ``no'' on ObamaCare, and I'm going to put my signature 
down here on this discharge petition, which commits them to voting for 
the repeal of ObamaCare if we get 218 signatures and it comes to the 
floor.
  That is being honest with America. That is sending a message out 
across America. It is giving the constituents in each of these 
congressional districts an opportunity to take a look at the real 
record, an opportunity to evaluate the real positions of the Members of 
Congress--not the smoke and mirrors version, not the duplicity, not the 
straddle-the-fence version, but the real version, which is, if you 
voted ``no'' on ObamaCare, you'd better be for the repeal of ObamaCare. 
If you voted ``yes'' on ObamaCare, you might want to reconsider and 
sign the discharge petition anyway because it is bad policy. It is 
lousy policy. It can't be afforded. In no way can it be calculated to 
fit within anything that we might be able to sustain. It is 
unsustainable.
  It is unforgivable to do this to the American people and to take away 
our freedom to manage our health care--to go out in the market and buy 
the health insurance policy that we want.
  There are many things we can do for reform. There are many things we 
have tried to do for reform. We sent some of them over to the Senate 
when the Republicans were in charge here in the majority, and they got 
locked up with the trial lawyers in the Senate. We are going to have to 
roll the trial lawyers. That has to happen in this next Congress and in 
the Congress after that, Mr. Speaker, but we cannot tolerate a Congress 
that drives up the spending in America, one that runs in a $1.4 
trillion or $1.5 trillion deficit. That is 10 times the average deficit 
under George Bush.

                              {time}  2050

  And still they stand up and say, Bush's fault, Bush's fault. Bush's 
fault?
  $140 billion deficit under Bush. Now, I'd like to have balanced the 
budget, and I voted for a number of balanced budgets and I'll keep 
doing that. And I'm an original cosponsor of the balanced budget 
amendment.
  But, Mr. Speaker, to equate a $1.4 trillion deficit and $1.8 trillion 
deficit coming the year behind that, and to equate that to a $140 
billion deficit, it defies any rational thought, Mr. Speaker.
  And I hope that I have conveyed some rational thought for you 
tonight, and I'm glad that you paid attention.

                          ____________________