[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 8 (Thursday, January 20, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H386-H390]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         REPEAL OF HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
30 minutes.

[[Page H387]]

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the honor to be 
recognized here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
  Listening to my colleagues in the previous hour has been very 
interesting to me and, I think, informative to the American people at 
the same time. We are here now today, the first day after the House has 
voted to repeal ObamaCare.
  I noted yesterday, although not in the Congressional Record, Mr. 
Speaker, that yesterday, the day of the big vote that came up, that 
passed the repeal of ObamaCare here in the House, was the 1-year 
anniversary of the election of Scott Brown from Massachusetts to the 
United States Senate.
  I would like to take you back, if I could, Mr. Speaker, to that time. 
Where we were a year ago today, 13, 14, 15 months ago. In fact, I would 
like to dial us all the way back to, let's say, the beginning of August 
of 2009.
  That was the time that the town hall meetings lit up all across this 
country. And as we watch and the intensity of the issue of the health 
care policy unfolded before us here in the House of Representatives, 
the national debate, the media debate, the talk in the coffee shops and 
across the backyard fence and in our churches and in our daily lives 
was focusing on health insurance and health care policy in America.
  I would remind you, Mr. Speaker, and those listening into this 
conversation we are having, that the President of the United States had 
consistently said that we were in an economic downward spiral. We were 
in a bad economic fix.
  If you remember Henry Paulson coming to this Capitol on September 19 
of 2008, and telling us that he needed $700 billion right now without 
any strings attached to solve what he predicted could likely be the 
collapse of credit and currency globally, and this Congress, over my 
objections, most vociferous, and votes, did send that money to Henry 
Paulson; and some of it got spent the way he intended to.
  But this fear of this economy brought about to some degree an 
increase in the number of Democrat seats in the House of 
Representatives, and it contributed to the election of Barack Obama as 
President, and he has said that he inherited some of the worst economic 
times ever.
  And the President of the United States told this country over and 
over again we are in an economic problem and a downward spiral, and he 
said, first, we couldn't fix the economy unless we first fixed health 
care in America. So he made that an issue that went into the middle of 
the economic calamity, conditions that we had.
  I didn't accept that analysis; but he also said that the problem with 
health care was we spend too much money in relation to other countries 
in the world, in relation to the overall size of our economy, in 
relation to the individual dollars that are spent on individual 
patients.
  There is some degree of truth to that, in fact, I think a significant 
degree, but in areas that the President didn't want to address. So he 
said we have to fix our economy, and we can't fix it unless we first 
fix the problem with health care. That includes when they use that 
term, that means health insurance and health care all together. They 
have conflated those two terms.
  His solution for spending too much money on health care was spend a 
lot more money on health care.
  And now we have an ObamaCare piece of legislation that has been 
pushed through this House, and we had to vote to repeal yesterday, that 
spends a lot more money. Mr. Speaker, you don't solve the problem of 
spending too much money by spending a lot more money.
  That would be the health care equivalent of Keynesian economics, 
wouldn't it, Mr. Speaker, Keynesian economics being that philosophy of 
John Maynard Keynes, who was an economist and a very influential one in 
that period of time when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to be 
our President of the United States, and a similar economic time of 
downward spiral. Their belief was that you could borrow money and send 
that money out into the public and get people to spend that money; and 
if you do that, it would stimulate the economy.
  In fact, John Maynard Keynes, perhaps facetiously, in fact--I believe 
it was facetiously--but I think it's worthy to tell the story that he 
told--he said, I can solve the economic problems here in the United 
States. I can solve the unemployment in America by doing this, go out 
to an abandoned coal mine, drill a whole bunch of holes out into that 
abandoned coal mine. Fill those holes up full of cash, U.S. greenbacks. 
Then fill the abandoned coal mine full of garbage.
  Now think of that image, Mr. Speaker, an abandoned coal mine with 
holes drilled in a random pattern all across the face of the abandoned 
coal mine, deep holes shallow holes, big holes, small holes, fill them 
full of cash. Then backfill the holes, fill the abandoned coal mine up 
with garbage.
  Then he said, turn the entrepreneurs loose. The entrepreneurs will go 
in--now I have to fill in the blanks, because that's the only part of 
the quote that I know--the entrepreneurs would then go in and start to 
dig the garbage out, haul garbage out to make way to dig into the holes 
to come up and pull up the cash. Somebody has to support the industry 
of the people that are hauling the garbage out and digging back down 
into the holes.
  Somebody has to exchange the cash, the garbage-covered cash for clean 
cash. It's like an industry that would begin in a similar way that a 
gold-mining town might begin if somebody discovers gold in Colorado, 
California, or maybe even Iowa one day.
  But the idea was if you could get money into people's hands, they 
would spend it and it will create multiple iterations of an economic 
activity; and John Maynard Keynes believed that would stimulate the 
economy. The President believes this also, our current President, Mr. 
Speaker.
  He told us that on February 10, 2009, when he spoke to the Republican 
Conference; and he said that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal 
actually did work, that it was working. But it was in the second half 
of the 1930s President Roosevelt lost his nerve. He got too concerned 
about spending too much money and he pulled back.
  And in pulling back, that brought about, according to our current 
President, a recession within a depression. And unemployment numbers 
went up in the second half of the 1930s because they should have 
borrowed and given away and spent more money at the Federal Government 
level.

                              {time}  1320

  And he convinced me on that day that this President would not make 
that mistake. And we're talking, Mr. Speaker, all within the confines 
of Keynesian economics, which I want to make it very clear I completely 
disagree with that philosophy. The President does not. And he did not, 
by his view, make the mistake that FDR did. He has continued to push 
for more borrowing and more spending and growth in the debt and the 
deficit. And we continue to see unemployment numbers that push at 
double digits, 9.8 percent, then down to 9.4 percent. And it looks like 
that may be a permanent condition until we can get free enterprise to 
kick back in again.
  But this is the approach economically. The President sees this in a 
downward spiral when he takes the oath of office and goes out and 
pushes to spend more and more and more money.
  And, yes, Mr. Speaker, there will be those who are sitting at home or 
perhaps in the gallery who are thinking, but some of this started under 
George W. Bush's Presidency. And it did, Mr. Speaker. But it was all 
supported by Barack Obama. And it was significantly accelerated after 
the election and the inauguration of Barack Obama.
  And so his approach to solving the economic problem was borrow more 
money, spend more money, drive this Nation into debt believing that he 
could stimulate an economy that somehow would come back and pay the 
taxes to offset the interest and the overhead that this government now 
has. That's the Keynesian approach.
  Well, he used the same approach when it comes to health care, the 
Keynesian approach to health care, which is this thought: we spend too 
much money on health care. We can't afford it. We have too many people 
uninsured. So let's go out here and impose a health insurance policy on 
another 32 million or 47 million Americans and send the IRS in to 
enforce the law so that they compel every American to buy a health 
insurance policy

[[Page H388]]

that is either produced or approved by the Federal Government. 
Remember, the President wanted the public option. The President is on 
record in previous years of being for a complete takeover of the health 
insurance industry which implies the complete takeover of the health 
care industry in America.
  They had the debate during the nomination process between Barack 
Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton carried the best credentials 
of her proposals on health care into that campaign. Barack Obama had to 
offset her strong liberal health care credentials with some of his own. 
That's what ginned this up. This is what convinced America that we were 
in a health care crisis, and the President grabbed it and went into the 
arena of an economic crisis using the Rahm Emanuel philosophy which is 
``never let a crisis go to waste'' and sought to bring about the 
beginnings of socialized medicine here in the United States.
  That's the foundation and the backdrop for what we have; and that 
brought about town hall meetings in August of 2007 and early September, 
I would add, that were jam packed all across this country. My town hall 
meetings have never been so full. I had some that were standing room 
only. Senator Grassley in the same area that I represent had to take 
one of his meetings outdoors because there wasn't room for people 
inside the huge building that they had set aside for the town hall 
meeting. That's just a part of Iowa, but that's a snapshot of the 
broader picture of the entire United States.
  There was intensity. We saw it. We saw it in YouTube. We saw it in 
the news. We saw Senator Specter I will say getting a message delivered 
to him utterly clearly in his town hall meetings. We saw Members of 
Congress that were, to some degree, disrespected in their town hall 
meetings, which I regret.
  We also saw many, many Members of this House and the Senate that did 
jam-packed town hall meetings and listened to constituents for hours on 
end and did tele-town halls on the phone so those that couldn't or 
didn't come out had an opportunity to weigh in. We read the mail. We 
took the phone calls. We took the emails and the snail mail, all the 
messages that we could.
  Wherever I went, the subject of health care was brought to me 
starting intensively in August of 2009, carrying throughout the fall of 
2009. And as the subject came to this floor and was voted on on 
November 7 of 2009, that was a Saturday night, when this House passed 
the House version of ObamaCare over the strongest of objections, the 
5th of November, 2009, tens of thousands of people poured into this 
Capital City, Mr. Speaker, to peacefully petition the government for 
redress of grievances in a very constitutional fashion.
  They were out there in red, white and blue, all the colors of the 
rainbow, so to speak, making their own signs. They were here on their 
own dime. They came from every single State. And we know they came from 
every single State. I've talked to people from most of those States, 
and the States that had a gap. For example, I didn't talk to anybody 
from Hawaii. Well, why do I say they come from every State? I met 
people from Alaska. People from Hawaii went to Michele Bachmann's 
office as she was out working against the ObamaCare bill and presented 
and laid on her desk a lei that they brought from Hawaii. They came 
from every State to peacefully petition the government for redress of 
grievances exactly in a constitutional fashion.

  Fifth of November, 2009, on a Thursday we did a huge press conference 
out on the West Lawn of the Capitol with numbers of people that ranged 
in the 30,000 to 40,000 people, small side, up to perhaps 50 to 60,000 
people, outside, calling for this Congress to listen to them, to keep 
this Congress' hands off of their health care.
  Well, still their hearts were hardened; and we had another press 
conference the following Saturday just 3 days later that had thousands 
of people at it. And still on that Saturday night they brought a vote 
to the floor that moved the ObamaCare legislation out of the House of 
Representatives, down the Hall all the way through the end of the 
Capitol into the United States Senate. That was November 7, a Saturday 
night of 2009.
  And the Senate took it up, and they were looking for a way to, I'll 
say the Majority Leader Harry Reid and others, were looking for a way 
to pass ObamaCare in the Senate. And as the maneuvering unfolded, it 
came to Christmas Eve, Mr. Speaker. On Christmas Eve, most of the 
procedural maneuvers that the Republicans had in the Senate were 
exhausted Christmas Eve day. They had 12 more hours that they could 
have used to delay the vote and 12 more hours of debate that could have 
been extended. But they decided to shake hands with Harry Reid and 
allow ObamaCare to come to a vote on December 24 about 9 a.m.
  Well, that let everybody get a plane ticket to go home. I wanted them 
to use every single minute to delay it until as long as they possibly 
could until 9 o'clock Christmas Eve night. And we know there aren't 
planes flying out of this town anymore after that. I would have thought 
if anybody wanted to impose that version of socialized medicine on the 
American people, if they wanted it, they believed in it that strongly 
that they had to do it on Christmas Eve morning, they could have just 
as well done it Christmas Eve night at 9 o'clock and spent their 
Christmas here in Washington D.C. after they put that great big lump of 
coal in our stocking, the stocking of the American people.
  When I saw that, that was a tactic that energized me more. And I 
asked one of the well established and very respected Republican 
Senators what do we do now. What do we do now? Where is our next line 
of defense? We had 12 more hours. We could have fought this. His answer 
was, pray, and pray for a victory in the special election in 
Massachusetts. That was my email back on the morning of December 24 
from that exchange. And I thought, I don't think I have the audacity to 
pray for an intervention in a Senate election in Massachusetts. How 
could there possibly be a Republican victory in Massachusetts? We know 
the politics of Massachusetts, and it's 100 percent Democrats--was--in 
each of their eight congressional seats and in their two Senate seats 
and had been for a long time. So I thought about that and deliberated 
on it and thought, that's the only real choice that I have.
  And I found myself in Massachusetts the last 3 days of the Scott 
Brown election; and I found a lot of patriots in Massachusetts, 
residents of Massachusetts, tea party groups, constitutional 
conservatives, 9/12 Project people, independents that are 
constitutionalists with a cause and discerning Democrats that have come 
over from the other side. I met a couple that had always walked the 
streets for Democrats, a union couple, both husband and the wife. And 
they told me that they were done, that they were working for the 
Republican side, and they would always stay on the Republican side.
  I met people there with the deepest amount of patriotism and went to 
look at Plymouth Rock. And there, of course, in Boston Harbor was the 
real Boston Tea Party. And why would I have thought that the State that 
could launch the Revolution and have an actual real tea party, why 
would I have thought that the Bay State couldn't deliver us a measure 
of defense and relief from ObamaCare?
  And so yesterday--I do the fast forward point now, Mr. Speaker--but 
yesterday here on the floor of the House of Representatives was the 1-
year anniversary from the election of Scott Brown. And I don't think 
anybody said it into the Record, but this Congress, having gone through 
all of that and seen 87 freshman Republicans elected, the majority turn 
over, and the American people rise up and send their message in the 
fashion that was imagined by the Founding Fathers themselves, that this 
would be the quick reaction body here in the House of Representatives, 
voted on the anniversary of the election of Scott Brown--which we 
thought saved us from ObamaCare and ultimately did not--but voted to 
repeal ObamaCare lock, stock and barrel with no vestige of it left 
behind, to remove that malignant tumor before it could metastasize and 
consume the liberty of the American people.

                              {time}  1330

  Now, that vote yesterday on repeal, and I mentioned to my family and 
some people around that I should have been euphoric and I should have 
been

[[Page H389]]

ready to dance the jig. Truthfully, it was satisfying; it was pleasing. 
I had a good feeling about what we had accomplished, but it is maybe 
similar to climbing a mountain, and when you get up there into the 
altitude and you have reached a place along the way to the summit and 
the altitude gets a little thin and the effort to get to that point is 
so great, that effort, that energy that it drains off also drains off 
some of the euphoria. And if you look up at the balance of that peak 
and you see you have to scale some pretty steep cliffs to get there, 
and even though you can see the path and you know you have the ability 
to do it, you don't feel that euphoria as you go up in the same way you 
might as you imagined the climb in the first place. And that is how it 
was here yesterday. You didn't hear a noise come up out of the 
Republicans on this side. We were respectful of people on the other 
side of the aisle. We have a legitimate disagreement and a difference 
of opinion. But the American people have spoken. They filled up this 
side of the aisle, and every Republican, every freshman that I know of 
ran on the repeal of ObamaCare. It was a big vote for them yesterday, 
and it is keeping faith with the American people.
  But the better way to describe this vote yesterday to repeal 
ObamaCare, I think, was described by Winston Churchill at the beginning 
of the Battle of Britain, and I should have checked the history book, 
but it was in the early part of World War II. Winston Churchill, 
speaking to brace up the British people in the war against the Nazis, 
said: ``Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the 
end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.''
  I think that is where we are in the repeal of ObamaCare, Mr. Speaker. 
It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning that we accomplished 
yesterday, and now we have a long, hard slog, to quote a previous 
Secretary of Defense whom I greatly respect, and that long, hard slog 
amounts to this:
  The resolution that passed today directs the committees to begin the 
project of writing replacement language, shaping bills and legislation 
for replacement language so that we can apply free-market ideals, 
constitutional ideals, protect the doctor-patient relationship so that 
we address the abusive lawsuits that are driving up the cost of health 
care, both in two forms: the cost of litigation and the money that goes 
to trial lawyers, as well as the cost of defensive medicine and 
unnecessary tests as doctors try to avoid and minimize the potential 
for lawsuits. Actually, there is a hearing going on in the Judiciary 
Committee that I left to come over here to deliver this message, Mr. 
Speaker.
  We will do all of those things, and the work has started here in the 
House. On top of that, though, we must, as the appropriations process 
unfolds, we must unfund ObamaCare. It is a constitutional method to put 
a stop to the development of authorized legislation. It would freeze in 
place the development of ObamaCare until such time as we can complete 
the repeal.
  Mr. Speaker, I am for and will work to put language in every 
appropriations bill that prohibits the use of those funds for the 
purposes of implementing or enforcing ObamaCare; and to do that on 
every appropriations bill, especially the bill that will come here near 
the end of February that is necessary to keep our government 
functioning beyond the expiration of the continuing resolution, which 
is March 4, coming up in a month and a half or a little better.
  We will put language in that continuing resolution that we likely 
will have to extend this funding. It doesn't have to be for the 
duration of the fiscal year. If it is for a month or 2 months or for 
the balance of the fiscal year until September 30, that is fine. But 
every appropriations bill must have the language in it that shuts off 
the implementation or the enforcement of ObamaCare and prohibits any 
funds that were heretofore appropriated from being used for the same. 
That is the language we need in each appropriations bill.
  If we do this, then the President of the United States will, at a 
certain point, need to sign an appropriations bill to keep the 
government funding. He will have to agree with the people of America 
and the voice of the House of Representatives. I also think he has to 
agree with what I believe is the majority in the United States Senate, 
Mr. Speaker.
  The majority leader in the Senate said that the bill is not coming 
up. The repeal of ObamaCare is not coming up in the Senate, that he 
will block it, that he won't bring it up. I think his job is to bring 
out the will of the Senate, to reflect the will of the Senate, because 
the people in the Senate are the representatives of the people of the 
United States of America.
  Every Senator over there would agree with me in this: Their 
constituents deserve every bit as much representation as Harry Reid's 
constituents do. When one Senator holds the rest of the Chamber up for 
his own personal will, for his own political agenda, and doesn't allow 
the will of the Senate to be reflected, that happens in certain 
leveraged positions over in the Senate, and the nuances of that are not 
something that I want to comment on.

  But I will comment on this tonight, Mr. Speaker, that I will 
challenge the majority leader in the Senate this: Put the repeal of 
ObamaCare up on the floor of the Senate for a vote. Give the American 
people a vote in the United States Senate. Let them hear where everyone 
of the United States Senators are. Put them on record. If they like 
ObamaCare so much, vote against the repeal. If you stand where I do, 
vote to repeal it. I predict that the majority votes are in the Senate 
today to pass the repeal of ObamaCare.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe the American people will put their request 
over to the United States Senate over and over and over again until 
that very hot potato, that very large, hot potato gets larger and 
hotter as it sits in the lap of the majority leader, Harry Reid, until 
such time as the American people get a vote in the United States 
Senate.
  Yes, I recognize that the President would veto such legislation. But 
we would then know--and we already know where every Member in the House 
of Representatives stands. We would then know where every Member in the 
United States Senate stands, and we would be able to see how much 
resolve the President has to protect his signature legislation, and 
whether he cares more about his signature piece of legislation that the 
American people have rejected than he does about the government of the 
United States and the broader well-being of the people and the security 
even of the United States, the functions of government.
  So I will go back again, Mr. Speaker, and say, reiterate, the 
strategy now is this: That this is not the end of our efforts to repeal 
ObamaCare. It is not even the beginning of the end of our efforts. And 
it is not the beginning of the end of ObamaCare. But it is, perhaps, 
the end of the beginning.
  We launched this off yesterday and the day before. We had the vote 
that went up last night. Now we know that Republicans stand unified 100 
percent in opposition to ObamaCare. And anybody who will vote to repeal 
ObamaCare also should be on good solid ground to vote to block any 
funding that would implement or enforce ObamaCare.
  That's the stand we need to take in every appropriations bill while 
the authorization committees work on the replacement policies, as is 
reflected by the resolution that passed here in the House of 
Representatives today.
  We have a large task in front of us. I am not daunted by the 
difficulty of it. I realize it will take a lot of energy and a lot of 
commitment over the next couple of years to finally accomplish the end 
of ObamaCare as we, Mr. Speaker, elect a President in 2012 who I hope 
and trust and believe will run on the ticket of plank number one in his 
platform, sign the repeal of ObamaCare.
  I look forward to that day, Mr. Speaker, when we see the effect of 
the resistance to the will of the people in the United States Senate. I 
believe that will put more ObamaCare opponents in the United States 
Senate during the 2012 election. I believe it will strengthen the ranks 
of ObamaCare opponents here in the House of Representatives in the 2012 
election, and I think that it will also elect a President of the United 
States who will be taking the oath of office on the West Portico of the 
Capitol on January 20 in 2013.
  Mr. Speaker, here is the image I have in mind. First, earlier in 
January of 2013, the House will have to repass the final repeal of 
ObamaCare. The Senate

[[Page H390]]

then, I believe, will take it up and pass that repeal of ObamaCare. And 
send it where? Message it where?

                              {time}  1340

  I hope we message it out to the podium on the West Portico of the 
Capitol for January 20, 2013, where I hope to be at a good vantage 
point where I can see the next President of the United States, and tell 
him, Take the oath of office with pen in hand, and take the oath this 
way, Mr. Speaker:
  ``I do solemnly swear to the best of my ability to preserve, protect 
and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.''
  Then, before that new President shakes hands with the Chief Justice 
of the Supreme Court, I would like to see him take his hand down, with 
pen in it, and sign the repeal of ObamaCare right there during the 
swearing in ceremonies of the next President of the United States, 
which will set the tone for the new era that we will be working towards 
throughout 2011 and 2012.
  So, when the Sun comes up on the morning of January 21, 2013, we will 
be free at last from the burden of socialized medicine, and the freest 
people in the world will have rejected dependency, will have stood up 
for independence, and will have stood up for the vitality of the 
American people.
  That, Mr. Speaker, is the vision I have in mind, and I will work on 
that every day until that is accomplished. That is my pledge to you, 
Mr. Speaker, and the American people.
  It is my privilege to address you here on the floor, and I thank you.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________