[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 37 (Friday, March 11, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H1761-H1762]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate being 
recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. I have come to the floor to raise some issues here, to 
address you and hopefully be able to penetrate with some rationale and 
logic that I think is essential that the American people benefit from, 
and that is this, that, for some time now, we have been making the case 
that there are automatic appropriations in ObamaCare in an 
unprecedented fashion with regard to the magnitude and the duration of 
them.
  These automatic appropriations were written into the bill in 
preparation. The automatic appropriations were written into the bill in 
preparation for and anticipated, I believe, the loss of the majority by 
the Pelosi Congress, because I think they expected that this Congress 
would be handed over by the American people to a Republican majority 
that had been assigned the task by the American people to repeal 
ObamaCare, to defund ObamaCare.
  That's what everyone ran on. There are 87 Republican freshmen here, 
all of whom have voted to repeal ObamaCare, and I believe all of whom, 
if they spoke to the issue at all, Mr. Speaker, also pledged to cut off 
the funding to ObamaCare.
  I have sought to facilitate that happening and taking place. In doing 
so, I have drafted legislation that's patterned after the language that 
was written into a continuing resolution in April of 1974. That's the 
language in a continuing resolution that shut off the funding to the 
Vietnam War.
  It says something very similar to this. Notwithstanding any other 
provision of law, no funds made available in this act and no funds 
heretofore appropriated shall be used for offensive or defensive 
operations in Vietnam or the countries adjacent to it.
  In other words, it's not really an exact quote, but it is the 
compression of the language, and it's an accurate depiction of what it 
said. What it did was it shut off all funding for anything that was 
used to support the South Vietnamese military, including M-16 rounds, 
105 rounds, MREs, anything that was going to support a military 
operation offensive or defensive was shut off by this Congress by 
language in a CR.
  Now, who could conceive, Mr. Speaker, that this Congress couldn't 
figure out how to write language on how to shut off funding to 
ObamaCare. They didn't find the Vietnam War unconstitutional. Two 
Federal courts have found ObamaCare unconstitutional.

                              {time}  1410

  I hear arguments that say, well, there is an obscure rule somewhere 
that says that this is written into a legislation that makes it what 
they call mandatory spending. Therefore, this Congress, this 112th 
Congress, is

[[Page H1762]]

prohibited from getting their hands on that and can't shut off the 
automatic $105.5 billion.
  Please, Mr. Speaker. We all know that no previous Congress can bind a 
subsequent Congress. None of our predecessors can put up a vote in 
2010--or 1810--that binds us here. We set the rules and we appropriate 
the money here. Automatic appropriations written into an authorization 
bill of the largest magnitude of any legislation that I know: 
ObamaCare. We expected the authorization, the authorization that says, 
we open the door up now and the discretion of the appropriators in the 
subsequent Congress will decide if those authorized categories are 
funded. Forty-eight places in ObamaCare, there's authorization written 
right in with appropriations. Unprecedented.
  Yes, it does happen in small little ways. Ironically, National Public 
Radio has in the past gotten an authorization/appropriation that went 
in out-years as far as way out there to 2 years, Mr. Speaker. Some of 
the ObamaCare automatic authorization/appropriation language goes in 
perpetuity. There's a billion dollars set in a category that says 
Medicare Modernization Effort that is a billion dollars every year, 
that automatically spits out a billion dollars and goes to CMS to do 
Medicare modernization to the end of the world. In perpetuity. It takes 
it out of the hands of Congress. And this Congress is going to sit here 
and wring their hands and say, there's a mandatory piece of spending 
language that's here and we can't stop it in an appropriations bill?
  This Congress stopped the Vietnam War in an appropriations bill, Mr. 
Speaker. Can't we stop an unconstitutional, irresponsible socialized 
medicine policy in an appropriations bill? Yes, we can. There is no 
rational reason why we cannot. I have faced straw man argument after 
straw man argument. These little things, they stand up a straw man and 
he's supposed to look like a whole demon himself that rules the road. 
And it might be an argument such as, ``King's language will violate the 
rules of the Senate. Therefore, they will never take it up.'' Not so. 
You take the language down to the Senate and they say, Bring it. We 
want it. We want the House to send language to the Senate that shuts 
off the automatic funding to ObamaCare.
  And then they will say, ``No, the language isn't accurate enough. It 
isn't precise enough. It doesn't get at what we want.'' Show me some 
better language. It's patterned off the language that shut off the 
Vietnam War. That worked. They don't have an argument as to where 
there's a hole in my language. There isn't a hole in my language, Mr. 
Speaker. It says, no funds in this act, ObamaCare, and I list the two 
of them actually. It is 111-148 and 111-152. That's ObamaCare and the 
reconciliation package that came from the Senate to circumvent the 
filibuster rules that they have in the Senate. In both of those, we 
shut off any funding that's automatically appropriated. And it says: No 
funds in any previous act and no funds in the continuing resolution or 
in any fiscal year shall be used to carry out the provisions of 
ObamaCare, patterned exactly off the language that shut off the funding 
to the Vietnam War. If we can end a war in an appropriations bill, we 
can shut off an unconstitutional, irresponsible, $2.6 trillion in 
irresponsible spending bill, Mr. Speaker. And that's what we must do.
  We pledged to the American people that we would repeal ObamaCare, and 
we won a huge majority here in order to repeal ObamaCare. Mr. Speaker, 
we have to act on it. We need to act on it now. Every day, every minute 
that goes by, we're seeing that $105 billion spent to send the 
tentacles of ObamaCare down, send the roots down. They're working night 
and day, 24/7, Mr. Speaker, they're doing that to establish and expand 
the dependency class in America and tell us that we can't live without 
ObamaCare, that we can't take responsibility for our own health care, 
and that the money that's spent and invested keeps our private sector 
and our doctor-patient relationship from functioning and growing and 
adapting to the markets that they must do so.
  We're losing huge health insurance companies across the country. 
Principal in my State laid off hundreds. And that's true across the 
Midwest at least, on down to Texas. Insurance company after insurance 
company is pulling out because there's no certainty out there in the 
market anymore, and they understand that there are going to be fewer 
insurance companies if ObamaCare is implemented. They're calling upon 
this Congress, shut off the funding to ObamaCare. Yes, we passed the 
repeal. Every Republican and with Democrat support, bipartisan, passed 
the repeal of ObamaCare, H.R. 2, sent it to the Senate. Harry Reid 
found a way to force a vote on it where it didn't succeed over there, 
but 47 Republican Senators voted to repeal ObamaCare. And I cannot be 
convinced that those same legislators, House and Senate, would not vote 
to shut off all the funding to ObamaCare if provided the language in a 
continuing resolution.

  I believe that we can look the President in the eye and say, Mr. 
President, we've demonstrated that we will keep the dollars there for 
the legitimate and prudent function of government available, as we have 
in a short-term CR that expires March 18, as is proposed by a short-
term CR that is likely to be released later on today--after the whip 
team has already whipped it, by the way. We've demonstrated we want to 
keep the government open. But if the President, speaking through Harry 
Reid, decides that all the functions of government can be shut down 
unless he has his pet project, ObamaCare, the American people will side 
with those of us who side with them.
  We want an America that has liberty and freedom and vitality, where 
people make their own choices, where we have the selection of 1,300 
health insurance companies, 100,000 health insurance policies, and not 
government-at-the-Federal-level intervention into those decisions that 
are made by individuals and doctors and families and businesses.
  America wasn't built by government plans, by one-size-fits-all, by 
socialized medicine. America wasn't built by people who sit in their 
lofty liberal towers deciding that they've been gifted with an 
intelligence and an intellect so that common, ordinary people can be 
taken care of by elitists. We were built by individuals, individuals 
that make individual decisions, to start a business, end a business, 
take a job, quit a job, to make a purchase or not make a purchase, to 
provide a service, to stop and help their fellow man. We're an America 
that lives on the American Dream, to leave this country a better place 
than it was when we found it.
  Mr. Speaker, ObamaCare diminishes the future of all Americans. It 
shapes and diminishes the arc of history in a way that cannot be 
forgiven by those who follow behind us. This is a destiny issue for 
this country. This is a pivotal issue for this country. I stand and I 
have written a letter and I have joined with Michele Bachmann.
  I see my friend from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is here. We agree that a 
continuing resolution that does not include the language that shuts off 
the funding that is automatically implemented in ObamaCare, we will 
vote ``no'' on that continuing resolution, Mr. Speaker. And I will 
continue to do so until such time as ObamaCare has met its end.
  Some will say, the President will never sign a bill that repeals 
ObamaCare. He would never sign an appropriations bill that shuts off 
the funding for ObamaCare. I'm not suggesting that that's an easy 
decision for him. But when I look back through the arc of history and I 
think what Socrates did at the end of his life, I think the President 
can make a hard decision here. If Socrates can drink the hemlock, the 
President can sign the repeal of ObamaCare.
  Mr. Speaker, I would be so glad to be able to yield the balance of my 
time to the gentleman from Texas.

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