[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 29, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H2029-H2033]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
OBAMACARE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Noem). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is
recognized for 30 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady for recognizing me here on
the floor of the House, Madam Speaker, and appreciate the privilege to
address you. I came to this floor, one, to hear from Judge Carter and
to listen to the presentation that he made. And the other component of
it is I came here to talk about one or perhaps two subject matters. One
of them is ObamaCare, as one might imagine.
I would make this point that--first, Madam Speaker, if it's possible
that there's anybody that doesn't know why ObamaCare is so bad, if they
maybe haven't heard the argument in some time and they're forgetting
about how bad ObamaCare is, and if they're starting to hear the
language about what is redeemable about ObamaCare, I want to make it
real clear: nothing. There is not one single component of ObamaCare
that is worthy of us making any effort to do anything except to repeal
it all, eradicate it all, pull it all out by the roots.
I listen to some Members of this Congress that will say, Well, don't
you want your children to be on your insurance when they're 26? No. I
raised them to grow up. I want them to take their own responsibility.
If they can be elected to the United States Congress when they're 25,
then I think that's a pretty good age to at least say you are free, on
your on--well, first, you got your car keys when you were 16--your
license, anyway.
{time} 2050
Then you get to vote when you're 18 and choose the next leader of the
Free World. Then you get to go out and, let me say, go into the tavern
legally when you're 21 and get elected to the United States Congress
when you're 25. Then they kick you off of Mommy and Daddy's insurance
when you're 26? Somehow I think that delays the growing-up process.
I think that we need to have people growing up and taking personal
responsibility at an early age rather than delaying it to a later age.
If the States want to have it at 26, let them have it at 26. If
insurance companies want to provide for that market, let them write the
policies to provide for that market; but the Federal Government should
not stick a mandate on this that requires all health insurance policies
to keep the kids on until they're 26.
[[Page H2030]]
Let's just say there's a young person who gets elected to Congress,
like--well, yes, I would think that there are some Members of the new
class that would fit very close to that category. Would one really
think that they would come in here at age 25 and transition from their
parents' health insurance on over to the Federal opportunity of health
insurance that they can access and pay their share of the premiums that
come with this job of working in this Congress and maybe never have a
window where they were responsible to go out in the marketplace and buy
their own health insurance?
I think that's actually a bad idea, but if people want it, let them
drive that through their States.
Some will say that we want to cover preexisting conditions so that
children cannot be denied insurance on policies that their parents
have. Well, that's a good idea, and it's one that can be sustained by
demand in the marketplace. If that doesn't do it, it can certainly be
sustained by mandates within the States, but it does not require, Madam
Speaker, that the Federal Government get involved in mandating to the
States, actually mandating to everybody in America, what shall be done
with insurance.
So now I've used up, I think, the two things that had some popularity
in ObamaCare. That's it--insurance for 26-year-olds and no denial
because of preexisting conditions to children whose parents have
policies.
If I want to go out and buy a policy that ensures that my children
could stay on it, that policy is available in the marketplace. I will
say this, that before ObamaCare wrecked the markets and drove out a
number of health insurance companies, we had 1,300 health insurance
companies in this country which were viable in the marketplace,
competing, providing all kinds of policy varieties for customers to
choose from--in fact, over 100,000 health insurance policy varieties
and 1,300 companies. There were 100,000 policy varieties. We had plenty
of competition. ObamaCare has driven out competition. It has not added
to it. It has driven out competition. It has made it harder. It has
driven up the cost of health care.
The indecision and the fear of what's happening has caused the entire
health care industry to be frozen in place. Now they come along and
say, Well, if you're not going to repeal it, can you accommodate me in
some way?--perhaps in some way like granting them a waiver. I'm hearing
individuals say, I want my waiver. They know that there have been 1,040
waivers to ObamaCare.
Madam Speaker, I know that there are people out there who are
listening who maybe don't understand what that means. It is this:
ObamaCare is the law of the land. It is imposed upon everyone in
America. A law is to be applied to every individual in an equal
fashion. We might sit in different categories. We might have Medicare
that applies differently to somebody who's 65 than it does to somebody
who's 60 years old; but these are waivers to statutes and to
individuals and to entities.
From my standpoint, it's unheard of, and where that authority came
from I did not see coming; but this administration has found out that
they pushed a law that's so bad--so bad--that they are granting waivers
to companies, to entities, and to entire States, like the State of
Maine.
Now we find out that one of the people who has taken credit for
helping to write ObamaCare, the gentleman from New York, who, I
believe, is a candidate for the mayor of New York City, is now calling
for a waiver for the City of New York to ObamaCare. So maybe, if he
gets his way, it won't be 1,040; it will be 1,041 waivers.
That's appalling to think that you would sit in a strategy meeting/
session and try to drive a policy that, I believe, is flat out
socialized medicine and argue that it's good for everybody in America
because they're too ignorant to take care of their own health care and
now find out that the policy is so ignorant you want a waiver from it
for the largest city in America. That's appalling to think that that
would happen.
1,040--1,040 waivers. Let me see. The IRS will enforce this. It will
punish people with an extra penalty if they don't comply. Let me see.
The E-Z formula. The E-Z form for the IRS is the 1040EZ. We've had 1040
waivers, 1,040 waivers. It's E-Z for them, Madam Speaker, but it's not
going to be easy for anyone who doesn't get a waiver.
We have this thing called the equal protection clause. It's in the
Constitution, the 14th Amendment. Everybody is going to be protected
with equal protection. ObamaCare, itself, violates the equal protection
clause because it gives some American citizens a different standard
than others. I'm thinking of Florida and their Medicare Advantage,
which they have an exemption from under ObamaCare. Even though the
cornhusker kickback was removed because, actually, Nebraskans rejected
it--to their great credit--Floridians didn't reject their exemptions so
that they kept their Advantage. That was an existing policy that
exempted them from the wipe-out of Medicare Advantage, which happened
to people like Iowans, for example. The equal protection clause? Not
hardly. It's a violation of the equal protection clause. It's an
unconstitutional bill, ObamaCare.
But I forgot to tell you, Madam Speaker, all of the reasons why it's
bad. It cannot be afforded. It's a $2.6 trillion total outlay for the
first full 10 years once it would be implemented, and it increases
taxes almost to that much over that period of time. It cuts Medicare,
which is going to have a huge increase from 40 million to 70 million
recipients of Medicare over the next few years. That huge increase cuts
Medicare by $532 billion. It purports to reform Medicare. While this
cut we know has got to actually happen, it just simply calculates it
into the CBO score.
We can't afford ObamaCare. It's unsustainable therefore. It will
reduce the research and development. It will increase lines and delays.
It will ration care, and it will take that care out of the cost of many
people and put it on a mandate that will force more people into
Medicaid, and there will be companies that will be forced off the
coverage they now provide for their employees and force those people
onto a program that's federally subsidized, where there is a fund that
will fund their health insurance premiums, which is also unaffordable.
All these things are bad. There are so many bad things about
ObamaCare that I don't think there is any one person in the country who
could stand up in 30 minutes and list all of the bad things about
ObamaCare. It boils down, though, to this: it's unaffordable. It's
unsustainable. It reduces research and development. It reduces the
quality and lengthens the lines. It delays the service. It rations the
care.
It takes away one more thing. The most important thing about
ObamaCare is this: I believe it is the unconstitutional takings of
American liberty. It is unconstitutional in numbers of ways, three or
four ways at least. American liberty is something that is precious; and
to think that the Federal Government would step in and commandeer,
usurp, the God-given liberty and right that we have to manage our own
health care and turn it into a rationed service, according to formula,
in which only government would decide who would get what service and
when and who would be on the waiting list for surgery and who would be
on the waiting list to die without surgery, is a result of ObamaCare.
It cannot be argued or refuted.
They put you on a waiting list for a hip replacement, or they put you
on a waiting list to die without. That's one of the things that
happens. They don't seem to think that's what they're doing willfully,
and I don't accuse them of willfully wanting to do that. It's a
consequence of the thick-skulled action of people who believe that
there is a Socialist model to produce their version of Utopia rather
than the individual dynamics that come from people who have free
choices.
But we are a vigorous people, Madam Speaker. We're a unique people.
We're the kind of people who recognize from the beginning that our
rights come from God. We are endowed by our Creator with certain
unalienable rights. Among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. That pursuit of happiness wasn't the pursuit of hedonism; it
was the pursuit of perfection, just the pursuit of perfection--both
intellectual and physical improvements. That's the pursuit of happiness
in the Greek form, and that's what our Founding Fathers understood.
[[Page H2031]]
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They're unique, vigorous people with rights that come from God, and
of all the things that flow through with this, these rights, many of
them laid out in our Bill of Rights: freedom of speech, religion, and
the press; freedom to peaceably assemble and petition the government
for redress of grievances; the right to keep and bear arms--the right
to keep and bear arms; the property rights that are the Fifth
Amendment; the right to protection of trial by jury, to be tried by a
jury of your peers, and the right to protection against double
jeopardy; the rights that are endowed to the States and then the
people, respectively, in the Ninth and mostly the Tenth Amendment.
All of those are unique things to Americans. They don't apply to
Western European democratic socialist states or, should I say, social
democratic states. They don't apply to people in Canada. They don't
have that same level of rights. They don't apply to people in Mexico or
anyplace in this hemisphere or anyplace else on this planet. These
rights, as understood and envisioned by our Founding Fathers, apply
only to Americans. And they are the foundation of why Americans are a
unique and vigorous people, and they're the foundation of why we are
the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world. And we have a unique
vigor, and that vigor comes from the foundation of these rights.
But, Madam Speaker, I would take the position this, that you could
take all of these rights that we have, that we identify as coming from
our Creator, from God, and you can bestow them upon any other people on
the planet and ask them to go out and build a vigorous society that
would match and mirror that of America, and I will submit that that
effort would fail. It would fail no matter if they had unlimited
natural resources, if they had free enterprise to no end, if they had a
reverence for the Constitution the way we do.
You could take this package, this vision of American rights and
Constitution, you could put it in the richest land in the world or the
poorest and offer it to any people on the planet, and I will submit
that they could not succeed in producing another country that has the
vigor and the success that this country has. And I'm not standing here,
Madam Speaker, taking credit for this. I'm standing here giving
reverence to this gift that we have that is America.
And I will continue, that of all of the rights that are foundations
of those beautiful marble pillars of American exceptionalism and the
free enterprise component that goes along with it--property rights,
freedom of speech, religion, and the press, and the list goes on--
there's one other component that no other nation can have, and that is
the unique vigor of the American people.
And we are a people that have been blessed by the vigor of every
contributing, every donor civilization on the planet, no matter the
country. The people that came here, the legal immigrants that came to
the United States, came here with the vision of the American Dream.
They were attracted to the vision of the American Dream. And so we were
able to, by good sense of circumstance and forethought and vision, skim
the cream of the crop off of every donor civilization on the planet:
the people that had a vision, that had a dream, that had a vision, that
wanted to test themselves, that wanted to build something that went
beyond their generation; people that wanted to leave the world a better
place than it was when they found it; people that wanted to prepare the
ground for the next generation to farm, so to speak, and in some cases
literally, these are the people that we got that came to America from
every country, whether it would be England or Scotland or Wales or
Poland or Germany or Italy or any of the countries on the planet, all
across Asia, all across Central and South America; people that had a
vision that they wanted to live free and breathe free and build
something and have children and grandchildren that could benefit from
their labors.
And their vision and their intuitiveness and their creativity and the
entrepreneurial nature, they came to America, and that set up a natural
filter, natural filter for people to save up enough money and to get
passage to come to the United States. Some of them sold themselves for
as long as 7 years of labor just to pay the passage to get here. That's
a dream. You don't get any calls that come like that. You get people
that are vigorous, and we attracted them, and that's the American
spirit.
This vigorous American spirit is totally unsuitable for a social
democracy or socialism or hardcore leftist communist Marxism or any of
those other utopian philosophies that many of them emerged out of the
non-English speaking portion of Western Europe, and their philosophies
permeated a lot of the components of the globe because they're built
upon class envy, but they're not built upon the truths of human nature
nor are they built upon our rights coming from God.
And so here we are in this country, fantastic that we are the
recipients of such gifts, and the gifts that we have and the vigor that
we have, we need to understand what it's rooted in. And it's rooted in
these freedoms and it's rooted in the filter, the filter that filtered
out people that wanted to come here but didn't have quite the ambition
to make it happen. It was hard to get here, and you had to have a dream
to want to come here; and when you came here, we respected hard work
and smart work and people that planned and invested and they were
rewarded, and we admired them and raised our children to emulate them.
How many people like Donald Trump today, even though--like I said, I
don't have anything bad to say about Donald Trump, not here into the
Record. It's because he's been successful, people admire him. Bill
Gates, because he's been successful. Steve Jobs, they admire him
because he's been successful. They've been successful because they've
been entrepreneurs. They've been creative. They've worked within the
free market system. They have made our lives better and improved the
quality of our lives and lowered the cost of the services that we need
for our quality of life to be upheld and made those contributions and
gotten rich in the process. That's the free enterprise system.
So here we are, these vigorous people, and some of the nanny state
advocates here in this Congress--actually, it was a majority of them
last year--decided they want to impose ObamaCare on us and take away
our personal vigor. They wanted to take over the responsibility of
managing our health care. What they finally did was, because ObamaCare
is right now the law of the land, they nationalized our skin and
everything inside it, a government takeover of my body. The government
took my body over and the body of 308 million Americans, and now
they're going to tell us when we get health care, under what conditions
we get health care, that we must have their health insurance policy
that they prescribe for us. They've taken away our individual
responsibility. They've nationalized our skin and everything inside it.
And they had the audacity--and the President's fond of that word
``audacity.'' It was in the title of one of his books, ``The Audacity
of Hope.'' The President of the United States had the audacity to
impose a 10 percent tax on the outside of the skin that he nationalized
inside of if you go into a tanning salon to turn yourself a little
browner. That is a reach of the nanny state to impose a tax. They
wanted to tax your non-Diet Coke. They want to manage our lifestyles in
such a way that they will tax us if we eat fat foods and then presume
we should get a discount if we eat healthy foods.
This is a nanny state personified. ObamaCare is so bad. It's bad
because of all the things that I've listed about the cost and the
quality and the lines and the rationing and the net result of all of
that, Madam Speaker, but the worst part is it is an unconstitutional
taking of American liberty. It takes from us the ability, the right to
manage our own health care, and it must go.
And when that legislation was passed and signed into law--I believe
the anniversary date was March 23 of this year--I laid awake most of
the night and slept a little bit and got up in the middle of the night
and drafted a piece of legislation to repeal ObamaCare. It was waiting
at the door of the service team to be formally put into the form
[[Page H2032]]
of a bill when they opened up that morning.
Very interestingly, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota had
done the same thing, and her legislation came down within 3 minutes of
mine, exactly the same 40 words that said we're going to repeal
ObamaCare and, ``as if it had never been enacted'' were the last words
in the bill. Forty words, repeal ObamaCare, gives the names of the
bill, the numbers of the bill, et cetera, the last line, ``as if it had
never been enacted.''
{time} 2110
Rip it out by the roots, Madam Speaker.
Now, that was not necessarily unheard of, but there aren't many
precedents in the history of Congress for repeal legislation to be
filed actually the next day after a huge piece of legislation has been
passed. But that is what we did, and we started down that path
immediately, working to get signatures on the bill and building up the
support to repeal ObamaCare.
By mid-summer we had a discharge petition. By the end of the 111th
Congress, going into the election as the only part that counted, we had
173 signatures on my discharge petition, people that wanted to see
ObamaCare repealed come to the floor, bypass the committee process,
bypass the Speaker's ability to kill the bill before it got here, and
bring it to the floor for a vote. We had 173; we needed 218.
And the message that went out across America was useful in that some
Members of Congress that are here today will say straight up they
wouldn't be here if it were not for the discharge petition and they
could challenge their opponent to sign it. And almost every Democrat
refused to do so. And now there are 87 new freshmen Republicans. Every
single one has run on the repeal of ObamaCare. As far as I know,
everyone has run on the defunding of ObamaCare. And I know that every
single Republican in the House of Representatives voted for H.R. 2,
which is the repeal of ObamaCare. And I know that every single
Republican in the United States Senate voted to repeal ObamaCare. The
language that we generated then is the language that emerged into H.R.
2. And today every Republican and some Democrats are on record voting
to repeal ObamaCare.
Now, that didn't stop there. The strategy that I put together almost
a year ago was this: that we needed to win the majority, which we did;
bring the repeal of ObamaCare, which we did. It didn't succeed in the
United States Senate, but behind that always was this majority here in
the House of Representatives has an obligation to cut off all funding
that would be used to implement or enforce ObamaCare.
And I have been consistent with that language all the way through
last summer into last fall and past the election and beyond. Repealing
ObamaCare, then cut off the funding to ObamaCare. Stop the
implementation of ObamaCare and stop the enforcement of it by shutting
off the budget dollars and hold this waste of money to this
unconstitutional bill of ObamaCare until such a time as we can elect a
President who will sign the repeal.
The date for that to happen in my strategy is January 20, 2013, Madam
Speaker. And that's the date that the next President of the United
States will be inaugurated out here on the west portico of the Capitol
Building.
And when that President stands there and takes that oath of office,
it's my vision and my dream and my commitment to work towards it, I am
going to ask him take your oath of office with pen in hand, Mr.
President-elect, and I'm going to ask you to solemnly swear to
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States to
the best of your ability so help you God. And once that statement is
made and it's completed and the oath of office is finished and he's
formally the President of the United States, and before that new
President on January 20 of 2013 shakes the hand of Chief Justice John
Roberts, I want that pen in his hand to come right down to the
parchment, and I want him to sign the repeal of the ObamaCare right
there on the podium of the west portico of the Capitol, right out there
as the first act of the next President of the United States. That's my
vision. That's my commitment.
But until then shutting off funding to ObamaCare is a must-do. And
most of America knows by now that there is $105.5 billion automatically
appropriated in a deceptive way by the way the bill was drafted up in
Nancy Pelosi's office, not going through committee, not having the work
of the will of this Congress, but drafted up in her office and dropped
on us with hardly any notice and certainly no time to inform the
American people of what was in it, automatic, unprecedented in their
scope, appropriations to the tune of $105.5 billion, Madam Speaker.
And already it automatically appropriated in the 2010 budget. So
that's $18.6 billion and $4.95 billion in the 2011 budget. It totals up
to $23.6 billion, already appropriated, almost all of it set aside for
the purposes of implementing ObamaCare.
We must have a showdown. We must face the President down. If the
President demands that ObamaCare be funded, what are we going to do?
Say, no, Mr. President, that he vetoes legislation that would otherwise
fund all of government?
And if President Obama does that or if Harry Reid continues to
perform as his proxy and shuts off anything that we send over that way
even though we've demonstrated our desire to keep the legitimate
functions of government, all of them, functioning, if the President
shuts it down or Harry Reid shuts it down and this government comes to
a halt, here's the irony.
The irony is this: lights would go out in Federal offices around this
land. Not all of them because essential services will keep going. But
lights will go out. And as the lights go out in the nonessential
service Federal offices, what will be going in the other offices?
ObamaCare will continue even in a government shutdown to be implemented
because there's $23.6 billion sitting in their pot to spend out of to
implement ObamaCare, and we could have shutdown after shutdown, and
ObamaCare is implemented and implemented.
We must hold the line. We must stand on this principle. It is our
obligation. It is unconstitutional. We take an oath to uphold the
Constitution too. And that includes defending the Constitution and
opposing unconstitutional legislation with every tool at our disposal.
The President and the Democrats, I believe, Madam Speaker, plan to
shut this government down. That's why they agreed to a continuing
resolution in December that funds the government until March 4. It was
to bring this to a head. They wanted to box us into a corner and then
blame Republicans for shutting the government down.
Well, it's real clear: Republican leadership wants to avoid a
shutdown. It's clear to me that Democrats are determined to provide a
shutdown and try to blame it on Republicans. And it's clear to me that
if we fund all the functions of government except ObamaCare and if the
President brings about a shutdown, it won't be the House Republicans;
it will be Harry Reid as proxy for the President.
If that happens, what we're going to see happen here is the President
of the United States could veto an appropriations bill that funds
everything except ObamaCare. It would be a Presidential executive
tantrum that he would be throwing. That tantrum that he would be
throwing would be saying this: that his signature piece of legislation,
ObamaCare, means more to him than all of the other legitimate functions
of government combined.
That's the scenario that we are in. The American people will render a
verdict when that day comes that there is that kind of a showdown. And
it must come. The American people will render a verdict. They will side
with us. They are not going to side with the President who has imposed
ObamaCare when 62 percent of Americans want it repealed, 51 percent
intensely want to do so, and only 24 percent want to keep it in any
kind of a vigorous way.
So, Madam Speaker, I will say this: we have an obligation to stand
and hold our ground. This showdown will come. It must come. If it
doesn't, we will be capitulating to the President in every way that
he's willing to fight. I say let's stand our ground now. Let's have our
fight now. Let's get it over with, and let's get on with the business
of the 112th Congress.
[[Page H2033]]
With that, Madam Speaker, I would yield back the balance of my time.
____________________