[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 106 (Friday, July 15, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H5115-H5120]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for
the remainder of the hour.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized
here on the floor of the House of Representatives and be able to
address you about the matters of the day and about the important issues
that are before us here in this Congress and in this Nation.
And I am continually impressed by the quality of the young people
that are attracted to this city, both as visitors, vacationers, but
also from people that will get their college degree or degrees and many
of them with a 4.0 grade point average, active in all kinds of extra
curriculars. The stellar cream of the American crop are magnetized to
come to this city. I am impressed with them--their intelligence, their
patriotism, their dedication on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Speaker.
But I want to add something that is a perspective that I think those
of us that have been around this planet a little bit longer have to
offer, and that is, first, that some of us have lived a lot of history
that others had to learn by reading the history book. And we know how
the history books have been truncated. And there's not time to learn
all the things that happened in history.
Some of us learned a lot of history from the front page, from the
radio, from the television, from the news, or from being in the middle
of that history. And that all is part of the collective memory of this
House of Representatives and the Senate on the other side. Some will
say they probably remember more history in the Senate than we do here
in the House.
{time} 1410
Mr. Speaker, my point is this: You can have very smart people with
very good principles, and the experiences of their life are supportive
of them understanding the underpinnings of the greatness of this
country, understanding the pillars of American exceptionalism, but
sometimes the definitions and as it's presented is taken at face value
because they might not have had years to see things go wrong when good
ideas come before this Congress.
And I look back and think of the time in 1995--actually, in 1994,
when Republicans took over the majority in the House of Representatives
here after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness of being in the
minority and not being able to advance legislation. There were many
here on the Republican side of the aisle that were complacent with
that, Mr. Speaker, but accepted the idea that the majority would maybe
never change in their lifetimes, and they operated in the zone that had
been delivered to them and they didn't go and charge the ramparts or
the windmill, so to speak, because the ramparts, to them, were
windmills.
Yet there were others that were visionaries, that saw the vision,
that realized that America was going in the wrong direction, and they
built a coalition here in the House of Representatives that I watched
on C-SPAN night after night after night, step down here on this floor
at the very spot, Mr. Speaker, and make arguments to the American
people, make arguments to me that moved me, moved me in my head and
moved me in my heart and helped me understand that it wasn't me alone
that was seeing that America was going in the wrong direction, that we
were overspending and we had this massive welfare system and that we
were expanding the dependency class in America. This spirited people
that we are, this unique people that we are here in America were being
diminished, were being diminished by the growth of the nanny state and
the growth of the dependency class in America.
So in 1994, the inspiration came from many people that were hearing
the inspiring words that were spoken into this very microphone, Mr.
Speaker, but also across the country. On talk radio, across the
backyard fence, over a cup of coffee, at work, at church, at school, at
play, at recreation, in fishing boats and golf carts across America, we
had a national conversation about where America needed to go. And the
result of that consensus of the national conversation was a massive
change in the seats here in the House of Representatives and a new
majority in the House of Representatives that came sweeping in in
November of 1994.
And there were big changes. The freshmen class that came in and was
sworn in here on this floor in January of 1995 were revolutionaries,
and they brought a difference and they forced a balanced budget here in
the House that was not expected to ever be reached. They cut spending
until they forced a balanced budget. And they reduced welfare and put
more people in a position where they could earn their dignity and a
paycheck at the same time.
Now, as this unfolded, they brought forth, as they said they would in
the Contract with America, that they would vote on a constitutional
amendment to produce a balanced budget. That was a 1994 promise that
was fulfilled in 1995. A vote on a balanced budget amendment here in
the House of Representatives that passed the House of Representatives,
was messaged right directly down the hallway to the United States
Senate, Mr. Speaker, where the Senate took up the vote for the
constitutional amendment to balance the budget, and it failed in the
Senate in 1995 by a single vote.
How different, how different might it have been, Mr. Speaker, if one
more Senate seat had gone the other way, if one more United States
Senate race had resulted in a victory for someone who believed in a
balanced budget amendment, believed in the Constitution, itself, fiscal
responsibility--those American exceptionalism principles that I have
briefly mentioned--but believed in requiring a balanced budget
constitutionally. How different it might have been if the Senate had
voted with a two-thirds majority, as the House did in 1995, and sent a
constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget to the States,
the 50 States for ratification.
Now, we know, Mr. Speaker, it takes three-quarters of the States to
ratify an amendment to the Constitution before it becomes incorporated
into our Constitution. We'll never know how many States would have
ratified that amendment because they didn't get the chance to do so.
Had that been messaged to the States in 1995, we can only ask the
question: Would the States have ratified a balanced budget amendment? I
think so. I believe three-quarters of the States, at a minimum, would
have done so; and if they did not, I think it would have changed the
politics within enough of the States so that they would have.
Imagine if this Congress here and now, today, this week, this month
would pass a balanced budget amendment to the United States
Constitution out of this House with a better than two-thirds majority--
equal or better than--to the Senate where they need 67 votes in the
Senate, if that constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget
gets messaged to the States. Some will say look at the makeup of the
State legislatures. Let's put it this way, Mr. Speaker: There aren't
enough Republican majorities to pass and ratify a constitutional
amendment to require a balanced budget. Maybe not, and not by an
analytical judgment of this moment, Mr. Speaker.
But think of what happens in a State like my neighboring State of
Illinois, for example, where Democrats control the politics and they
insist on deficit spending and running themselves into the red. It
seems as though the right of passage in Illinois is, if you are elected
Governor, you go off to prison. But if we have a balanced budget
amendment sitting on the docket of the Illinois State Legislature
today, I don't think there's much of any chance that they would ratify
an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to do such a thing.
But I do think, Mr. Speaker, that there will be hundreds of people
all across Illinois that will decide that they want to step up and run
for public office so that they can have the chance to vote to ratify
a balanced budget to the United States Constitution in the State
legislature. They would go out and campaign, and they would knock on
doors, and they would talk to their friends and neighbors and say, I
don't care if you're a Democrat. I don't care if you have some other
interest. The best interest you can have is the long-term best
interests of the United States of America. And it's becoming
increasingly clear that the long-term best interests of the United
States of America are to require that the budget
[[Page H5116]]
be balanced by the Constitution because this Congress has not
demonstrated--and the President clearly has not demonstrated--that they
have enough discipline to crank this spending down to balance the
budget.
Part of the reason is we have elections every 2 years in the House
and every 6 years in the Senate. So the incentive is be in a position
to keep your job in 2 years or 6 years. There is not an incentive out
there that tells the Members of the House and Senate that we should
prepare the groundwork for our grandchildren, let alone children yet to
be born. That's part of the dynamics. The other part of the dynamics is
that this Capitol is full of bright, energetic people. A lot of them
come to my office on a regular basis. A lot of them are honorable
people with good intentions. But a lot of them are there because they
want the tax dollars of the American people to go to their interests.
And because there's a constant drumbeat of asking for more and more and
more spending and the push for--well, I know that you are fiscally
responsible and you want to balance the budget, but can you just make
this exception because it's so important. It's so important issue after
issue. You could be accused of voting against children and women and
seniors and minorities and handicapped and combat-wounded veterans all
together if we do anything other than increase the budget to the level
that's hoped for and predicted by the President of the United States.
So when I stand up for fiscal responsibility, Mr. Speaker, I often
get this statement which is, Well, you're a Republican. You Republicans
spent too much money. And you have to admit that you are half the
problem. Well, no, I don't, Mr. Speaker. First, I voted against a lot
of that spending. I've been an original cosponsor of the balanced
budget amendment offered by Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia since
I arrived in this town. And I'm sticking with him and the principles
that are that constitutional amendment that we passed out of the
Judiciary Committee that hangs on the calendar of the House today.
But aside from that, speaking from a party-by-party standpoint, the
truth is this: Yes, Republicans spent too much money, and in the middle
of the Iraq war, we came within $160 billion of balancing the budget.
Now, that's not particularly impressive if you dial it back a
generation or two or three, but it's very impressive when you think of
it in terms of the President's budget, which is a $1.65 trillion
deficit in a single year.
So actual, real numbers come down to we came within $160 billion of
balancing the budget at the height of the Iraq war, and had it not been
for the Iraq war, we would have balanced the budget. If the equation is
there, it's that simple.
{time} 1420
But the President has proposed a deficit, an annual deficit spending
budget, of $1.65 trillion. Now, I have said the deficit of Republicans
is $160 billion and the President's deficit is $1.65 trillion, and on
his deficit, Mr. Speaker, I am not saying that this is a 10-year
accumulated deficit. This is 1 year, $1.65 trillion.
Now, yes, Republicans spent too much money, but for every dollar that
they went into deficit, the President proposes $10 of deficit spending
into the same equation. I can't see that that's a shared
responsibility. It looks to me like it's 10 times the overspending on
the part of the President versus one-tenth of that on the part of the
Republican Congress here in the middle of the Iraq war. Those are the
facts as they are established by the Congressional Budget Office. We
need to stand on facts here, not on emotions, and we need a level now
of fiscal austerity.
Mr. Speaker, we need to get to this point where we can send another
balanced budget across to the United States Senate and ask them to pass
it with a two-thirds majority and message it to the States. Give the
States the chance to ratify it this time. If they had the chance to
ratify the balanced budget amendment in 1995, I might or might not be
standing here. I might have realized that, listen, government did its
job, and I can go ahead and raise my family and run my business and
live the American Dream. But it didn't happen.
It didn't happen, and some of us, out of frustration, stood up and
engaged in public service and public life, and we were elected to
positions in perhaps our State legislatures and then came here to this
Congress. I have seen this country going in the right direction. I have
seen this country going in the wrong direction.
I have seen the spirit of America be diminished.
How many people today remember Jimmy Carter's malaise speech where he
essentially said to us, You have to lower your aspirations. Yes, you
are Americans, but it means something different in the future than it
has in the past--that America is no longer going be a country with
unlimited resources and prosperity and aspirations and realized dreams,
but that we'll have to wear a sweater and turn the thermostat down and
drive at 55 and be limited by government.
We have some of that going on now. We have the nanny state being
reestablished under this administration. Now, I would suggest that
there are a number of ways to illustrate that, Mr. Speaker, but I would
point it out this way: that the food retailers sat down, along with a
couple of other interests--and this is something driven by the First
Lady, I believe. They have identified that about 3 percent of the kids
in America are obese.
You may have seen in the news this week about some effort to go in
and remove obese children from their parents because obese parents are
a bad influence on the diets of their kids, and kids that are
overweight are a health risk, and they are more likely to have
diabetes. Statistically, that's true.
Mr. Speaker, I don't need a nanny state that is going to go in and
weigh my kids and weigh me and my wife or my sons and daughters-in-law
and grandchildren and decide whether I am going to be able to manage my
own children's lives. I need the nanny state out of my life, not in my
life, Mr. Speaker. I don't need them deciding what my diet is going to
be.
But this initiative that flows from the First Lady is about cutting
1.5 trillion calories from the diets of young people, because I guess
that you run them across the scales and do an average and do the
calculus that 3,550 extra calories over what you are burning amounts to
a pound. Then they can do the math and figure out, if they can reduce
1.5 trillion calories from all the right places, these kids are going
to lose weight in all the right places. It doesn't work that way.
How are you going to do this? I asked them.
They said, Well, you know, we're going to reduce the number of
calories in a bag of Doritos, for example.
How do you do that?
Take a couple of chips out.
Okay. What do we think a kid is going to do if he's hungry and there
are a couple of less chips in a bag of Doritos? He eats two bags.
Then they said, Well, we've got the power bars that have 150
calories. We're going to reduce them down to 90. That way, these kids
aren't going to gain weight. They're going to lose weight because
they're eating fewer calories in a power bar.
So, if you pick up a power bar and you're hungry, you're eating that
because you want the energy, and your appetite calls for it. If there
are only 90 calories in there, I will suggest that these kids are going
to eat two power bars and consume 180 calories rather than settle for
90 when, before, they were getting 150 out of that previous power bar.
Kids are obese for two reasons. They have voracious appetites, and
they don't exercise enough. It's that simple.
The former Secretary of Defense came out and said that 30 percent our
youth that are overweight is a national security risk because they are
too overweight. They don't quality for the military service, and we,
therefore, can't recruit enough volunteers from the universe of people
that are left that have a waistline that fits the standards for our
military.
Now, I would suggest that being obese does not destroy one's skeleton
or muscular tissue or nervous tissue; it's just extra weight to carry
around. And if it's a national security issue, then let's extend basic
training, and they can just stay there and do exercises and eat the
diet in the mess hall until they make weight.
[[Page H5117]]
This is not a national security issue, and I am constantly hearing
these arguments about national security. One of them is, well, national
security is fresh fruits and vegetables, and if we don't have fresh
tomatoes it is a national security issue. So, therefore, we must have
cheap labor to pick the tomatoes. Never mind that tomatoes have been
bred now to be picked by machine.
I ask the question, Mr. Speaker: How long did the Eskimos get along
without any fresh fruits or vegetables?
They have lived for centuries on the high protein of the animal meat
that they can harvest up along the Arctic Circle, but they don't have
carrots or broccoli or lettuce or tomatoes or pears or apples or
peaches. None of that grows up there in the Arctic Circle. They are
carnivores. They have gotten along really well eating a meat diet,
because the nutrients are in there, and they are concentrated. It's not
a national security issue not to have guacamole even though it's a
profitable thing to raise the avocados.
We get way out of balance here in this Congress and overemphasize
things with all kinds of hyperbole, which brings me back around to
where we need to go as a Nation, Mr. Speaker. We need to go down this
path of a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. The President
doesn't want to balance the budget or he would have offered one.
And the President wants to scare seniors. He did that on purpose.
That's the statement that he made a couple of days ago when he said, if
we hit the end of the debt ceiling limit, he can't guarantee that
military pensions or Social Security would be paid on time. That was a
calculated statement. It was calculated to scare the group of people
who is the easiest to scare. That's our seniors.
The reason they are is because they have worked their whole lifetimes
to get into the position that they are in, and most of them are on a
fixed income. That fixed income might be a pension plan, other savings,
Social Security or a rent check or an investment of some kind. But when
the Federal Government interferes with that and starts to send a
message that they can't count on any component of it, yes, they get
concerned, rightfully concerned.
This system that we have, entitlements, cannot hold together if we
continue down the same path we are on. We have about 40 million people
that qualify for Medicare today. In 10 more years, it will be about 70
million people as the baby boomers come on line.
It isn't just that non-defense discretionary spending in this
Congress is growing too fast. We can't solve the problem if we shut
down the non-defense discretionary spending or if we ratchet it
backwards. We must address entitlement. We also must guarantee to the
seniors: You have organized your lives around Medicare--in fact, Social
Security. We need to protect them and their interests. They are
deserving of that. They may be getting greater benefits than they ever
paid in, but they still have to be able to count on this Congress
keeping its word.
Meanwhile, as a government that's spending itself into oblivion,
however big a Nation we are, there is no one to back us up. We don't
get to go to the European Union and ask for a loan to bail us out. We
don't even get to go to the Chinese or the Saudis to ask for a loan to
bail us out. We are the last stopgap in Western civilization, the free
enterprise world.
Remember, there are a lot of entities outside that would like to see
this country go down, tumble, collapse to some degree. We don't have
friends all around the world. So we are the ones who have to hold the
line. We don't get to go back for a backup of any kind. The Greeks
could at least look to the European Union, and what did the European
Union say? We will loan you some money to bridge you through this
problem, but you have got to cut your spending to our satisfaction
before we will loan the money.
{time} 1430
Now we have a President that says he can't guarantee that military
pensions are going to be paid or that Social Security is going to be
paid because he wants to use that as leverage to try to get a debt-
ceiling increase by making the least amount of concessions. And he
would like to make no concessions. That's the scenario that we're in.
So I've introduced today, along with Michele Bachmann and Louie
Gohmert with a growing number of cosponsors, an act called the PROMISES
Act. What it does is it requires that our military be paid first and on
time, every time, no exceptions, no hesitation. Whether it is a
spending gap that is a result of the expiration of a continuing
resolution or whether we hit the debt ceiling, the revenues in the
United States Treasury--and there will be plenty there for this under
all circumstances that we can envision--go first to pay the military.
They are our number one line of defense. Their lives are on the line.
They should never have to wonder in a foxhole or on a ship or in the
air and their families near the barracks or at home should never have
to wonder whether that paycheck is going to be electronically
transferred into their bank account on time every time. That's our
guarantee with the PROMISES Act.
The military should never be used as a pawn in a political discussion
here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
The second thing is we need to take care of the full faith and credit
of the United States Government. That means we have to pay the interest
on the necessary principal on our debt. We can do that with incoming
revenue. And those who say we can't are wrong, and I don't care what
their title is. We have $200 billion in anticipated revenue per month.
It takes $11 billion to pay our military, and it takes $20 billion to
service our debt. That's $31 billion out of a $200 billion average
revenue stream. That turns out to be--and I know, Mr. Speaker, you have
calculated this in your head--15.2 percent of the overall spending of
the revenue stream per month--15.2 percent.
That means pay the military first, service our debt second, guarantee
the full faith and credit of the United States of America, and there's
still plenty of money in that funding stream left over to pay Social
Security, pay Medicare, go on down the line and pay military pensions--
keep faith with those who have stood on the line for America--and keep
faith with our senior citizens. And it takes the leverage out of the
hands of the President. That's what the PROMISES Act is about.
And some will say, well, no, you can't. The money is not there. Tell
me where that money is, then, the $200 billion a month--$11 billion to
pay our military, $20 billion to service our debt, and it costs $58
billion per month for Social Security, and for Medicare it is $43
billion per month. We can even add defense on there, and we're getting
up to the limit. I mean all defense, not just the military pay.
So, as you can see, Mr. Speaker, we have lots of options. I want to
take the options off the table for the President. I don't want him to
be scaring our seniors. I want that guarantee to be there, but I go
just far enough in the PROMISES Act that we take care of the absolutely
necessaries, and I'm open to the discussion on how we might add other
priorities behind them. First priority: pay our troops first. Second
priority: pay the interest and the principal to service the national
debt.
And as we move forward with this, the brinksmanship gets more and
more intense. And as the President of the United States is looking to
try to get us to crack, we need to understand that decisions will be
made on August 2. The President alone holds the most power to decide
who gets paid and who does not. I saw a presentation this morning that
proposed that unemployment benefits get paid, but our military not get
paid. Now if that's something that's going to be proposed out of the
White House and not just a hypothetical scenario, I think everybody in
this country knows about the inequity of that. We would pay people not
to work but not pay the people to put their lives on the line for us?
But that's an option open to the President today. That threat is
already out there drifting through the stratosphere--I should say
cyberspace--in discussions, serious discussions about our priorities.
This Congress can pass priorities; and absent statutory language that
requires the executive branch to pay our bills in a priority order, he
has the discretion to pay them in any order, or
[[Page H5118]]
maybe just let them go in no order and see what happens out of a grab
bag. He could sit in the Oval Office and toss a coin or throw darts at
a dart board and decide who gets paid and who doesn't right now.
I'm calling upon this Congress to pass the PROMISES Act or pass
another priority ``pay the bills'' act so that we keep faith with our
military, we keep faith with our international creditors, and we keep
faith with our senior citizens.
Furthermore, when I hear the language that says ``pay the military
first and pay the national debt second,'' that means pay the Chinese
first when you're servicing the national debt. If we borrowed the money
from the Chinese, we have to pay the money back to the Chinese, unless
they sell our debt to somebody else. That's the facts. And if we didn't
intend to pay them back, we shouldn't have borrowed the money in the
first place.
But if we're concerned about servicing 100 percent of our debt
because the Chinese hold $1 trillion of it, they hold less than 10
percent of our debt. So when we put $10 out to service our debt, one of
those $10, less than one of those $10 goes to the Chinese. Half of
those dollars go to Americans that hold U.S. debt, and some of that
goes to the Saudis and, of course, other countries around the world.
But this isn't ``pay the Chinese first.'' This is keep faith--keep the
full faith and credit of the United States Government first and keep
faith with our military. We owe them more than we owe even our
creditors.
I went through some of these things during the eighties, the farm
crisis years of the eighties. That added clarity to it. Three thousand
banks were closed during that decade in the United States. A good
number of banks around my neighborhood, including my bank, was closed.
And I remember when it happened. It was April 26, 1985, Friday
afternoon, 3 o'clock, when the FDIC showed up at my bank, put a red
tag, a red sheet notice on the door, taped it on there, and two highway
patrolmen stood at attention on either side of that door to guard the
bank. And at that instant, they froze every single account, including
mine. I had payroll to meet, and my customers' accounts were frozen
along with mine. We had to go to a barter system to keep the business
running right in the middle of corn planting in Iowa. You could not
have picked a worse date or time than they did on that Friday
afternoon.
But, Mr. Speaker, I learned what was important. The first thing we
did was go to a barter system. And I loaded and hauled hay to the
auction to turn that into cash so I could pay my employees. They were
first. I fed myself last. I paid the interest second and the necessary
principal third. I kept full faith and credit with my creditors.
But the first thing that--the people that were on the line every day
making the business run were like our troops are today. Without them,
everything stops and you live in fear; you don't have anything going.
Pay them first, those people on the front line first; pay the interest
second, keep your credit; pay the necessary principal third. And then
you can look around and maybe make some tough decisions and options.
That's where this country is today.
I do believe we must balance this budget, and I believe we must pass
a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget. And I believe the
American people will support such an endeavor. And if we don't have the
votes to pass a constitutional amendment to balance the budget among
the States, then the people in America will rise up and elect their
State representatives and their State senators to go to their
statehouses and ratify the constitutional amendment to balance the
budget.
The American people want this. This is a national movement. Some of
this is coming out of the Tea Party; the constitutional conservatives
with a cause are activated. They stood up against ObamaCare, and
they'll stand up to balance this budget, and they will still stand up
against ObamaCare.
And let me add to this, Mr. Speaker, that for this Congress to think
about going down a path that would offer a balanced budget to the
States in exchange for, let's say, some cuts in spending, increasing
the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion and cutting our spending as a
percentage of GDP, ratcheting it down to 19.99 percent, which is short
of the constitutional amendment's cap, for this Congress to do this but
still allow what we will know as $105.5 billion to go forward to
implement and enforce ObamaCare is irresponsible.
There are $23.6 billion sitting there right now automatically
appropriated for these times, this year, for Kathleen Sebelius and
others to implement ObamaCare while the President delays the case that
should be expedited before the Supreme Court that I believe will find
ObamaCare to be unconstitutional. It's already been rejected by the
American people by margins of 60 percent or better. There are 87
freshmen in this House of Representatives, all of whom ran on repeal of
ObamaCare and all of whom voted to repeal ObamaCare. Every Republican
in the House of Representatives voted to repeal ObamaCare, and every
Republican in the United States Senate voted to repeal ObamaCare.
And it's unconstitutional in my view in four different areas of the
Constitution, and the Supreme Court will eventually rule when the
President can no longer delay the actions of the Supreme Court. And he
is believing that he can implement components of this and that we won't
want to let it go if the Court finds it unconstitutional.
{time} 1440
He is believing that since there is no severability clause in
ObamaCare, that somehow the Supreme Court will look at it, maybe find a
component of it unconstitutional, but decide at their option not to
throw it all out and recognize a nonexistent severability clause. And
that would be, a severability clause says if any part is found
unconstitutional, then the other parts are still retained. If it is
missing that clause, if any part is found unconstitutional, then all
parts are then not retained and essentially repealed.
The language that I have introduced, the language that Michele
Bachmann introduced, and others, Connie Mack comes to mind, with all
Republicans voting for it, is this. It is 40 words to repeal ObamaCare
and it ends with these words: ``as if it had never been enacted.'' That
is the language we must put on a President's desk who will sign it.
In the meantime, to spend $23.6 billion to implement an
unconstitutional piece of legislation that is 2,600 pages long, that
kind of money in a period that must be a period of austerity is an
absolute waste. We know it is a waste. If we are at this point where we
are going to cut down spending, we have to do it by cutting off the
$2.6 trillion of outlays that are ObamaCare; and $23.6 billion of that
is sitting now in the hands mostly of Kathleen Sebelius, and they are
seeking to send the roots of ObamaCare into our lives and expand the
dependency in us so we decide we can't get along without ObamaCare.
How much time do I have left, Mr. Speaker?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. West). The gentleman has 13 minutes
remaining.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, this ObamaCare of $23.6 billion that is sitting there
being implemented, and with Kathleen Sebelius, with the discretion to
spend that and send the roots down and expand the dependency class,
here is an example. One of those example is this. They advertised that
we needed to do ObamaCare because we had so many people who had
preexisting conditions, and they would be refused for insurance. So
when they were refused, they didn't have any way to get health
insurance and that it was a human tragedy.
So these huge numbers of people who were uninsurable would be brought
into the fold of the new ObamaCare under the preexisting conditions
language that already is law. But a month or so ago, they discovered
that in spite of how hard they tried to recruit people with preexisting
conditions, and I remind you, we have 306 million people in America.
And of those 306 million people, the numbers were supposed to be large,
impressive, maybe not astronomical, of those who had preexisting
conditions and could not buy insurance.
And what they found, they could find only 18,000 people, in spite of
them advertising preexisting insurance. All across this land, 18,000
people only who had signed up for the preexisting conditions component,
18,000. Divide that
[[Page H5119]]
out across the States. Put 50 into that 18,000 and see what kind of a
problem that is. It's a small number when you divide it by the 50
States. And the States could manage those kinds of numbers after you
distribute it by population. For example, the majority of the States,
including Iowa, have a high-risk pool that we subsidize with tax
dollars to buy the premiums down so people with preexisting conditions
can buy a policy. I encourage that. I think that is a good, responsible
thing to do.
But Obama's preexisting policy only had 18,000 people after a year of
effort trying to get people to sign up. So Kathleen Sebelius took what
she considers to be latitude within the law and decided to buy the
premiums down another 40 percent, pay another 40 percent of the
premiums out of this pot of money that she has that is automatically
appropriated to her to a total tune of $105.5 billion, and they still
couldn't find enough people to make it look like there was a reason to
have preexisting conditions policy in the Federal code, and so they
removed the condition that you have a preexisting condition.
Now we have an insurance policy for people that want to signed up
with the Federal Government that may or may not have an illness. They
may not have been sick a day in their lives. They don't even need to
make the case that they have been turned down for insurance by a single
company in America. They just have to sign up, and they'll put them on
the policy and they'll buy the premium down by at least 40 percent.
This is what government is doing. And they are seeking to expand
Medicaid and collapse Medicare into Medicaid.
We saw what they were trying to do under Bill Clinton's era where--
and they started this SCHIP, which now is CHIP, Children's Health
Insurance Program, and ObamaCare kind of does that in. But it was
expanded within the States. It started out to be 200 percent of
poverty. If you're at 200 percent of poverty or less, we'll help pay
the health insurance premiums for your children. Those are low-cost
premiums, by the way. Kids don't have a lot of problems. And on the
upper end of this, Bill Clinton wanted to lower the Medicare
eligibility age to 55, if you remember.
So if you can insure kids up to the age of 26, which ObamaCare does,
and you can lower the Medicare eligibility age to 55, now you've only
got that little window in there of 24 years, the most productive years
of a person's life, presumably, and often is the case, that the
government is stepping in requiring that you stay on or mandating that
you be able to stay on your parents' health insurance until age 26. You
can get elected to Congress when you're 25, come down here and swear
in, still on your mommy and daddy's health insurance and come over on
the government plan right away. That's what that means. I wanted my
kids to grow up.
But if we are going to insure kids through SCHIP or CHIP or a Federal
mandate up to age 26 and pay those premiums out of tax dollars, and
then lower the Medicare eligibility age, as Clinton wanted to do, and
it is impossible in this environment today, down to 55, it is only a
24-year window. Then they would add to those at the lower end and lower
the upper end age until they got it to collapse altogether. In the
meantime, collapse Medicare into Medicaid, you have the formula for
socialized medicine. That would be the great bleed of most everybody on
this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, they want socialized medicine. John Conyers back in 1981
introduced a socialized medicine policy that forbade anyone from doing
health care services on a fee-for-service. They had to be on the salary
of the national health care system.
The Federal Government would hire and presumably fire everybody that
worked in health care, and no one could charge a fee for it, and no one
could be paid a fee-for-service. They would have to be working for the
government within the health care system.
We know what happens when government takes things over. I ask the
American people how is the service in the place when you go into
government offices. It is about the same as it is where you go in where
somebody has a monopoly. I'm not picking on government workers.
Government, often by definition, has a monopoly. If you don't have
competition, you don't have to be nice.
I learned that in the auto--what do I call it--the vehicle
registration department in the county courthouse the first time I went
in to register a vehicle at about age 16. I learned that. They had the
market cornered. They didn't have to be nice. They could open the door
when they wanted to and close the door when they wanted to. There was
no motive for them to try to provide better service for me or anyone
else. However long the line was, we stood in it. Anybody in Washington,
D.C. who goes down to the vehicle parking department here in
Washington, D.C., you will find the same thing.
When my wife goes down to get her annual $10 ticket so we can park
our car for a short period of time on the streets of Washington, D.C.,
invariably it is a 4-hour process. And I have had to send my chief of
staff and a driver down there through a 4-hour process just to get a
$10 permit because they have got an attitude. Their attitude is we
don't have to service anybody; we have the market cornered. That's the
attitude. Go down there and go buy a parking permit if you think
ObamaCare and a national health care act are good for you, Mr. Speaker,
or anyone else.
I don't want to see monopolies; I want to see competition. And
ObamaCare eliminates competition, and it prescribes a product that the
American people have to buy for the first time in history, a product, a
government-approved, or if they had their way, a government-created
health insurance policy that a person has to buy unless you are of low
enough means-tested income that they are going to pay the premium for
you.
{time} 1450
This has never happened in the history of America, how one lower
court could come to a conclusion that the individual mandate is
constitutional. It is appalling to me that a judge could sit on a bench
and come to a conclusion like that--or a panel of judges, a majority of
a panel of judges--and it was 2-1, I believe, on a three-judge panel.
Think of this, Mr. Speaker: think of when you get your paycheck.
Let's just say you've got--let's keep it reasonable--$500 take-home pay
for a week's paycheck. If your health insurance premium is $100 a week
and if the government says you must buy a health insurance policy that
is of a value that costs you $100 a week, what they have done is
confiscated--confiscated--20 percent of your paycheck, of your take-
home payroll, your after-tax dollars, and it is after-tax dollars.
Let's just say the government decides you need to buy a General
Motors or a Chrysler because we have a vested interest in that and that
you can't drive a clunker--we're going to outlaw those, so we have to
buy a new car every 10 years or have one that's within 10 years of new.
They could prescribe that with the same standards that they prescribe
ObamaCare on us. Let's say that car payment takes another $100 a week.
Now you've got $200 of the $500 that is swallowed up by the government.
That's 40 percent of your take-home pay commandeered by Uncle Sam.
Then they decide that the appliance companies aren't making enough
money and that you need to buy certain appliances--and I can go through
this a little faster. They might decide you have to buy this diet food
I talked about a little bit earlier. They might put a tax on the non-
diet pop. Then pretty soon your paycheck is swallowed up. Your whole
$500 is gone because the government has told you how to spend every
single dollar.
If the government can commandeer a single dollar out of your paycheck
that they direct you to spend on a product that's produced by
government or approved by government, then they can commandeer the
second dollar and the third dollar and 99 cents out of every dollar and
100 cents out of every dollar. That's what we're faced with.
That's the biggest reason why ObamaCare is unconstitutional, Mr.
Speaker.
The American people are not adequately outraged. We have a character
among us. We've got a history that the
[[Page H5120]]
product of the will of the people emerges out of the House and the
Senate and goes to the President's desk for his signature or a veto and
an attempt to override a veto. That happens once in a while. That's
supposed to be the voice of the American people, and we expect it
because of the structure of this republican form of government.
I want to emphasize the Constitution guarantees us not a democracy.
The Constitution guarantees us a republican form of government.
That means representative.
That means we don't go out there and take the temperature of the
public and do a poll and decide it's the will of the people today, so
let's race in that direction. We have an obligation to listen to the
people and understand what they want and have a very sensitive antenna
to pick up on the will of the American people.
It doesn't end there, Mr. Speaker; it starts there.
Our job is to be full-time paying attention to all the facts and the
figures and all of the components and to be making the best decisions
possible because we are representatives here in a republican form of
government. This Republic is not a democracy. It isn't two coyotes and
a sheep taking a vote on what's for dinner.
We have liberty. We have American liberty.
We have rights that come from God that are guaranteed to us in the
Constitution.
Now, I believe that God moved the Founding Fathers around like men on
a chessboard to shape this Nation, and I believe that for a lot of
reasons. One of them is I can't go back on this Monday morning of 2011
and redraw the course of history and even imagine that I could come up
with a result that would be half of what has been produced by this
great gift of liberty and freedom--freedom of speech, religion, and the
press. All the people who came here to exercise their religious
liberty, their free enterprise liberty, their property rights, to be
protected from double jeopardy, and to have a jury of their peers and
face their accusers, a lot of that comes from Roman law.
The reasonable Western Civilization culture that lets us analyze our
problems is part of who we are. They landed on a continent with
unlimited natural resources at the dawn of the industrial revolution
and settled it from sea to shining sea in a blink of a historical eye.
That's America.
We are a vigorous people.
We've got the vigor of every donor civilization on the planet. And
now they want to impose ObamaCare on us? They want to raise the debt
ceiling by $2.4 trillion or $4 trillion and ask us to go further and
deeper into debt and put that on our grandchildren and children not yet
born?
My youngest granddaughter, Reagan Ann King, entered this world with
$44,000 that she owed Uncle Sam. That has got to stop, Mr. Speaker.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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