[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 148 (Tuesday, October 22, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H6670-H6672]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2100
                          GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I want to emphasize the point being made by 
my friend, Mr. Franks from Arizona, about the origination clause. I 
have been talking about this for 3\1/2\ years of when the Senate took a 
House bill that provided a tax credit for first-time home buyers who 
were in the military or veterans, took out every single word and took 
that short little bill and expanded that by thousands of pages--my copy 
was around 2,500 pages--it had nothing to do with military or veteran 
home buyers. It had nothing to do with that. They inserted health care. 
We have found out since it is costing more; and if you like your 
doctor, you're going to lose your doctor, and if you like your 
insurance policy, there is a good chance you may lose it. Fortunately, 
not everybody is losing their doctor, but the promises have been badly 
broken. It turns out those people, including the head of this 
administration, were just flat wrong when they said, If you like your 
doctor, you can keep your doctor; if you like your insurance, you can 
keep your insurance.
  For example, there is a story here from Kaiser Health News from Anna 
Gorman and Julie Appleby, dated October 21. I won't read all three 
pages, but this is what it points out:

       Health plans are sending hundreds of thousands of 
     cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage, 
     frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have 
     and forcing others to buy more costly policies.
       The main reason insurers offer is that the policies fall 
     short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting 
     January 1.

  On further it says:

       But the cancellation notices, which began arriving in 
     August, have shocked many consumers in light of President 
     Barack Obama's promise that people could keep their plans if 
     they liked them.
       ``I don't feel like I need to change, but I have to,'' said 
     Jeff Learned, a television editor in Los Angeles, who must 
     find a new plan for his teenage daughter, who has a health 
     condition that has required multiple surgeries.

  He liked his policy. She had a pre-existing condition. Now, because 
of ObamaCare, he has lost the insurance for him and his daughter, and 
he is going to have to find another plan, which will likely cost much 
more.
  The article goes on and says:

       An estimated 14 million people purchase their own coverage 
     because they don't get it through their jobs. Calls to 
     insurers in several States showed that many have sent 
     notices.
       Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 
     policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the 
     State. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 
     160,000 people--about half of its individual business in the 
     State. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 
     percent of its individual market customers, while 
     Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, 
     is dropping about 45 percent.

  The article further down talks about other notices and says:

       Blue Shield of California sent roughly 119,000 cancellation 
     notices out in mid-September, about 60 percent of its 
     individual business. About two-thirds of those policyholders 
     will see rate increases in their new policies, said spokesman 
     Steve Shivinsky.

  The President, Jay Carney, this administration, Senators who quoted 
this, Democrats, leaders here in the House, owe millions of people an 
apology. They owe an apology to those who they told that if you like 
your doctor, you can keep your doctor, and people that were told that 
if you like your policy, you can keep it.
  I know that our President has traveled the world apologizing for 
things he did not do that were done in prior generations, prior times 
in this country; but I think in order to keep credibility in this 
country, it is important that instead of apologizing for things you had 
nothing to do with, it is important to apologize when people trust you 
and you make promises and those promises turn out to be totally false.
  I understand that the President's spokesman may have indicated today 
that they may need to suspend the individual mandate. Mr. Speaker, let 
me tell you that after Harry Reid and the President refused to suspend 
the individual mandate--that was the third compromise we proposed 
before the shutdown. They said, Absolutely not, under no circumstances. 
Their actions made it very clear that they were saying, We are willing 
to shut this government down. We have already worked out the purchase 
and rental and the use of barricades to keep World War II veterans in 
wheelchairs from getting to see things they want to see. We have worked 
out barricades for the Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial, that so many 
come to Washington to see. We worked out barricades across the entire 
Lincoln Memorial plaza.
  When I asked one park ranger the second day of the shutdown, how many 
they normally have out there, she said four. Actually, I've been there 
all hours of the day and night. I rarely see more than one or two in 
the area; yet I was shown a photograph that had mounted police, most of 
them on horseback in the picture, with a few of them standing around. 
It looked like there were at least 16 mounted police there to try to 
enforce the barricades at the World War II Memorial, which would 
violate the existing law that says in the event of a shutdown, you are 
not supposed to spend more money than you were before. Yet this 
administration, in order to make the hurt be felt across the country by 
veterans, by people who had their one-time vacation planned for a 
national park, this administration and Harry Reid were willing to shut 
down the government, rather than just suspend the mandate that 
individuals have to buy this insurance. Now they have got to buy it in 
the next few months. They have got to buy it. By their actions, they 
were saying, We are willing to shut the government down for over 2 
weeks to keep from suspending that mandate to individuals. Yes, the 
President already issued what should be an illegal order saying that he 
was not going to enforce the mandate for Big Business under ObamaCare.

  So this side of the aisle repeatedly said, Look, if you are going to 
suspend the mandate for Big Business--businesses with over 50 
employees--then why not just agree to suspend for a year, the same 
amount of time you are giving to Big Business, do that for the 
individuals? Then, as the shutdown continued, we saw what a disaster, 
what a train wreck it was. The Democrats that called it a train wreck, 
a nightmare, they were exactly right. It was playing out in front of 
us, and still Harry Reid and this President said, We don't care. We are 
not suspending

[[Page H6671]]

the individual mandate. We are forcing individuals to do what we are 
not making businesses do. Even though it is in the law required for 
businesses to do it, that seemed like a pretty easy ask.
  That was where we were in the negotiations, right before the last 
bill we passed about an hour after midnight on October 1, which I saw 
as basically capitulation. All right, all right, Harry Reid, Mr. 
President, we are not demanding that you suspend the individual mandate 
as you have done for Big Business, but here are our conferees, 
negotiators. It is what the Constitution anticipates, and it is what 
the law and the rules require.
  Harry Reid, again, by his actions said, We would rather shut this 
down. We would rather have mounted police out there in the face of our 
veterans. And as we saw when veterans ultimately took barricades to the 
White House, we saw, for the first time in my memory, officers of the 
Federal Government in uniform who were supposed to protect Americans' 
rights, instead for the first time in my memory, being used, the first 
time in my lifetime that I can remember, to take away Americans' and 
specifically veterans' rights that they fought for for all Americans.
  It is almost unthinkable. It is like a bad dream, the Federal 
Government hiring officers to take away Americans' rights. How far is 
this administration willing to go to make Americans hurt, to get the 
money they want? How ironic that leaders in this administration, going 
to the top, would use the term ``extortion.'' Extortion is when you do 
some action threatening someone with action if you don't give them all 
the money that they demand. I always thought when Jay Carney said that 
Congress is putting a gun to their heads to be paid for doing their 
job, that that didn't make sense because this is exactly the other way 
around.
  Some of our Democratic friends are very good at taking action that is 
offensive to most Americans and then blaming their opponents for doing 
what actually they are doing when their opponents weren't even doing 
what was alleged. That is basically what we saw here, people saying 
Republicans in the House were using extortion. Hardly. The Constitution 
of the United States gives the Congress the purse strings, control over 
the money. What this administration said by their actions and made very 
clear is, We will harm World War II veterans, Korean veterans, Vietnam 
veterans; we will harm veterans by preventing them from getting to the 
cemetery in Normandy, being able to pull over and take a picture of 
Mount Rushmore, trying to take advantage of the Claude Moore farm that 
operates off of individual expenditures; they would put up barricades 
at a World War II Memorial that was built entirely with private funds 
that has a trust fund of millions of dollars that is used for operating 
expenses; they would go out of their way to spend more extra money just 
to make Americans' lives more difficult and unpleasant, all the while 
saying, We will never agree to suspend the individual mandate, the 
requirement that individuals buy a certain level of insurance or be 
fined the minimum of either $95 or 1 percent of their income tax, 
whichever is lower.
  One of these days some of the fact-checking people will actually 
admit that I have been right and they have been wrong. Even with 
subsidies, people that make 133 percent of the poverty level are 
projected to come out of pocket potentially thousands of dollars, one, 
two, three--one projection that I had read before I talked about this 
ran $3,000 even after the subsidies.

                              {time}  2115

  And so, you know, all the mainstream media that is doing everything 
they can to protect the President, some are coming around and 
realizing: Wait a minute; there were a lot of things that weren't true. 
And I appreciate NBC making some of these stories the stories they 
should be.
  But it is appalling what is happening to Americans, what is happening 
to the health insurance they once had. It is time for real reform. And 
as I have said from this podium, going back 3, 3\1/2\ years, a bill 
that starts out as a fraud is not likely to get better. And when you 
take a House bill, because of the origination clause, article I, 
section 7, all bills that raise revenue must originate in the House.
  Now, it could and had been considered that ObamaCare was not a 
revenue-raising bill. But when Chief Justice John Roberts did the 
unthinkable and rewrote legislation that clearly defined itself as a 
penalty and rewrote that as a tax--even though at page 15 he made clear 
that it was a penalty; it wasn't a tax. It was penalizing people for 
not doing an act. So under the anti-injunction statute, it was clearly 
a penalty, not a tax. But then to save it, he had to actually do the 
unthinkable and say further in the opinion, actually, it is a tax, not 
a penalty.
  Well, once he defined it as a tax, in order to rule it 
constitutional, then, clearly, that is a bill that raises revenue. 
Clearly, article I, section 7 kicks in, and a bill to raise revenue, 
which is what taxes do, must originate in the House.
  I have heard people say, who have not done the legal research, well, 
the Supreme Court has decided many times that you don't have to have 
precisely the same bill when the Senate strikes language in the House 
bill and puts other language in it and sends it back, then it still 
originated in the House. Mr. Speaker, I would submit to you that when 
you strike every single word of a bill, including the title about it 
being a tax credit for first-time home buyers in the Armed Forces or 
veterans, you even strike the title and substitute therein about a 
2,500-page bill that is all about the government running health care, 
about getting health care records controlled by Washington, about 
creating navigators to get your personal information--which, actually, 
we have been told is just a dream for identity thieves because of how 
much information will be accessible, be stolen by hackers--you put all 
of that stuff in there, dictating about what has to be put in vending 
machines, notices that have to be put, requirements for restaurants--I 
think there is a requirement for restaurants, they may have to have a 
place specifically for nursing mothers--you put all of those in there, 
including issues--and I love the fact that women nurse babies. I think 
it is one the greatest gifts God gave, but that has nothing do with a 
tax credit for first-time home buyers in the military or veterans, so, 
clearly, that bill did not originate in the House. It originated in the 
Senate. When the only thing that is left of the bill that originated in 
the House is a number, like 3590, that is not a bill that originates in 
the House. It originated in the Senate.
  And since we now know after the Supreme Court opinion that Chief 
Justice Roberts rewrote the law, which the Constitution simply does not 
allow, but the Supreme Court did it anyway--there are checks and 
balances. Congress could check the Supreme Court when they act 
unconstitutionally like that themselves. But he rewrote it to call it a 
tax after he called it a penalty, so that means it had to originate in 
the Senate. It did not originate in the House.
  And what limited case law there is indicates it absolutely must be 
germane to the underlying bill, and that is not germane. There is no 
way that is germane to first-time home buyers. It is about the 
government controlling people's health care. It sets up a panel that 
will decide: Do you get a pacemaker or do you not get a pacemaker? You 
are too old for a pacemaker. You are going to die early because we are 
not going to let you have a pacemaker. Are you going to get the surgery 
you need?
  You know, like people in England, Canada, others, again, I have had a 
number of people from England and Canada go, you know: Where are we 
going to go now when we need immediate treatment when you screw up the 
greatest health care system in the world?
  It certainly needed reform. But what people need to understand is you 
can look at the entire history, recorded history of mankind, going back 
to the very beginning, when we knew what mankind was doing, and some 
medical historians say it was around 1900, 1910, 1912, maybe it was 
during World War I, 1916, '17, '18, maybe it was during the great 
influenza outbreak and protocols were established, but somewhere around 
that time, about 100 years ago, it has been said that for the first 
time in the entire human history you had a better chance of getting 
well than of getting worse after seeing a doctor. When you consider 
that just in 100

[[Page H6672]]

years this country has been at the forefront of saving lives, enhancing 
lives, improving quality of life, making incredible breakthroughs in 
medicine and health care--reforms were needed, but not the government 
taking it over and making it run like the Post Office, not the 
government taking it over and making it run like the Department of 
Education or Energy or Interior, that slows everything down, because 
when somebody needs heart surgery, they don't need the government in 
the process of slowing things down.
  It is incredible what has been inflicted upon man by man, and the 
ObamaCare law is inflicting massive cost increases for most Americans, 
higher deductibles, running many doctors out of health care. It is time 
that this administration, if Jay Carney is willing to now say, after 
the President and Harry Reid shut down the government for over 2 weeks 
over a little temper tantrum that they did not want to suspend the 
individual mandate, that is what we were down to, and then after that, 
okay, just produce conferees--we have got ours; we will get an 
agreement hopefully by morning so most Americans will never even know 
the government was shut down--refused to even have conferees to work it 
out before morning because before that they weren't going to suspend 
the individual mandate. They would rather shut down the government 
indefinitely than allow individuals to have the same break that they 
gave to Big Business. I am a fan of Big Business as long as they treat 
people fairly and right. Most do.

  But now to say, well, we may suspend the individual mandate, it means 
all the suffering this administration inflicted upon our veterans, on 
people on vacation, people that needed Federal services and didn't get 
them, on those whose loved ones were killed in Afghanistan, and this 
administration, though we gave them the power to pay the death 
benefits, wouldn't even do that, played games with their death benefits 
while they were grieving. This administration was willing to do all 
that, knowing we are probably going to have to do what the Republicans 
were asking anyway, but we will try to get--we know the mainstream 
media will blame it 100 percent on the Republicans. We know that is 
going to happen. They will give us cover, and so we can refuse 
something as reasonable as just suspending the individual mandate for a 
year, something as reasonable as just appointing conferees and working 
it out before morning. We can refuse to do those things because the 
mainstream media, MSNBC, CNN, they will give us cover, they will 
deceive the American public about who is at fault.
  And I am wondering, if this administration goes about suspending the 
individual mandate that would have prevented there ever being a 
shutdown in the first place, which was the next to last thing we did 
before we just capitulated and said, all right, appoint conferees, if 
they are willing to do that now, I still have hope that even CNN will 
have to recognize that it was the President and Harry Reid that shut 
the government down, that inflicted pain and suffering upon the 
American people who needed Federal services for something that they 
were agreeable to do anyway.
  We will see. But then again, this is the same administration who 
weaponized the IRS to go after conservatives. Here is a story from 
today at Watchdog.org, by Kenric Ward, ``IRS pays illegal immigrants 
$4.2 billion while stalling Tea Parties.''
  It says:

       On January 19, 2007, file photo, the U.S. Border Patrol 
     detains a large group of suspected immigrants at the Arizona-
     Mexico border in Sasabe, Arizona.
       While harrying and stalling Tea Party groups seeking 
     nonprofit status, the Internal Revenue Service mailed $4.2 
     billion in child credit checks to undocumented immigrants.
       Critics say midlevel IRS bureaucrats continue to abuse the 
     Additional Child Tax Credit program by dispensing $1,000 
     checks to families in this country illegally.
       ``The law needs clarification that undocumented immigrants 
     are not eligible,'' Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of 
     Iowa, told Watchdog.org in a statement.
       To make Congress' intent clear--that only legal U.S. 
     residents are entitled to the Additional Child Tax Credits--
     Grassley cosponsored a clarifying amendment with Senator Mike 
     Enzi, Republican from Wyoming.
       ``Unfortunately, the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat 
     from Nevada, cut off debate, so we weren't given the chance 
     to offer our amendment,'' said Grassley, the top Republican 
     on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

  So all the while--and I spoke to another Tea Party group this 
weekend, different races, all ages, even kids, very, very senior 
people, both genders, people from all walks of life were there, and out 
of hundreds of people at that event, there was only one who got more 
benefits from the government than he paid in.

                              {time}  2130

  That is the common thread I see with the vast majority of Tea Party 
people. They pay income tax. Those who identify with the Tea Party are 
a majority of those paying income tax, the 53 percent, 52 percent, 
whatever it is. They ought to be able to say something without being 
called all kinds of criminal names, without being slandered and 
libeled. They just want fairness, and they are not seeing it.
  Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the shutdown and that this 
administration was willing to make the American people--World War II 
veterans and so many others--suffer, the survivors of the loved ones 
who died in Afghanistan, make them suffer, when all they had to do was 
suspend the individual mandate for a year--and they are talking about 
doing it anyway--the American people ought to be furious.
  Like I say, I still hold onto that hope that springs eternal in the 
human breast that even the mainstream media will figure out who was 
actually at fault for the shutdown, when Republicans submitted 
compromise after compromise after compromise that included things the 
administration may do anyway. If we are going to get this country 
turned around, America is going to have to wake up to who is causing 
the problems and who isn't.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________