[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]
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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.
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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.
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