[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 7, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H1581-H1587]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TOPICS OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address 
you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I have a 
number of topics I would like to bring up this evening.
  First, I would comment that I heard the words ``Affordable Care Act'' 
multiple times in the previous hour, and it just caught me each time I 
heard that. Abraham Lincoln would have had a difficult time saying such 
a thing being Honest Abe, and George Washington probably couldn't have 
said it at all.
  As we know this, it is not affordable care and that is the reason 
that we have to address it. We knew this was going to happen. Of all 
the horrible stories we have heard about ObamaCare--this thing they 
call the Affordable Care Act--many of them were predicted here on the 
floor of the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker. I predicted quite a 
lot of them myself, as did many of the Members who fought against that 
piece of legislation that was jammed down on us by hook, by crook, by 
legislative shenanigans.
  We could see what was going to happen with this. It was slammed 
together by trying to circumvent the majorities, by pushing some things 
through on reconciliation. And we ended up with a piece of legislation 
that was the biggest bite they could get to create socialized medicine.
  The worst part of ObamaCare, Mr. Speaker, was this: That it is an 
unconstitutional taking of God-given, American liberty. We are--and at 
least used to be and believe we are to be again--the freest people on 
the planet; and that our rights come from God; and that government 
can't take them away.
  Many times here on the floor, I have said, Mr. Speaker, that the 
Federal Government hasn't figured out how to nationalize or take over 
our soul. That is our business, and we manage that. Our souls are the 
most sovereign thing that we have and are.
  The second most sovereign thing we have and are is our skin and 
everything inside it. It is our health. It is the management of our 
health. And if Americans are not capable of managing their own health 
and making their own health decisions and pressing the marketplace to 
produce the health insurance policies that they desire, if Americans 
can't make those decisions, then it would just stand to reason, if that 
is true--and that is what Democrats seem to think--then there aren't 
any people on the planet who can manage their own health.
  What I am pretty sure of is that if we don't think that regular, red-
blooded Americans--especially those who are out there punching the time 
clock, running their business, starting a business, or working on 
commission, whatever they might be doing, the salt-of-the-Earth 
Americans--if they can't manage it, I am really sure that a bunch of 
leftists who are elected to office out of the inner cities of America 
aren't going to be able to do it.

                              {time}  2030

  And we have seen the success of that, the leftist agenda of 
ObamaCare, imposed upon America, commanding that we buy policies that 
are approved by the Federal Government. They would have liked to have 
established the Federal Government as being the single-payer plan and 
abolished all insurance whatsoever and simply taken care of everybody's 
healthcare needs so that one size fits all, and we could drift down 
into the mediocrity that most the rest of the world has exhibited for a 
long time.
  This all started back in Germany in the latter part of the 19th 
century, when Otto von Bismarck decided that if he was going to get 
reelected, he had to make the Germans dependent upon him. And so he 
devised this plan called socialized medicine and he, more or less, 
trained the Germans to expect the federal government to make those 
decisions for them, pick up the costs for them; and, in doing so, that 
sense of dependency got Bismarck reelected in Germany.
  Well, it is not that old a country in Germany, but this idea of 
Marxism comes right out of there. By the way, there is a bench in 
Berlin that honors Karl Marx, and a number of other statutes and 
monuments as well. That is where this came from, and we watched as 
other countries adopted it.
  I once picked up--Mr. Speaker, I had a World War II veteran who came 
over to an event that I was doing in Hospers, Iowa, and he had gone up 
to his attic and he brought down these Collier's magazines. They were 
original Collier's magazines that started right at the end of the 
Second World War and went on through those years, for 2 or 3 or 4 
years, and they were yellow and, of course, they were dated, and he 
presented them all to me.
  He said: I want you to have these. I want you to read down through 
these

[[Page H1582]]

magazines and see what it was like in those days shortly at the end of 
World War II and in the Reconstruction era afterwards.
  So I actually accepted all of those magazines, copied them, and gave 
him back the originals. I didn't feel right having them in my 
possession. But I read through them; and there were pictures there of 
doctors and nurses and healthcare providers in Great Britain that were 
haggard and tired and worn, and stories about how, because of the 
socialized medicine they passed in the United Kingdom, they had to see 
so many patients a day in order to make a living, and they couldn't pay 
attention to the patients so much as they had to pay attention to their 
schedule and turn them through quickly through the turnstiles in the 
healthcare system in Great Britain because health care was rationed in 
that way.
  I have a friend who is a radio talk show host--and, actually, it is 
WHO Radio, one of Ronald Reagan's original radio programs where Ronald 
Reagan got his start--who comes originally from Great Britain; proud 
American. But both of his parents are gone, and both of his parents 
deaths can be attributed to the failed national healthcare system, 
socialized medicine that the United Kingdom has. He had told me several 
years ago: Once socialized medicine is established, you will not be 
able to undo it.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I bring this up this way because this is our last 
best chance to turn this country in the right direction. It is our last 
best chance to throw off this mandate of socialized medicine that was 
established by hook, crook, and legislative shenanigan by the 
Democrats, and passed through in the final component in this Congress 
March 23, 2010. That event that took place, as I recall, I believe it 
was dated March 23, but it actually rolled over past midnight, but the 
Record showed March 23.
  I went home that night worn out from days of fighting ObamaCare and 
doing all that I could do to put an end to it, to kill it off before it 
did what it has already done to the American people. And I laid down, 
thinking I would sleep the sleep of the dead, but I woke up in about an 
hour and a half and I got up and I wrote the repeal of ObamaCare, and 
it turned out to be the first repeal draft that emerged after ObamaCare 
had passed.
  I certainly wrote it well before Barack Obama had signed the bill, 
although they hustled it out to him, I think, the next day, and that is 
when he signed it.
  The repeal bill that I have introduced here--and it has passed the 
floor of this House a number of times; I have lost track of how many 
times, Mr. Speaker--it is only 40 words. And the last words in that 
bill are: ``As if such act had never been enacted.''
  That is, Mr. Speaker, what we need to do. We need to send the full, 
100 percent, rip-it-out-by-the-roots-as-if-it-had-never-been-enacted 
repeal out of the House and over to the Senate and set it on Mitch 
McConnell's desk and let Mitch McConnell figure out--Majority Leader 
McConnell, Senator McConnell figure out then how to get the votes put 
together in the United States Senate for a full, 100 percent repeal of 
ObamaCare.
  The House will pass such a bill. It won't be hard to put those votes 
together. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Democrat or two that 
was worried about their seat that would join us in such an endeavor.
  Then, once that bill is over through the Rotunda and over on the desk 
of Senator McConnell, then we should start down through with the 
individual repairs to the healthcare system that we need to do, that we 
all know we need to do and that we have talked about for a long time.
  Some of these have been out here debated for 10 years in this 
Congress, Mr. Speaker, and, instead, we have got a different 
configuration that has been served up to us. But I submit that it is 
not too late to do it right. Send the full repeal over. That repeal can 
have an enactment clause of, say, a year from now. That is enough time 
for people to make their adjustments for their own health insurance and 
get it taken care of, especially under the provisions that I propose.
  I would point out that my ObamaCare--and, yes, we Members of Congress 
are obligated to own our own ObamaCare policies and pay a substantial 
portion of the premium. By the way, mine went up when ObamaCare was 
imposed upon me by not quite $4,300 a year additional. That was my 
privilege to own an ObamaCare policy, but we are compelled to own that 
policy.

  For me, I got the letter, dated last September 28, that said, as of 
December 31, at midnight, my ObamaCare policy was canceled. And it 
turned out that I would have been without insurance from New Years, 
from the stroke of midnight, auld lang syne, until whatever time it 
would take me to get that put together. So we went to work, and there 
was only one policy that actually qualified under ObamaCare, only one.
  Of all the counties in America, roughly a third of the counties there 
is only one choice available to the American people; compelled by law 
to buy a policy or be penalized by the Federal Government. And your 
options are not that you get to keep the policy that you like or that 
you get to keep the doctor that you like. You don't even get to choose 
from a menu of what kind of health insurance policy you want.
  Instead, for a third of the counties in America, you only have one 
choice, and that is buy the policy that is the only option that is 
available to you. So there is no shopping for prices. There is no 
looking at the kind of options you might want covered by your health 
insurance policy.
  There is no freedom to go out there in the marketplace, and there is 
no marketplace that actually exists because the consumers are not 
making the demands for the kind of policies that they would like. 
Instead, it is the Federal Government dictating by mandate what the 
policy shall cover. And when that happens, the premiums go up--which 
anybody could figure out--and the coverage goes down.
  Now we have people that--I would just look back to shortly before the 
election. The Thursday before the election we had an event south of Des 
Moines on a farm, and there, soon-to-be Vice President-elect Mike Pence 
arrived, as did Senator Ted Cruz, back to Iowa. I'm grateful to both of 
those gentlemen and friends.
  As I gave my speech, I pointed out that I have seen people's health 
insurance premiums go from $8,000 a year to $10,000 a year. And then as 
I saw people in the crowd started waving their arm, and I say $12,000 a 
year, $14,000 a year, we had an auction going on, Mr. Speaker, and it 
came up to $20,000 a year. Looked to me like these were ``Ma and Pa'' 
family farm operations that were facing $20,000 in health insurance 
premiums, where not that long ago they would have been looking at 6 or 
7 or $8,000 in health insurance premiums.
  That has swept across this countryside. I talked to a gentleman here 
on the floor tonight whose health insurance premiums were $24,000. That 
is just not sustainable. You have to finally decide: I am going to take 
a risk and go without health insurance with those kind of costs.
  That is driven by ObamaCare. It is driven by the mandates in 
ObamaCare. It is driven by the guaranteed issue, no consideration for 
preexisting conditions, and it is driven by a mandate such as you stay 
on your parents' health insurance until you are 26.
  It goes on and on and on. OB care, maternity coverage, contraceptive 
coverage, you can name it, and also, no additional cost for your 
medical checkups. All of these things cost money, and they are built 
into the premium, and every time you add another bell or whistle or 
accessory to your health insurance policy, the premium goes up and up 
and up.
  When the insurers find out that they are losing money, they start to 
drop out of the marketplace. They drop out of the marketplace, and when 
they do, there is less competition.
  When there is less competition, prices go up, Mr. Speaker. This is 
what we have seen happen over the years since the implementation of 
ObamaCare. It is a calamity. It will sink ObamaCare. If we don't touch 
it, it will sink and it will be gone. It will implode upon itself. It 
cannot be sustained. We know that on this side of the aisle from about 
here on over. They know it intuitively over on this side of the aisle 
from about there on over. But

[[Page H1583]]

the difficulty is that politically they have embraced ObamaCare and 
they have decided they are going to hold onto it and protect it.
  Why?
  I think part of it is they want to hold on and protect the legacy of 
President Obama, who, if all had gone well, would have ridden off into 
the sunset. He doesn't seem to be doing that, Mr. Speaker.
  But now we are at this place where we have the votes in the House to 
do a full, 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare, and that is what we should 
do.
  Tomorrow, I understand that the gentleman from Ohio, and perhaps 
others, will introduce legislation that will be described as a full 
repeal of ObamaCare. I wish it were so, but it is designed to fit 
within the reconciliation standards. It is a legislation that once made 
it to President Obama's desk and received a veto. This time, 
presumably, it could go to President Trump's desk and receive a 
signature. That is good. I favor that as an improvement in the right 
direction. But the full right thing we need to do is the 100 percent 
repeal.
  We shouldn't be sustaining any kind of mandate whatsoever. Let the 
States determine what the mandates might be, but don't let them lock 
people into their States and refuse to let them buy health insurance 
from outside of those State lines. And it looks to me that the bill, as 
introduced by leadership, doesn't really allow for the facilitation of 
buying insurance across State lanes.
  So here is what I suggest we do, Mr. Speaker. Send the full, 100 
percent repeal over to the Senate. Pick up the bill that was a repeal 
just about a year ago, send it over to the Senate, too. Then, what we 
have is Mitch McConnell can choose from the menu on what he can get 
done, but the pressure for the full repeal will build if the House 
sends it to the Senate, and the odds of the full repeal get greater and 
greater.
  Then the House, doing its job--and we are not obligated to negotiate 
a deal out of the House and the Senate and the White House. It is the 
judgment of the House that needs to be reflected here in this Chamber.
  This most deliberative body that we have, the voice for the American 
people, we should never be trapped into thinking that we can't pass 
anything out of the House if we don't first have a handshake with the 
President and the majority in the Senate. That has handcuffed us for 
the last 8 or more years.

  The strategic thinking has been that we don't even try to move 
anything out of the House unless we know they can take it up in the 
Senate and unless we know that we can get a signature from the 
President, because anything else is a waste of time.
  Well, it is not necessarily a waste of time, Mr. Speaker, not 
necessary at all. In fact, we need to send out of here our highest 
aspirations. So I say this: send the full repeal over to the Senate, 
and then pick up the repairs, the replacements, and the reform, those 
things that we know we need to do, and they can stand alone with or 
without the full repeal of ObamaCare.
  For example, we need to send Paul Gosar's bill that repeals 
components of the McCarran-Ferguson Act that allows for insurance to be 
bought and sold across State lines. Paul Gosar has done a lot of work 
on that bill, and his predecessor out of Arizona, John Shadegg, pushed 
that bill for about 16 years here in the House of Representatives. In 
his last week or so here in the House, he said: I have one regret, and 
that regret is I should have pushed harder for the repeal of McCarran-
Ferguson so that we could be selling and buying insurance across State 
lines.

                              {time}  2045

  He should have pushed harder. I recall John Shadegg pushing very hard 
on that, and he just couldn't get it there. We all couldn't get it 
there. Now Paul Gosar has that bill out of the Judiciary Committee. We 
passed it out a week and a half ago, and it is hanging on the calendar 
now, and it should come to this floor. The votes would be here to pass 
Paul Gosar's repeal of McCarran-Ferguson, and we should send that over 
to the Senate. Passing that piece of legislation would enable insurance 
to be sold across State lines, and that would set the competition up 
between the 50 States.
  I recall the debate here on the floor of the House in 2009 and 2010 
when the data came out that a typical young man in New Jersey at the 
time, a healthy 23-year-old, would pay an average of about $6,000 for 
his health insurance premium for the year--$500 a month, $6,000. A 
similarly situated healthy young man in Kentucky would be paying $1,000 
a year.
  Now, what is the difference between those two States?
  The cost of providing that care and the far fewer mandates in the 
State of Kentucky and a lot of mandates in the State of New Jersey.
  So why wouldn't we let a young man in New Jersey buy a health 
insurance policy in Kentucky? What are the odds that he is going to be 
insured if he can get a policy for $1,000 as opposed to $6,000?
  We know that far more Americans would be insured if they had the 
options and didn't have to buy all the bells and whistles. He probably 
doesn't need maternity. He probably doesn't need contraceptive. Maybe 
he is not too concerned about the preexisting condition component of 
this. If he is 23 years old and on his own, he is not worried about a 
26-year slacker mandate. So that is the comparison of what could happen 
if we passed Gosar's bill and repealed McCarran-Ferguson and allowed 
people to purchase insurance across State lines. That should be number 
one.
  Number two would be full deductibility of everyone's health insurance 
premiums. Today there is something like 160 million Americans that get 
their health insurance from their employer. When the employer sets up a 
group plan as a rule and they negotiate those premiums, whatever that 
premium might be, let's just say it is $10,000 a year per employee, 
they lay that $10,000 on the barrel head, pay that insurance premium, 
and that goes into the books as a business expense, and it shows up on 
the schedule C as a health insurance premium.
  But if you are a sole proprietor, if you are a partnership, if you 
are a ma-and-pa operation and you have one part-time employee, that 
makes you an employer. If you are an employer, you can deduct the 
premiums to your employees, but you can't deduct your own premium.
  There are 20.9 million Americans similarly situated in that scenario, 
Mr. Speaker, where that 20.9 million Americans are compelled under 
ObamaCare to pay for health insurance premiums and meeting those 
standards, and maybe they have only got one choice like one-third of 
America's counties; maybe they only have two choices like another third 
of America's counties; or maybe they have more than two choices like 
the other third. But at least 1,022 counties in America have only 
choice: buy the insurance policy--that is your only choice--or be in 
violation of the law and be fined and be punished, but do it with 
after-tax dollars instead of before-tax dollars. That is the burden 
that they are carrying right now.
  Mr. Speaker, 20.9 million Americans are disenfranchised in that way. 
Yet they would be employers and they would be in the effort of trying 
to provide health insurance for themselves, trying to start up a 
business perhaps with maybe one part-time employee, with now this big 
disadvantage that they don't get to deduct their health insurance 
premiums.
  Maybe they are that couple that is $20,000 or even $24,000 for a 
premium after-tax dollars, and by the time the Federal Government steps 
in and taxes the first, say, 36 percent, and the State steps in and 
taxes another 9 percent, now we are at 45. You can add a few more 
various and sundry taxes in there, but a round number is half. So your 
$20,000 premium takes $40,000 of earnings in order to break even with 
that premium. But the employer gets to write off the $20,000 as a 
business expense, so they have that advantage, and you are seeking to 
compete with an established larger employer. This is wrong. So the 
second bill we should pass out of this House is the full deductibility 
of everybody's health insurance premiums.
  The McCarran-Ferguson repeal under Paul Gosar, then the full 
deductibility of everybody's health insurance premiums--oh, that is the 
King bill, by the way, Mr. Speaker, and I am hopeful that that can be 
passed through and become law. It is a superior approach to providing 
refundable tax credits.

[[Page H1584]]

  We need to learn some things. For example, when we hear tax credits, 
it really means in this discussion refundable tax credits.
  What is a refundable tax credit?
  That is when the Federal Government sends you money whether you have 
a tax liability or not. So that would be that if--and the range in this 
proposal that emerged yesterday is between $2,000, $4,000, up to 
$14,000 in refundable tax credits to help people pay for their 
insurance premiums.
  Well, that makes me feel good, the idea of trying to help people that 
can't afford it, but in the process of doing that, we are also helping 
a lot of people that can afford it. Nonetheless, when you are paying 
people's health insurance premium, that becomes an entitlement. If 
everybody is entitled to having a health insurance policy, and if you 
don't have the money to do so--and I think they use the standard of 
$75,000 or less--then the Federal Government will subsidize your policy 
and conceivably buy your policy. Now we have another new entitlement 
that grows the Federal Government, raises taxes, and spends hundreds of 
billions of dollars because we don't want to say no to people. They had 
a policy handed to them by ObamaCare, which the taxpayers cannot 
afford.
  We have $20 trillion in national debt right now, Mr. Speaker, and we 
have a debt ceiling crisis coming at us within just a matter of days 
or, at a maximum, weeks. This Federal Government needs to get a handle 
on its spending and it needs to get back to balance. We will never get 
there if we keep growing entitlements here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives.

  So that is two items that need to be brought through. The first is 
the full repeal. Item number one, the repeal of the McCarran-Ferguson 
Act, sell insurance across State lines. Item number two, pass the King 
bill for full deductibility of everybody's health insurance premiums so 
that everybody paying for health insurance is on the same standard as 
employers are.
  Then the third thing is the medical malpractice reform, and that is 
the tort reform legislation that passed out of the Judiciary Committee 
on the same day with Paul Gosar's bill, Mr. Speaker. That legislation 
puts a cap on medical malpractice settlements of $250,000 in 
noneconomic damages--a lot of us would call that pain and suffering--
and pay for pain and suffering. That is a component of it, but it is 
not the whole picture. So we adopt language that is actually borrowed 
from California which passed this medical malpractice reform 40 years 
ago and capped it at $250,000.
  By the way, that is still the law in California today. The individual 
that signed it into law, his name is--at that time he was the Governor 
of California, Mr. Speaker. Maybe people don't remember who the 
Governor of California was 40 years ago: Jerry Brown. The Governor of 
California today: Jerry Brown.
  Is there an effort to repeal the tort reform legislation that has 
been part of California's law for 40 years? No.
  In fact, Texas has borrowed from those ideas and implemented that 
into law, and they are finding that they have got doctors and medical 
practitioners moving to Texas now because they are not subjected to the 
outrageous medical malpractice claims that they have been in multiple 
States across the country.
  So this tort reform legislation that just passed out of the Judiciary 
Committee a week and a half or so ago is another prime piece of 
legislation that should come to the floor for debate and vote, and I am 
confident it would pass the House and send it over to the Senate, and 
then give Mitch McConnell some tools to work with.
  That is not the end of it, Mr. Speaker. I know that under the 
legislation that has been proposed by leadership and just rolled out 
yesterday, they expand health savings accounts. I think they nearly 
doubled them, as I understand, $6,000-some for an individual, maybe 
$12,000-some for a couple. That is close, but I know that it is not 
precise, Mr. Speaker.
  I agree that we need to expand health savings accounts. I think we 
need to expand them more. My legislation expands them to $10,000 for 
the individual; $20,000 for the couple. But health savings accounts 
need to be expanded, and they need to be expanded so that people can 
use them and manage them. They can put money in tax free, take money 
out to pay their premiums, take money out to pay their healthcare 
costs, and grow the health savings account so that when it grows to a 
point where it becomes $50,000, $100,000, $400,000, $500,000, double 
that by the time of retirement or more. With that kind of money sitting 
in a health savings account, then there will be people that will 
negotiate a health insurance policy, but as a catastrophic policy. They 
will conclude that they want a policy that has got a high deductible, a 
fairly high copayment, and that they will take care of their own 
incidental healthcare costs out of pocket and try to grow their health 
savings account.
  In the process of doing that, if you have got the capital in your 
HSA, then you can negotiate the premium or your monthly health 
insurance premium down by negotiating for a catastrophic plan, taking 
care of the incidental costs yourself out of your health savings 
account. To some degree, you become your own insured for the lower 
dollar items while you still have catastrophic insurance for the big 
things.
  We have done the numbers on this. Even when it was down to the cap in 
2003 that rolled out of here that was capped, the HSAs were capped at 
$5,150 for a couple. We did the math on that. If a couple started out 
at, say, age 20, worked for 45 years, round numbers, worked out to be 
age 65, Medicare eligibility, then they would conceivably be sitting 
there with $950,000 in their health savings account. I have well over 
doubled this. In fact, take it up to $10,000, $20,000 for a couple 
where 5,150 was the opening bid in 2003. So we are not quite four times 
that amount, yet healthcare costs have gone up. So I am not proposing 
that we end up with $4 million in the account, but maybe some number 
that is 2.5 or so million.
  Arriving at Medicare eligibility with six--well, seven figures times 
some number in their health savings account leaves these couples in a 
position where they could go out on the open market and purchase a 
paid-up Medicare replacement policy for life, pay for that up front, 
and then the Federal Government wants to tax anything that comes out of 
the health savings account as ordinary income. But my answer to that is 
no, don't do that. If they will take themselves off the entitlement 
roll by buying a Medicare replacement policy, then let them keep the 
change tax-free.
  Now this becomes a life management account. Not only is it a health 
savings account, it is a pension plan, and it is incentive to manage 
your health insurance premiums and your healthcare costs to get your 
checkups, to get your tests, to watch your weight, get your exercise, 
and manage your life because you are going to have a nest egg at the 
end of your working life that you want to be able to spend doing 
enjoyable things. If your health is a bad experience, then you have got 
the money there to cover it to make sure that you are taken care of.
  This is where we need to get people in this country. We are just 
awfully short of people willing to think outside the box and to think 
about what we should do here in America. We are not just some regular, 
ordinary, humdrum, run-of-the-mill country, Mr. Speaker. We are the 
United States of America. We are the unchallenged greatest nation in 
the world. We didn't become this way because we are dependent upon 
government. We became this way because we have a robust appetite for 
freedom. People have gone out and blazed their own trails. In a lot of 
cases, settling this country, they literally did that, blazed a trail 
through the timber and went out and settled the West.

  When our original Founding Fathers arrived here on our shores, they 
arrived in a land that had, as far as they knew, unlimited natural 
resources. They had unlimited freedom because they were a long ways 
away from King George. They came for their religious freedom as well. 
They were farmers, they were shopkeepers, they were individual 
entrepreneurs with a dream, and they forged the American Dream. They 
did it on religious faith, on free enterprise capitalism, and on God-
given liberty. That created this robust country in this giant petri 
dish that was the only huge experiment that the world has ever seen: a 
nation that is formed on ideas and ideals.

[[Page H1585]]

  Here we are, the descendants, the recipients, the beneficiaries of 
their risk and of their dream, beneficiaries of their ideals. All we 
have to do is preserve them. Our Founding Fathers had to hammer them 
out.

                              {time}  2100

  They had to conceive of these ideas about God-given rights, and then 
they had to articulate it. They had to write these ideas over and over 
again in many different configurations so that the populace began to 
understand what it really meant when you have rights that come from 
God. Then they had to sell this to the colonists. And then they had to 
defy King George and fight for that freedom.
  All of that took place with the desks that were there and those who 
gave their lives for our freedom and our liberty. And what is our job, 
Mr. Speaker? Hang on to it, maintain it. Now, in this case, with 
ObamaCare, we have got to restore it. That is what we are faced with.
  In my view, it is not that hard, if we just come together here and do 
that which we know is right, send the full repeal of ObamaCare across 
the rotunda to the Senate, pass Paul Gosar's bill selling insurance 
across State lines, the repeal of McCarran-Ferguson, make our health 
insurance premiums fully deductible, and expand our health savings 
accounts. Do those things and pass the tort reform legislation which 
will diminish the malpractice premiums that our doctors and 
practitioners are paying. If we do that much and eliminate the mandates 
that tie us down in such a way that we don't have the latitude to work 
any longer, we don't need a mandate that requires every insurance 
policy to keep your kids on until age 26. There are a lot of other ways 
to manage that. If you as a family want to buy such a policy, the 
insurance companies will provide it. You don't need to have the law.
  The preexisting condition component of this, yes, we have compassion 
for people who are uninsurable. In fact, 37 of the States, by my 
recollection, had policies before ObamaCare, Iowa included--and I 
helped manage that as former chairman of the Iowa Senate State 
Government Committee--37 States, by my recollection, had established 
high-risk pools.
  These high-risk pools used tax dollars to buy the premium down so 
that those who had preexisting conditions and could not be insured 
could have their health insurance premiums subsidized by the taxpayers.
  Now, some States are more generous than others. That is how it will 
be. But it is a far better solution than the Federal Government being 
involved in preexisting conditions just because they think that is the 
right political answer, Mr. Speaker.
  We will see how this unfolds as the days and few short weeks come 
forward here. I am hopeful that we will be able to get together in 
conference and the Republicans can hammer out a solution that can be 
signed off on by, hopefully, all of us.
  I am hopeful there will be some Democrats that understand you don't 
want to go back home again and tell your constituents that you fought 
to defend ObamaCare, this thing that my colleagues, scores of times--in 
fact, thousands of times here on the floor--called the Affordable Care 
Act. We know, Mr. Speaker, it is not affordable and that the premiums 
are way out of sight; the coverage can't be used, in many cases, 
because the deductibles are too high for most people; and that the 
insurance companies are bailing out one after another. And perhaps a 
year from now, if we don't do something, there will be great chunks of 
the American people who will have no options whatsoever.
  So I suggest we do this the prudent way: do the full repeal and send 
single components of the reform rifle shot out of the House over to the 
Senate. Let the Senate take them up. Or, if they think it is prudent, 
package them up and send them back to us as a package. If the House has 
once passed it, and it comes back to us in a package, I think we will 
pass it again, Mr. Speaker.
  So these are intense times, and America's destiny is being 
determined. It is being determined because we have elected Donald Trump 
as President of the United States.
  I think about what it would have been like if I had woken up on the 
morning of November 9 and we had someone other than Donald Trump 
elected to be President, and how the optimism that just poured forth 
since that day has been terrific.
  You can recognize, right after the election, that people had a spring 
in their step, and they are more optimistic and more outgoing. If you 
would walk into the grocery store, people would come over and start a 
conversation. If you walked into a restaurant, they would do the same 
thing.
  They were just more outgoing and more friendly and they wanted to 
engage with each other. They still want to engage with each other. The 
stock market has soared up over 21,000, and there has been over $3 
trillion in wealth created just in the stock market alone, Mr. Speaker.
  So this high level of optimism that we have brings with it a high 
level of responsibility. It is not only to the ObamaCare change, but 
the pledge that was made by Donald Trump many times throughout the 
campaign was a full, 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare. I always say 100 
percent repeal will rip it out by the roots as if it had never been 
enacted. The language is a little different, but the meaning is 
identical. The meaning is identical, Mr. Speaker: a full repeal of 
ObamaCare.
  President Trump has said many times we need to be able to sell and 
buy insurance across State lines. That is another Trump promise. Of 
course, he has got people he is working with. Tom Price is head of HHS. 
He is a good man whom I first met here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives when he came in as a freshman a number of years ago. I 
watched as he paid attention to the healthcare issues then. And the 
constitutional issues, I might add. My first encounter with Tom Price 
was on constitutional issues, and it was a positive one.
  So we are at this place with a new President that has, halfway into 
his first 100 days, a number of campaign promises that he has yet to 
live up to, but a great many that he has lived up to. It looks to me 
like Donald Trump has at least somebody in an office somewhere in the 
White House that has a list of all the campaign promises, and they are 
checking those off one by one as he accomplishes the promises that he 
has made as a candidate.

  That is a laudable thing, Mr. Speaker. Yet, he is being bogged down 
by a series of stories that have, to some degree--I don't want to quite 
say handcuffed his administration--but it has made it difficult to 
operate in a flexible and a fluid way.
  This has to do with, I think, it is leakers within; people who should 
be loyal to the United States and, hopefully, loyal to the President of 
the United States, who have been leaking information out.
  When The New York Times is publishing that they have got inside 
information that has been leaked to them from the intelligence 
community, nobody seems to be troubled that The New York Times is going 
to people in the intelligence community or receiving messages from them 
and taking information that is about classified activities of our 
Federal Government and printing the stories about that classified 
information in their paper.
  It is not only The New York Times. I see Heat Street here, The 
Guardian, The Washington Post. That all comes to mind. McClatchy.
  Here is a series of things that have taken place that bring into 
question the integrity of some people that work within government and 
some of them that work within our intelligence community. Here are just 
a string of events, Mr. Speaker, that bring us to a conclusion about 
what is going on in our Federal Government.
  It was in the summer that Heat Street reported that the FBI applied--
in June it is reported--applied for a FISA warrant wiretap to survey 
people in the Trump campaign who had ties to Russia. Roughly late June, 
this report came out. FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance 
Act. Special warrants have to be achieved in a FISA court. These 
warrant requests are classified. The activity around them are 
classified. So, if it is classified, how is it that Heat Street 
reported that the FBI applied for FISA warrants to wiretap people in 
the Trump campaign last June?
  Well, that is because classified leakage went into the ears of the 
Heat

[[Page H1586]]

Street reporters, or I suppose we could say they made it up. And if it 
were the only story out there, that might be the most likely, but we 
have a number of other stories.
  The Guardian reported that a FISA warrant request was made to monitor 
four Trump campaign staffers for conflicts or for communications with 
Russia and Russians. That story in The Guardian matches up with the 
story in Heat Street roughly last June that there was a FISA warrant 
request to monitor four of Trump's campaign staffers for their 
communications with Russia.
  So there is story number one and two. Heat Street writes one; The 
Guardian writes another. Both of them are writing about what, if we had 
the real information in front of us, would be classified: the 
application for FISA and the results of that.
  The report comes back and says those applications were denied. They 
were not based upon a reasonable suspicion that there was, I will say, 
collusion with Russians.
  So here is item number three. McClatchy reported that the FBI and 
five other agencies were investigating Russian influence on the U.S. 
Presidential election. So we have two stories--one from Heat Street, 
one from The Guardian--that says that there was an application for a 
FISA warrant. That FISA warrant was presumably turned down, by reports, 
but then there is a report that there is the FBI and five other 
agencies that are investigating the Russian influence on the U.S. 
Presidential election. That is a McClatchy report.
  Now, this is starting to add up. I am starting to see here is a sign 
there is something going on and there is a leakage of classified 
information--a sign something is going on and leakage of classified 
information. Then, the report of the investigation of the FBI and five 
other agencies.
  Now, here is the next story. The New York Times reports that the FBI 
is investigating Russian Government communications with Trump campaign, 
but there is no evidence of those communications resulting in any kind 
of collusion, at least. That is a New York Times report.
  So these stories have been dropped in: Heat Street, McClatchy, The 
New York Times.
  Here is another New York Times report. The Obama administration 
allowed the NSA to share globally intercepted personal communications 
with 16 other Federal agencies without a warrant. That, I believe, 
refers to a January directive that came from Barack Obama that opened 
up the ability to communicate between the intelligence agencies so that 
they could share classified information among them, rather than 
compartmentalize and share that information on a need-to-know basis. 
That is item number five.
  Item number six, the Obama administration officials tried to spread 
information to media showing Russian involvement to help Trump and his 
election. That is a story that was pushed out and perpetuated. It was 
pushed out by, of course, the Hillary campaign and others.
  So the weight of this cumulative effect of these stories is adding 
up.
  I would add, also, that on October 31 of last year, just a little 
over a week before the election, Hillary Clinton sent out a tweet that 
said--I am trying to remember the words that she used--it was 
communication specialists or intelligence officials. It was a reference 
to experts in communications and computers and that they had identified 
that there were investigations going on and there were communications 
between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
  It looked to me like that was an effort on the part of the Clinton 
campaign to spread these rumors that had been planted all the way along 
throughout the summer by Heat Street's report that there was a FISA 
wiretap warrant that was turned down, and by The Guardian's report of 
presumably the same event of a FISA warrant turned down because they 
didn't show that there was any activity there that was worthy of a 
warrant; the McClatchy report that said the FBI and other agencies are 
investigating Russian influence. Then you have got the two Times' 
reports.
  Here is the third New York Times report. They reported that General 
Flynn talked to Russian officials about how Trump would handle Russian 
sanctions. This is presumably from a wiretap of the Russian Ambassador 
to the United States, Mr. Speaker.
  Now, if that surveillance is taking place of a Russian official, a 
Russian Ambassador in the United States, if those activities are 
typical surveillance activities that would go on in most any country 
that had the capability, then that information is still classified. And 
if the conversation took place between General Flynn and the Russian 
Ambassador--and we all, I think, believe that it did--that conversation 
and the contents of it would be classified.
  So how did this leakage come out to The New York Times about the 
phone call or calls that General Flynn may have had with the Russian 
Ambassador?

                              {time}  2115

  The leakage of that information would be a Federal felony because it 
is classified information, facing 10 years in a Federal penitentiary as 
a penalty. Yet America is hyperventilating about a tweet that Donald 
Trump sent out that said that Trump and Trump Tower had been hacked or 
wiretapped by the Obama administration. I know he said President Obama. 
He put the responsibility on President Obama. It is pretty easy to 
conclude he may have also just meant the Obama administration.
  Do we think that this wiretapping is taking place?
  I think so. I think the evidence, at least, of the telephone 
conversation between General Flynn and the Russian Ambassador is pretty 
strong. Since it has not been denied by General Flynn or by Vice 
President Pence, I am going to assert here in this Congressional Record 
that that took place, that it was surveilled, and that the information 
in the exchange, which they claim there is a transcript of the 
conversation, was leaked out to the press. The press didn't release the 
specific language that had been used but wrote the general narrative 
about it in much the same way that a Member of Congress might if they 
walked into a classified briefing, listen to the briefing, and come 
back and talk about their general understanding of what they saw in 
there rather than the specific language that was used and uttered.
  I submit, Mr. Speaker, that we have at least one Federal felony that 
has taken place, that it likely is because of leak or leaks that came 
from the intelligence community. It is pretty clear that President 
Obama granted the authority--I don't know if I can quite say ordered--
granted the authority that all of our intelligence community, all 17 of 
them, could exchange classified information freely, and that vastly 
multiplied the number of people who had access to this information and 
dramatically increased the odds that there would be leakage about these 
communications that appear to be surveillance of--perhaps it looks like 
the Trump team, at least people who were on the Trump team, the Trump 
campaign perhaps, and that there was an effort that goes back as far as 
last June.
  This team of the FBI and the five other intelligence organizations, 
agencies that are there, did they form that team in June?
  It looks likely.
  Did they get any real information due to lack of a FISA warrant from 
that point on?
  We don't know, but we have got a pretty good idea that there was a 
FISA warrant that was approved in October and that information came out 
of that and maybe other sources that was leaked for the purpose of 
hurting this Presidency and hurting the effectiveness of then-
President-elect Trump and now President Trump.
  I submit that President Trump should purge from the executive branch 
all of the political appointees for whom there is any question about 
their loyalty. Any of those whose loyalty is beholden to Barack Obama, 
any of those who can't embrace a conservative government that is 
bringing us back to constitutional principles, they should all be gone. 
And those civil servants whose jobs are protected, there have been a 
good number of Obama people who have burrowed themselves into civil 
service jobs in order to handcuff President Trump. I say for them, when 
you can identify them, get a room somewhere, put them in it, pay them

[[Page H1587]]

their wages. They will get tired of their job over time, but the damage 
they will do if you let them have a desk will be far greater than what 
we get out of them for the paycheck we are giving them. I say purge as 
many as possible, Mr. President. Put those people in place who are 
loyal to you, who want to carry out your agenda.
  Here is another news report. The Washington Post reports that U.S. 
investigators examined Jeff Sessions' contacts with Russian officials 
while he was a campaign adviser to Trump. This report from The 
Washington Post says that U.S. investigators examined Jeff Sessions' 
contacts with Russia. So he was under surveillance. He was at least 
under investigation, it sounds like, if this story is right. Here we 
have a seated United States Senator, a stellar individual.
  If I were going to try to compare the character that I know Jeff 
Sessions is, and I look around this town, I ask: Who matches the 
character of Jeff Sessions?
  Not many. I would say Vice President Pence, and then the list gets 
pretty short after that. Jeff Sessions has a very high degree of 
character, and he is imminently a constitutionalist, an adherent to the 
rule of law, a dedicated patriot, and one who makes his decisions 
within the bounds of the Constitution, of the law, of the rules that 
exist. He is a great respecter of the order of a civilized society and 
a terrific Attorney General.
  There was no better choice that could have been reached by Donald 
Trump than Jeff Sessions. But here he is, subject to this kind of--at 
least a report that there is an investigation, Mr. Speaker. I think if 
I wanted to know about Jeff Sessions' activities, if I thought that it 
was my business, I would just ask him. When he answered the question 
from Senator Franken, the question was in the context of did you have 
any discussions with Russians with regard to any campaign activities 
that you might have cooperated or colluded with?
  If Al Franken had asked that question precisely, then the answer 
would have been precise as well.
  I can understand why Jeff Sessions' answer came back no, that he 
hadn't dealt with the Russians. I do a lot of meetings, and if I am 
asked a question about the context of a subject matter, I will answer 
within the context of that subject matter. I think that is what Jeff 
Sessions did. Most of the Senators--I will say all of the Senators 
sitting there on that committee who heard those questions asked and saw 
the answers of Jeff Sessions, and then they and their staff and the 
public, weeks went by, not a peep about anybody being concerned about 
the answer that Jeff Sessions gave.
  Why?
  Because all of those Senators sitting on that committee listening to 
his testimony and the other Senators who were watching that testimony 
either from in the room or around the Hill on C-SPAN, and their staff 
who were monitoring those hearings all understood that you have people 
from multiple countries come into your office on an irregular basis, 
and in a matter of months one might meet with the Greeks, the Russians, 
the French, the Germans, pick your country in South America or Asia. 
There is a constant flow of people coming through my office, and I know 
there is a constant flow of people from other countries coming through 
the offices of probably every United States Senator.

  So when Jeff Sessions said that he hadn't met with the Russians 
within the context of discussing the campaign, which was the heart of 
the question asked by Senator Franken, no Senator was concerned about 
his answer that he hadn't met with the Russians because they understood 
the context within which he was answering that question. Had that not 
been the case, some Senator, like Chuck Schumer, would have woken up 
the first day instead of after they were able to gin it up and turn it 
into a media story, Mr. Speaker.
  We have a country to save. We have an ObamaCare to repeal. We have a 
healthcare policy in this country that needs to be rebuilt logically by 
preserving our doctor-patient relationship, encouraging competition 
between insurance companies, letting people be in charge of the policy 
they want to buy, providing full deductibility, fixing the lawsuit 
abuse, being able to sell insurance across State lines and expand 
health savings accounts. All that needs to happen. I am hopeful that it 
can happen within the next couple of months, Mr. Speaker.
  While that is going on, we need to look over at the White House and 
encourage this President: Purge those people from your midst who owe 
their loyalty to Barack Obama. They are undermining your Presidency. 
You have to fight the moles from within, the media from without, the 
George Soros-organized protesters who are on the streets of America 
every weekend with a different cause. They will continue this until the 
public gets tired of it.
  Mr. Speaker, the President needs to understand that he has a lot of 
enemies in this country and a great big job. His ability to take on the 
mainstream media has been demonstrated. Now it is a little bigger 
hurdle that needs to happen, too. The intelligence community from 
within, there are a lot of good, dedicated patriots there. They need to 
purge those people from their midst as well who are not loyal to the 
United States of America and those who are working against the foreign 
policy agenda of this President.
  We need to rebuild America. We need to make America great again. We 
need to restore our economy. We need to get our tax cuts done. We need 
to get some more regulatory reform. Let's have this robust, growing 
economy kicked off and see that 3, 3\1/2\, 4 percent growth that this 
country can do with the freedom that has been delivered to it, much of 
it by the pen of our new President, Donald Trump.
  I am optimistic about our future, although we have our challenges in 
front of us, Mr. Speaker, and I urge that my colleagues step up to this 
task, keep it constitutional, keep it free market. Remember the 
individual freedom, the God-given liberty, and the legacy that we are 
leaving for succeeding generations. Let's get this job done and make 
America great again.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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