[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 71 (Wednesday, April 26, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H2891-H2893]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Johnson of Louisiana). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the
gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) for 30 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, let me just note that today I am paying
close attention to the healthcare issue. I don't want anybody to think
when they look at me giving this speech on the floor of the House that
this is evidence that there is arm-twisting going on here in the
Capitol about trying to get people's vote on the healthcare issue. No,
it is just humorous.
This is a shoulder replacement. I had this one replaced, actually, 4
or 5 months ago, and it is doing fine now. This one was a week ago. The
cause of this, of course, has been excessive surfing. When I was older,
I should have understood that you cannot surf as much as you can when
you are younger without eliminating the cartilage that is there, then
the cartilage is gone, and the bones grind on each other.
Well, that is just one example, however, of a healthcare issue that
is going to be with us much more frequently now as the population of
this country is growing older. The older people get, there will be
other infirmities that really were not suffered on such a scale when we
died off at a younger age.
So what we need to do is to make sure that we set down policies and a
system that will provide the American people with the greatest and the
most effective care that is possible within the budget that we have to
deal with.
Today I thought I would talk about that, of course--health care. But
there are a few other issues I would like to discuss.
Tax reform, of course, is something that is being focused on today as
well--tax reform for fiscal year `17. And, of course, fiscal year `18,
the appropriations bill. Border security, of course, has to be on this
list.
These are issues that we are every day talking about here on Capitol
Hill. The work is intense, people are serious, and there is a job for
us to do. President Trump is in the White House, and he is working hard
as well.
This is not the time for the other side to be politicizing every
issue that comes up, but, instead, to admit that Republicans now have
legitimately won the election for President and legitimately won a
majority in both Houses of Congress.
Thus, we should put in place policies that are, yes, fair, honest,
and effective. But, also, we have to realize that it is fair, honest,
and effective based on what those people who are elected by the people
to make the decision believe is fair and effective.
Unfortunately, what we have now, and we see this across the country,
are people who--and I don't even know if they understand the system at
all, but they are arrogantly trying to be engaged with disrupting the
system because they did not win. That cannot be tolerated for long. I
would hope that people have a change of heart and work with us. We are
willing to work with Members of the other party, the Democratic Party,
to make sure we come up with both health care and tax reform that the
American people will accept and applaud.
First, let's take a look at health care. Tonight I would like to
discuss with whoever is listening and whoever is reading the
Congressional Record an idea that I am proposing for the healthcare
industry. And for the bill that is being put together, as we speak,
where people are negotiating and compromising out, I have thrown this
idea into the mix. And that is that we are--and we have to recognize--
making progress toward replacement of ObamaCare.
I am asking my colleagues to give serious consideration to this
simple amendment that I believe will revolutionize health care in
America by protecting the formation and operation of healthcare
cooperatives.
Now, let's get back to that. I am trying to suggest that a small
change could actually bring about a revolution in the way health care
is delivered to the American people today.
Let's first admit that our healthcare system today seems to be run by
the insurance companies. Yes, insurance companies have almost more
influence than doctors do on the policies that we have on health
insurance. That is not something that we need to put up with much
longer if there is an alternative.
What that should mean to Americans is that we need to open up the
system of health care. We need to make sure that health care is being
looked at as a target for a multiapproach that will come to grips with
those challenges, both financial and technical, et cetera, and that we
need to open it up, rather than just having such a major influence by
those people who are the money changers--the insurance companies.
{time} 1800
My amendment which I am proposing would go a long way towards opening
up a whole new avenue. Now, when I say free enterprise--and I believe
in free enterprise. When I say free enterprise, I don't just mean--and
this is where, unfortunately, a lot of people have made a mistake in
thinking that free enterprise approaches are simply the approaches that
are based on greed and are based on profit motive. And instead of other
things and motivations that are available, they believe that that is
what free enterprise means, whether it is health care or whatever.
Well, I would submit that free enterprise means a lot more than just
depending on the profit motive and competition and greed but instead,
also, includes, and should include--but we have excluded this avenue--
cooperation; cooperation among free people for their own benefit and
the benefit of their families. We need it not only just in health care,
but that is what we are discussing today, to make sure that Americans
can cooperate together for their own benefits and the benefits of their
family.
Now, how do I get this? How do I get this consciousness? My mom and
dad were both born on very small farms in North Dakota. In North Dakota
where we have homesteaders and others who are relatively poor, in North
Dakota, the farmers may have been given the land--by a Republican
President, I might add. Abraham Lincoln is the one who initiated the
Homestead Act.
But they didn't have the money for the equipment, maybe even the
money to buy seed. And what they did is, they formed farmers'
collectives. What they called them, farmers' cooperatives. In Russia,
they might have called them collectives, but they had the iron hand of
evil in Russia, the iron hand of despotism, and a political control.
But the cooperation in the United States was based on people gathering
together, voluntarily working together to create a better situation.
And you had cooperatives that would buy--farm cooperatives that would
buy the machinery that was necessary for a small farm to succeed.
Well, that worked. I noticed that when I would go up to work on the
farm when I was younger, and I noticed these farm cooperatives around.
And that is totally consistent with free enterprise, the cooperation
among people to share with each other the burden of buying that type of
equipment.
Well, the amendment that I am proposing, in terms of our health care,
falls right into that category. The amendment I am proposing stipulates
that no provision in current law, or the underlying act, which we are
amending, may restrict cooperative arrangements between individuals or
organizations to jointly cover healthcare related expenses. The
provision would further stipulate that such cooperative arrangements
shall not be subject to any of the requirements, bureaucratic
[[Page H2892]]
rules and regulations, that currently apply to healthcare industry
companies.
In addition, my amendment would stipulate that participation in such
a cooperative arrangement shall be deemed as the equivalent of being
covered by health insurance. If I might describe what I am talking
about so people will understand. We are talking about now, the reason
why a lot of people won't buy health insurance is that if they put it
in, and they are healthy, that insurance money then goes to the
insurance company, even though they have not used it at all.
And so you are going to be hesitant to give that money and to buy
that insurance, and the insurance companies, of course, are very happy
to have that money available to speculate on the stock market, et
cetera, in order to make a profit. I am not against profit, but I want
to make sure that profit and greed are not the driving forces for what
most people would hope for is they can cooperate together and not be
subject to someone else's greed and profit motive.
So what I am talking about, if this would be put into the healthcare
bill, this small provision that I just read to you, making sure that
cooperative efforts are covered and are not going to be controlled by
the Federal Government, that they are free to do so without the many
restrictions that would be on another company providing health
insurance, that these cooperative efforts could--for example, you could
have a co-op among people who worked at a certain school, or an
industry, or you could have the same as we have now.
I think that the pathway has been certainly explored when it comes to
credit unions where, again, people in a nonprofit situation are working
together in order to establish something that benefits all of those
people.
We could have a cooperative effort for health care, even run by some
of the credit unions if they wanted to do so. They could have an app on
their telephone or something where people would then put their money
forward. If they didn't get sick, that money would still be part of
what they have as their pot of money, their account with whoever it is.
It is either an account or whatever, but the account will be returned.
Thus, people will then take money out of the account to handle their
own small medical needs, but they will also know that if they have a
catastrophic condition--that is why everybody is banding together in
this cooperative program--that they will be taken care of in terms of
some catastrophic illness that might become them.
So what we have in this proposal is an alternative, a very simple
change in our healthcare law, which will permit people to work together
and make it profitable for them to do so and take them away from the
control of other corporations in the health insurance industry that may
be thinking more profit than of what their interests are.
So with that said, I have asked my colleagues to consider that
proposal, and those who are reading this tonight or tomorrow in the
Congressional Record, I hope they would call their Congressman to say
that they are really interested in seeing that the cooperative
alternative to health care is permitted in the bill.
Now, the second piece of legislation that I would like to talk about
tonight also deals with a vitally important issue, vitally important to
the well-being of the American people, and that is border security. Let
me just say, I have been aware that a massive influx of illegals into
our country was a threat to the well-being of the American people, and
I have known that in the almost 28 years that I have been a Member of
Congress.
But it has been discouraging to me that we have, over and over again,
made attempts to try to do something that would draw the line and say
we are not going to have any more illegals coming into our country.
Now, by the way, that is illegals. I didn't say immigration,
immigrants. I am talking about people coming here illegally, a massive
flow of illegal immigration.
In fact, the United States permits 1 million legal immigrants to come
into our country every year. How big is that? That happens to be more
than all of the other countries of the world combined. And we are
supposed to apologize about having that kind of an open system? But no,
we have been attacked, over and over again, for trying to get control
of this. And what happens when you get out-of-control illegal
immigration? You get jobs for ordinary Americans; the value of their
work is bid down. And if you want to know why some people can't get
good jobs today, and those jobs actually paid a lot more in the past,
is because we have flooded the market.
Basically, the Democratic Party has been deeply involved with
opposing any of the efforts, and many Republicans have opposed the
effort to get control of this flow of illegals. Why? Well, I guess we
might be able to take a look at some motives and say: there are a lot
of Republicans who could have done something on this, but they didn't
want to stem the flow of illegal immigrants because Big Business
wants--what do they want? Cheap labor.
That is a betrayal of the American people, just as much as it is a
betrayal of the American people for the other party to try to keep the
flow of illegal immigrants into our country, hoping they will give them
a victory at the ballot box and, thus, give them political power that
they wouldn't otherwise have.
Well, it is time to draw the line, and the American people did that
in the last Presidential election. And I am very proud that the
American people stood up to the most massive propaganda campaign
against any Presidential candidate that I have seen in my lifetime, and
that was against President Donald Trump.
I just heard the other night, even the bankers up in Massachusetts
and New York overwhelmingly were giving money to Hillary's campaign.
But Donald Trump got a pittance. The establishment was out to destroy
Donald Trump, because Donald Trump said that he was going to stop the
flow of illegals, he was going to be watching out for the benefit of
America's working people, and that would be the top priority.
Well, one of the things we remember, he wanted to make it real. It
wasn't just a bunch of rhetoric. He kept talking about how he would
build a huge wall. Now, we all know that ``a huge'' wasn't around
before Donald Trump. I don't remember people using that phraseology.
And what we have got now is Donald Trump is moving forward. The
President of the United States is moving forward to fulfill his
promise.
We should not have a situation where politics get in the way by
people who lost the election and are now trying to stop and interfere
with those people who won the election. That is what the democratic
process is all about. And the proposal that I am making when it comes
to border security is that--and I was very honored to be asked into the
Oval Office by President Trump and to give him some ideas that might be
good ideas on how to handle some of these problems.
What I suggested to him is, any wall that he has suggested will be
built along our southern border will cost tens of billions of dollars.
Well, I had a proposal that I made to him, and I have made to the
leadership here in the House, and I hope that they do not ignore this
because it is vitally important if we are serious about stopping this
massive flow of illegal immigrants into our country. We have to be
building that wall, if nothing else, as symbolism that this is a
sovereign country, and we demand that our border laws be respected.
Well, what I am proposing is a change from a currently existing
immigration law. And that is, we bring in 1 million legal immigrants
every year. But guess what? Of that 1 million legal immigrants that we
permit in--which I applaud--but among that 1 million legal immigrants,
there are 50,000 of them coming in who are selected. What?
They are not selected by a process where you study who is what, who
we need here, what kind of skills we need. They are selected by a
lottery. They are selected by a lottery, just pulling them out of
nowhere. Yes, they are vetted all right, but they are not in any way
rationally designed, them coming here, in a way that would help the
American people.
Well, what I am suggesting is that 50,000 people--we do not want to
decrease the number of legal immigration. We don't want to decrease
legal
[[Page H2893]]
immigration. So we have a 50,000 slot. If we eliminated that stupid
lottery that we don't even decide who is coming in, that it is left up
to chance, well, we eliminate that, and then we set up a special fund.
And the fund is a dedicated fund that whoever puts in $1 million into
that dedicated fund will do so in exchange for immediate residency and
U.S. citizenship within 2 years.
{time} 1815
In other words, foreign people who are successful in whatever they
have done in order to accumulate wealth, and we are not going to bring
in criminals, it is going to be vetted just like every other legal
immigrant will be vetted to make sure they are not criminals or
terrorists or anything, but people who are overseas who would love to
become U.S. citizens, that they will be given guaranteed U.S.
citizenship within 2 years.
Now, that would mean $1 million per person, and perhaps we might want
to say that individuals could bring in their immediate family, minors,
for $500,000. But whatever that is, the revenue raised from this
program could be put into that special account managed by the Secretary
of Homeland Security for the purpose of carrying out border security
and immigration enforcement activities.
In other words, the President of the United States does not have to
have the burden of raising taxes in order to pay for that Southern
border wall. He does not have to pass it off on further generations by
increasing the debt by that level.
We have a method in this to bring in a better quality of people who
we need coming into our country rather than selecting at random and
paying for a wall that will reestablish the security of the people of
this country and will go a long way to establish a mindset around the
world that no longer are our borders open. No longer, whoever can get
over here, are we going to take in and then give them free education
and free health care and let them commit crimes and not even be kicked
out of the country for it. No. Those days are over, and this wall will
symbolize that.
What I have suggested, having these foreign wealthy people pay for
that wall, makes it a real possibility. If people would be interested
in talking to their Member of Congress, they can call or write, but
they should call and say the idea of letting rich foreigners build that
wall is the answer. Let's get going on it. Let's not wait for 5 years.
Build the wall and let the others pay for it. That is a plan that will
work.
I would like to also discuss another issue that I have been involved
in. But let me just note that, on the tax bill, I have also asked for
an amendment that would increase the well-being. And, how do you say,
right now our wealth is becoming so centralized in just a few hands.
What we have now in the United States is a vision that the poor are
getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. There is a problem with
this concentration of wealth.
Now, the reason we have that concentration of wealth is because there
are a few people in our country that own capital, own the companies
that produce the wealth. And over the years, that has been focused on
fewer and fewer hands, and the working people are being shut out of a
system that is something that they are essential players in.
So with that said, I am certainly not against profit motive and I am
certainly not against competition. I am certainly for the private
sector and not for big bureaucracy. But if we just passed an incentive
into our system, that incentive would be this: I am proposing that when
an employer provides stock for his employees, it has to be an equal
distribution to all the employees. Those employees don't have to pay
income tax on it. And if those employees keep that stock for over 10
years, the employees don't have to pay capital gains tax on it.
So what we have got--if a company is successful and we have got a
large increase in the value of that company, it is being shared with
the workers in the company. It is not being held up in the one percent
of the elite management. What we need to do is to make sure that we
deal with this concentration of wealth because the American people,
that is what it was all about. It wasn't about having some elite. That
was what the Homestead Act was all about that helped my grandparents.
We need a Homestead Act for people who are working in the various
industries in our country. And tweaking the system with a little tax
incentive like I am talking about, this would be an ESOP, which are
already in existence but have very complicated structure associated
with them, an expensive structure associated with them, that this would
be like ESOPs on steroids. We will have working people thinking in
terms of partnership with their employer instead of being on an
adversarial relationship. People with startup companies will be able to
get the top-quality people knowing if their company is successful, the
capital gains tax will be zero for them who came onboard early on.
This is another proposal that I am making, and I would hope that
people will look at that again and ask their Congressman to consider
Congressman Rohrabacher's Employee Ownership Bill, Expanding Employee
Ownership.
Finally, I would like to talk about one last issue that is something
that is very controversial, I know, and I have never stepped away from
being controversial. But what we have got here today is a major change
in public attitude towards something that has been wrong for a long
time but the public was not aware of it.
I would hope that we do not pass up the chance again of legalizing
the medical use of marijuana. And the fact is, 44 States have taken
many restrictions off the use of medical marijuana.
I have legislation that says respect State marijuana laws. This
should be left up to the States. This should be left up to the people
who decide for themselves whether or not they believe medical marijuana
should be available to seniors, to veterans, and to other people. And
we should stop paying money to the drug cartels by making sure that
this medicine that we now know is possible with marijuana that we don't
want to have the source being the drug cartels around the world.
So I would ask my colleagues to join me in supporting the medical
marijuana initiative, what I have, which says we will respect medical
marijuana laws and the United States.
I would hope that my colleagues get the message. These are four very
important issues. These are issues I spent a lot of time on, but I am
doing that because I understand these are fundamental. We have to start
doing more. If we are going to drain the swamp, as the President says,
we have got to be working on the fundamentals that are wrong with the
system rather than just trying to create some image of progress and
image of activity here.
We can do it. We have got good leadership here in the House. We have
got a willingness to cooperate with the other side of the aisle. We
have got a President who wants to work with us. Congress is here. We
are in action, and we have got some great new creative ideas. Now the
American people are welcome to participate.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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