[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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