[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 26259-26266]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              THE DEMOCRATIC AGENDA, WRONG FOR THE NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Wasserman Schultz). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, as always, I very much appreciate 
the privilege to address you here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives.
  There are a number of issues that are before us this evening that 
have accumulated over the last week or two that I believe are worthy of 
our consideration and our discussion here, and among them are a couple 
of debates that we had today. And perhaps the first of which was a 
fairly intense debate that we had on a bill that addressed the Iraq 
war, and that would be H.R. 3087, and this is a piece of legislation 
that came out what seems like a weekly effort to weaken the resolve of 
our troops, make their job harder in Iraq, seeking to answer to 
MoveOn.org and energizing the anti-war liberal left in America and 
energizing our enemies across the world, including and I mean 
specifically al Qaeda.
  And, Madam Speaker, many times I have come to the floor and spoken to 
this issue and reminded Americans that we are at war. And when a Nation 
is successful in a difficult war, they pull together and bind together 
in the same will. There was an address made here on the floor talking 
about World War I, World War II, and other conflicts we have been in as 
well as the Iraq war that we are in right now. I would take us back to 
World War II as the central example of the time when the Nation pulled 
together. And there were rations here in the United States. Most 
everybody found a way to contribute to the war effort. My father went 
to the South Pacific for 2\1/2\ years. My mother tied parachutes in a 
parachute factory. The unemployment rate was down to 1.2 percent, and 
as far as I know, that is the lowest unemployment rate that this 
country has had. And that was at the same time that many of the women 
went to work that traditionally had not.
  This Nation pulled together, put 16 million Americans in uniform to 
defend ourselves on two major fronts, the war in Europe and the war in 
the Pacific, and mobilized an entire Nation, an entire people.
  The movies were about patriotism and defending the American way of 
life. We had pride in our culture and who we were. And the legacy that 
flows from that is that the United States, ultimately after we walked 
our way through the Cold War, we emerged as the unchallenged only 
superpower and the greatest Nation on Earth. That is the legacy of the 
selfless sacrifice and the single will of a people when they came 
together when they saw that they were attacked from without, threatened 
from without, and they saw that the world was in danger of being 
consumed by totalitarian powers.
  And after that Second World War, we went through the Cold War. Again 
the world was in danger of being consumed by totalitarian powers. But 
the will of the American people during the Second World War was 
unquestioned. They understood that our job was to defeat the will of 
our enemies, and that meant that we had to apply military might in both 
directions, to the east and to the west, break down their ability to 
conduct war; but in the end destroying their ability to tactically 
attack our military was just a means to an end. The end was to defeat 
the will of the German people and defeat the will of the Japanese 
people, which the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki did finally defeat 
the will of the Japanese people.
  Now here we are engaged in this war against al Qaeda, against radical 
extremist jihadists, people who have committed themselves and say they 
have a religious belief that their path to salvation is in killing us. 
It is our way of life that threatens them. And they have come across 
the oceans and attacked us here on our soil. And they have global plots 
that weekly there's some kind of information that emerges about 
sometimes second and third generation immigrants who come into the 
Western European countries and determine that they might be sent back 
to Pakistan or one of the other countries over in the Middle East to be 
trained to be a terrorist and they come back into the Western society 
and plot and sometimes successfully attack people from Great Britain 
and in other countries in

[[Page 26260]]

Europe. And we have been fortunate in this country not to have an 
effective attack against us since September 11, 2001.
  But the enemy that we are against, the enemy we are fighting across 
the world, this global terrorist army out there that are rooted in al 
Qaeda in that philosophy and their affiliates, and it is a loose 
affiliation even within al Qaeda itself, the principle enemy in our 
battlefield that is Iraq is al Qaeda in Iraq. That has been clearly 
brought to this Congress, and it has been a message that has been 
delivered to us by General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, and others. 
Who is our enemy? Al Qaeda in Iraq. The number one enemy. There are a 
number of other enemies there, and there is a struggle going on for 
power.
  But we are in the business of defeating the will of our enemy. Our 
brave troops have put their lives on the line, and many of them have 
given their lives in that effort to project freedom to that part of the 
world, protect our freedom here, and defeat the will of the enemy. They 
lost their lives, sanctified the soil in Iraq with their blood to 
defeat the will of our enemy in Iraq.
  And yet here on the floor of the House of Representatives, since the 
gavel in and the passing of the gavel in this new 110th Congress, there 
has been almost weekly, with only two or three exceptions that I can 
think of, at least one resolution or a bill or a piece of legislation 
here on the floor of the House of Representatives that serves to do 
what? It serves to encourage our enemies, to encourage the will of our 
enemies, and weaken the will of the American people.
  So if this war is not to be won, and I believe it will be won and I 
believe that the indications that are coming from Iraq since the 
beginning of the surge, information such as the lowest monthly loss of 
American lives was in this past month of September, the lowest month in 
the last 14 months, this at a time when we have upped the troop numbers 
over there by at least 30,000 and engaged them in an aggressive posture 
of searching and destroying our enemy and hunting them out in the 
neighborhoods and our troops that are actually living in the 
neighborhoods rather than in their compounds, that kind of information 
is coming to us.
  And I have been to Iraq five times. The last time was towards the end 
of July. The things that I saw there gave me a preliminary view of the 
report that General Petraeus would give us here in this Congress in 
just this past month, a couple of weeks ago. The news has been 
encouraging. And, of course, no one can declare victory there, but one 
can certainly see that we have made significant progress. It's moving 
in the right direction. All of this, Madam Speaker, in spite of, not 
because of but in spite of, these demoralizing resolutions that have 
come to the floor of this Congress.
  And this one that was out here today is another demoralizing 
resolution, this H.R. 3087 that has been delivered here and supported 
by a larger number of my colleagues than I have seen in the past. And I 
wonder what the motive is, what they hope to gain, what the upside 
would be to bring a resolution such as this.
  This resolution has in its findings the statement that the 
authorization for use of military force against Iraq resolution of 
2002, where this Congress voted to authorize the President to have the 
authority to engage in military action in Iraq that was enacted into 
law in October 2002, and it says here ``authorize the President to use 
the Armed Forces as the President determined necessary and appropriate 
in order to defend the national security of the United States.'' I 
agree with that statement. I think it's consistent with the use of the 
military force resolution.
  However, the findings of this resolution that passed off the floor of 
this House tonight have a false statement in them. It states: ``the 
continuing threat posed by the Government of Iraq at that time'' was 
the reason that we passed the use of military force resolution here 
that went into law in 2002. I will state again, and this is right off 
the resolution: ``the national security of the United States against 
the continuing threat posed by the Government of Iraq at that time.''
  As I have read through this entire resolution that did pass, current 
law that did pass, and I looked for the reference to the reason being 
our opposition to the Government of Iraq, and it's capitalized, 
Government of Iraq at the time, and going through these references in 
here in this resolution over and over again, there is a multiple number 
of references to Iraq, and I have read every one of those references to 
Iraq. I have them here highlighted, and there is not a single reference 
to the Government of Iraq or the Government of Iraq at that time.

                              {time}  2230

  They're all references about Iraq itself. And I could go through 
this, the Government of Iraq, destroy Iraq's weapons, declared Iraq to 
be, on and on and on; no reference to the Government of Iraq.
  And yet, this resolution that passed the floor identifies the use of 
military force resolution as the reason that they brought this one 
forward and makes a statement that because the resolution from 2002 
identified a threat posed by the Government of Iraq, and then it goes 
on further to say that, the Government of Iraq, which was in power at 
the time of the authorization for use of military force, was enacted 
into law, but that because the leader has been removed from power, he 
has been indicted, he's been tried, he's been executed by the new and 
freely elected Government of Iraq; therefore, the current Government of 
Iraq does not pose a threat.
  Now, this rationale of, we went to war in Iraq, we gave the President 
the authority to use military force in Iraq, this resolution today that 
says it was because it was against the Government of Iraq, and because 
the government has changed and no longer poses a threat, we have no 
reason to be in Iraq is that it is an irrational rationale that is 
founded upon a falsehood. And this entire resolution then is based upon 
a falsehood that is supported by a flawed premise.
  So, to get here with a resolution, then, that requires the President 
to present to this Congress a contingency plan for a redeployment of 
the Armed Forces from Iraq that would include a range of possible 
scenarios, multiple possible timetables to require the President to, 
and I understand this resolution actually says the director of the 
department, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State and a 
list of the cabinet members, it really means the President, Madam 
Speaker, it will require the Commander in Chief to have his cabinet 
then present to this Congress, describe the possible missions they 
might have of redeployment, project the number of members of the Armed 
Forces which would remain in Iraq in order to do a number of things; 
protect vital U.S. interests and national security, conduct 
counterterrorism operations to protect the Armed Forces, the United 
States Diplomatic Corps, and support, equip and train Iraqi forces, 
these things that we would need military forces for. And it says 
``provide a range of possible scenarios.''
  And so this resolution, if signed into law, and I would hope that the 
President would veto such a thing, would require the Commander in Chief 
then to present a series of different alternatives and means to deploy 
our troops out of Iraq, put those in public before this Congress, who 
we know can't keep a secret, show our enemies a whole list of 
contingency plans.
  Now, part of successful warfare is to have a few things in your 
pocket that you don't tell the enemy about. It's essential that we be 
able to have some surprise tactics, and so far I think the enemy is 
slightly surprised that the President has resisted the push of the 
Speaker and the majority leader in the United States Senate and taken a 
clear constitutional and principled and patriot stand that we are going 
to follow through on our commitment in Iraq. And as we see them make 
progress over there, we're watching resolutions come to this floor, 
Madam Speaker, that undermine our troops and their mission, as resolute 
as they are, as stoic as they are, as committed as they are. It

[[Page 26261]]

doesn't recognize either the fact that everyone serving in Iraq from 
this United States military is a volunteer, a volunteer for the branch 
of the military that they're in. They weren't drafted; they signed up 
voluntarily. They knew that they had very good odds of being deployed 
to Iraq, and many of them are on their second tour, some on their third 
tour and even some on their forth tour of duty in Iraq, selflessly 
carrying out their duty and asking us, let us finish our mission, we're 
making progress here.
  This, Madam Speaker, is a disgraceful thing to bring to the floor of 
the House of Representatives. It serves no useful purpose unless one 
wanted to serve a purpose to encourage our enemies and demoralize the 
will of the American people, which seems to be one of the goals that I 
have seen come out of this Congress on a weekly basis. And I and a good 
number of others voted ``no.'' I know some voted ``no'' because they 
didn't think it went far enough. They don't seem to recognize that in 
their constitutional oath, they swore to uphold the Constitution. And 
from the perspective of the Constitution, we don't have any authority 
to micromanage a war.
  One of the previous speakers in the previous hour said that we don't 
need 535 generals, or words to that effect, and we don't. It's not that 
we don't need them; our founders understood, when they drafted the 
Constitution, we couldn't have 535 generals, that we couldn't have wars 
micromanaged by Congress. They knew what it was like to have a 
Continental Congress and a Continental Army and try to get the 
confederation of States that we had at the time of the Revolutionary 
War to go together and voluntarily provide funds to fund the military. 
And what was going to be the command and control structure? They knew 
you had to have a strong central government to have a strong military. 
And they knew you couldn't fight wars by committee; you had to hand 
that over to a Commander in Chief. That's why, when they drafted the 
Constitution, they clearly established in the Constitution that the 
President of the United States would be the Commander in Chief of our 
Armed Forces. That's one of the things that's constitutional that we 
all need to recognize when we take our oath to the Constitution.
  And another is the constitutional authority that this Congress does 
have. We have the authority to raise an Army and a Navy, and by 
implication an Air Force. And we have the authority, and I say a duty 
and obligation, to fund it. But we do not have the authority to 
micromanage it. We don't have the authority to be calling shots in a 
war. That's got to be one person, not a committee, not a mercurial 
switchback from one side to the other or a never-ending chain of 
resolutions that has no strategic purpose, no logical purpose in law, 
only a purpose to try to encourage the people in this country that are 
in the business of trying to encourage our enemy, and the ultimate 
effect is to demoralize the people in the middle who are really the 
ones that are subject to this debate.
  The people on the left that show up here to demonstrate in this city 
against this military effort are never going to change their mind, 
Madam Speaker. That's not going to happen. There is no amount of logic 
or rationale, no human experience that can flip them over the other 
way. They are dug in. And there are some folks on the other side that 
are going to stand with our President and with our Army, Navy, Air 
Force and Marines, and they are going to stand with our dear departed 
who have sacrificed, and they're going to stand with our wounded, 
they're going to stand with our military families and they're going to 
stand with the mission and the people that have been asked to carry it 
out. They're going to support the troops and the mission.
  There are some people on the other side, on the left side of the 
aisle, that will say ``I support the troops but not their mission.'' 
They don't seem to recognize the dichotomy of that position. You can't 
ask someone, ``You can put your life on the line for me, I support you, 
but it's not a good thing you're doing. I don't agree with your 
mission.'' You cannot do that to people. If you support the troops, you 
have to support the mission.
  And so, Madam Speaker, we are where we are today, as irrational as it 
is, as demoralizing as it is, as debilitating as it is, another debate 
on this floor that has no purpose in law, just tries to make an 
argument to those people in the middle that might be swayed to go over 
to the side of the pacifists on the left. That's been our debate here 
on the floor.
  And I believe I will tack on to that another resolution today that I 
think was an unnecessary resolution, and that's a resolution that drew 
a good size number of votes that were votes for ``present,'' and that's 
the resolution that took up the issue of Ramadan. And I think the 
language in that was excessive, so did a good number of Members of this 
Congress; all didn't have the will to put up a ``present'' vote, and no 
one had the will to put up a ``no'' vote. But I would point out that 
Ramadan has been the bloodiest month throughout this global war on 
terror, and so if that is the holy month, I would like to see Ramadan 
lifted up to be the bloodless month if it's going to be a peaceful 
religion.
  And now, Madam Speaker, I would like to take the subject matter off 
of these depressing things and on to another subject matter that is not 
particularly thrilling either, and that, Madam Speaker, is the subject 
of SCHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Plan.
  This legislation that passed out of this Congress in the 1990s that I 
will say emerged from the Clinton administration and was intensely 
debated in the State legislature where I was at the time, where we 
adopted a bill off of that that we called ``Hawkeye.'' And that's just 
the Iowa version, and it wouldn't apply unless there happens to be a 
Buckeye in Ohio. But the SCHIP program was an intense debate here and 
it continues to be debated across the country. The President is poised 
to veto the SCHIP bill, and I think he has very sound reasons to do so, 
Madam Speaker.
  First of all, the idea that we would increase the health insurance 
coverage for families that are making 3 or 4 times the rate of poverty 
defeats the very concept of the idea of SCHIP. And that is that we 
wanted to provide, and it was Congress' intent to provide, health 
insurance for those children in families that were not so well to do, 
that didn't quite qualify for Medicaid coverage. And so from the 
Medicaid side of this, it wasn't quite enough to reach up into those 
lower-income families, and so SCHIP was created. And as it was created 
and it came to the States, we adopted in my State an SCHIP program that 
covered 200 percent of poverty, trying to reach those kids that weren't 
insured.
  So, here are the levels that were produced by the Congressional 
Budget Office just this year. If you cover between 100 and 200 percent 
of poverty, half of the children will have private health care anyway, 
about half of them within that range. The legislation that first passed 
off of the floor of this Congress, this Pelosi-led Congress that was 
then modified by the Senate is way over on the right. That's 400 
percent of poverty. That shows that when you offer subsidized health 
insurance to that level at 400 percent of poverty, you're going to get 
95 percent of the kids that were insured that will roll off of that 
health insurance and onto the government program. The various stops in 
between, 300-400 percent of poverty, 89 percent, well, that's nine out 
of 10 kids that are already covered, you're going to get them off and 
onto the government program; 200-300 percent at 77 percent.
  So what was our mission here? What were we seeking to do? One is the 
SCHIP program needed to be reauthorized, it was expiring and needed to 
be reauthorized. And so it needed to be brought before this Congress, 
and we needed to make a decision on how it was going to be shaped and 
what the parameters of SCHIP would be. And I would have liked to have 
seen it extended to 200 percent of poverty. And I would like to have 
seen some of those 25-year-olds that were collecting

[[Page 26262]]

SCHIP insurance be taken off of those rolls and roll this thing down to 
where it be kids, not young adults that should be taking care of their 
own health insurance. But instead, the leadership in this Congress saw 
fit to bring legislation to this floor and roll over the top of an 
intensely opposed minority at 400 percent of the poverty level.
  Now, to give you an example of what that is, the poverty level is 
fairly consistent across the country, but in Iowa, if that SCHIP plan 
that was first offered by this Pelosi Congress that was passed off this 
floor over to the Senate were enacted into law in a State like Iowa, a 
family of four, a mom and dad and two kids, would qualify for SCHIP 
coverage even if they're making $103,249 a year. Now, I call that 
pretty well off. If you're making six figures, you've got two kids in 
the family, four mouths to feed, you should be able to find a way to 
take care of your own health insurance. Likely, that's going to be 
available in the workplace; at least 75 percent of those jobs do 
provide health insurance for the employees. But the Senate has modified 
this language and kicked it back over here at 300 percent of poverty. 
So in a State like Iowa, under this 300 percent of poverty, they would 
be offering SCHIP health insurance subsidy up to $77,437 a year for a 
family of four.
  Now, I can take these numbers up to families of eight and on and they 
go way off into the stratosphere. But a family of four has been our 
standard across this country. Currently, if you're in Iowa and you're a 
family of four and you're making less than $51,625 a year, you qualify 
for subsidized health insurance premiums, $51,625. We call that middle 
class where I come from.
  And so this policy that first passed off the floor, the 400 percent 
of poverty, went so far that 70,000 families in America that would 
qualify for SCHIP funding would also be compelled to pay the 
Alternative Minimum Tax, that tax that was designed to make sure that 
the rich didn't slip by without paying their fair share. That was a 
special tax for the rich, the Alternative Minimum Tax. 70,000 families 
in America are making so much money that they would have to pay the 
Alternative Minimum Tax and we would have to subsidize their health 
insurance premiums for their kids, presumably because in order to pay 
that extra tax on the rich, the Alternative Minimum Tax, presumably we 
have to subsidize their health insurance so they've got the money to 
pay the extra tax.

                              {time}  2245

  That is bizarre, Madam Speaker. It is bizarre if you believe in a 
free market system, if you believe we are ever going to have a health 
care program in the United States that actually rewards those that take 
responsibility, one that allows people to have a choice and one that 
allows people to make decisions for their own health care.
  But that is not where this is going. This debate has a couple of 
contradictions within it that the discerning ear will hear. One of them 
is on the part of the left, the Pelosis, Harry Reids and Hillary 
Clintons and all the Democratic candidates for President, Madam 
Speaker, very loosely interchange the term, and this is as near as my 
ears picked up, very loosely interchange the term ``health insurance'' 
with ``health care.''
  For example, my Governor came to this Hill. And sitting in a 
congressional delegation meeting with the Senators and the 
Representatives, all Members of Congress, sitting in the room, said 
that there are 40,000 kids in Iowa that don't have health care. I am 
not aware of a single kid in Iowa that doesn't have health care, at 
least access to health care. If they are poor, they get Medicaid. If 
they are at low-income, they get SCHIP or hawk-i. If they go to the 
emergency room, they will all get care regardless of whether they are 
qualified, whether their parents take the trouble of getting them 
health insurance. So there are no kids that I am aware of in Iowa that 
don't have health care.
  It may be true that 40,000 don't have health insurance. It might be 
that there are a number of those kids that are covered under Medicaid 
that don't make enough money to be in that threshold level for SCHIP. 
But it is not true that 40,000 don't have health care. That is the 
sloppiness of the exchange between those two terms. ``Health care'' and 
``health insurance'' have become kind of an easy slip into the 
utilization of the terms. In the same fashion that some people say 
``immigrant'' when they mean ``illegal immigrant,'' some people say 
``health care'' where when they say ``no health care for kids'' they 
really mean ``kids that currently don't have health insurance for one 
reason or another.'' But they are not alleging, at least, that there 
are kids in this country that don't have access to health care. That is 
one of the problems that we have in our communications. It is not that 
they don't have access to health care.
  Another one is the complete flat-out denial on many of them on the 
left that this SCHIP plan is the cornerstone for a socialized medicine 
program. Now, you can argue about what kind of shape it takes, but if 
you listen to Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or Barack Obama, they are 
all for some kind of a national health care plan. A national health 
care plan, once adopted, becomes a single-payer national plan where 
everything is merged together. They want to negotiate for the cost of 
Medicare as a group, and they will want to negotiate for the cost of 
all services with the leverage of the Federal Government. They will 
want to do that with the cost of pharmaceuticals. This takes away the 
competition that comes from within that drives the research and 
development, that provides for the highest quality medical care in the 
world. If you adopt the Hillary plan from 1993, eventually it merges 
into a single-payer Canadian plan.
  Now, I took the trouble today to read through, Madam Speaker, William 
Clinton's speech before the floor of this Congress that he brought here 
in, this is September 22, 1993, when he came to give a speech before a 
joint session of Congress. This is about an hour speech, 13\1/2\ pages, 
single-spaced, where Bill Clinton laid out Hillary's health care plan. 
It is very adeptly done. It was quite interesting to read through this 
health care plan.
  Some of the comments that he made were kind of astute. One was that 
he thought we needed Medicare prescription drug coverage. We did do 
that. That's a piece of that plan. We got that accomplished here in 
this Congress, Madam Speaker. Some of the other arguments, we are 
drowning in paperwork, we must produce savings. He goes into how you 
produce savings. Well, that is going to be some form of limiting. He 
said he doesn't want to limit prices, but he would limit the increase 
in prices, which by now we know would be price limitations. Mountains 
of unnecessary procedures. It is quite interesting that President 
Clinton is opposed to mountains of unnecessary procedures. But we know 
that because of the high cost of the litigation, the lawsuits against 
medical providers and the medical malpractice insurance premiums that 
are necessary because of the intensive litigation against the 
practitioners of health care, we know that that is a reason why a lot 
of these tests are done.
  We can argue that they are not necessary one at a time. But every 
doctor has to make the decision on whether he is going to be defending 
that decision in court, because the Monday morning quarter backs, the 
after-the-fact ambulance-chasing lawyers will raise those issues up for 
litigation. If they see a deep pocket, they will go for it. The deep 
pocket has been the medical industry.
  So the mountains of unnecessary procedures ties into the unnecessary 
litigation that is part of this. However, there is nothing in the 
Clinton plan that addresses the high cost of litigation. That is a big 
reason why we have the high cost of health care here in the United 
States. We have tried to limit that in this Congress. We have tried to 
limit it in the last Congress and tried to cap the malpractice to 
$250,000 in noneconomic damages while still letting everyone who has 
been a victim of malpractice get themselves whole. We couldn't get it 
past the trial lawyers,

[[Page 26263]]

the trial lawyers in the Senate in particular. But the Clinton plan 
gives full deference to the trial lawyers' interests here and doesn't 
approach that expensive component of health care at all.
  He addresses fraud and abuse. I agree there is some of that. He calls 
it, though, under our broken health care system that power is slipping 
away from Americans. Then, let me see, an interesting component here on 
about page 9 or 10, we will impose new taxes on tobacco, directly out 
of SCHIP is right off of this page, new taxes on tobacco, Federal taxes 
at a dollar a pack. Some of the States, including my own, have raised 
taxes. That turns into, and I am not a smoker, Madam Speaker, I think 
it would be a wonderful thing if no one smoked. But it is a legal 
activity. The marketing of tobacco is done as prescribed by the Federal 
Government. So this tax, a higher percentage of poorer people smoke 
than people that are better off. So this tax becomes a very regressive 
tax on the people that do smoke.
  It does advocate here, though, that we should be able to deduct from 
our taxes 100 percent of our premiums if we are a small business. I do 
support that. There were some components in here that were good. It was 
an interesting read on what was delivered to the floor of this Congress 
in 1993, the things that have transpired since then and the effort that 
is coming out today.
  I would note that nothing in this speech of these multiple pages here 
in this roughly an hour-long speech of Bill Clinton from September of 
1993, all on health care, and really all packaged up on the Hillary 
plan, nothing in this addresses health savings accounts. Yet we passed 
health savings accounts here off the floor of this Congress. They are 
the opportunity that we have to continue to provide the private market 
health care here in the United States and to give people choices and 
let them have control over their own plans. I think that was the 
strongest reason to vote for the Medicare prescription drug component 
piece of the bill.
  The health savings accounts were the most important component. It 
allowed, in the beginning, young couples to put $5,150 in a tax free, 
into a health savings account. I would like to see that expanded and 
accelerated so that young people would get to the age of retirement 
with 6 figures times X of money in their health savings account, enough 
money that they could purchase a paid-up, lifetime health insurance 
plan. If we could do that, then they could roll the money that is left 
over out of that and put that back into their savings account, their 
estate, whatever they choose to do with it. That is a good thing to 
build on, health savings account, and rewarding those providers that 
provide high-quality care for a low price, that is the best 
combination. That is something also we should do, Madam Speaker.
  We have made some progress here. We have made some progress under 
this Republican Congress in past years. But this year, this SCHIP plan 
goes too far. The people that advocate this were the same people that 
advocated 400 percent of poverty. I haven't heard a peep of fiscal 
responsibility come out of the other side. So where would they draw the 
line? I have drawn it, Madam Speaker, at 200 percent of poverty. I put 
that vote up in the late '90s. That's a matter of record. I have been 
here on this floor, and I support the SCHIP program to a limit. That 
limit is 200 percent of poverty. I would ask those advocates that came 
to this floor and voted for 400 percent of poverty, what is their 
limit? Where do they draw the line? They wouldn't draw it at 400 
percent of poverty when there is hardly anybody left on any private 
insurance, hardly any kids left. Ninety-five percent of the kids are 
gone and pushed into the government-funded program. Their choices are 
really substantially limited.
  How many million kids would be talked off of private health insurance 
by this bill as it came off the floor of the House the other day and 
that essentially it does concur with the Senate? I can tell you that 
number. That number is produced by the Congressional Budget Office; 2.1 
million kids in the United States would be leveraged off of or talked 
off of and given an incentive, their parents would be given an 
incentive to take them off of their own insurance plan so the 
government can pay the insurance that the families are already paying.
  Is this that consistent with the motive here that we are trying to 
get health insurance to kids who don't have it when 2.5 million of them 
who do have it will be taken from their own self-sustaining, family-
funded health insurance plan, often funded by the employer who will see 
the opportunity to cut down on their costs and push their employees' 
kids over on to an SCHIP plan? 2.1 million kids moved off. How many 
kids in the future, if this bill becomes law, how many will never see a 
private health insurance plan? For how many of them will it become 
automatic, employers will make the shift, they will write new policies, 
they will offer to their employees?
  As they do that, the employees won't know there is another choice. I 
can easily see an employer sitting there in the HR office, the manager 
saying to a prospective employee, Here is our plan. We will pay for 
your health insurance and we will pay for your wife's health insurance. 
We have a good plan, but your kids will go on SCHIP. We have a way to 
facilitate that for you so we make that real easy.
  While they are doing that, they will be saving some dollars in the 
premium. But it will end up being private insurance for mom and dad, 
government insurance for the kids to 95 percent or more. When it is 95 
percent, who is left? Just a few people who stubbornly want to be self-
reliant and stand on their own two feet. Just a few people, Madam 
Speaker, will be all that will be left if this thing goes all the way 
to 400 percent.
  Even at 300 percent, you are looking at 89 percent of those kids are 
gone. Then, year after year as employers change their plans to taking 
advantage of now another government handout, and as they hire new 
employees, and as this thing shifts and evolves, there will be fewer 
and fewer kids on private health insurance, but millions and millions 
of them that never go on.
  This isn't just the numbers of 2.1 million that go off within the 
next year if this bill becomes law. And that is at the 300 percent, 2.1 
million. It is not just that. It is the tens of millions and ultimately 
the hundreds of millions that will never see a private health insurance 
plan until they become the age of adulthood, which by then the 
proponents of SCHIP would like to have a plan in place for those 
people, for those kids, as they become adults.
  Bill Clinton promised us that when Hillarycare came crashing down, 
when it collapsed in the weight of the opposition of the American 
people that wanted to keep their freedom and didn't want a Canadian-
style plan and understood there was no place for them to go to get 
their health care if the United States was going to be shut into a 
Canadian-style, rationed, long-lines health insurance premium, when the 
American people brought that crashing down, when Senator Graham said, 
This passes over my cold, dead political body, when that happened, then 
Bill Clinton came before the American people and said, Well, this is 
more than the American people can absorb all at one time. So we will 
get this done a piece at a time. We are going to feed this to the 
American people a piece at a time. When we do that, we will get them 
the SCHIP. Then we will also go for the 55 to 65 year olds.
  Now, Madam Speaker, do you get the picture, the 55 to 65 years olds? 
First, we will bring the kids in. Who can say ``no'' to the kids? Who 
can say ``no'' to 300 percent? In fact, a whole bunch couldn't say 
``no'' to 400 percent of poverty. We know 400 percent of poverty is 95 
percent of the kids. So if you get to 500 or 600 or 800 percent of 
poverty, you are going to get, statistically, we say today, virtually 
all of them. So at some point, we just say that all kids qualify 
because there are hardly any kids that are not on there.
  Then, if we follow this path that is advocated by Bill Clinton back 
in the mid-1990s, lower the age of Medicare eligibility down to 55, now 
your window, we have got people that are 25 years old qualified for 
SCHIP today on SCHIP in the States, and we have people there at 400 
percent of poverty. If

[[Page 26264]]

you lower the Medicare age down to 55, 25 to 55 is only that 30-year 
window. Well, that is the most productive years. Those are the people 
that will be paying the taxes.

                              {time}  2300

  They will be the ones that feel the pain the most, and they will say, 
why do I pay for all this health insurance and health care for the 
seniors that are 55 years old that have a lot of years and vigor left 
in them, and the kids that are now kids up to age 25? Why don't you 
just give me mine, too, under the same version, because, after all, I 
am paying for it anyway. I am paying for my own at work because it's 
part of the wages I earn, and I am paying for all the kids up to age 
25, well, at least a lot of the kids up to age 25, and the adults from 
age, as Clinton advocated, 55 on up.
  Does anybody believe that Hillary Clinton disagrees with Bill on this 
one-hour long speech? I would submit that she wrote a lot of it; in 
fact, may have written all of it. This policy that she's advocating 
today reflects much of it. I can't quite find contradictions in it.
  So we need to understand, Madam Speaker, that this debate is not 
about trying to provide health insurance to kids that don't have it. 
Many say it's providing health care to kids that don't have it. But we 
know this: Every kid in America has access to health care. Most kids 
have health insurance. At 200 percent of poverty, you're looking at 77 
percent of those kids that have insurance. Maybe that number is a big 
number of kids that don't have health insurance, but they all have 
access to health care.
  This debate isn't about the health of the kids. We didn't hear 
examples in any significant statistical number of kids that are 
suffering because they don't have access to health care. We heard a 
socialized medicine debate here on this floor, Madam Speaker. And that 
is what is going on in America.
  This is where the landing zone is being prepared for the presidential 
candidates who are advocating for a single-payer Canadian-style or 
nationally-mandated socialized medicine program. They think it's their 
ticket to the White House. They think the American people want to 
become even more dependent yet on the nanny-state of government.
  Well, Madam Speaker, I oppose that kind of a philosophy. Myself and 
many millions of Americans oppose that kind of philosophy. We are still 
out there, Harry and Louise; we are out there, Phil Graham. We are 
still going to stand here and we are going to oppose a Federally-
mandated, single-payer, Canadian-style socialized medicine health care 
system in this country, and we are going to oppose the expansion of 
current SCHIP law that goes beyond the 200 percent of poverty, up to 
the 300 percent and more, and allowing, by the way, the States to 
discount the income so that that 200 percent, now 300 percent of 
poverty, goes higher than that yet.
  We are going to oppose all of that, because what we are really 
talking about here is the Pelosi Congress laying the cornerstone to the 
next generation of socialized medicine. SCHIP is the cornerstone of the 
next generation of socialized medicine, Madam Speaker, and I oppose it 
primarily for that reason.
  I want to point out that this country has the best health care system 
in the world. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it consumes perhaps 17 percent 
of our GDP. That is a lot. We pay for it because health care is worth 
it to us. If it were not, we would say, I'm not going to do that. I'm 
not going to pay the premium. Give me my money in my wages. I don't 
want that to go off to my health insurance. I think I am going to take 
some risks with my health. I don't want that test. See if you can keep 
my premiums a little cheaper, because you're spending a little too much 
time. No.
  Madam Speaker, we are for high quality health care, and when it comes 
to our health, as people in this Nation, and our lives, no cost is too 
high for us. Because of that, it has driven research and development 
and driven the educational institutions and the research hospitals. The 
system that we have out there that produces new doctors and nurses and 
inventors and the infrastructure of our hospitals and clinics and a 
delivery system and the medical equipment that has been developed over 
the last generation or two is an amazing thing to understand in its 
broader scope. All of those things are rooted in a belief that we need 
to provide ever better health care for our people. It has extended our 
lives and it has extended the quality of our lives. We have been 
willing to pay for that.
  Now, I think there are many things we can do to keep the costs down 
and provide more efficiency. One of those would be a digital 
recordkeeping system that would allow for a Web page for all the 
prescriptions of a patient to go on there, and have a firewall for 
security, and allow a doctor to put in a patient's records and 
instantly be able to read the entire file from anywhere in the country, 
anywhere in the world. I think we will get there.
  Those are some things we can work with as to having an integrated 
medical records system. It will save lives and it will save money. It 
will avoid duplicate prescriptions and avoid duplicate tests and 
duplicate x-rays, list after list of things that can be more efficient. 
That is not something you produce and drive here by saying we need to 
go to a single-payer plan or socialized medicine plan. That is 
something government can help facilitate, and I think we should.
  I want to have my choices. And I think we also need to grow these 
HSAs and increase the amount of deductible that goes into the HSAs and 
allow the insurance company and encourage them to produce plans that 
adjust the premiums, so if people have healthy lifestyles, that is 
reflected in a cheaper premium. And if that can be reflected in a 
cheaper premium, they can roll more dollars into an HSA, and if they 
have control of management of that from the standpoint of if they live 
healthy lifestyles and they go in and get regular checkups, they will 
see cheaper premiums, which allows them to grow their HSA. And if that 
happens, when there is enough money in their HSA, they can raise the 
amount of their deductible and lower their premium, which will take 
less dollars out of their paycheck, and as that transition goes on, 
they might want to have a larger copayment as their HSA becomes larger 
and larger.
  Meanwhile, insurance becomes more what it is about. It doesn't need 
to be about covering every medical treatment, the loose-change medical 
treatment. It needs to be for the catastrophic, those that would knock 
us down economically and cause us to have to rebuild ourselves again.
  We can structure this system so there is more responsibility in it, 
less litigation it. We can limit the medical malpractice, and we need 
to do that. I don't expect this Pelosi Congress will do this, Madam 
Speaker, but I do expect the American people are going to understand 
where their costs are and want to elect a Congress that will follow 
through on the medical malpractice and will grow the HSAs and will give 
us back even more of our freedom when it comes to health care and 
health insurance, not less.
  SCHIP is the cornerstone of socialized medicine, and it is wrong to 
advance ourselves down that path. It also results in a 156 percent 
increase in taxes, that is the tobacco tax that I mentioned, and it has 
no fiscal responsibility. It also has a cliff in the funding.
  The funding of this system that is here, even under the 300 percent 
version that was the last version passed off of this House, the funding 
is set up so it will require there be an additional 22.4 million 
smokers recruited to go on the smoking rolls in order to fund this 
SCHIP. So if you increase the cost of a pack of cigarettes and you 
presume that there will be 22.4 million more smokers, when taxes in the 
Federal are a buck a pack and a lot the States have very high taxes as 
well, would one have to conclude there will be fewer smokers instead of 
more, and those that are fewer will also smoke less because of the 
cost?
  This inverse ratio then result in the Heritage Foundation's estimate 
of 22.4

[[Page 26265]]

million new smokers to fund this over the next 10 years. Then this 
funding that is set up is a gimmick funding that produces a cliff, a 
cliff that happens in the funding, the acceleration of the funding, 
which will be the collection of increased tobacco taxes until the year 
2011. At the year 2011, it hits the spot where there is the drop off in 
revenue. There is no provision to continue the revenue, and as things 
stop, you there will be a drop in revenue of 75 percent. No provisions 
for how to fund the increase in costs that are sailing off into the 
stratosphere. Instead, there is a 75 percent cut in the revenue. The 
revenue drops off of a cliff.
  What we know then is they will come to this Congress and say, well, 
you can't say no to all these kids, these 89 or 95 percent of the kids 
in America that have been talked off of their private health insurance 
and talked on to a government-funded health insurance. You can't say no 
to them. So in order to fund them, you are going to have to raise taxes 
or increase the national debt.
  That is what is in store for us with this SCHIP program that we are 
dealing with today, Madam Speaker.
  Then, not the least of which, but among it, is the lowering of the 
standards on requirements for qualification. We have State agencies 
that have been requiring birth certificates, passports and other 
verifiable documents that demonstrate lawful presence in the United 
States, that demonstrate citizenship, so that we are not providing 
these kind of benefits to people who are otherwise, actually in fact at 
the time, deportable.
  I mean, to give taxpayer dollars off to people who are deportable is 
a deplorable thing to do, and it is beneath the standards that have 
been set by the previous Congresses. And so this SCHIP legislation that 
is there allows the States to waive a passport requirement, waive a 
birth certificate, citizenship-proving requirement, and allows them to 
simply accept a Social Security number.
  Now, some will argue that there is a line in the bill that says that 
these funds can't go to illegals. But, Madam Speaker, the legislation 
in the bill doesn't require the States to verify citizenship or lawful 
presence. It doesn't require them to ask for a passport or a birth 
certificate. In fact, it stipulates that they can accept a Social 
Security number. And it may actually be a valid Social Security number, 
but the Social Security Administration themselves have said there is no 
way to verify that that number actually represents the person that you 
have before you.
  We know that from our immigration debates, and we also know that 
there are thousands, in fact millions of illegals in America who are 
working in this country under a false Social Security number. That is 
the same standard by which we would grant SCHIP benefits to illegals 
that are here, who otherwise are deportable in the United States.
  This SCHIP legislation weakens the standards. It wasn't content to 
stay with the standards that we had. I didn't hear complaints about the 
standards that we had. We asked for verification of lawful presence in 
the United States. No, just produce a Social Security number. So if you 
can beg, borrow or steal someone's Social Security number and you 
present that, that can be accepted by the States as adequate proof of 
lawful presence in the United States.
  So this law, this SCHIP legislation, opens the door up for more 
benefits to go to illegals. And when I say that, I mean people that are 
deportable, those who, if adjudicated, will be sent to their home 
country.
  That shows one of the things that is wrong with this government, this 
permissiveness. The Federal Government has enforced our immigration 
laws less and less over the last 20 years, and this is another piece of 
it. This same party that brings this permissiveness, this subsidy for 
deportables, was the same party that advocates for border security. 
Now, that, Madam Speaker is another dichotomy that I find to be a bit 
ironic.
  So I stand on the rule of law. I think that our laws should be 
enforced. I think if people violate those laws, you have to enforce it 
and you have to adjudicate them, and you have to sometimes make an 
example so the rest of the public recognizes that this is a nation of 
laws.
  But this SCHIP law undermines our national security, it encourages 
the subsidy of illegals, and it will require another 22.4 million new 
smokers. It will cost my State of Iowa a net of $226 million. That is 
the figure that is produced by the Center for Disease Control, that 
shows that when you add the new taxes into my State and all the money 
that gets added up on the taxes that would be collected in Iowa, and 
then you subtract from it the extra grants that would go into Iowa to 
take care of raising the SCHIP from 200 of poverty to 300 percent of 
poverty, from $51,625 for a family of four, up to $77,430 for a family 
of four, you do that math, extra taxes taken out of the State, grants 
for SCHIP coming back in, the net, not a net gain for Iowa, Governor 
Culver, I hate to tell you this, it is a net loss of $226 million. So, 
it isn't even fiscally prudent for Iowans to engage in this.
  There are other states that have a net loss as well, according to the 
Center for Disease Control. The title of this is SCHIP Expansions, 
Winners and Losers, Net Impact on States New Grants.
  This is, Madam Speaker, the look of the map that is produced here, 
and this is the data that has been delivered by the Center For Disease 
Control. The map is produced by one of our Members of Congress, I 
believe.
  But, at any rate, Iowa loses $226 million. Our neighbors in 
Wisconsin, $330 million. Missouri, our neighbors to the south, $496 
million. Florida loses $703 million, Madam Speaker. That might be of 
particular interest to you. $703 million. South Carolina, $239 million. 
North Carolina, $536 million. This list goes on and on. Kentucky, $602 
million. Indiana, minus $517 million. Ohio, minus $426 million.

                              {time}  2315

  So there are winners and losers. There is a transfer of tax dollars 
and a transfer of wealth that takes place with this SCHIP legislation. 
The transfer of wealth just shows what an economic boondoggle it is for 
some States. It shows also that some States, their leadership is 
clamoring for this SCHIP increase. I haven't noticed Republican 
Governors clamoring for SCHIP increase. I haven't noticed Republican 
candidates for the Presidency clamoring for an SCHIP increase. They 
recognize that this increase to 300 percent of poverty, that the 
attempt to take it to 400 percent of poverty, this attempt to talk kids 
off of private health insurance, is the cornerstone for Hillarycare, 
for socialized medicine and lays a foundation for the Presidential 
debates that will be unfolding from this point until November 2008.
  It sets it as the central issue for the Presidency in the event that 
MoveOn.org and the get out of Iraq at any cost pacifists can't make 
that issue stick. If they lose that debate, as said by the Democrat 
whip, that is a big problem for Democrats if there is a good report 
from General Petraeus.
  Well, the report he delivered to us was honest and objective. It was 
delivered by a patriot. It was delivered by a man who I believe knows 
more about Iraq and our military operations as well as the political 
and economic operations there than anybody in the world. It was 
objective. It was delivered prudently, carefully and factually. And 
yet, as John Adams said, facts are stubborn things.
  Whatever we might choose to do, we can't escape the result of the 
facts. The facts support a continuing improvement in Iraq. The facts 
indicate that this debate that is going down this path on SCHIP is not 
a debate about getting health insurance to kids. This is a debate about 
laying the cornerstone for socialized health care in the United States.
  I think it is utterly wrong and undermines our free market economy. I 
think it takes away the freedom of the American people. If you take 
away the freedom of any people, you undermine their productivity and 
you take away their spirit. If you are a Nation that

[[Page 26266]]

provides, if you become the nanny state and you provide everything that 
people want, and FDR created those freedoms, some of these are 
constitutional, two of them were extra-constitutional, freedom from 
want and freedom from fear.
  This SCHIP plan fits into that idea that people should be free of 
want and free of fear. They shouldn't fear not having health insurance 
for their children, and they shouldn't want for anything. This has 
gotten so bizarre in this Pelosi Congress that we have a farm bill that 
came to this floor and is passed over to the Senate now that has 
increased the food stamps, the nutrition component of the bill, by 46 
percent. Even though the proponents of that bill could not find a 
statistical argument that there were components of Americans that were 
suffering from hunger or malnutrition, in fact they had to admit that 
people were getting their past meals and they knew where their next 
meals were coming from, but they stated that people had food 
insecurity, I'll call it food anxiety. And so because sometimes they 
weren't sure that some of those meals down the line might not be there, 
they ate more.
  Madam Speaker, I think it is an appropriate thing to get me down to 
this closing here because it is ironic to quote from the testimony that 
came before the Agriculture Committee. This would be testimony by Janet 
Murguia, March 13, 2007, representing LaRaza testifying on food stamps 
about food insecurity. This is a quote: ``There is also mounting 
evidence that the overweight and obesity trends in the United States 
are due in part to high levels of food insecurity.''
  In other words, food anxiety, food insecurity cause people to 
overeat. They become overweight and if we give them more food from the 
taxpayers' dollar, then they would eat less and be more healthy and 
slender and all would be wonderful.
  Yes, I guess if you are committed that tax increases and more 
government responsibility and less personal responsibility are the 
solution to everything, you can even include the idea that if you give 
them more food stamps, they would eat less as part of your rationale. 
It is no more rational here to take SCHIP and take it up to 300 or even 
400 percent of poverty. The only rationale I see here is socialized 
medicine. Lay the cornerstone for socialized medicine, lay the 
cornerstone for the Hillary campaign for the Presidency.
  Pick up this speech from September of 2003, ``Move Ahead Into 
Socialism.''

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