[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 28682-28689]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address 
you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.
  And having been a speaker in waiting, I had the privilege to listen 
to some of the Blue Dogs talk about their budgetary priorities. And I 
also listened to the reflection of the individual from Iowa, whose cows 
I represent down there in my territory. And we are good neighbors and 
we've worked together over the last 5 years that I have been in this 
Congress.
  There always are two sides to an issue, and a number of the 
statements that were made here I absolutely agree with. I would submit, 
though, that there is a distinction between us, and that is, I want a 
balanced budget. I worked for a balanced budget. I called for a 
balanced budget upon my arrival in this Congress 5 years ago. I've 
sought to produce those numbers and get that language out on the floor.
  My Blue Dog friends also call for a balanced budget, but they're 
willing to raise the taxes. And they have offered several budgets to 
this Congress that would have raised taxes in order to balance this 
budget.
  I would submit that we need to balance the budget a different way. We 
need to do it by controlling spending. And we can do a better job of 
controlling discretionary spending, but in there is not the answer, not 
the complete answer to the things that we need to do.
  The tax cuts that came from the Bush administration immediately 
following September 11, 2001, and the next wave of tax cuts that we did 
in 2003 have stimulated this economy, and they have probably kept us 
from a recession and maybe even a depression. So, Mr. Speaker, I would 
submit this: I would take your reflection back to that period of time 
that was in the end of the Clinton administration, during the campaign 
of the Bush-Gore campaign in the year 1999 and 2000 and the beginning 
of the Bush administration. We had this growing, booming economy, and 
it coupled with serious spending cuts that were brought forth on the 
floor of this Congress by Republican leadership, the new Republican 
leadership that arrived here, elected in 1994, sworn in here in the 
first week of January of 1995, and came in and said, we're going to do 
these 10 things, and we're going to work towards a balanced budget. And 
they actually didn't know that they could accomplish that. But as they 
brought the spending restraint and the cuts and the efforts to 
eliminate entire departments, unsuccessful, I might add, Mr. Speaker, 
that constrained this growth in spending. And by the way, they didn't 
have any inhibitions about cutting down and limiting the spending that 
President Clinton wanted to do at the time. They had political 
opposition, so points were being scored on both sides. And while that 
was going on, we were holding this budget down. In fact, the government 
went into shutdown. And there was a time when I thought that the 
leadership in this Congress should not have blinked. But in the end, 
regardless of who got the blame, this Congress, had it not had the 
majority that was here, and I would point out to the Speaker that that 
was a Republican majority, we would not have had a balanced budget in 
the 1990s. You would not have seen John Kasich with a T-shirt that said 
``back in the black'' with the line of our spending cut down and where 
we were going into solvency.
  But we got into solvency. And I don't get the credit for that, I 
wasn't here at the time. This Congress got into solvency because it had 
solid, conservative leadership. And then, as the administration changed 
from the Clinton administration, which has been lauded here tonight, I 
believe, to the Bush administration, at the same time we had a dot-com 
bubble in our economy, there was a growth on Wall Street that capital 
was being attracted to the information age, that type of industry. And 
there was a belief that because technology had taken the microchip to 
the level where we could store and transfer energy more effectively and 
more efficiently than ever before, there were billions of dollars 
speculated in dot-com companies on the idea that, with all this 
technology, we are transitioning from the industrial age into the 
information age.
  And as we go into the information age, Mr. Speaker, the capital that 
was

[[Page 28683]]

attracted to those businesses was capital that simply was placed upon 
the speculation that, because we could transfer and store information 
more efficiently than ever before, somehow these companies that were 
formed for that purpose would be able to all make a profit. But the 
bubble, when it burst, it was the realization that this information, 
just because we could store it and transfer it more effectively than 
ever before, didn't necessarily transfer into profit. It couldn't be 
translated directly into profit because the information storage and 
transferability that came with the information age, that actually 
caused the information age, that ability was predicated upon how that 
information could provide a good or a service more efficiently, or to 
the extent that that information could be used for recreational 
purposes.
  Now, we understand the good or the service being provided more 
efficiently. Look at the things that we can do with tracking inventory, 
for example, or dispatching trucks on the roads of America with the 
satellite transponders, to be able to sit there at a software screen, 
if you're dispatching trucks in a nationwide or continentwide trucking 
company, and be able to see on that screen a little dot where every 
truck is, be able to click on that and find out when that truck got its 
last rest, how much rest the driver had, what the maintenance is on the 
truck, what the cargo is, what the delivery time is, how many miles are 
left, and be able to have that software package give you a warning on 
when a load might be late. And we went from keeping significant 
inventories in our warehouses in America to just-in-time delivery, 
partly because we could do a more effective job of dispatching trucks.
  That's just one of the things that came with the information age, and 
that's efficiencies that came into this because of being able to store 
and transfer and calculate more efficiently than ever before. But, a 
miscalculation that was made by Wall Street was a miscalculation that, 
because we could store and transfer and calculate more effectively, 
that it all translated into profit. It did not.
  And so the speculators on Wall Street and into the private companies, 
whether they were publicly traded or whether they were privately traded 
companies, the speculation part of that was the dot-com bubble. And it 
burst. And it burst kind of slowly, not like a balloon pop, but kind of 
a slow letting out of the air. And as that bubble collapsed, that 
transitioned across the end of the Clinton administration into the 
beginnings of the Bush administration. And while that was going on, we 
had corruption that emerged within major companies, within major 
corporations within the United States. And we know who some of them 
are, Enron, for example.
  And so, as this corruption was corrected and as we saw legislation 
being passed in this Congress and signed by the President, there was 
also downward pressure on our stock market because they didn't know how 
much regulation they were going to get from this Congress, under the 
pen of the President, what was going to happen. So, how would this 
Congress react?
  Well, as that debate went on, as we began to clean up the corruption 
that emerged, and thankfully that did happen to a large degree, that 
went on top of the slow letting out of the air, I call it the bursting 
of the dot-com bubble, those two pressures downward came downward on 
our economy. Well, we know that our tax collections are also predicated 
upon how strong our economy is. And if we have growth, we will have 
more taxes; if we have a decline, we will have fewer taxes. With the 
dot-com bubble bursting and the corporation corruption that was being 
addressed, both suppressed our economy and the tax revenues declined.
  While this was going on and as the President was getting his feel of 
coming into the Oval Office and beginning to become the newly sworn 
President of the United States, January until September, in September 
of that same year that the President was sworn in, while he is dealing 
with the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the corporation corruption, 
and while this Congress is as well, we had the September 11 attack on 
the Twin Towers, on the Pentagon, and a plane that crashed in 
Pennsylvania. That was a direct attack on our national defense center 
and a direct attack on our financial centers.
  And so, Mr. Speaker, all of these things came descending down upon 
this Nation, focused like a laser beam on the responsibilities of the 
President of the United States. And the President responded by calling 
for tax cuts in a wave that came pretty closely after the September 
11th attacks. While we were ramping up our defense, while we were 
ramping up homeland security, while we were setting up the TSA, and 
today we walk through the airports and there are billions that have 
been spent for the security just to board airplanes, and you add that 
to the cost of the expansion of our military, the cost that came 
because we went, appropriately, into Afghanistan and then in the 
following year and a half we went then on into Iraq, all of these 
things were pressures on this economy. And all of them worked against a 
balanced budget that, the last number I saw it looked like we were 
going to come in about $158 billion in the red, $158 billion, and one 
could speculate as to whether that is a hard number, whether it might 
go up or whether it might go down as a percentage of our overall 
budget, tells me if we would have had hard-nosed fiscal discipline even 
on the discretionary spending just in the time that I have been here in 
5 years, we would have reached a balanced budget. We would have gotten 
there just by having spending discipline, not the discipline that says 
I want to increase spending because I think I see these needs, and if 
I'm going to do that, then I want to increase taxes. That's the 
approach that comes, and, admittedly, the Blue Dogs have more 
discipline than a lot of the folks on their side of the aisle, but they 
don't have as much spending discipline as I have. I would pull this 
thing right on down and I would set it out and say, we can get to a 
balanced budget by having discipline and discretionary spending.

                              {time}  1945

  But, Mr. Speaker, that is not really the answer either. That is a 
constant fight, and it is a diminishing effort to slow down and 
eventually reduce discretionary spending to balance the budget because 
the more we do that, it is working in the right direction because it 
slows growth in government and it holds more personal responsibility 
and so less spending creates less dependency. Those are all good 
things, Mr. Speaker.
  But the other side of this is that while we are talking about 
discretionary spending, the huge elephants in the room, one might 
speak, or should I say the gorilla in the room, I hesitate to say the 
donkey in the room, but those huge gorillas in the room are this: 
Medicare; Social Security; to a lesser extent Medicaid; the 
entitlements; and then, of course, the growing interest, which we heard 
about from the Blue Dogs, the growing cost of maintaining the interest. 
But Medicare and Social Security are the two big ones.
  As the President stepped out from his second inaugural address that 
took place in January right out here in the west portico of the Capitol 
Building in January 2005 and talked about the position we were in as a 
Nation and we were poised to hopefully end the war in Iraq and move 
forward with our economy; the two rounds of tax cuts that we had done 
had succeeded in rebounding this economy and got us back into a growth 
mode again, and today we are sitting on 49 consecutive months of 
growth. Astonishing.
  There are astonishing measures of the economic growth in this 
country. But the President stepped out from that west portico and 
invested his political capital in addressing the Social Security 
entitlement, a huge burden that is coming at us. As I listen to the 
Blue Dogs talk about Social Security, I didn't hear them talk about, 
this is a bit of an old number, but a number that I recall from a 
couple of years ago and is at least representative and it will not be 
precisely accurate today but slightly dated, $1.7 trillion in the 
Social Security trust fund. That was

[[Page 28684]]

there a couple of years ago. That trust fund continues to grow today 
because we are collecting more Social Security than it takes to pay the 
benefits out to the people that are the recipients of that Social 
Security.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I don't submit that where we are with this is a 
good idea. I point that out that there is an account there that 
presumably we could draw from that is going to address this big 
entitlement. But it works out like this. Even if that money were going 
into a lock box, as some said it was, even if that were an account that 
grew interest at $1.7 trillion and add some more in there over the last 
couple of years to get that number up, it is probably approaching $2 
trillion or more by now, the accumulation in that account goes, it 
accumulates until about the year 2016. And then it goes the other way. 
Then we start spending more than we are taking in. And from that year 
forward, that roughly $2 trillion that will be in there will be spent 
down by the year, and these numbers aren't the freshest again, but in 
the neighborhood of 2042, by then the Social Security trust fund is 
broke. Then what do we do?
  I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that, first of all, it wasn't a good 
idea to put the Social Security money into a trust fund if we were 
going to spend the money from the trust fund and put it into the 
general fund. If we were going to borrow the money from the Social 
Security trust fund and spend it with our overall budget, which we have 
been doing, that breaks faith with idea that there is a trust fund, 
because in the end it is an accounting gimmick.
  I have in my file somewhere, an electronic file of one of the bonds 
that are on file. This Social Security trust fund that is approaching 
$2 trillion is the accounting of it is, yes, electronically but also it 
is an accounting that is paperwork, actual bonds that are printed on 
paper that is identical to this paper worth no more than probably not 
as much as a blank sheet of paper from a copy machine, 8\1/2\ by 11. 
They print these off. I have one that is a sample. I believe it is 
$3.54 billion on that little sheet of paper that says trust fund 
account bond for the Social Security trust fund. Those original 
documents, Mr. Speaker, are on file in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, 
West Virginia, Robert Byrd's district, and they are there because some 
enterprising Senator passed legislation that said, you will keep a 
paper accounting of the Social Security trust fund.
  Well, the paper is an accounting. The electronics is an accounting. 
But the accountability of our Social Security trust fund is the full 
faith and credit of the people of the United States as represented 
through the United States Congress, and when the day comes that we need 
to tap into that Social Security trust fund, which will be a day in 
about the year 2016 when we start tapping into that, there isn't any 
money there. It is only there on IOUs from the government to the 
government, which is the equivalent of writing yourself an IOU and 
putting it in your pocket. The value is only the value that it reminds 
us that we have this obligation to keep our sacred trust with the 
senior citizens of America. I am pledged to do that. Our President is 
pledged to do that. I think that that is something that is a universal 
opinion between Democrats and Republicans in this Congress, that we 
keep our sacred trust with the seniors in America, that we do not 
diminish their benefits, their anticipated promised benefits, that we 
keep that intact, that we don't increase the contribution rate, we keep 
that intact.
  But something that we have done if we had had the support of the Blue 
Dogs, because the Republicans were in support of this, was the 
President's proposal that we offer people the opportunity if they were 
young enough to make the actuarials work out, a personal retirement 
account that could begin to transition some people off of Social 
Security. They get their Social Security benefits too, but it would 
supplement that, and then the need to increase that would have 
diminished over time.
  We couldn't get there, Mr. Speaker. We couldn't reform the huge 
entitlement of Social Security even to keep it actuarially sound. Some 
said it is a political third rail the President should never have 
touched. The President says it is a third rail that you if you don't 
touch it, it is the third rail, but he couldn't and we couldn't get the 
job done to reform Social Security even though there was no down side 
for senior citizens, at least a level guaranteed to them, even though 
there was only an upside for the younger generations, and one of the 
reasons is the issue got demagogued across this country dramatically.
  The President did at least 30 stops across the country. He 
articulated what this was about. It would have been good if he would 
have had spokesmen and women from the younger generation, the under-30-
somethings that were half as vocal as the 30-somethings that come out 
here on the floor that would speak up for their opportunity to be able 
to ensure their retirement without having to become financially 
destitute when you get from that point where we start out 16 workers 
for every one retired at the beginning of Social Security, where we are 
about three to one now and where we will soon get to two to one under 
this current program.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to look into the future. We need a long-term 
planning approach to the things we do in this Congress. And this 
electoral process does anything but. It focuses Members on the idea 
that you get elected, you come down here and swear into office and 
while you are doing that, there is someone announcing their candidacy 
to run against you. They're home in the district 6 or 7 days in a week, 
stabbing you in the media, raising money and trying to unseat you. You 
are supposed to concentrate on policy when you have someone trying to 
unseat your political survival from the day you swore in, and you are 
up for reelection in 2 years.
  So this constitutional system that we have, in fact, it is one that I 
appreciate and revere. In a lot of ways it makes us very responsive to 
the public. Our fingers are on their pulse. They let us know; we react 
quickly. This House can move more quickly than the Senate by far if we 
decide to do it. That is a good thing.
  The bad thing is if I called a meeting and said, we are going to 
start a new long-term planning caucus here in the United States 
Congress, and invite all 435 Members, you know, if I ordered a lot of 
good food and advertised it, some would show up. And then after the 
next week and the next week and the next week, pretty soon there will 
only be a small handful of people that would be working on something 
like that just because the system is set up where it focuses us on the 
things that are urgent, sometimes at the expense of the policy that is 
important. That is the down side of this constitutional system that 
sets us up for reelections every 2 years. But if you give us a lifetime 
tenure, I'm not sure we would solve the problem either.
  And you go over to the Senate side and there every 6 years a third of 
them up for reelection every election cycle and they don't seem to have 
a lot more interest in long-term planning than we do over here.
  So I look to Wall Street. I look to major corporations. I look to the 
business communities in America for leadership. I am wondering what are 
they putting together so that we can have economic viability and a 
healthy populace that can be raising families and bringing up the next 
generation so that we can continue this American Dream. I watch what 
they do, and I get the unalterable message from them that their real 
focus is on their next quarterly report.
  Well, I understand that. You have got to produce profit for your 
investors, and the board of directors is telling you what they want you 
to do. But where is the leadership in America for long-term vision? 
Where is the leadership that will take us down this path where we will 
eventually get to solve the Social Security problem, to solve the 
Medicare problem, and I will submit the words of George Will which 
were, democracies function under the lash of necessity.
  And we haven't reached the lash of necessity if we are talking about 
actuarial tables that start going into zero

[[Page 28685]]

on the Social Security trust fund in 2016 nor a fund that runs out to 
zero in 2042. That is not the lash of necessity. We need the American 
people to be looking ahead and demanding that we put long-term plans in 
place. And that is important that the media, that the philosophers, 
that the writers, the people that are opinion leaders in America join 
with us so we can put the pieces in place for a long-term solution to 
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid to a lesser degree. All that solves 
the interest problem, and even then, if we simply had discipline in our 
spending, we can solve this all with growth, Mr. Speaker.
  So if the Blue Dogs want to talk about getting to a balanced budget, 
I am for that. Let's do so. Let's do it by spending discipline. Let's 
do it by reforming Medicare. Let's do it by reforming Social Security. 
By the way, I have a couple of ideas for you on Medicaid. If we can do 
those things, this budget becomes easy. We need to index our spending 
then to the factor of inflation which should keep us down below the 
revenue stream when we have the economic growth that we have if we have 
good favorable tax policies.
  I can go on into subject matter that has to do with reforming the Tax 
Code that eliminates the IRS and eliminates the entire income tax code. 
It untaxes all the production in America and puts it on consumption. 
Mr. Speaker, I would take us all down that path, and I may well run out 
of time before I can get to that.
  But I wanted to address the concerns that were raised by the Blue 
Dogs. And I would point out that to compare spending, the spending of 
the National debt to the amount of money that we spend in this Congress 
on education, I can look through this Constitution that I have in my 
pocket, and I can't find anything in there that says, thou shalt 
extract money from the taxpayers to fund education. It is not 
comparable to the National debt. It is not relevant to the National 
debt. To the extent we make the decision that we want to invest in 
education, it is not something that is a legitimate measure.
  Neither is it a legitimate measure on the part of the Members on the 
other side of the aisle. And I believe that includes the Blue Dogs as 
well. Neither is it a legitimate measure to argue that because we spend 
billions of dollars in Iraq, we ought to spend billions of dollars on 
SCHIP. There is no legitimate measure. They are not linked. They can't 
be linked. But if you want to link them, if you choose to link SCHIP 
spending to the global war on terror, to the funding that supports our 
men and women whose lives are on the line in places like Afghanistan 
and Iraq and other places around the world, if that is your will, to 
link that spending, then let me associate this for you.
  I point it out this way, Mr. Speaker, that if it is a zero sum game, 
and by presumption it is a zero sum game if we are going to compare 
national defense spending to the State Children's Health Insurance 
Program, then the zero sum game comes down to this: How many bullet-
proof vests would you deprive our soldiers and marines of in order to 
fund health insurance for middle, let me say, upper-income kids? 
Because we are talking about a Congress that passed subsidy for health 
insurance premiums for families in my State up over $103,000; $103,250, 
400 percent of poverty. That was the Pelosi plan. That was, Mr. 
Speaker, the 400 percent of poverty that passed off the floor of this 
Congress.
  I submit that subsidizing health insurance premiums when people are 
making over $103,000 a year is an irresponsible expansion of this 
budget. It cannot be defended within the context of the previous hour 
that was delivered by the Blue Dogs. It can't be defended by anyone 
unless it is their will and their intent to move us to socialized 
medicine.
  What is our line here? I will argue that in the 1990s we passed 
welfare reform. This welfare reform was called workfare in a lot of 
cases, to move people off of the multigenerational dependency on 
welfare, move them into work, transition them smoothly so they could 
get there and observe and recognize and act upon the reality that when 
people moved off of welfare when they started to earn more income, they 
would no longer qualify for Medicaid which was, of course, the health 
care that is provided for the low-income among us. The working poor 
weren't going to have health insurance for their children.

                              {time}  2000

  So this Congress passed SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance 
Plan, to subsidize, in most cases, to replace, to buy the health 
insurance premiums for working-poor kids, the children of the working 
poor, so they could transition out of welfare and onto work without 
losing the health coverage for their children. Pretty good idea. When 
it passed out of this Congress and went to the States, the States had 
this opportunity to take it up. We took it up in Iowa. We called it 
HAWK-I. We called it the Healthy and Well Kids in Iowa.
  We set that at 200 percent of poverty. I supported that and adapted 
some of the language technically and voted for 200 percent of poverty 
level. That 200 percent of poverty level then grew. The State got an 
exception where one could exempt 20 percent of the income of a family. 
So you get into a situation where the 200 percent of poverty, that 
turns out to be about $41,000 and change a year for a family of four; 
when you exempt 20 percent of the income, that goes to $51,625.
  That is where we are today. I don't call $51,625 the working poor in 
my State. It might be in some States. It's not the working poor in my 
State. Most people don't make more than that in the State, but most 
people provide the health insurance for their families and their 
children. When it's provided through the employer, this bill that was 
pushed through this Congress provides a perverse incentive to crowd 
kids off of private health insurance and put them on the government-
funded health insurance. That is the crowd-out factor.
  The crowd-out factor was a lot bigger for the 400 percent of poverty. 
I don't recall that number, as I stand here, Mr. Speaker, but as that 
bill went over to the Senate and it was negotiated down to 300 percent 
of poverty, the crowd-out factor became 2 million kids in America that 
today have health insurance that is paid for by their parents or at the 
workplace of their parents, and those 2 million kids would be crowded 
off of their own private insurance rolls and put onto the government-
funded insurance rolls.
  Now they would match up with a number about 3.8 million kids that 
don't have insurance today. They have health care, but statistically 
they don't have insurance. That sometimes is a fluid number. There are 
people in transition between one policy and another. That is added into 
that 3.8 million. But the 2 million is a hard number. That is the 
number of kids that get crowded out, pushed off their own private 
health insurance.
  That is unacceptable. If we are trying to insure children of the 
working poor, we don't take it up to $103,250 income for a family of 
four and say we are going to subsidize it up to that point, now we have 
helped the poor kids, because $103,000 is not poor. That is really 
wealthy where I come from. That is 400 percent of poverty. That is not 
the answer to subsidizing health insurance for the kids of the working 
poor. That is what SCHIP is supposed to be.
  Three hundred percent of poverty is what this House passed the last 
time after it was negotiated in the Senate. That is $77,437 in my 
State. In some States, it's $83,000. That is not the working poor for a 
family of four. Probably not for a family of any normal size that we 
would see today. But that is the standard that this House has passed 
again. Still, it crowds out 2 million kids. One of my objections, one 
of my real objections to this is that they have changed the language in 
this bill. They have changed the language that under current Medicaid 
qualifier standards there has to be a demonstration of citizenship or a 
lawful presence in the United States that extends beyond the 5-year 
prohibition for receiving any welfare benefits here in this country.
  That provision has been weakened by an addition to a section in this 
SCHIP

[[Page 28686]]

bill, and it has been done so by the majority, and they have done it 
more than once. When we raised the objection and said that this 
language has changed and it will provide taxpayer dollar benefits to 
people who are in this country illegally to give them Medicaid and 
SCHIP, the majority said, no, that's not true because we have a 
paragraph in the bill that says none of these funds shall go to fund 
illegals.
  I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that they wouldn't have had to add the 
language to the bill if they weren't going to do something with it. The 
language that they added to the bill is scored by the Congressional 
Budget Office, who analyzed the language and has a job in a nonpartisan 
way of calculating the impact on our budget, and they concluded it 
would cost an additional, the changes that open the door to allow 
people who are deportable to collect health insurance benefits and 
health benefits in the form of Medicaid, illegals in the United States, 
the cost to that is, according to the Congressional Budget Office, $3.7 
billion in Federal tax dollars, $2.8 billion in State tax dollars. The 
easy math on that is $6.5 billion all together it costs the taxpayers 
of the United States to fund Medicaid and SCHIP, most of it, a vast, 
vast majority of it, for illegals, that if we simply ask the 
immigration customs and enforcement why don't we deliver that benefit 
in the form of a voucher and you guys take it up there and hand it 
over, when they met with most of these people they would have to take 
them into custody and take them home to the country where they belong.
  That is the reality of the law. That is the law, Mr. Speaker. $6.5 
billion, and yet I have people here in this Congress and around the 
country that say: Steve King is wrong on this. This bill really doesn't 
allow for funding to go to illegals. It really doesn't open the door. 
My answer to that, first of all, is if you think I am wrong, what is 
your number? Submit to me your number. Would you like to submit zero? 
Say that to the Congressional Budget Office.
  Right here, Mr. Speaker, is the CBO report that shows the $3.7 
billion, and the easy math that came from the Energy and Commerce 
Committee to put the States' share in that comes to $6.5 billion. My 
question is: If you think I am wrong, what is your number? The second 
question is: If I am wrong, why is the majority so insistent upon 
keeping their language in the bill that opens the standards up for 
Medicaid qualification that just simply says all you have to do is 
write down a Social Security number and we are going to recommend that 
the Social Security Administration verify that number, maybe send a 
letter back to the provider or to the State if that number doesn't 
match up.
  We know how well that works with employment in this country. We have 
at least 6.9 million working illegals in America. According to the 
Center for Immigration Studies, those 6.9 million, which may now be 7 
or 7.1 million people, at least 55 percent of them have false 
documentation that they present in order to get the job. That is a 
Social Security number that has been submitted in the same fashion 
under the same standard as would be required for Medicaid 
qualifications. We know how well it is working with hiring illegals in 
America when you say, give me a Social Security number. It is not 
working. That is why we are in the middle of this immigration debate, 
Mr. Speaker.
  So, I will submit that that same standard has no chance of working 
any better if you are going to use it to be able to qualify applicants 
for Medicaid and SCHIP. It defies logic to think that the Congressional 
Budget Office hands out a document that says $3.7 billion Federal, and 
Energy and Commerce calculates the State share of that and it comes to 
$2.8 billion, and you are at $6.5 billion in cost. Why does it cost 
$6.5 billion more money, if there is nothing in this bill that funds 
illegals? And why is the majority going to fall on their sword to 
protect the language that opens up the standards, if it doesn't change 
anything? One can't get past that. Facts are inconvenient truths to 
some people on the other side of the aisle and sometimes on this side 
of the aisle.
  But what I recognize is I have been joined here by my colleague from 
New Jersey who occasionally will be watching C-SPAN at night and have a 
thought and a concept that he needs to get out here this evening. So 
with that in mind, with great gratitude, I would be happy to yield to 
the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Well, I thank the gentleman from Iowa for 
giving me the opportunity to address the House.
  First, before I begin, let me just say this. I commend the gentleman 
for your being down here on the floor to, first and foremost, refute 
the arguments that had been made initially, in your opening statements, 
refuting the arguments made by the other side of the aisle, where I 
believe you were getting into the issues of the debt and what have you, 
and some of the other points you made with regard to our spending 
levels, and finally on SCHIP.
  If I may, I want to address a couple of those. First of all, here we 
are at the end of October, 10 months into the rule under the new 
Democrat majority, and we have to ask, what has their leadership 
wrought? They have brought us the largest tax increase in U.S. history, 
the creation of slush funds, where a lot that money is going to go to, 
and the end to the transparency that they promised in the last election 
that they would bring to this House.
  On the first point, as far as the largest tax increase in history, 
that began initially as soon as the Democrats took control with their 
budget, a $387 billion tax increase, which basically is too large of a 
number for any of us to get our hands around. But what it really 
translates down to is, on average, around a $2,500 to $2,700 increase 
that every individual in this country will have to take out of their 
pockets, from the hard-earned money they make, and send down here to 
Washington so Congress can spend it instead on who knows what it may 
be. That is where they began.
  We know just this past week the chairman of Ways and Means has come 
out with the ``mother of all tax increases.'' That ``mother of all tax 
increases,'' of course, basically begs the question of what happens to 
all the orphaned taxpayers then in this country, those who are now left 
having to foot the bill for that tax increase.
  So I raise these points only because it is truly ironic that the 
other side of the aisle would come to the floor and raise the issue of 
the debt level and the spending of Congress, because, when you think 
about it, they ran on a platform that the Republicans were spending too 
much, but what was the first thing they did when they came here? They 
decided that they would spend even more. They ran on the platform that 
we were taxing too much. And what was the first thing they did once 
they got here? They raised our taxes. And they have done so repeatedly. 
They have about half a dozen times now had legislation, just about 
every single major piece of legislation that has come to the floor so 
far, that has included some form of tax increase in it.
  Now, the gentleman from Iowa raises the point now near the end of his 
discussion with regard to SCHIP, and I always appreciate his explaining 
to the American public what the acronym SCHIP really does stand for. 
SCHIP stands for ``Socialized Clinton-Style Hillarycare for Illegals 
and Their Parents.'' I will get to that point of illegals in a minute, 
but let's look at the overall focus and what the intention is here.
  I think it begs the question to ask, is anyone from either side of 
the aisle not intending working towards making sure all Americans can 
have the health care that they need? I think we all agree on that.
  The next question is, do we not want to make sure then that all 
American citizens' indigent children get the health care that they 
need? I think, generally speaking, except for the partisanship and the 
politicking on the other side of the aisle, I would have to say that 
all of us agree on that as well.
  Then we have to ask ourselves, what is the best mechanism to get 
there? Is

[[Page 28687]]

SCHIP and the expansion that the Democrats want to foist on the 
American public the best way to get there? I would answer that question 
by saying, no, it is not.
  Going in reverse order, the gentleman from Iowa raises the point with 
regard to illegals, an important point. The Democrats will tell you, 
don't worry about it. The bill already says in plain language that 
illegals are not allowed to get these benefits, as if all you need to 
do is put those words into a bill and that makes it so.
  I see on the table over there, I think that looks like your 
demonstration for the wall. Is that what that is?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Yes.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. You know, we would not need that wall 
under the Democrat philosophy, because we already have a law that says 
no illegals may come into this country illegally. If that is all it 
takes is just to say they can't do it and it won't happen, you don't 
need that wall. You don't need any surveillance. We don't need any 
border security guards, because we have a law that says they are not 
allowed to come into this country illegally. But we know that that is 
not the way it works. What works is you need enforcement. You suggest 
enforcement in the form of a wall, and I agree with you on that.
  In the area of SCHIP, enforcement means that we need to have a way of 
verification for an individual when they come to claim American 
taxpayers' dollars for their own benefit for them to verify that they 
are legal American citizens entitled to it. And that is all that the 
Republicans were asking for, some sort of process to make sure that was 
done.
  Now, the Democrats also argue, look, they put in a penalty provision 
for the States. The Democrats were not willing to actually put an 
enforcement mechanism in themselves to say how they want to verify the 
illegals. But the Democrats will say, well, we are going to leave that 
little question to the States instead and have the States cleverly come 
up with it. Of course, you and I are all supportive of States being the 
laboratory of experimentation.

                              {time}  2015

  The Democrats then say that is all we need to do. I would suggest 
that is not all you need to do. The enforcement there is not to say to 
the States if you mess this up, if you don't enforce the law and allow 
illegals to get American taxpayer dollars under this program, and 
therefore potentially deprive other American children of their 
benefits, it does not say that those States will not receive any 
Medicaid benefits whatsoever. It does not say that they will not 
receive SCHIP benefits as well. It just holds the additional funding 
that goes to those States.
  Under the original DRA law that was signed in 2005 and went into 
effect in July of 2006, for those States under Medicaid where it 
applied to, we saw a decrease because of the Republican enforcement 
mechanisms of illegals actually getting those benefits. What the 
Republicans have simply asked the Democrat majority to allow us to do 
is to allow those systems that are working to apply to the entire SCHIP 
process.
  So on the point of trying to make sure that only U.S. American 
citizens get the benefits, Republicans have a plan and it has been 
working in other aspects of Medicaid, and we wish to expand it.
  I yield back.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman for coming to the floor and 
giving us a New Jersey perspective on this issue of SCHIP and also the 
overall budget that we have.
  As the gentleman arrived, I was reaching for a quote in my memory and 
I came up a little bit empty. And so I looked it up while I was 
listening to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  You have heard a number of facts that have been rolled out by the 
gentleman from New Jersey. You have heard a number of facts that I have 
rolled out here. I have said they are stubborn things. But it was John 
Adams who spoke to facts in memorable fashion when he said: ``Facts are 
stubborn things. And whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations or 
the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and 
evidence.'' John Adams, and that was before the Declaration of 
Independence that he made that statement, as I recall.
  And so as we laid these facts out here, this SCHIP initiative that we 
have today, current law, family of four qualifies in my State up to 
$51,625. It may be higher than that in New Jersey.
  But the bill vetoed by the President and the bill that was passed out 
of this House last week is a bill that funds up to 300 percent of 
poverty, family of four, $77,437. That is off of Governor Culver's Web 
page. By doing the simple calculation that is provided there on whether 
you qualify or whether you don't, the $51,625, and 300 percent of 
poverty is pretty simple, you just do the math on that.
  This House passed it at 400 percent of poverty. That was the Pelosi 
plan. The argument is this is not the cornerstone to socialized 
medicine.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit when you cover 95 percent of the kids in 
America with SCHIP, which you would do once you get up over that 400 
percent of poverty, only 5 percent are left on their own insurance. The 
rest are crowded out. The 2 million who would be crowded off their own 
insurance plan under this plan which has been vetoed by the President 
and then brought back in substantive identity to the first bill by the 
Pelosi-led Congress, that legislation still crowds out a huge 
percentage of the kids.
  I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I will make this last point if the 
gentleman permits. The definition of a middle-class benefit or 
entitlement is one that goes to the middle class of America.
  The definition, I guess, of a program for the indigent would be a 
program that is aimed for those who are making less than the average, 
less than middle-class America.
  I wanted to give a couple of numbers. The median, middle, middle 
income in this country is around $46,000 for a family of four 
essentially. That is the middle. That would be how we define middle 
class across the board. Some higher, some lower. That is the middle.
  The bill, SCHIP, as it was created initially was for 200 percent of 
poverty. That would be around $42,000 for a family of four, so less 
than the middle.
  There are some discussions going on literally as we speak right now 
in what the Senate is looking at to bring this program up to around 275 
percent of poverty. That would be $58,000 for a family of 4. So if 
middle, middle-class America is around $46,000, and some are suggesting 
we should be bringing the coverage up to $58,000, by definition it is a 
middle-class entitlement. Actually above middle class. Slightly above 
middle-class entitlement, as a matter of fact. It begs the question if 
you are trying to set up a program to address the problems of the 
indigent Americans in this country, why are you bringing the number up 
so high we are going over the median income in this country.
  That is a rhetorical question. I don't think the other side can 
answer it unless they simply want to be honest with us and tell us they 
are trying to do what Bill Clinton said back when he was President that 
he wants universal coverage where the government has socialized 
medicine, and you will start with indigent children, you will go to all 
children and eventually you will go to all adults in the entire 
country. One-fifth of this economy will be encompassed by a government-
run health care system, something you and I definitely oppose.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Again I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I 
would ask him to point out to the body the acronym of SCHIP that he 
illustrated in his speech. I know that poster is available, and so I 
would direct the attention of body to the gentleman from New Jersey and 
the poster.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. SCHIP. It has another meaning as 
Republicans initially created it, but we see what the Democrats have 
morphed it into. SCHIP now stands for Socialized Clinton-style 
Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents. That wraps

[[Page 28688]]

it all right up there. They are willing to go back to what Hillary and 
Bill Clinton wanted to do, and that was to have a universal, socialized 
plan that the government would control, literally one-fifth of the 
economy, health care economy, the same government that gave us FEMA and 
the way they handled Hurricane Katrina and the same aftermath of 
Katrina, the same government that gives so many other problems of 
waste, fraud and abuse, and the same government that gave us the 
proverbial bridge to nowhere. That Clinton-style type of government, 
Hillarycare for illegals. As the gentleman from Iowa just pointed out, 
it is not for American citizens. It is for anyone who simply wants to 
walk across the border and take the benefits of the hardworking 
American taxpayers.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I very much thank the gentleman from New Jersey.
  I want to point out that this acronym has been out here now for over 
a week. When it says SCHIP stands for Socialized Clinton-Style 
Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents, the criticism that has come 
for that is that no one has argued with the substance. They simply say, 
well, this is emotional. It is reactionary. Well, tell me what's wrong? 
Does this not lay the cornerstone to socialized medicine, to provide 
for taxpayer-funded insurance for kids and families up over $100,000 
for the 400 percent that was brought across this floor in the first 
place.
  Mr. Speaker, does that not lay the cornerstone for socialized 
medicine? I submit, yes, it does.
  And what happens in this county when, under current SCHIP, we have 
adults on up to age 25, 85 percent of those receiving SCHIP funding in 
Minnesota are adults. Some argue 92 percent. It is 66 percent in 
Wisconsin. I mean, these are huge numbers. This isn't for kids the way 
the system is today. But it is to lay the cornerstone to socialized 
medicine. I will support that statement.
  As John Adams says, facts are stubborn things. Here is a fact about 
laying the cornerstone for socialized medicine. This is what President 
Bill Clinton said about achieving socialized health care on September 
29, 2000: ``You know, when Hillary and HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and 
I started working on this back in 1993, we proposed a solution that 
would have covered all Americans. And it was too much for the system to 
accommodate at once, so we've gone back, piece, by piece, trying to 
achieve that. We have now the Children's Health Insurance. Next, we 
need to deal with the 55 to 65-year-old age group.''
  Does anybody think that this isn't part of a plan to lay the 
cornerstone for socialized medicine when the very words came out of the 
mouth of Bill Clinton on September 29, 2000? He was still President 
then.
  And a speech he gave here on the floor of Congress on September 22, 
1993, where he laid out component after component of the plan to get to 
Hillarycare. And by the way, it was Hillarycare. It was Hillary working 
behind the scenes in some secret meetings to put together an overall 
health care proposal which was socialized medicine.
  Mr. Speaker, it was wrong then. It is wrong now. This is the 
cornerstone of socialized medicine. It is a component of Hillarycare.
  Bill Clinton again, September 29, 2000: ``You know, when Hillary and 
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala started working on 
this back in 1993, we proposed a solution that would have covered all 
Americans.''
  Well, a solution that covers all Americans, I would submit, isn't 
your private health care program, isn't the one that has been built by 
the free enterprise system, the one that has provided the incentive to 
do the research and development that has given us the best health care 
in the world. A system that would have covered all Americans is 
socialized medicine. That is a definitional fact. This is a direct 
quote from President Bill Clinton, September 29, 2000.
  I say SCHIP stands for Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare for 
Illegals and their Parents. It is a matter of historical fact. She met 
over and over again, and some would say the meetings could have been 
more lawful. That is not my issue so much as she was driving a health 
care policy as First Lady as if she were the lead health care policy 
wonk in America. It collapsed when the American people revolted against 
it because it was Hillarycare, because it was socialized medicine.
  It came to us Clinton-style, but he delivered it here on the floor of 
the House of Representatives on September 22, 1993. In the year 2000, 
when he found out they couldn't drive it through, he said, well, we are 
going to give you a solution that will cover all Americans, but we are 
going to give it to you a piece at a time.
  So when SCHIP passes at 200 percent of poverty, then we will raise it 
to 400 percent of poverty. This is what the Pelosi Congress wanted to 
do. These are all facts, these inconvenient, stubborn things. At 400 
percent of poverty, you have only about 5 percent of the kids any 
longer on private health insurance. So the culture to provide for your 
children's health insurance premium is gone. It is wiped out. It is 
destroyed by a Congress bent on laying the cornerstone to socialized 
medicine, SCHIP. Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare. Those issues are 
all addressed for what, Mr. Speaker, for illegals and their parents.
  I have spoken to this. Here is the CBO score: $6.5 billion increased 
costs in fundings that are not currently going to illegal recipients of 
Medicaid, and those funding that currently are going to SCHIP to 
illegal recipients, that comes from the changes that are in this bill 
that passed this House last week and the bill the President vetoed, the 
bill that this Congress refused to override. That $6.5 billion.
  They can argue that they changed the language. They did. They were 
distinctions without a difference, and the proof that it lacks a 
difference is because the Congressional Budget Office scored, evaluated 
the cost to taxpayers, at precisely the same dollar amount. Regardless 
of whether it was the language they first brought or the language that 
they amended it to, the distinction is without a difference. It still 
provides for health care for illegals in America.
  Mr. Speaker, fact after fact come out here. These inconvenient 
truths, to quote a famous author in America. I will go down through 
some that I have missed.
  It does weaken citizenship requirements. The loss in taxpayer 
dollars, the net loss to my State is $226 million. Everybody that has a 
State where people smoke will pay 61 cents more a pack. When they do 
that, they will pay more taxes.
  It is also a fact that one of the most regressive taxes we have is 
the tax on tobacco because people less well-to-do tend to smoke more. 
It is an inverse relationship when they do a little better. We could 
look into the reasons for that, but we know this. Poor people pay a 
greater percentage of their income on the current tobacco tax, and will 
pay a far greater percentage of their income on the proposed tobacco 
tax. The idea on the part of the Speaker's side of the aisle is you 
would raise the tobacco tax and, therefore, there would be an incentive 
for people to smoke less.

                              {time}  2030

  I agree there would be, and I'd like to see what those numbers 
produce and maybe that's a good thing, and I'd like to evaluate that 
tax policy on that.
  But we've got another little problem here, and that is, that in order 
to fund this increase, we have to have 22.4 million new smokers in 
America. So we've got to go out there and unleash Joe Camel again and 
get him out there recruiting the kids in America to start smoking, 
because if we don't do that, we can't fund their health insurance, and 
even if we do do that, we're still going to have, according to the 
first bill they passed at 400 percent of poverty, 70,000 families in 
America that qualify for SCHIP and still qualify to pay the alternative 
minimum tax, that tax on the rich.
  So I'll submit, Mr. Speaker, that this is a bit of a bizarre 
proposal, and it's awfully hard to explain the rationale

[[Page 28689]]

behind it when there are so many conflicting inconsistencies. But in 
the end, it's a net increase in cost to my State of $226 million. It 
will take an increase of 22.4 million new smokers to fund it. It will 
fund, at 300 percent of poverty, families of four in my State earning 
$77,473. It will crowd 2 million kids off of the private family and 
business, job-funded insurance rolls, cost $6.5 billion to fund the 
illegals that are participating in programs that today are barred from 
so and add taxes to cigarettes of 61 cents a pack.
  Now, you add that all up, those are the facts. Those are the stubborn 
things. Those are the inconvenient truths that the other side of the 
aisle has to deal with. I simply called it SCHIP, ``Socialized Clinton-
style Hillarycare for Illegals and Their Parents.''
  So, Mr. Speaker, in the remaining time, I think that I should do a 
bit of a demonstration for the sake of popular demand. I wanted to 
point out for the body that we're spending $8 billion on our southern 
border, and this is supposed to keep us from the $6.5 billion in costs 
that are accumulated here under this SCHIP bill that came out of the 
Pelosi Congress.
  But on that border that's 2,000 miles long, $8 billion, that's $4 
million a mile. So I thought, you know, I've got a mile of gravel road 
that runs west of my house, and if Michael Chertoff came to me and he 
sad I'm going to give you $4 million but it's your job to make sure 
that only 75 percent of the people that want to cross that road get 
across and 25 percent of them stay where they are, that's our current 
efficiency rate that we're getting out of our $8 billion and $4 million 
a mile on our southern border today. We interdict about 25 percent of 
those trying, and about 75 percent get across. You might argue it's one 
out of three, but they'll testify one out of three, one out of four. We 
stopped 1,188,000 going across that border in the last year that was 
reported to me. That means about 4 million try. That's about 11,000 a 
night, 11,000 a night. Twice the size of Santa Anna's army pouring 
across our southern border, not in the day, at night. Every single 
night, Mr. Speaker.
  What would I do if Michael Chertoff said, I'm going to offer you a 
contract. I'd bid it. It wouldn't be a no-bid contract. I'd want to 
compete for this, $4 million for my mile of road. What would I do?
  Well, I'd get out there and build something because I know the 
Humvees cost a lot of money, and uniforms and retirement programs and 
health plans for our Federal employees cost a lot of money. Now, I love 
our border patrol. They're doing a great job, and I've been down there 
to work with them, but I would submit they could use some help. I would 
give them a little structure. I'd go in there and say, Your job would 
be a lot easier if we build you a physical barrier. I'd want it double. 
I'd put the fence in, and I'd build the wall. The wall would be 
something that would last a long, long time.
  This would be the trenched footing that I would put in. It would be 
slip form, Mr. Speaker, and I would set this trench footing into the 
ground. I'd drag her along, and I'd pour slip form right behind it. It 
would look like this from the end. Then I'm going to set it up in this 
stand, and I'll show you how easy it is to build a wall. It will take 
about, let me say, $1.2 million, about $1.2 million a mile, and you 
just simply put this in about like that. That would be a piece of 
concrete that would be about 13 feet high, 13-and-a-half feet high, 
about half that for width, and then you pick up your little crane and 
drop this thing in here. That's about 12,000 pounds per formation.
  Mr. Speaker, I thought I heard your gavel as I dropped that in the 
hole. I apologize for that. I was making a little too much noise.
  I would wrap this up simply by then submitting that I believe I have 
demonstrated how we can protect America at about $1.2 million a mile as 
opposed to $4 million a mile. I'd encourage this Congress take a good 
look.

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