[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19434-19440]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           FREEDOM OF SPEECH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to sort of do a continuation 
of a theme that I have been discussing, but this one has gotten to the 
point where I'm very concerned about the seriousness of the offense.
  We talked about failure of certain Members of Congress to pay their 
taxes, failure of Members of Congress to not disclose the influence 
peddling that is going on. We've talked about a lot of things. Last 
week we talked about the rule of law and how many are trying to 
circumvent the rule of contract.
  In fact, I read today in the Wall Street Journal that the 
compensation czar is going to renegotiate the contracts. I assume that 
means strong-arm the parties to renegotiate the contracts on certain 
compensation packages; and however offended we may be by compensation 
packages, there are certain rules of contract that should be honored. 
That is one of the backbones of our Nation's freedom is that we have 
the right to make a deal and then be bound by it. But that's a 
different subject.
  Tonight I want to talk about a subject that I think that if this 
doesn't concern people back home, if this doesn't concern the Members 
of this body, then I don't really know what will.

                              {time}  2000

  It is because the issue we are talking about here is something that 
is the beginning of tyranny, and it is something we should all be very 
concerned about, and that is when a political group starts to step on 
the free speech rights of others in this Nation.
  Now, you may feel like this is a position that I am taking that is 
untenable, but I am going to tell you that 652,000 people in the 
various districts, and most of the districts in my State have grown to 
a million now, send a

[[Page 19435]]

person to Washington, D.C., to speak and to communicate with them back 
home about what is going on here in Washington, and they expect to hear 
the words and the ideas and the thoughts of their elected 
representative when that elected representative is communicating with 
them back in Washington, D.C.
  But recently, in fact, you started seeing some of this pop up back 
during what they called the cap-and-trade and we call the cap-and-tax 
bill, but it has gone now to where it has become rampant on this issue 
of health care. An organization that is designed to set rules 
concerning how we spend government money in communicating with our 
people back home--it is called the Franking Commission. It is made up 
of, as I understand it, and I could have the number wrong, three 
Republicans and three Democrats, and both are submitted a 
communication, say a weekly newsletter, that is sent back home or the 
lead-in to a telephone townhall or an e-mail back home, an instant e-
mail telling people what is going on this day in Congress. And these 
things have to be submitted if they are being paid for by government 
money to the Franking Commission.
  The Franking Commission, in a simple way to say it, they just 
basically don't think you should be using the government's money for 
politics. But they have never in the history of the Republic taken the 
position you don't have the right to express your opinion on the 
policies that are being proposed, or that you must reword the policies 
to suit the language of someone else. It is almost like, I hate to say 
it, political correctness run amok.
  I want to start off by telling you what happened to me, and then I 
want to tell you what has happened to some of my colleagues, and I am 
going to be joined by some of those colleagues.
  It is important that you understand that I write to my folks or I 
communicate with my folks back home every day. One of the tools I use 
is called a telephone townhall. On a telephone townhall you make a 
recorded message that leads into the townhall, and part of the recorded 
message is to tell the people what you are going to be talking with 
them about for the next hour, so they know what the subject matter is, 
because it narrows the scope and we get to narrow down the things we 
talk about.
  So we made a telephone townhall recording submission to the Franking 
Commission in which I proposed to say the Democratic Party is offering 
their government-run health care program in the next 2 weeks, and this 
is what we are going to talk about tonight. The Franking Commission 
came back and told me I could not say ``government-run health care'' 
and I could not say ``the Democratic Party.'' I had to say the majority 
party is submitting its public option health care program.
  In other words, what they are telling me is I have to use the same 
language that the President of the United States uses in his speech, or 
that Nancy Pelosi uses when Nancy Pelosi talks about this, ``public 
option,'' which they have done polls to discover that ``public option'' 
sounds better than ``government-run health care.''
  But that is their opinion. I as an American citizen and a Member of 
this body am entitled to express my title for that to my constituents 
back home, and in fact to the entire American public, to say in my 
opinion they are submitting their government-run health care program. 
And I would submit there is no other real way you can describe that if 
you believe the government is running it, because it says the 
government is running it.
  It is not like they are going to contract out, subcontract to 
insurance companies to put together a policy. No. The United States 
Government is going to offer a health care plan for the American public 
and it is going to be run by the Federal Government, the United States 
Government. That is the plan. That is what they are submitting in their 
1,018-page health care plan, which to this point has not been completed 
and finally marked up, and we haven't seen the final product. And if it 
goes the way it has gone since we have been in Congress since January, 
when Mr. Obama was sworn in, this Congress will present it to us 
sometime between midnight and 2 in the morning of the morning before we 
vote on it.
  But getting back to the seriousness of this situation, I was taken 
back by what they did to me. But it is not just about me. If it was 
just about me, I would not be standing up here. But I felt like they 
were telling me what I had to say. I had to use someone else's words to 
describe something that I wanted to describe.
  But that wasn't all. My colleague Kevin Brady from Texas, and he may 
be here later on, we were delayed because of weather for a long time 
tonight, and Mr. Brady told me he would get here if he could, as fast 
as he could, within this hour.
  My friend Kevin Brady prepared this chart. And what this chart is is 
Mr. Brady's interpretation of all of the entities that exist or that 
are being created by this plan that is put together by the Democrats, 
and it is what stands between the consumers, that is this little body 
of folks right here, and the health care professionals over there, and 
all of this stands between them.
  Mr. Brady was told that he could not mail this to his constituents. 
He asked why, and they said it is not true. And he said, well, that is 
fine. Point to me one entity that is not in the bill, one, just one, 
and I will pull it down.
  No one could point to any entity that is not contained in the bill. 
Everything that is seen on this chart is contained in the bill. But the 
point of this was they were trying to curtail Mr. Brady's freedom to 
express himself, his freedom of speech in this body.
  Now, if you want to really lean and say, Oh, sure that is fair, they 
ought to be able to do that, well, let's look at something here that is 
kind of interesting.
  Back during the Hillary Clinton ``HillaryCare'' debate, another chart 
was introduced into this Congress. It is not as pretty as Mr. Brady's, 
because it is not in color. This chart, during the HillaryCare debate, 
was submitted to the Franking Commission. I don't remember the date. 
Maybe it is on here. Anyway, it was during the HillaryCare debate, what 
was that, 1993, back in 1993, by Dick Armey of Texas. It went to the 
Franking Commission, and the Democrats and the Republicans approved it 
as appropriate to communicate to constituents with.
  So what has changed between the nineties and the first debate about 
health care, which was approved by both parties, and today, 2009, which 
was blocked and refused by the Democrat Members of the Franking 
Commission? What has changed is someone is trying to tell us we don't 
have the right to speak our minds in the United States Congress.
  Now, when you get a huge majority like they have in the House, and 
the 60 vote majority in the Senate, maybe you feel like the mandate is 
so great that you have the right to circumvent the freedom of speech of 
the Members of Congress on the minority side. But you don't.
  Congressman Joe Barton used the words ``Democratic majority'' in his 
newsletter. The Franking Commission kicked it out and said he had to 
use ``congressional majority.'' But in Nancy Pelosi's newsletter in 
2006 when she was in the minority, you find this statement: ``But too 
many here and across our Nation are paying the price for the Republican 
congressional majority's special interest agenda.''
  So why was it okay for the now-Speaker of the House just in 2006 to 
use ``Republican congressional majority,'' but it is not okay for Mr. 
Barton to use the term ``Democrat majority?'' He has sent this back 
along with Ms. Pelosi's statement and is awaiting a response from the 
Franking Commission.
  Now, what is wrong with that? Well, what is wrong with that is that 
if you await a response from the Franking Commission, then you lose 
your time to communicate. You try to communicate on issues as they come 
up. This had to do with cap-and-trade before it passed the House. He 
was not allowed to use it.
  A Florida colleague submitted a franking review for the week of July 
13th that said, This bill imposes a new

[[Page 19436]]

payroll tax on employers who do not provide their employees with 
insurance. The Democrats demanded it be changed to read, In my opinion, 
this bill imposes a new payroll tax on employers who do not provide the 
employees with insurance.
  The problem is, it is not an opinion; it is a fact. It was pointed 
out to them on page 150 of their own bill. It says specifically the 
language that was quoted by a colleague from Florida.
  Mr. Ken Calvert from California pointed out that he quoted verbatim 
from President Obama in a speech that he made at his recent townhall 
meeting on health care in which he quoted this quote. When a lady asked 
about her elderly mother and special treatment for her elderly mother 
with heart troubles and receiving a pacemaker, the President, this is a 
direct quote from his speech, which was not allowed to be sent out and 
was deleted from Mr. Calvert's newsletter, it was a direct quote: 
``Look, the first thing of all is to understand that we actually have 
some choices to make about how we want to deal with our end-of-life 
care. We as a culture, as a society, can start to make better decisions 
within our own families and for ourselves. At least we can let doctors 
know and your mom know that you know what--maybe it isn't going to 
help. Maybe you are better off not having the surgery, but taking 
painkillers.''
  That was a direct quote from the President at his conference, news 
conference, townhall, which was not allowed to go in Mr. Calvert's 
newsletter by the Franking Commission.
  There are more stories, but the following people have had censorship 
of their language recently: Representative Herger, Representative Lamar 
Smith, Representatives Lamborn, Bonner, Westmoreland, Olson, Shuster, 
Roskam, McCotter, Gingrey, Fleming, Boustany, Brady, Conaway, Price, 
Culberson, Garrett, Kline and Lee. All have been in some form or 
fashion censored in their freedom of speech.
  Folks, if they will take the freedom of speech away from your Members 
of Congress, when will they take it away from the press? When will they 
take it away from the people? When will they take it away from you and 
your children and the next generation of Americans that we pass this 
great, beloved freedom on to, the right of an American to stand up and 
speak his mind?

                              {time}  2015

  Yet this party, in control of this House, is starting to interfere 
with the freedom of speech of American citizens who are elected by 
other American citizens to represent them on the floor of Congress. 
Well, I have talked for a long time, but I am upset about what's going 
on. I am joined by some of my colleagues.
  I yield to my friend Judge Poe from Texas for whatever time he needs.
  Mr. POE of Texas. I thank the gentleman from Texas. I appreciate the 
time to address this issue. You've brought forth an excellent argument 
and concern. As you have mentioned, the bigger problem about what is 
occurring has to do with the Constitution where the First Amendment 
says, ``Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.'' 
Of all places on Earth, this body, this group of people in this House 
should have the absolute freedom to speak freely about things that 
concern the people we represent, things that concern America, things 
that are good about America, and things that we need to help for 
America. This place, Congress. And yet this own body, through this 
censorship commission, prohibits us from talking to people in our own 
districts in a candid way. So much so that you and I and other Members 
throughout this House of Representatives can say anything we wish on 
this House floor--almost anything that doesn't violate the ethics rules 
that we've all agreed on. But yet we can say things on this House floor 
that we cannot say to our constituents back home in the form of a 
newsletter or a telephone call. The example you gave: We can say 
government-run health care plan, but we can't say that to our people 
back home. The reason is because there is a censorship commission that 
garnishes and looks after our words and says, No, you cannot have that 
freedom of speech.
  So this issue is bigger than health care. It's bigger than energy 
cap-and-trade. It's bigger than all of those issues. The issue is the 
freedom to speak freely as a Member of Congress. Now we are slowly 
entering the abyss where words that we want to say in our own way are 
going to be controlled by the speech police in Congress. Who would have 
ever thought this would occur? But yet, as you mentioned, this is 
occurring because of the things that we wish to communicate with the 
people back home in Texas or California or Michigan or Iowa. We cannot 
tell them in a candid way what we think about what's going on here and 
answer their concerns when they ask us questions through e-mails, 
letters and phone calls. We are now being told that there are some 
things you just cannot say as a Member of Congress, and it's very 
disturbing. The First Amendment is first for a reason because without 
the First Amendment, none of the others can be enforced. Freedom of 
speech and the freedom of press are first, along with the freedom of 
religion and freedom to assemble, because they are the most important 
amendments and rights that we have. Now it's disturbing, as you said, 
that we find ourselves in a place where we have to get permission to 
say things from a censorship board that prohibits us from communicating 
our thoughts and our ideas back home, things that we can say on the 
House floor that we can't say in writing. Who would have thought?
  It ought not be.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend from Texas for a very eloquent 
presentation. And it is that serious. Those of us who spend our lives 
in the courtroom trying to protect people's rights, as Judge Poe will 
tell you, we spend an inordinate amount of time making sure that all 
the rights of Americans who appear in the court system are protected. 
We in this body should spend an inordinate amount of time making sure 
that our rights and the rights of the American people are protected. 
There are others here.
  My good friend and classmate Mr. McCotter, who is from the great 
State of Michigan, has a few things to say.
  Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I thank him for 
allowing me to borrow the disputed chart. One of the things that I 
think frustrates Americans is when they entrust elected officials with 
office--especially Congress--and the Members of Congress forget a 
simple thing: We do not represent Washington to our districts. We 
represent our districts to Washington. I think that that important 
principle is often missed in the debate we are currently having. By all 
objective standards, the American people want health care reform, and 
they want it done right. Yet in the rush to misjudgment, they are very 
concerned that one of the truisms Americans understand will, once 
again, be proven: That no matter how bad a situation may be, Congress 
can still make it worse. The rush to judgment now to pass a bill before 
the August deadline, to me, is based upon one ineluctable fact--the 
more the American people learn about what's in this 1,200-page health 
care bill, the more they are opposed to it. Thus, if this Congress 
leaves without having passed a flawed health care bill that will 
increase costs, decrease quality, eliminate choices and kill jobs, the 
American people will have time to tell their duly elected 
Representatives what they think of this bill; and it will not be 
pleasant.
  Thus, we come to the problem before us tonight, which is the 
inability of Members of Congress to put out a chart that shows how the 
process would work under this bill. The chart in question is here 
before us. It is on the floor of the U.S. House; it is being broadcast 
by C-SPAN across the country; and yet Members are not allowed to put it 
in materials to be distributed to their constituents. I can find no 
logical explanation why this chart can be shown to you here and yet 
cannot be shown to you in a piece of mail, in a flyer or anything 
distributed out of the office of a Member. I would eagerly await the 
logical rationale as to why this is the case because, quite simply, if 
the majority has its way and does not allow

[[Page 19437]]

Members of Congress to put forward the chart of their own 1,200-page 
health care plan, you will not see this chart.
  This is what they want you to see. This will lead no one to an 
informed decision about what is in the bill. This will lead no one to 
an informed decision about how one of the most intimate relationships 
they will have, between themselves, their doctor and their health care 
insurance, will be affected by this bill. All we ask is that rather 
than allowing the people less information about this bill, that the 
majority do what is right and give the American people time to make 
their own determination based upon what is in the bill, and allow them 
to see this chart, contact their Members, tell them what they think of 
it; and let us come back, let us get rid of a flawed bill, and let us 
come together from the center and work out for true health care reform 
that is right for Americans, that will decrease costs, increase 
quality, empower patients as consumers, and continue to make the best 
health care system in the world even better for all of our citizens.
  Mr. CARTER. I am now going to yield such time as he may choose to 
consume to my good friend from the State of Iowa, Congressman King. He 
always has great things to say. He is a man of compassion and passion.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge, the gentleman from Texas, for 
organizing this Special Order, bringing this point up, and for getting 
the media out so that the American people understand what is going on.
  I'm looking at the two charts that the judge has put down there. One 
of them is the HillaryCare chart that was black and white that you will 
remember from a few moments ago, Mr. Speaker. Back in 1993, the black-
and-white HillaryCare chart was enough to sink the National Health Care 
Act. HillaryCare went down because the American people saw a chart. 
They saw all of those government commissions that were created; and 
every time you create a government commission, they knew intuitively 
that some of their freedom was going to be gone, some of their choices 
were going to be gone, taxes were going to go up, services were going 
to go down, lines were going to get longer, and the quality of health 
care was going to be diminished, all in the name of leveling this thing 
down to the lowest common denominator, would be how I would describe 
it. That was when that flow chart in '93, 16 years ago, was in black 
and white.
  This flow chart is in full technicolor. Mr. Speaker, when you look at 
this chart--and I hope you have studied this chart thoroughly and 
understand all of the 31 agencies that are created here in this full 
technicolor chart and the maze of government bureaucracy that is 
created by it, the loss of quality that would result from it, the 
increasing cost that will come from it, and the dependency that will be 
brought about because this safety net turns into a hammock; and in the 
end, no individual will really have an incentive to take care of their 
own health insurance because they will be crowded out by the public 
option. This is a national health care plan. This is socialized 
medicine. Mr. Speaker, I'll say socialized medicine real clearly to you 
here in this House of Representatives. If I had the notion to put it on 
frank mail, then we would see how that works too. Public option is the 
President's words and the national health care plan. Government-run 
insurance is what it really is.
  Now we know a little bit about government-run insurance. A lot of 
western civilizations have government-run insurance. They have 
government-run a lot of things that have crippled them to the point 
where they couldn't compete with us. When you get down to the extreme 
in this, there's a reason why we won the Cold War--because we didn't 
have government-run, we had private sector-run, private sector-
motivated, a whole mass of worker bees that went out and contributed; 
they were entrepreneurs; they were creative; and they sparked this 
economy. The vitality of the American free enterprise system not only 
created the best health care system in the world, the highest-quality 
medicine in the world, it created the most dynamic, the most 
competitive economy that tied together with strong political, military 
and cultural country. And in the end, the Soviet Union imploded because 
they couldn't keep up with us economically.
  Here we are looking at the rest of the world having failed in their 
central planning models, whichever side of that great Iron Curtain they 
originated from. We can look at western Europe; we can look at the plan 
in France, in the United Kingdom; we can look to our neighbors in the 
north in Canada and see what they have created when they started down 
the path of trying to produce a substitute for the private sector 
health insurance models. We have over 1,300 health insurance companies 
in America. That's not policies. That's companies, and companies with 
multiple policies, Mr. Speaker. The President has this idea that we 
need one more competitor, one more injector of good ideas supposedly 
into this health care debate. I would submit that of all the people 
that have spent their lives creating good ways to provide a more 
competitive model of health insurance, the President's not going to 
think of a better idea than they came up with.
  I think he proved himself here just a couple of days ago on the 
Cambridge issue. The President doesn't always come up with good ideas. 
Sometimes his ideas are not so good. But to look in on an industry and 
decide you want to create a government-competing industry so that you 
have more competition when you have more than 1,300 health insurance 
companies, there are only two things that can happen with this. That 
is, this circle on the chart and down at the bottom in the purple 
circle on the side that would be the left hand of those who are 
watching on television is the white square that shows all the 
traditional health insurance policies that are there. They have to flow 
into qualified policies. Qualified policies will be policies that will 
be qualified when the newly appointed health insurance czar decides 
what kind of rules to write for these private insurance companies, 
these 1,300 that will have to change their policies to conform with the 
new rules that will be written by a person yet to be named by the 
President of the United States. There will not be 1,300 that qualify. 
They all won't qualify. Some will decide, they can see the writing on 
the wall, they'll know what's happened, and they will just pull the 
plug--pull the pin, as we say, and drive away from the wagon they have 
and decide to get out of the business because they know the 
government's coming. The government's coming with your tax dollars, and 
the government is determined to build--this administration at least and 
the Democrat majority in this Congress--is determined to build a health 
insurance policy to compete with 1,300 private insurance policies, 
which means they're going to do two things in some combination. I could 
say one of two things. I think they'll do both things. The new health 
insurance czar, who is the guy in the blue box with the yellow letters 
above the two purple circles dead center up about a third of the way. 
The new health insurance czar will write new rules. There will be 
compliance rules; and those rules will be things such as: They will 
mandate. They will mandate mental health coverage, which it is good to 
cover mental health. Some of the States have mandated it, and some have 
not. They will mandate mental health coverage. They will probably 
mandate contraceptive coverage. They will probably mandate anything 
that you can imagine; and additionally, they're going to mandate--they 
will not step away from this so we know they're going to mandate that 
this policy fund abortion in America. And they will trample over the 
top of more than 50 percent of Americans' deeply held convictions that 
life begins at the instant of conception, and that it is sacred in all 
of its forms. They're going to ram this policy at us all, and some of 
these companies will decide out of moral reasons that they are no 
longer going to be in business in a country that is going to compel 
abortion, for example, or compel mandates, for example. All of those 
mandates that are on there will drive the premiums up.

[[Page 19438]]

  Now if the newly appointed Obama health insurance czar, which is the 
guy in that rectangular box in that schematic there, the blue box with 
the yellow letters on it, if he will write those regulations tough 
enough, a lot of companies will drop out, and the others will have to 
raise their premiums.

                              {time}  2030

  When they do all that, then the Federal Government can compete with 
their public plan that they want to have, just one entity out there to 
compete with the private sector. And they will be able to compete more 
easily and still be able to have premiums that are competitive for a 
time, and then when we find out that the competition is not working 
that way, they will subsidize the premiums in the public plan, and that 
will drive the private sector insurance companies.
  And we know the model in Canada. They started out with a similar 
proposal. I actually think that's where President Obama got this idea. 
The Canadians don't have any competitive health insurance plan today. 
There are no two purple circles, one of them the public options, the 
collection of them, and the other is the private. They have one circle, 
one size fits all, and everybody has to submit to one health care 
system in Canada. And they have to stand in line, and the result is 
rationing.
  And so, for example, if you're waiting for a knee replacement in 
Canada, the average wait is 340 days. When you're waiting for a hip 
replacement, the average wait in Canada is 196 days. If you're waiting 
for heart surgery, I'd like to think it's not as long a wait. But we 
know this: If people have to wait for health care, if they have to get 
in line for health care, they will die in line. Some will die in line. 
We've seen numbers that are pretty stark, and I'm going to hesitate on 
quoting them.
  But I will tell you that a week ago Thursday night, we had a speaker 
in the Policy Committee that Mr. McCotter, who just spoke, from 
Michigan, chairs, and it was a doctor from Michigan who has practiced 
medicine on both sides of the border, in Michigan and in Canada. He 
told a story of going up there to work in the ER in the hospital in 
Canada, and they brought a patient in that had a knee that was all torn 
up, a torn meniscus and a torn ACL, anterior cruciate ligament. And so 
this knee was a mess. And the doctor examined the knee, did what tests 
he could within the ER, and he said, You need surgery. You need surgery 
right away. I'll schedule you for tomorrow morning.
  Well, it must have been the doctor's first real foray up into 
Canadian medicine working within the system because he found out that 
he couldn't schedule the surgery the next morning. He had to schedule 
another exam and another approval from a doctor who was a specialist. 
And by the way, this doctor is a specialist.
  And so he couldn't get him scheduled, not for that night or the 
following morning or the day after, which would be a real stretch in 
America. Can you imagine laying around in a hospital for a specialist 
to come along, your knee swollen up the size of a cantaloupe, and 
waiting for a doctor to show up 2 days? And I'd say, Mr. Speaker, no. 
We wouldn't wait 2 days for a doctor to show up to look at our leg. If 
he couldn't be there that night, he would be there the next day, 
probably in the morning.
  And he would do the examination and they'd find a way to schedule the 
surgery, and they would do that surgery as quickly as they could 
because they care about recovery and quality of life and service and 
they want to make sure that you're not in an ambulance going to a 
hospital somewhere else telling them that you couldn't get in at so and 
so memorial hospital because there was a long line. They don't want 
that to happen.
  But in Canada, in this patient, this real case that was related to us 
before the Policy Committee a week ago last Thursday night by a doctor 
from Michigan, it took 6 months for that young man with that torn-up 
knee to see the specialist to be diagnosed in order to be approved for 
surgery that this doctor would have liked to have seen done the next 
day.
  And then 6 months later, they actually did the surgery. A knee torn 
up, a man who's in the productive time of his life, on crutches for 12 
months waiting for surgery. And then we know that the leg atrophies and 
the recovery and the rehab gets to be longer.
  So he was out, I think pretty close, I believe the doctor said 15 
months he was off work, when they could have had him back to work in a 
couple or maybe even less if they could have just had the surgery right 
away. That's an example of Canadian health care.
  And I recall reading through a stack of Collier's magazines from 1948 
and 1949. These magazines were--they featured the United Kingdom's 
socialized medicine plan that they passed in 1948 in Britain. And there 
they showed pictures of long lines outside the clinics and doctors that 
were just frazzled that they had to see so many patients in order to 
hold their economics together. They didn't have time to be a doctor 
with a patient relationship. They just ran through them as fast as they 
could do so, and it just was wearing everybody down.
  All the predictions, the things that we see today were even predicted 
then. They saw them. They were real in the first year of the socialized 
medicine plan in the United Kingdom. And here we are where we can't 
even call this government-run health care, government-run system. Well, 
who will be running this system if it's not the government? Who is 
poised to pass this legislation if it isn't the Democrat majority in 
the House of Representatives and the Democrat President in the White 
House? And it will take a Democrat majority in the United States Senate 
to pass this schematic that is in full technicolor today that takes 
away the American people's freedom to purchase their own health 
insurance policy and access to their own health care, all in the name 
of trying to provide for the people that are not insured and blurring, 
intentionally, the language between health insurance and health care.
  If we had a billion dollars for every time somebody on this floor had 
blurred the language between health insurance and health care 
intentionally, I believe, Mr. Speaker, we would have enough money to 
fund this monstrosity. People are being confused, I believe, 
intentionally. I've seen this language unfold for at least 2 years now. 
People don't have health care. It gets said over and over again. Every 
American has access to health care. And we can have the argument about 
whether going to the emergency room is the right way to do it or not, 
and we know it's not the cheapest. But if they have access to health 
care, we should not tell the American people they do not. We need to 
tell them every American has access to health care. Not every American 
can afford their own health insurance policy.
  But when you break the numbers down, we're around 306 million people, 
and if you start subtracting from that those that are in America that 
are here illegally, if--let's just say this great gift of automatic 
government health insurance had to be delivered to these illegals in 
this country by the Department of Homeland Security, they would be 
obligated to deport those people rather than reward them with a 
government-owned and run health insurance plan. Subtract them from the 
306 million.
  Subtract those that are here legally that are immigrants. They're 
supposed to take care of themselves. We don't hand people entitlements 
when they come to the United States. That's by law. Subtract them. 
Subtract the people that make over $75,000 a year. They can find a way 
to take care of themselves. And if you subtract the people that are 
eligible for Medicaid but are not signed up--and by the way, Mr. 
Speaker, almost half of those eligible for Medicaid just aren't signed 
up. And I don't know why we would think that if we would just give 
everybody free access to health insurance that they will sign up. But 
you subtract the Medicaid people that are not signed up. Then you 
subtract the people that are eligible for an employee-run option but

[[Page 19439]]

they don't sign up for one reason or another, and you get down to a 
study that is this.
  One was by a pair of Penn State professors that does the math down to 
10.1 million Americans are the chronically uninsured. And there's 
another study that one of our government agencies, I think it actually 
was CBO, but I'm not certain, 12 million uninsured. So, in any case, 
between 10.1 and 12 million Americans are chronically uninsured. That's 
the universe that we're supposedly trying to get to, about 10 to 12 
million Americans. That maps out to be about 4 percent of this 
population, 4 percent of the population chronically uninsured.
  And we know that the people that are, let's say, chronically not 
covered by Medicaid just simply don't show up. So why would we think 
that the chronically uninsured are any different type of personality or 
any different kind of person utilizing the health policies that we 
have.
  So I will submit that even if we handed them a free policy, probably 
not more than half of the 4 percent that are chronically uninsured are 
going to sign up. The rest you'd have to chase them down and impose it 
on them. Staple the policy to their shirt collar on the chance they'd 
show up at the emergency room, in which case we're going to take care 
of them anyway. The administration cost of providing health insurance 
for the 4 percent of the chronically uninsured when you can't get 
probably half of them to actually sign up, so we get 2 percent of a 
population of 306 million people at the price of $1.5 trillion and a 
raising of taxes of $800 to $900 billion and a deficit of $239.1 
billion, at the low side, and maybe a deficit of $500 to $600 billion 
on the up side.
  I wonder if anybody wants to censor those numbers? I mean, I'm always 
open to that debate. But I found out that when I put numbers out here, 
some will say, You're wrong, Congressman. And I say, What's your 
number? And they don't have a number. If they don't have a number, they 
don't have any right to challenge my numbers. I'll put the numbers out 
here.
  But this is about access to health care. This is about our freedoms. 
This is about whether 1,300 private health insurance companies in 
America can do a better job of providing the options that are suitable 
to the American people and the creativity and the research and 
development and the innovativeness and the modern health care system 
that sets the standards for the world. And the rest of the world, by 
the way, poaches on the innovativeness of the American health care 
system. We create more pharmaceuticals and more techniques and surgical 
techniques than anybody else by far. And they're available to the rest 
of the world for a really cheap price, if anything at all is charged. 
We set the standard. The Americans pay the price, and still they can't 
keep up with the results we have here in America.
  I could go on, Mr. Speaker, but I think I have made my point, and I 
thank the gentleman from Texas for bringing this up. And I'll just say 
this. Can I say this like a Texan, Judge? This is our chart. Kevin 
Brady of Texas put that chart up. It is accurate. It shows 31 
government agencies, new ones. It is accurate and it shall stand. It 
shall not come down. And like that first flag down in Texas with that 
cannon on it, if they think that this should not be something for the 
public to see, they can come and take it.
  Thank you, Judge. I yield back.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for reminding us of Texas history. In 
reading over the list of people that have had the Franking Commission 
censor their language, I failed to mention Congressman Spencer Bachus, 
who's the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee and has 
had just horrendous hard times this year with all the issues of 
bailouts and all the things that are going on in the financial service 
industry. He submitted the term ``government-run health care.'' This is 
his exact sentence. ``Government-run health care system proposed by 
President Obama and his liberal allies in Congress.'' They would not 
allow him to say that.
  He was also told during the cap-and-trade--we say cap-and-tax bill, 
which is our description of the bill, they would not let him use the 
term ``cap-and-tax'' and wanted it to be climate bill. He also had his 
language censored. One of my colleagues made the point, said, When 
people start censoring your language and telling you what to say, I 
think that most people in America start saying, Why are you doing that? 
We've got free speech in this country. Those are my elected 
representatives. They have the right to express their opinion. Why are 
you not letting them have that right to express their opinion? Why 
can't they call something a government-run health care that you want to 
call a public option plan? That ought to be part of the debate. I think 
the American people would ask that question.
  I would also think they would ask the question about this chart, Why 
are you wanting to hide this? What's there to hide? If it creates those 
agencies, then it creates them. And we have asked and asked and asked 
to point out what agency that it says, and it's the colored agencies 
that are being created that aren't in the bill, and no one has yet 
pointed out one that's not in the bill.
  So why can't we show it to people? Why would a branch of this House 
tell Members of this House what they can and can't say to the people 
that elected them to come up here and speak on their behalf?

                              {time}  2045

  I think we should be concerned about this. I think Americans should 
be worried. If they start telling us what we can say, when are they 
going to start telling you what you can say? You know, if we let it go, 
we are just as guilty as those who have let tyranny go in the past.
  We, as Americans, fought a revolution to be able to set down in black 
and white, on paper, our God-given rights, and that's what our 
Constitution says. Man is endowed with these rights by his creator, 
certain unalienable rights, and we define those rights by setting them 
down in black and white in amendments to the Constitution.
  In the first sentence of the First Amendment, it says that this 
House--this body, this government--shall not infringe on the right of 
free speech. I mean, it is a direct directive to this government. That 
means the House of Representatives of the Congress cannot interfere 
with the freedom of speech in this country. The Senate cannot 
interfere, and the executive branch, the President, and any of the 
agencies cannot impose upon the right of free speech in America. Yet a 
body created to decide how stamps are going to be spent is now telling 
us what we can and cannot say to the people who sent us up here.
  I don't think I'm blowing this out of proportion. I don't think I was 
when Mr. Brady was told he could not publish this initially, in any 
form or fashion, until it was discovered that the Internet--you know, 
the Internet is a great protector of American freedom because the 
average American can make a copy of this, and he can send it to the 
world on the Internet. The Franking Commission can talk all they want 
to. It's already out there. If you had something to hide, the fact that 
you had something to hide will also be out there all over the world.
  We feel like we have a duty and a responsibility to talk to and to 
communicate with the people who sent us up here to represent them. The 
majority party has every right, the Democrats have every right, to 
express their opinions on bills, to say what they think they say. We 
can say what we think they say, and we can describe them as we want to 
describe them. That's what this House is all about. We like to say this 
is the greatest experiment of democracy in history, the greatest 
experiment of self-government in history. Well, it can't be if somebody 
is curtailing the voice of even one of the Members of this body, if 
somebody is telling one Member that he can't do it.
  Now, if this chart were written and if every third word said, ``Elect 
Candidate Brady to Congress,'' the Franking Commission would have every 
right to do this because that would be using government money for one's 
own purposes toward being elected to Congress.

[[Page 19440]]

If it said, ``Elect only Republicans to Congress,'' I agree that the 
Franking Commission would have every right to say that because, quite 
frankly, that's why they're there, to keep us from using government 
money for political purposes.
  Yet, when you're expressing your opinion and when you go to the 
trouble of using four researchers to dig through and to find out every 
agency that has been created in the new health care plan that is being 
proposed by this Congress and at the instruction of this President, Mr. 
Obama, and if these things are created, why can't you tell people about 
them?
  If I want to describe the Federal Government's public health care 
plan as a government-run health care plan and if I choose to describe 
it that way because the government is going to run it, I mean, this 
isn't rocket science. The government is going to run it. In fact, a 
whole lot of these agencies are established to help them run it.
  If I want to describe it that way, I've got a constitutional right to 
do that, and no colleague in this House and no organization set up by 
this House has the right to curtail the freedom of Americans, 
especially the Representatives of Americans, to speak their minds.
  It may be a little thing, but do you know what? It just takes one 
drop of water, and eventually the bucket is full and then the barrel is 
full, and then the lake is full.
  I didn't count these names, but I can count them. There's this list 
right here. Let's see, twenty-four Members of this House have had their 
language censored and their communications stopped because of something 
that they said, like ``government-run health care'' or like using the 
term ``Democrat majority'' in the newsletter. If this is going to 
happen--if you're going to tell people you can't state that the bill 
imposes taxes when it does impose taxes, if you're being told you can't 
send the letter out and that you can't communicate--I don't think you 
can define it any other way than as curtailing the freedom of speech in 
the United States. That's what's going on.
  I've talked in the past about the fact that, a while back, in the 
middle of these Special Orders when we've been talking about the rule 
of law and about other things, Congress has just adjourned. We have a 
3-day reading rule proposed by Thomas Jefferson that has been set as 
the standard for this House of Representatives since the beloved Thomas 
Jefferson, the patron saint of the Democratic Party. Yet the 3-day rule 
promised by the Speaker, promised by the President and established by 
Thomas Jefferson hasn't applied to a single one of these bills we've 
had thus far, not to one, not to one of these major bills starting 
clear back in the fall. Not one of them has given us 3 days to read 
them.
  Yet if you'll remember, John Boehner dropped one that was about that 
tall--3,000 pages. He dropped it on the floor to show that we'd had 8 
hours to look at it.
  Now, I guess it's one of these things where, if you don't step up and 
speak now on the little things, like making you change your language or 
like telling you you can't mail your letter, then at some point in 
time, somebody is going to tell you, I'm sorry, Congressman, your 
opinion is not wanted here on this floor of the House. Sit down. You 
can't talk at all, or I'm sorry, that party's opinion is not wanted, 
and you can't talk at all, or whatever, or maybe, Your opinion is not 
wanted, and you can't express it at all.
  That's not America. That's not the America that we created. That's 
not the America we are proud of. That's not the America we honor when 
we salute the flag and when we sing patriotic songs. That's not the 
America that we want.
  We were talking about the national health care plan. I really haven't 
gone into the merits of it. I think my colleague did a very good job of 
going into the merits of it. I am so concerned about the fact that 
they're censoring. All I said was ``government-run,'' and it's like I 
committed a crime. What in the world would have happened if I'd started 
really saying what I thought about it?
  I did see something on television yesterday on PBS. It was on Winston 
Churchill. He was kicked out of office in 1946, '47 or '48, something 
like that, by the Labor Party in England. He was reelected, I believe, 
in 1950, but don't hold me to those dates. They showed him making a 
speech. I won't quote it exactly, but it was close.
  He said, 2 years ago, we thought socialism was the solution to all of 
our problems. Today, we know that it's not, and, in fact, it has failed 
miserably.
  However, they passed socialized medicine in 1948, and even though Mr. 
Churchill came in in 1950 and said that socialism had failed, that was 
almost 60 years ago, they've still got socialized medicine. It failed 
then and it's failing now. Ronald Reagan said the hardest, closest 
thing to eternal life on the face of the Earth is a government program. 
Once it's created, you never get rid of it.
  So, as to the government-run health care plan, once it becomes law--
that's why they're in such a hurry to do it this week. We don't have 
any time. The sky is falling. We can't wait 30 more days to discuss 
this problem that's going to change America as we know it, that's going 
to completely change the way we do health care as we know it. We can't 
have just 30 more days to talk about it back home with our 
constituents. We can't kick this ball down the road.
  We've got to do it when it really came to the center portion of this 
House 2 weeks ago. Most of the committees that reported it out reported 
it out last week. We've been told if we don't do it by Friday, we'll 
keep you Saturday and Sunday. If you don't do it Saturday and Sunday, 
we'll keep you next week or the week after, but you're going to do it 
before you go home for the August recess.
  That's fine. I stood up here most of last August, talking in a dark 
Chamber because they turned off the lights and wouldn't let us talk, so 
we just talked in the dark. So I don't mind. I'll stay up here the 
whole August recess if that's what's supposed to happen. They're trying 
to hurry because the closest thing to eternal life seen on this Earth 
is a government program, and once these government programs are in 
place, you'll never get rid of them. That is the consequence of being 
in a hurry.
  I'll just point out that we got in a hurry on TARP, that we got in a 
hurry on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and that we got in a hurry on the 
stimulus bill. We got in a hurry on cap-and-trade. We've been in a 
hurry on everything we've done this year, and I think everybody is 
seeing the results of not thinking things out and of not doing what 
we're supposed to be doing.
  I love it when somebody says we're the greatest deliberative body on 
Earth. Then let's deliberate. You know, I've had juries deliberate 
longer on an issue than we're dealing with on health care for America. 
I mean, I had a jury deliberate for 2 weeks. We're in the second week 
this week, and not one committee has marked up and reported out a bill 
yet. The biggest committee and arguably the most important committee, 
Energy and Commerce, has not sent us a completed bill. Yet we are 
expected to finish it this week.
  I had a jury deliberate, I believe it was 2 and maybe 3 weeks, close 
to 21 days, on a water tank and on a water system in Taylor, Texas. So 
this has got to be a little more critical to the American people than 
that.
  It's about freedom. It's about liberty. It's about your liberty and 
my liberty to rely upon. The Bill of Rights and the First Amendment of 
the Bill of Rights says that this Congress shall not impose upon 
freedom of speech in America.
  I thank the Speaker for his time. I yield back the balance of my 
time.

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