[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 16]
[House]
[Pages 21624-21625]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1045
            EXAMINING THE PRESIDENT'S CLAIMS ON HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, in a recent article, conservative 
commentator Thomas Sowell, an African American, examined some of 
President Obama's claims about the health care legislation moving 
through the Congress. I wanted to quote some excerpts from his column 
that I found insightful.
  Sowell writes that in his joint address to Congress, President Obama 
is wrong about the spending levels of his health care reform. Sowell 
says:
  ``To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more 
people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit, is world 
class chutzpa and an insult to anyone's intelligence. To do so after an 
analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has already showed this to 
be impossible reveals the depths of moral bankruptcy behind the 
glittering words.''
  Sowell continues along this accounting line by addressing the issue 
of paying for the health infrastructure implied in the President's 
health reform plan. He writes:
  ``Even those who believe that Obama can conjure up the money by 
eliminating `waste, fraud and abuse' should ask themselves where he is 
going to conjure up the additional doctors, nurses, and hospitals 
needed to take care of millions more patients.

[[Page 21625]]

  ``If he can't pull off that miracle, then government-run medical care 
in the United States can be expected to produce what government-run 
medical care in Canada, Britain and other countries has produced--
delays of weeks or months to get many treatments, not to mention 
arbitrary rationing decisions by bureaucrats.''
  Sowell later draws a parallel to the difference in the words and 
deeds of President Obama in other areas of policy. He writes:
  ``Obama can deny it in words but what matters are deeds--and no one's 
words have been more repeatedly the direct opposite of his deeds--
whether talking about how his election campaign would be financed, how 
he would not rush legislation through Congress, or how his 
administration was not going after CIA agents for their past efforts to 
extract information from captured terrorists.
  ``President Obama has also declared emphatically that he will not 
interfere in the internal affairs of other nations--while telling the 
Israelis where they can and cannot build settlements and telling the 
Hondurans whom they should and should not choose to be their 
President.''
  Then Sowell writes that:
  ``President Obama tells us that he will impose various mandates on 
insurance companies but will not interfere with our free choice between 
being insured by these companies or by the government. But if he can 
drive up the cost of private insurance with mandates and subsidize 
government insurance with the taxpayers' money, how long do you think 
it will be before we have the `single payer' system that he has 
advocated in the past?
  ``Mandates by politicians are what have driven up the cost of 
insurance already. Politicians love to play Santa Claus and leave it to 
others to raise prices to cover the inevitable costs.''
  Sowell concludes by noting that no manner of lofty rhetoric about 
certain policies not coming to pass will convince many Americans that 
those same policies will not in fact occur because of the intrusive 
nature of government-run health care. As Sowell says:
  ``Barack Obama's insistence that various dangerous policies are not 
in the legislation he proposes sounds good, but means nothing. 
Unbridled power is a blank check, no matter what its rationale may be. 
No law gave the President of the United States the power to fire the 
head of General Motors, but TARP money did.''
  Furthermore, in the bill, an analysis of the bill by objective 
agencies tell us that the Democrats' health care bill would increase 
the Federal deficit by $239 billion over 10 years. The bill includes 
$1.2 trillion in new Federal spending over the next 10 years.
  The Democrats' bill spends so much that it needs 8 years of higher 
taxes to finance just 6 years of spending. The Democrats embedded an 
automatic tax increase in their bill by doubling the 1 percent and 1.5 
percent small business tax in 2013, continuing their revenue grab from 
small businesses. 4.7 million jobs could be lost as a result of ``pay 
or play'' taxes on small businesses.
  The prescription of a health care bill from the Democrats and the 
President is wrong, and we need to do everything we can to stop it.

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