[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3994-4001]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. It's my privilege to be recognized here on the 
floor and address you as we watch this Nation lurch forever forward 
toward their version of socialized medicine.
  It's astonishing to me to think that the people on the other side of 
the aisle who have spoken in the previous hour could even stand and 
make the statement that we are going to put 30 million more people onto 
the insured rolls and somehow we're going to cut spending and reduce 
the deficit. How in the world could that be? We're going to ensure 30 
million more people for less money than we ensure the people we have 
today? Are we going to go back to President Obama's mathematical logic 
that seemed to have gotten him elected into office when he and Hillary 
Clinton vied with each other on who had the best government-run health 
care plan? When President Obama said--and he said consistently and 
continually--We spend too much money on health care. We have to fix 
that.
  He said as the President of the United States that we're in an 
economic downturn, an economic crisis,

[[Page 3995]]

and we can't fix the crisis of our downward spiraling economy unless we 
first fix health care.
  Mr. Speaker, do you remember that? The astonishing statement that the 
solution to our economic downward spiral is socialized medicine? That 
is what came out of our President's mouth.
  So we have to first fix this health care. And what's wrong with 
health care? According to the President, we spend too much money. Now, 
I don't necessarily quibble with that particular statement. We spend 
too much money on health care. I just disagree on where that too much 
money goes.
  But he argued that we spend too much on health care. We have to fix 
it in order to fix the economy. And what's his fix? All of the way 
through his political history up until the reality of being President 
of the United States was a single-payer plan. The Federal Government 
writes the check for everybody's health care in America. That's been 
the President's solution all along. It's clear. It's as clear as his 
statement eight times on national TV that there were going to be C-SPAN 
negotiations over health care.
  But the President's logic was, and apparently remains, the economy is 
in a crisis, the problem with the economy is health care, the only fix 
for health care is to turn it into socialized medicine because we spend 
too much money. And we've heard these gentlemen say, We're going to 
save money. We're going to save $300 billion, and it's going to be 
trillions of dollars by giving 30 million more people a health 
insurance policy that is paid for by the taxpayers in America. Now, how 
can they do that?
  First I need to dispatch this thing of President Obama's statement 
that we can fix the economy by fixing health care. I never agreed with 
that. I always believed that our economic problems were too much 
spending, too much irresponsibility, too many Federal guarantees. We 
had the implicit guarantee that the Federal Government would prop up 
these businesses that are, quote, ``too big to be allowed to fail.'' 
Now ``too big to fail.'' And so, that was implicit.
  And those big businesses took great risks to grow against their other 
competition that was taking great risk, and the economy was on the 
verge of collapsing, and that is when we became deemed ``too big to 
fail,'' and the Federal Government dropped in and bailed them out with 
our tax dollars. Treasury dollars that are just simply advanced, 
appropriations that were approved by this Congress in the form of $700 
billion dollars in TARP funding, $787 billion in an economic stimulus 
plan--none of which the American people in anywhere near a majority 
believed actually worked.

                              {time}  2130

  So the free enterprise system was sacrificed off for the 
nationalization of the huge entities in our Federal Government. And the 
President continued to insist, even though he had the brilliant Tim 
Geithner there as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, too smart to be 
allowed not to be confirmed, to help bail out these businesses that are 
too big to be allowed to fail, and the only way we can fix all these 
economic problems is to first fix health care because we spend too much 
money on it. And so the President of the United States argues, well, 
here is a solution for everything: we will just spend a lot more money 
on health care in America.
  In terms of numbers that we have seen from Senator Judd Gregg, say 
that when you look at the 10 years after, the first full 10 years, $2.5 
trillion, the President has repeatedly made the breathtaking statement 
that we want to spend all of this extra money in the trillions of 
dollars on health care in order to fix the economy that we can't fix 
without, and the problem with spending too much money is solved with 
spending a lot more money.
  That's the President's position. And any third grader can figure that 
out, Mr. Speaker. That position could not be sustained in a third grade 
logic class. I don't think they actually have logic classes in third 
grade, but it couldn't be sustained.
  And so we went from this breathtaking position of spending a lot more 
money on health care to solve all the Nation's woes on down to, well, 
the problem really is that we don't have enough competition among 
insurance companies. So the President said, let's create a Federal 
health insurance company to compete against the privates, and that way 
we will have competition that it will drive done the costs. I don't 
think the President ever counted the private health insurance 
companies, 1,300 of them, 100,000 public health insurance varieties; 
and still the President wanted 1,301 health insurance companies and 
100,000 and about a dozen health insurance policies. And that was going 
to solve all the problems, Mr. Speaker.
  So we see that the massive, multi-trillion dollar Federal takeover of 
the management and of the approval of everybody's health insurance in 
America is based upon two flawed premises. I wonder what would happen 
if President Obama were sitting in the square in Athens and he had to 
sit between Socrates and Plato, and he would make the pitch we're going 
to solve the problem of spending too much money by spending a lot more, 
and we're going to solve the problem of not enough competition in 1,300 
companies by adding one more company with 1,301. Those two fellows 
would have just eviscerated him with clearest logic of chopping his 
axiom down and tossing it off into the Aegean Sea.
  But, instead, we are so polite in this country. We aren't willing to 
say that these premises don't even make the third grade level. And now 
here we are, a Nation that has seen its President use all the leverage 
possible to force the situation where we are, even though, even though 
it was all Speaker Pelosi could do to squeeze the votes to pass the 
first version of this bill. Even though she has 41 votes to burn when 
this happened, Speaker Pelosi didn't have any to burn when it was over.
  It barely, barely passed the House. The Senate, they had no votes to 
spare, and on Christmas Eve that bitter pill was dropped into our 
stocking by Harry Reid and company over in the Senate. And most folks 
thought that this thing would become law, until Scott Brown was elected 
to the United States Senate. And when that happened, it changed the 
whole dynamics, Mr. Speaker.
  But here we are today, the President of the United States doesn't 
hear ``no.'' He doesn't hear that the American people have stood up and 
screamed, no, don't spend any more money. You poured trillions in this 
economic stimulus plan and in the TARP funding, and what do we have to 
show for it? A declining economy and a growing unemployment and 15.4 
million people on unemployment, a mismanaged economy with a government 
that has taken over three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, 
Freddie Mac, General Motors and Chrysler and given us a couple of 
trillion dollars' worth of wild spending programs.
  And the President had told us in a meeting a year ago February that 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt lost his nerve. He should have spent a lot 
more money. If FDR had spent a lot more money in the late thirties, 
then this Keynesian economy would have turned around, and it would have 
recovered before World War II came along.
  That was an experiment that is called the Great Depression. And the 
New Deal failed throughout the thirties. And the stock market that 
crashed in October of 1929, even though we had World War II, even 
though we had the Korean war, did not recover to the place where it was 
in October of 1929 until Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been passed away 
for 9 years. 1954 is when the Dow Jones Industrial Average caught up to 
where it was in 1929.
  And this President doesn't learn this lesson from history. If you 
borrow money, if you raise taxes, if you spend that money with 
government, you're competing against the private sector. And, 
necessarily, if government spends money, they can't spend money unless 
they first take it from somebody else; and when they take it from 
somebody else, they are borrowing the investment capital away. They are 
taking it away. They are taxing investment capital. There would be a 
whole row of entrepreneurs out here, Mr. Speaker, that maybe have a 
little capital, and they

[[Page 3996]]

have a way to borrow some money, and they have an idea about expanding 
an existing business or creating a new one, businesses hire people and 
they create careers and jobs.
  The Federal Government raises taxes and dips into the capital base 
and raises the cost of that capital because of the higher taxes, and 
that diminishes the jobs in the private sector. It might create new 
government jobs in the public sector, but it diminishes them in the 
private sector.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I cannot be convinced that our President of the 
United States, he may understand, but I can't be convinced that he 
believes that there is a difference in this economy between government 
employment and private sector employment.
  The private sector is the sector that creates the wealth. The 
government is the burden on the wealth creators. If you have a career, 
if you're an entrepreneur, if you have a business, and if you employ 
people, and the Federal Government raises taxes and raises the cost of 
the capital, it takes away your ability to generate more revenue for 
expanding more careers and jobs or for paying taxes. And eventually if 
the Federal Government swallows up all sectors of the economy just to 
macro this and fast forward it to where I think even the people on this 
side of the aisle could understand, if the government runs everything, 
there is nothing left to tax except government. That's where this 
country is going.
  I have looked on the Progressives' Web site. They are linked in with 
the Democratic Socialists of America. Their Web site used to be managed 
by the same people. It says on there they want to nationalize the 
Fortune 500 companies. They want to take them over. They want to 
nationalize the oil refineries business. That was offered by Maurice 
Hinchey of New York. They want to nationalize the energy industry in 
America. That was offered by Maxine Waters of California. They are both 
members of the Progressive Caucus. The Progressive Caucus is the 
progressive arm of the socialists. They want to nationalize our economy 
and take it over. If the Government takes over the Fortune 500 
companies, where they have already taken over one-third of the private 
sector profits, if they do that, they will have killed the goose that 
lays the golden egg, and there won't be any tax revenue then that comes 
into the Federal Government because the Government will be the entity 
that has to tax itself. And I know how that works. I have been to Cuba. 
I know how that functions down there, Mr. Speaker.
  So we have a couple of flawed premises here. We spend too much on 
health care, the solution is to spend a lot more, and we don't have 
enough competition in health insurance companies, so one more, the 
Federal Government, competing against them solves the problem. I could 
not have advanced either one of those ideas and gotten them past first 
base. But that's where we are, Mr. Speaker.
  And so it comes before us this weekend, this nationalization of our 
health care, the Federal management of our health care that has been 
debated since last July or so, that has filled the town hall meetings 
in the United States with hundreds of thousands of people and their 
cumulative total and every State in the Union that I'm aware of. They 
certainly filled them up in Iowa, they filled them up in Texas, and 
they filled them up in Minnesota and everywhere else. And the American 
people came to reject the idea that the Federal Government can take 
over our health care.
  Now, some will argue that this isn't a nationalization of our health 
care. And I will submit in response to that, how far do you need to go 
before you concede that it's nationalized? If you set up a health 
choices administration commissioner who has the power and the authority 
vested in him by the legislation to approve every health insurance 
company in America, every health insurance policy in America, that is a 
nationalization.
  It doesn't matter if the Federal Government is just managing the 
private companies. They will tell the private companies how they have 
to operate. Hugo Chavez tells companies how they have to operate in 
Venezuela. It doesn't mean they aren't nationalized. He will come in 
and say, you're going to give me so much of a cut out of your gross 
receipts, and you will meet all these standards. This is what you will 
do to manage help; this is how it will look as far as the facade in 
front of your building. They dictate right down to the minutiae of what 
you have to do if you want to do business in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez 
dictates that. We call it ``nationalize.'' If the Federal Government 
dictates these things, we say, what, no, that is just private? No.
  I would make the argument that our military takes care of our 
national security, and sometimes they will hire private contractors. 
The left was critical of Blackwater; and they would like to, and some 
suggest did, reduce Blackwater's involvement overseas in places like 
Iraq. But if the Federal Government writes the check to Blackwater and 
says take care of the security for, let's just say, for the airport in 
the Baghdad, is there a difference between whether they are 
nationalized, whether it's people in uniform wearing military uniforms 
or people wearing paramilitary uniforms, if all the shots are called by 
the Federal Government? I don't think so, Mr. Speaker.
  So what we're seeing here is the nationalization of our health care, 
the Federal Government dictating everything about our health insurance 
policies. The Federal Government would decide, in fact, they would 
cancel every health insurance policy in America over a period of time, 
2 to 4 years, by the time they rotated through the Federal Government, 
would cancel every health insurance policy in America. And then if 
those policies didn't meet the new guidelines yet to be written into 
the rules and approved by the health choice administration 
commissioner, then what we have would be a Federal Government that 
would say, all right, your company hasn't met the guidelines and your 
policies haven't met our guidelines, therefore you're not doing 
business in the United States. That's just a fact, Mr. Speaker.
  And so that is the nationalization of our health care. They want to 
tax you if you don't buy diet pop. They want to tax your medical 
devices, your hearing aids, your wheelchairs, your oxygen. And that's 
in order to fund this. So the people on this side of the aisle that 
spoke in the previous hour that have argued that they are actually 
going to save $300 billion over a period of 10 years because they--do 
you know how long they have been massaging these numbers and they send 
something back to CBO, the Congressional Budget Office and go back and 
forth, in secret, by the way, until they get some numbers that they 
think they can defend as the clock ticks down?
  Well, now they are at maybe $300 billion in savings. But what they're 
not telling you it is a massive increase in taxes to raise revenue. The 
first 4 years of this bill produces revenue before the costs actually 
kick in. It is a half a trillion dollar cut out of Medicare 
reimbursements so that we are starving the health care services of our 
seniors in America.
  That's just two of the ways that they manipulate these numbers. And 
that is where Judd Gregg comes in and makes the argument that if you 
calculate the first full 10 years of this bill, it's $2.5 trillion; and 
of course that's not considering the things that they would offer for 
reconciliation.
  I would also make the point, Mr. Speaker, that this House doesn't 
have the will to pass the Senate bill. The Senate version of the bill 
can't pass the Senate today. They all know that. That's a given. 
They're not taking the bill back over there. It passed this Congress. 
The Senate version of the bill passed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve 
morning, to be charitable. Harry Reid's lump of coal in the stocking 
for America was this Senate socialized medicine bill that barely had 
enough votes to pass. It had none to spare.
  And Scott Brown was subsequently elected as the United States Senator 
from the improbable place of Massachusetts. And today, the Senate 
version of the bill can't pass the Senate. They couldn't bring that 
bill back

[[Page 3997]]

there to pass it because maybe the Senators over there don't have 
buyer's remorse, but the people in Massachusetts had buyer's remorse. 
And they've reversed their position, and millions of Americans have 
reversed their position. They have done so because they've seen this 
spending that is out of control, and they don't want someone to take 
over their health care, so they reversed their position.
  There are a lot that have buyer's remorse from the Presidential 
election in November of 2008. A lot of them would like to have a do-
over, and they are not going to get one. But they have buyer's remorse. 
And so when you add the coalitions of people that are opposed to this 
national health care act, this socialized medicine, it becomes 
Americans with buyer's remorse that regret that they put the votes up 
that they did for ``hope and change,'' and I put that nicely in quotes, 
votes for hope and change, they put it up, they had more hope, and we 
got a different kind of change than they thought they were going to 
get. But now they regret putting that vote up. That's the buyer's 
remorse crowd.
  And then you have the newly energized Americans that are across the 
vast middle of America. They started out with 9/12 project, people that 
came out here by the hundreds of thousands on the 12th of September, 
and patriots of a number of different categories including TEA party 
patriots that lit up this country. And on April 15, they had rallies 
across this country. I joined in some of them. Then they filled up the 
town hall meetings across this country and began to also come to this 
Capitol to petition for redress of grievances, as the Constitution 
says, in a constitutional fashion.

                              {time}  2145

  They did so November 5, November 7. They did so again in December on 
the Senate side. They came back again a few days ago, and they are 
going to be here tomorrow starting in the morning with the central 
event at noon on the west of the Capitol, and it will have thousands of 
Americans here that say: Keep your fingers off of my health care. I 
want to preserve my liberty. I want to preserve my freedom, and I want 
to preserve fiscal sanity in the United States of America.
  I see that my friend and colleague, my neighbor to the north, has 
joined us here on the floor this evening, and I would be so happy to 
yield such time as she may consume to Michele Bachmann.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I thank you to the gentleman from Iowa. He has done a 
wonderful job explaining the context of the health care debate that we 
are in today. We also have a neighbor to the south joining us as well, 
Louie Gohmert from Texas, and he has a lot that he wants to add to this 
debate.
  I just wanted to focus for context purposes, to begin with, on what 
the President has demonstrated thus far that his understanding of 
economics has been when he had been in the United States Senate. He was 
an advocate for the $700 billion bailout of the banks and the financial 
meltdown. All through the 1990s and then in the early 2000s, there were 
continual bailouts that occurred. This was nothing new. This is yet one 
more bailout. They didn't work before.
  What they did is they laid the groundwork, the moral hazard, if you 
will, for the same players, the same investment banking houses on Wall 
Street to make very bad bets because they knew the chump would be Uncle 
Sam. Uncle Sam would come along and pick up the pieces if they made 
mistakes.
  What did they care. They rolled the dice. They took the risk. They 
risked their investors' money. And, when the deals went south, they 
came crawling back to Uncle Sam here in D.C., and Uncle Sam said, Sure, 
I will bail you out. That history was available for everyone to see.
  Then-Senator Barack Obama should have known about those deals. After 
all, he served as a lawyer for Project Vote, Project Vote being an 
affiliate for ACORN, and ACORN was the organization pushing for all the 
relaxed lending standards that led to all of the toxic mortgages with 
the subprime loans that led to the mortgage-backed securities that were 
bad, that were starting to fail. And he was also a part of that effort 
suing, suing and threatening to sue so that banks and financial 
companies would relax their standards and make loans to people with no 
income, no assets, no jobs. The President had that in his background.
  After that, he decided when he became President to deal with the 
financial crisis. Rather than tightening up those lending standards, he 
wanted to spend $1 trillion. And he came here and he told all of us in 
the United States Congress we had to spend $1 trillion, because if we 
wouldn't, unemployment could go as high as 9 percent or 8 percent. I 
think he said it could go as high as 8 percent.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. 8.5 is the number I remember.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. 8.5 percent, it could go that high. So that is what 
the $1 trillion was supposed to do.
  The $1 trillion was allocated. We saw unemployment soar above 8 
percent, soar above 8.5, and now Americans are sitting at about a 
permanent level of near 10 percent. The White House came out and said, 
Get used to it. This is our new normal. We are looking at these 
elevated levels of high unemployment.
  Well, America isn't used to this, Mr. Speaker. American people don't 
want to be used to these elevated levels of unemployment. They actually 
like to work, and they actually like high prosperity.
  Also, when President Obama was a Senator, he wanted to devote our 
entire U.S. budget--he wanted to devote 1 percent or 1.5 percent of our 
U.S. budget to redistribute wealth to the rest of the world. Knowing 
that our country was already trillions of dollars in debt, his goal was 
to have us, every year, devote at least 1 percent of the U.S. budget to 
redistribute the wealth. We should have known where President Obama was 
going with this. We can't say that we weren't warned.
  Next, the President offered cap-and-tax or cap-and-trade. That is the 
government takeover of the energy industry. In other words, the 
government would take control of 8 percent of the private economy.
  After that, he was proposing amnesty for illegal aliens, saying that 
that was something he wanted to do, but the people were pushing back.
  So what did we see happen? We saw 30 percent of the private economy 
taken over by the Federal Government. In fact, Senator Obama wasn't 
even sworn in yet as President of the United States, and he was already 
pushing President Bush, You have to give me $17 billion, $19 billion 
for the automobile task force, because, guess what, GM and Chrysler, 
they might go bankrupt if we don't get $17 billion to $19 billion. We 
have got to prop these businesses up, or they are going to go bankrupt.
  President Bush, he was going out the door, President Obama was going 
in, so he gave that money to President Obama to create the automobile 
task force.
  What did we get out of that deal? We got Chrysler bankrupt. We saw 
the bondholders shafted, losing their equity interest. We saw the UAW 
come in and scoop up a big share of that company so that they got their 
retirement plans and their health insurance plans, not fully, but 
funded at the expense of the bondholders, and the United States 
Government now is a shareholder. The same with GM. It is Government 
Motors. We all know that story.
  And we also know the other thing the automobile task force did. They 
put 150,000 people out of work, with what? Pink slips to 3,400 mostly 
viable dealerships across the Nation.
  This is the level of economics that we were treated to just in the 
very first months of the Obama administration.
  After all of that groundwork was laid, after banks were taken over, 
AIG, the largest insurance company, Freddie and Fannie, the secondary 
mortgage market, which today the Federal Government owns over 50 
percent of all of America's mortgages. That, the student loan industry, 
Chrysler, GM, 30 percent.
  What did President Obama propose? Not to lower costs in health care, 
as

[[Page 3998]]

my colleague Steve King has suggested, by allowing people to buy across 
State lines. No. His suggestion was let's have the Federal Government 
take over 18 percent more of the private economy and put it under 
government's control. That is the solution.
  And so here we are, on a Friday night. America has spoken. Three out 
of four Americans have weighed in and said, We don't want any part of 
the Federal Government taking over our private health care system. We 
don't want it.
  The doctors have said that. Investors Business Daily, 45 percent of 
all doctors surveyed said they would leave the profession if the 
government takes over health care. New England Journal of Medicine this 
week, 35 percent of all doctors surveyed, We will leave the medical 
profession.
  But no, no, no. What does Speaker Pelosi want to do? What does 
President Obama want to do? Ram this bill through. Pass it, without 
even the courtesy of the Members of this body voting for the bill.
  My name, Michele Bachmann, will not be listed in the journal with a 
``yes'' or a ``no.'' Why? Because Speaker Pelosi, Mr. Speaker, wants to 
presume my vote. When she presumes my vote, Mr. Speaker, she has 
stripped the people of my district from their voice, because the people 
of my district made a choice, sent me here to vote on their behalf. 
And, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you with complete confidence, the 
overwhelming number of people in Minnesota's Sixth Congressional 
District want nothing to do with this government takeover of health 
care. They want nothing to do with it, because the more they have 
heard, the more fearful they become.
  So let's call it for what it is, Mr. Speaker. This is pretty clear. 
This administration and this Congress wants to have the Federal 
Government take over private industry, because if they win on Sunday, 
the American people lose. If they win, they will have taken over, 
effectively, one half of the American economy from September of 2008 
until March 20, 2010. We are talking less than 2 years, something like 
18 months time. This is stunning. This is a coup, if you will, an 
economic coup of our free market system, half of it being taken over.
  Mr. Speaker, someone came in, it almost feels like, in the middle of 
the night and has stolen away America's future and America's promise. 
That is why we are here tonight. There is no exit strategy out of this.
  And then we learned that the IRS will be the enforcement agency for 
this new health care system. It will be up to the IRS to verify, on a 
monthly basis, that 300 million Americans have purchased insurance that 
is acceptable, not to the Americans, acceptable to government. Because 
every American, Mr. Speaker, all 300 million Americans are forced to 
purchase a product or a service that they may not want. But government 
wants them to have it, so they are forced to buy it.
  So who is the enforcer? Well, it is the IRS. Doesn't that make 
everyone feel great? About 16,500 new IRS employees are about to be 
employed at a cost of $10 billion, because they have got to breathe 
down the neck of every American every month to make sure that they have 
applied with government-approved health insurance. And, in order to do 
that, they have got to pry into private business. They have got to go 
into the books of every private business every month, find out how many 
employees that private business has, what the wages are that business 
is paying. All that information with the IRS, that is confidential 
taxpayer information, and now they will be sharing that with the 
Department of Health and Human Services.
  And if the IRS, Mr. Speaker, discovers that an American has failed to 
purchase government-approved insurance, well, then that American is 
subject to a fine of $2,250 or 2 percent of their income. The same with 
the businesses. The businesses also will be subject to fines, 
penalties, interest.
  I don't remember, Mr. Speaker, on the President's team and the 
Cabinet, all of the people that had tax problems who weren't paying 
taxes who repaid their taxes, I don't recall too many of them paying 
taxes, penalties, and interest. They just paid their tax liability.
  But that is not good for the American people. They don't get that 
sweetheart deal. No, no, no, Mr. Speaker. The American people and 
American private industry, they are paying the interest and the 
penalties and the taxes.
  The IRS, Mr. Speaker, in this scenario, has now become the collection 
agency for the insurance companies. President Obama has been saying the 
Republicans are sold out to the insurance companies. Well, Mr. Speaker, 
now we know the truth. Behind those closed doors, President Obama 
struck a deal with these insurance companies so that every American is 
mandated to buy their product, and now the IRS is the collection agency 
and will be the enforcer and will send about one-half trillion dollars 
to the insurance companies.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentlelady read from the poster?
  Mrs. BACHMANN. And the poster says, as my colleague Steve King is 
pointing, ``Why does the Democrat bill subsidize health insurance 
companies?''
  Here is the strong arm of the IRS shaking money out of the average 
American taxpayer and sending that money straight in to the insurance 
companies, which, by the way, we know will be collapsing, because 
ultimately that was the purpose. One of our colleagues in this body 
even said as much himself. He said this is a temporary step, because 
what they want is government to own it all.
  Let's realize, Mr. Speaker, who are the hogs in this situation? Who 
are the pigs here? Who wants to soak up the people's money? It is the 
same culprit, Mr. Speaker. It is those who embrace Big Government. The 
big winner in the stimulus, the big winner in the TARP, the big winner 
in every bailout we have ever had, and the big winner in this health 
care bill is Big Government.
  And, as my colleague shows, the loser in all of this is the forgotten 
man of the American taxpayer, the American worker, the American boy and 
girl who may not grow up to realize their American Dream of a better 
life than their parents. The biggest loser again, Mr. Speaker, is the 
forgotten man of the senior citizen who will have to potentially go 
without with their Medicare funding.
  Well, not if we have anything to say about it, Mr. Speaker. Not if we 
have another breath in our body will this happen.
  And so we are here. We are here, because this is all we can do, to 
fight until our last breath to make sure that this monstrosity does not 
make it over the finish line.

                              {time}  2200

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlelady from 
Minnesota for this presentation tonight and for many more that have 
gone in the past and more that are in front of us before such time as 
we can put this monstrosity deep into a hole where it belongs for at 
least another generation. That's what happened when HillaryCare was 
brought forward, almost a generation ago, and that's what needs to 
happen here this weekend, Mr. Speaker.
  I recognize that my friend from Texas is here--from east Texas. An 
Aggie from Texas. He will make it clear to us if we don't make it 
clear, anyhow. Judge Gohmert from Texas, who has more to say about this 
health care monstrosity and this government takeover, I'd be happy to 
yield so much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert).
  Mr. GOHMERT. I thank you and I appreciate the insightful words from 
the gentleman from Iowa, the gentlelady from Minnesota. One of our 
friends commented earlier tonight that America is a Nation of 
entrepreneurs. Thank God, it used to be. Thank God, it could be again. 
But with the oppressiveness that the Federal Government has put on 
entrepreneurs and people who would do well and start businesses, they 
are making it next to impossible, because an entrepreneur needs 
capital. Normally, they have to borrow capital. This Federal Government 
is sucking

[[Page 3999]]

the capital out of the country and not leaving anything for 
entrepreneurs to borrow capital. So I hear people every day I'm back in 
the district saying, I can't get loans like I need to keep my business 
going. I sure can't add anybody on--not that I could right now. I'm 
hearing over and over they're just trying to hang on, hoping the health 
care gets defeated, the cap-and-trade bill gets defeated.
  You look at what is being done, just the atrociousness of the things 
that are in these bills. You look at what this bill effectively does. 
This monstrosity here, this is the Senate bill. It's not the House 
bill. And when you base a bill starting with a lie, that's not a good 
place to start. But on the front page of this Senate bill it starts 
with a lie. The Constitution, heaven forbid that anybody should refer 
back to it, the Constitution indicates that all revenue-generating 
bills must begin in the House. Well, the Senate didn't like the House 
bill. So they knew there was too much they wanted to do different in 
their bill.
  So what they did, they took--and it's on the front of the Senate 
bill. As it says: In the Senate of the United States, December 24, 
2009, as they did it on Christmas Eve. What a sad thing to do on 
Christmas Eve. Resolved, that the bill from the House of 
Representatives, H.R. 3590, entitled: An act to amend the Internal 
Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the 
case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees 
and for such other purposes, do pass with the following amendments. 
That's how this starts. That's how this atrocious health care bill that 
usurps, sucks the capital out of the country, it sucks the authority 
out of the States, it mandates oppressiveness upon people who would be 
entrepreneurs. And it starts with a lie. And now we're told we're going 
to have a rule.
  Normally, a rule, anyone can ask--well, if no one objects, then we do 
not read the bill. But if there's any objection, then they have to read 
the entire bill. The rule, as I understand it, deems that there can be 
no reading of the bill; that it's already been read. It is deeming that 
the bill has been read. Not only that, once the procedural rule of how 
many minutes for debate and those kind of things is passed, then the 
bill--they will be deeming the bill passed. It's atrocious.
  But I looked at this quote that I carry with me most of the time. I 
have a number of quotes that I carry in my suit pocket. And this one is 
from George Washington, when he said, Government is not reason. It is 
not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a 
fearful master.
  And so as we have looked at this, and I know my friends from Iowa and 
Minnesota remember President Obama going to the Caterpillar 
headquarters. Caterpillar is the world's largest construction machinery 
manufacturer--the world's largest construction machinery manufacturer. 
And it's in the news today that Caterpillar has sent a letter to the 
President, Speaker Pelosi, and other leaders, urging lawmakers to vote 
against the plan ``because of the substantial cost burdens it would 
place on our shareholders, employees, and retirees.''
  The article here, this is from Chicago Breaking Business. Boy, is 
that true, Chicago Breaking Business, and business is about to be broke 
here. This is a quote from the letter, We can ill afford cost increases 
that places us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors. It 
says, We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the 
cost concerns we have raised throughout the year. The Peoria-based 
company said these provisions would increase its insurance costs by at 
least 20 percent or more than a $100 million dollars just in the first 
year.
  This is just incredible the Federal Government would do this to our 
largest manufacturer of construction equipment. I mean they have done 
so much to drive our businesses overseas. ``Bye-bye jobs.'' This is 
another reason economists have told us that if this bill passes, signed 
into law on Sunday, 5 million jobs will be gone.
  The article notes that the company supports efforts to increase the 
quality and value of health care, but unfortunately, neither the 
current legislation in the House or Senate nor the President's proposal 
meets these goals. It's going to bankrupt this company. They're going 
to have to go overseas. All these wonderful American workers that are 
doing such a great job will see their jobs go overseas.
  And it brought me back to what my friends know, and I know my friend 
from Iowa and I have spent a great deal of time going back through the 
original Declaration of Independence. And if I could, just briefly, I 
would like to touch on a few things in that and see if instead of King 
George III, if this doesn't fit what the Federal Government is doing to 
the States and the people. And keep in mind the Ninth Amendment says, 
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be 
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. They did 
not intend for the Federal Government to have all this power. They knew 
that most power would be retained by the people. And the 10th Amendment 
says, The powers not delegated, specifically delegated to the United 
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are 
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
  With that in mind, remember the Declaration of Independence says 
governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from 
the consent of the governed. They point out that the history of the 
present King of Great Britain--in our case, the Federal Government--is 
a history of repeated injuries and usurpations. We see them every day 
in this body, usurpations of the States and the people's rights. But 
the Declaration says, All having in direct object the establishment of 
absolute tyranny over the States. To prove this, let facts be submitted 
to a candid world. And one of the things it said is about the King--
think about our Federal Government: He has forbidden his governors to 
pass laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in 
their operation until his assent should be obtained. And when so 
suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
  We have heard from nearly 40 States who say, You can't do this to us. 
You're usurping the powers reserved under the Constitution to the 
States and the people. You're taking those away. We're ready to file a 
lawsuit as soon as you pass this unholy bill come Sunday. Sunday, the 
Lord's day, we're going to pass an unholy bill like this, when the vast 
majority of the States, over two-thirds of the States, are saying this 
is wrong. You're usurping our power. You can't do this. It's what they 
said in the Declaration. Goodness. And the Declaration goes on, He has 
erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers 
to harass our people and eat out their substance. Well, how about that? 
A new article today that happened to be in the paper talking about just 
that very thing. Isn't it interesting?
  This is in the news today--yesterday, I'm sorry--from the Hill. It 
says, Assuming this bill becomes law, the Congressional Budget Office 
expects the IRS will need around $10 billion over the next 10 years and 
nearly 17,000 new employees to meet its new responsibilities under 
health reform or, as the Declaration of Independence called it, to 
harass our people and eat out of their substance. They're going to take 
tax dollars in order to create 17,000 new IRS agents to go out and 
harass the people and eat out of their substance.
  The Declaration goes on: He has combined with others to subject us to 
jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our 
laws, given his assent to their acts of portended legislation. We see 
that in things that this White House is proposing; that we're going to 
give Interpol, a foreign intelligence group, the same rights our own 
intelligence people have in this country. And another point. We're 
suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with 
power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
  It goes on: In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned 
for redress in the most humble terms. Our

[[Page 4000]]

repeated petitions have been answered by repeated injury. A prince 
whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant 
is unfit to be the ruler of free people. We have appealed to their 
native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties 
of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which would 
inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, 
have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. For support 
of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine 
providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, 
and our sacred honor.
  Man, the power in there. The power in that. And out from that, John 
Adams wrote this letter to Abigail. On July 4th he wrote her, and he 
said at the end, You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I'm 
not. I'm well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will 
cost us to maintain this Declaration and to support and defend these 
States, yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light 
and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and 
that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, which I trust in 
God.

                              {time}  2215

  Anyway, these are powerful things, and these are on our shoulders to 
protect the States and the people's rights and not to continue to usurp 
what was so graciously entrusted to us and to make sure the States had 
us protected. I thank my friend, and I yield back.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time from the gentleman from Texas, I 
appreciate the work that he puts into this and the research that gets 
done and the memory that it taps into. We reviewed this Declaration of 
Independence not that long ago, and we established--the three of us, 
actually, very intensively working on it along with a few others--the 
declaration of health care independence and produced a document that 
reflects many of the same values that are in the Declaration of 
Independence. And it lays out the rules of the road for going forward, 
a very reasonable thing to do. It anchored that philosophy of the 
declaration of health care independence, which I imagine is on all of 
our Web sites, Mr. Speaker, into these values into the declaration 
itself.
  I listened to this discussion, and what I get out of this is one 
thing: this national health care bill doesn't play in Peoria. I mean, 
Peoria where the national headquarters of Caterpillar are. The world's 
largest heavy equipment manufacturer has written a letter that says 
that their shareholders, their employees, and their retirees will be 
disadvantaged by this, that there will be a 20 percent increase in 
their premium costs, and the first year would cost them $100 million.
  And over the course of this bill where this Congress sets up the cost 
estimates and the budget in a 10-year period of time, that's $1 
billion. It's a $1 billion tax on a great American corporation, 
Caterpillar, based out of Peoria, Illinois, which has been viewed to be 
the center of America. If it doesn't play in Peoria, it doesn't play 
for America. Well, this bill doesn't play in Peoria, Mr. Speaker.
  Then one of the other components of this is the unconstitutionality 
of the legislation. We're virtually guaranteed that if a bill passes 
here Sunday or any other day, that there immediately will be lawsuits 
that will be filed as soon as it becomes law, if it should become law. 
And I believe that the President is sitting at the White House now, 
looking for a chance to sign something. But there would immediately be 
lawsuits because of the unconstitutionality of the bill. Congressman 
Gohmert's talked at length about the violation of the Ninth Amendment 
of the Constitution. And remember, the powers that are not vested in 
the Federal Government are reserved for the States or the people, 
respectively.
  There is no one that can point to the authority in the Constitution 
that would grant this Congress the authority to compel an American 
citizen to buy a product that's produced or approved by the Federal 
Government, every American for the very privilege of being an American, 
being compelled to buy a product that the Federal Government has 
designed and approved. That would be the first in the history of 
America. The Congressional Budget Office wrote about this back in 1994 
when HillaryCare was preparing to do the same thing.
  Here's the conundrum, Mr. Speaker. First they want to establish 
socialized medicine, so there is a long hard leftward push on this. But 
in order to solve the problem of preexisting conditions--people that 
can't buy insurance that can sick, and we have solutions for that that 
I'll not go into tonight because of the interest of time--they would 
argue that they will compel every insurance company to sell insurance 
policies to applicants without regard for their preexisting conditions. 
So someone could have a very expensive and serious cancer, have not 
ever had any health insurance, and walk into the health insurance 
company and say, Sell me insurance now. I have got a diagnosis that 
says it is going to cost me a few hundred thousand dollars. People 
won't buy insurance until they're sick if you prohibit insurance 
companies from considering preexisting conditions. That's just a fact.
  So the way they solve that problem of people refusing to buy 
insurance if you're going to compel insurance companies to issue is 
they compel every American to own a health insurance policy, and that's 
where we get into trouble. That's where the unconstitutionality of this 
comes up. That's why there's no precedent for the Federal Government 
producing or approving a product that requires every American to buy 
it. And as Mrs. Bachmann said so clearly, put the IRS in charge of 
doing the enforcement, and the IRS in charge of doing the collection, 
the IRS in charge of collecting the insurance premiums for the 
insurance companies and transferring that into the insurance 
companies--that's what will be going on with the Federal Government.
  So it's unconstitutional on two other grounds I can think of. And one 
of them would be a violation of the equal protection clause. The equal 
protection clause means that because we have people in different States 
that would be affected differently by it, if you live in Nebraska, 
you've got a different benefit than if you live in Iowa or Minnesota or 
Texas. And because of the Cornhusker kickback--and yes, they say 
they're going to fix that. It's in the bill. If anybody votes for a 
rule that deems the bill passed, they voted for Cornhusker kickbacks, 
they voted for the Louisiana purchase, they voted for the Florida Gator 
aid bill that exempts the senior citizens in Florida from the cuts in 
Medicare Advantage that will be brought against the senior citizens in 
Iowa and in the other States.
  And it sends money by backroom deals into clinics across this country 
at the insistence of Bernie Sanders, a self-evolved socialist from 
Vermont. Self-evolved. I didn't lay that label on him. He lays it on 
himself. So that's another place where it's unconstitutional, Mr. 
Speaker.
  And another way is a violation of the commerce clause. There are 
people that don't do business with health insurance companies. The 
Federal Government does not have the authority under the commerce 
clause to impose a health insurance policy on somebody that's not 
engaged in interstate commerce. And that could be a person that's born, 
doesn't do health care, and dies within a State, that doesn't cross 
State lines. There's no way you can argue they were involved in 
interstate commerce. So this massive stretch, it is unconstitutional.
  It does fund abortions, and it funds abortions in a number of ways. 
Congressman Gohmert has laid that out pretty clearly. Even though the 
Speaker has publicly said it doesn't fund abortion, it does. And when 
you look at Congressman Gohmert's argument and you track the legal 
language, you have to understand it starts out about $700 million a 
year for that subject and grows to about $1.5 billion a year. It's in 
the categories of the authorizations within the bill itself. And then 
it also funds abortions through the Federal health insurance exchange 
that just

[[Page 4001]]

says that there has to be a policy offered that doesn't cover them that 
someone could buy.
  A policy doesn't have to be something that meets their other needs. 
It would just be something to assuage the conscience of a single 
taxpayer. The other part of this could be a whole series of health 
insurance policies that do fund abortions under the Senate language.
  So when the President says he won't sign a bill that does fund 
abortion, that's just simply not true. And the liberals have been 
making the argument ever since 1973--ever since Roe v. Wade was decided 
by the Supreme Court and Doe v. Bolton, both on abortion issues--they 
have argued that the Federal Government has no business telling a woman 
what she can or can't do with her body, two generations of arguments 
saying that over and over again. The Federal Government has no business 
telling a woman what she can or can't do with her body. They argue 
about whose body it is, but that's been their argument, their statement 
since 1973.
  And now the same people, this side of the aisle, the liberals, the 
progressives, the Democrats in Congress are now arguing that the 
Federal Government has every business to tell everybody in America what 
they can or can't do with their bodies. That undermines their argument 
that they call pro-choice or else their pro-choice argument undermines 
their argument that we ought to have nationalized socialized medicine. 
They can't have that one both ways, Mr. Speaker. They have got to 
settle on one side or the other. I think they're both untenable 
arguments myself.
  Then the bill also funds illegals, and the President has said that he 
won't sign a bill that funds illegals. And the Speaker has said it 
doesn't fund illegals. I will tell you that I have been through this 
policy for 7-plus years. I know this policy. Two and a half years ago 
under the rewrite of SCHIP, the children's health insurance 
legislation, they changed the language for proof of citizenship to 
qualify for Medicaid. Prior to that, it required that an applicant 
would produce a birth certificate and a couple of supporting documents 
to show that they were an American citizen or their naturalization 
papers and supporting documents.
  They lowered the standard to only require that an individual simply 
attest to a nine-digit Social Security number. Just attesting to a 
nine-digit Social Security number means that you don't have to speak 
English, you don't have to have anything except be able to write down 
nine numbers. Nobody checks it; they just qualify for the benefit. 
That's the case with Medicaid, and the Congressional Budget Office put 
out those numbers on those additional costs there. And here the 
Congressional Budget Office has now, through their calculations, shown 
that under the Senate version of the bill--the reason is because they 
lower the standard of proof. Even though it says, We're not going to 
fund illegals in the bill, they lower the standards of proof. CBO's 
numbers then--their calculations produce this number--6.1 illegals 
could qualify for taxpayer-funded health insurance benefits under the 
Senate version of the bill.
  So we have a bill that's designed to expand the dependency class in 
America in order to expand the political class on the left side of the 
aisle that funds abortions against the will of the American people and 
violates any principle we have here that American people of principles 
should not be compelled to fund abortions. And it also funds illegals.
  While expanding the dependency class, we have 38 States that have 
initiated legislation that has already been signed into law in Idaho by 
Governor Butch Otter, compelling his State attorney general to file a 
lawsuit in Federal court because of the unconstitutionality of this 
bill. They're already set up. The idea of facing almost 17,000 IRS 
agents to eat out our substance, to sit in our kitchens and go into our 
offices and look through our books and look through our health 
insurance policies to determine and verify if it's the proper policy, 
that's approved by Uncle Sam.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to kill this bill this weekend and have this 
rally at noon tomorrow. We'll have it on the west side of the Capitol.
  I yield back.

                          ____________________