[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5158-5160]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             HEALTH REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Pingree of Maine). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is always and ever an honor to get to 
speak in this body. It touches the soul when you think about the 
freedoms that have been afforded to people in so many places that have 
been discussed right here on this floor.
  Apparently, this is the last that we will be addressing the House 
before we break for what's considered the Easter break, and so it's 
time to pause for a moment and think about what we have been doing. We 
just passed the most incredible bill, not in a good way, that most 
Americans, a much bigger majority of Americans than voted for President 
Obama, had made clear that they did not want passed. We didn't pay 
attention to them. I say, ``we,'' collectively. I thought it was a big 
mistake, especially the more I read.
  For example, this body, our friends across the aisle, pride 
themselves, they constantly talk about helping the little guy. Well, 
how about the little guy who is working, working, trying to get by. He 
doesn't make all that much, he doesn't make all that much, but they 
make just under 133 percent of the poverty level.
  That means under the bill that has now been signed into law, that 
person, that person's family, are eligible for Medicaid, which means 
under this law that person, their family, will have to do one of two 
things, and this begins in about 3 or so years. They will either go on 
Medicare, which has got to be scary for them because, you know, 
Walgreens came out--I read somewhere that they were not going to be 
accepting Medicaid to pay for prescription drugs. Doctors all over the 
country have complained that Medicaid does not pay them for their own 
out-of-pocket expenses so they can no longer accept it. So doctors 
across the country are saying we are not going to take Medicaid.
  Under this bill that has been passed, signed into law, even with the 
so-called reconciliation, what a misnomer. That poor working man, 
woman, family, they either go on Medicaid, with more and more people 
refusing to accept it, or get nothing in the way of insurance.

                              {time}  2230

  If their employer is providing it, they cannot accept it. They have 
to say, I am not allowed, under this punitive so-called health care 
bill, to accept the wonderful insurance that you have been providing. 
The law now says I take Medicaid or I take nothing. There is no in 
between. So much for helping the working poor.
  And, heaven forbid, if you are working as hard as you can and you are 
not quite making enough to buy the level of health care that will now 
be mandated by the Federal Government. Well, we are going to help you. 
We are going to pop you with a fee or tax to teach you a lesson. That 
makes no sense. That just makes no sense.
  So you have 14 States, as I last heard, who have said, We are filing 
suit. We are going to do what we can to stop it. Twenty-five other 
States that are looking into it, looking at whether they should pass a 
bill in their State to nullify or stop it or say we are not going to 
take it, see what they should do.
  For the State of Texas, for example, we have been frugal. Our State 
leaders have done an admirable job. We have got, I think, $8 billion or 
$9 billion in reserve for a rainy day. You have States like California 
that are in the tank. You have other States that are just barely 
hanging in there. Well, I know it's Easter time, but it's time to say, 
Merry Christmas. You States, guess what you just got. You just got 
billions of dollars that you are going to have to pay in Medicaid in 
this bill.
  Now, what we have done, since the country is about broke and we are 
selling bonds, printing money to try to keep from announcing that we 
are broke, we have decided, You know what? To try to keep Ben Nelson 
from looking bad, we're just going to pay all of the State portion of 
the Medicaid expense for a while, for a few years, and then you are 
going to have it. And the States will not be prepared for it.
  You know, when Art Laffer was the economic adviser for President 
Reagan, he advised him when Reagan asked, How do we get out of double-
digit inflation? They had way over 10 percent inflation, double-digit 
inflation; they had over double-digit employment, worse than it is now, 
coming out of the Carter years. There was double-digit interest rates. 
My wife and I, our first home we bought just off of post there at Fort 
Benning when I was in the Army and we had a 12\3/4\ loan and some 
people were envious that we had such a low interest loan. Interest 
rates, some have told me they had 15 percent, 18 percent, just crazy. 
It was an economy that was a disaster.
  So Reagan asked Art Laffer, What do we do to come out of this 
terrible economic mess? And Laffer said, You have got to cut taxes by 
30 percent. That's how you stimulate the economy.
  Well, the Democratic-controlled Congress at that time refused to do 
an

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automatic 30 percent tax cut the first year, 1981, so they phased it 
in, 5 percent the first year, 10 percent the second year, 15 percent 
the third year.
  As time went on, Art Laffer became prophetic, because when President 
Reagan had called him, President Reagan said, Great news, Art. We've 
got the 30 percent tax cut, just what you asked. And he said, Well, 
that's great. And he said, Well, you ought to be ecstatic. This was 
your idea. He said, Well, I am happy. Fine.
  He says, Why aren't you happy? He said words to the effect that, 
Look, I understand you are going to phase this in over 3 years: a 5 
percent cut the first year, 10 percent cut the second year, 15 percent 
cut the third year. And President Reagan said, Well, that's right. The 
Democratic-controlled Congress said that's the only way they would do 
it. They weren't going to give us a 30 percent tax cut the first year.
  And Art said, Well, Mr. President, let me put it to you this way. If 
you are going to buy something from the store and you heard they had a 
5 percent sale this month, 10 percent sale next month, 15 percent sale 
the third month, when would you go buy it? And President Reagan 
responded after a pause, Are we going to have a bad couple of years, 
Art? He said, Exactly. And that's exactly what happened because they 
did not cut taxes 30 percent off the bat.
  But once the 30 percent taxes kicked in, the economy turned around in 
such a dramatic and short period of time that President Reagan was 
elected to a second term, when in 1982 people didn't think that was 
going to be happening; but it did because he cut taxes.
  Well, let's look at what the economic forecast is for the United 
States. We know that, come January of next year, we are going to have 
the biggest tax increase in the history of the country. The biggest tax 
increase in the history of the country.
  Now, we know that when the Republicans had the majority, they didn't 
have 60 votes in the Senate, and so they were pushing and pushing 
trying to get the tax cuts to be permanent. But they didn't have the 60 
votes in the Senate. The only way they could get it passed because of 
the Democratic obstruction was to agree to have the tax cuts go away at 
the end of 2010.
  I wasn't here. It was a year or so before I got here, but I 
personally believe they should have pushed, they should have gotten it 
done, they should have made sure those tax cuts were permanent so that 
nobody could come in here and have what we are going to have the end of 
this year, the biggest tax increase in the whole American history 
without even having a vote, just letting the tax cuts expire.
  Well, since we know capital gains rates are going to shoot up, we 
know the marginal rates income tax are going to shoot up, we know that 
the estate tax is going to go from zero, shoot back up to 55 percent. 
Talk about socialist.
  The estate tax, the death tax says: you've accumulated too much and 
you don't deserve it, so we are going to give you a little exemption 
and then we are going to take over half of everything else you have 
accumulated through the blood, sweat, and tears of you and your family.
  That just doesn't seem right. It seems like some law that you would 
find in the old Soviet Union before they went broke because it does so 
much to discourage a family business or a family farm. But that's what 
is coming.
  And now, on top of that, we have just had, as somebody said, the 
mother of all unfunded mandates on the States. Texas has done so well; 
it is going to have to come up with $25 billion under this bill over 
the next 10 years. So much for the money they had saved and tried to 
make sure was there for the rainy day. Here came a flood, and not from 
nature, not from nature's God, but from the hand of the President 
signing a bill that was rammed through against the will of the American 
people, through this House and through the body at the end of the Hall. 
Can you think of a worse time to increase taxes?
  You know, we heard from Caterpillar this week; $100 million it's 
going to cost them just this year.
  You wonder, well, why did they make that announcement? If you are a 
corporation and you know there is bad news coming, then you have got to 
get it out there; otherwise, somebody may come after you and say you 
artificially inflated your stock prices by keeping bad news secret. So 
we find out. I believe we saw John Deere may lose $150 million this 
year. I mean, devastating these businesses.
  Well, perhaps there are people here in this body or down the Hall 
that thought Caterpillar, John Deere, these other companies just had 
too many employees, so they said it's time to go ahead and lay more 
people off. Let's put them on unemployment, let's extend unemployment, 
let's have more and more people without a job. Because that is what has 
happened.
  I know I am being sarcastic. I know people across the aisle and down 
the Hall do not want to see more people lose their jobs. I understand 
that. But that is the effect of what is happening by the senseless 
stuff we are passing the last week, the last two weeks. And now we are 
going to take up cap-and-trade. As our friend, former Chairman Dingell, 
had said, It's not just a tax, it's a big tax. That's exactly what cap-
and-trade is.
  It's heartbreaking. People are going to lose their jobs right here 
around Easter time because of the senseless, hardheaded acts of this 
body and the one down the Hall: we don't care if the country doesn't 
want it; we don't care that the States can't afford it. We don't care 
that you couldn't pass the same bill right now through the Senate or 
through the House the way it was sent down here. We don't care. We are 
just going to pass it.

                              {time}  2240

  We're just going to pass it. It's unbelievable. Just unbelievable. We 
had friends here who thought that the Executive order would prevent and 
stabilize things so that you couldn't pry Federal money from people's 
hands; take their money, make it Federal money, and pay for abortions. 
But there are at least three ways under this bill that that's going to 
happen. Terribly unfortunate.
  It was amazing, because it was as if someone was trying to trick 
America so you couldn't tell what was going to happen with abortion. 
Because I don't have the bill with me. I've got my copy back there in 
the cloakroom, but I've been through it. And you look, and at page 119, 
subparagraph B(i) it says, basically, you can't fund abortion with 
Federal tax dollars. If you had done a word search for ``abortion,'' 
you would not see page 122 come up, just three pages over. It wouldn't 
come up because ``abortion'' is not in that paragraph.
  What it says is that people are required to make available health 
insurance policies that will cover abortions, but it doesn't say 
abortions. It says cover what is mentioned in B(i), that subparagraph, 
which is abortion. So you won't find it if you're doing a word search 
for ``abortion.'' Sure enough, that's what's required.
  And then--I'm sure it's just out of ignorance--people didn't know 
what the Hyde amendment really did. It prevented appropriations through 
the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill from being used 
for abortion. But some people were bound to know. They're just bound to 
know. Somebody's staff. Somebody. Surely it just can't be me. There are 
bound to have been people who knew that this bill appropriated money. 
That money was appropriated, therefore, outside the Labor and HHS 
appropriations bill. Therefore, the Hyde amendment did not apply to it.
  For those of us that know something about Executive orders, we know 
that an Executive order cannot be used--for one thing, you can't use to 
legislate. Another thing, you cannot use an Executive order to impound 
money that's appropriated in a bill that the House and Senate had 
passed. Number three, you can't use it for a line item veto to strike 
something you don't like. There's money in the bill for community 
health centers.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will suspend.

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