[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9315-9319]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             WHAT HAVE THE DEMOCRATS DONE WHILE IN CHARGE?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as I watch this regulation that's 
coming through in the financial services component of this, it's a 
regulation that sets up Tim Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, to 
decide which businesses are too big to be allowed to fail, which 
businesses would be deemed to fail, and all he needs is the agreement 
of the FDIC and the agreement of the Chairman of the Fed. Those things 
concern me a great deal. But this conversation could go almost in any 
direction, Mr. Speaker, because I am prepared to yield to my good 
friend, the gentleman and the judge from Texas, Louie Gohmert.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I appreciate my friend for yielding, but I want to 
follow up on that very point.
  We're told that there is going to be a financial ``reform'' bill that 
sounds more like a financial ``deform'' bill. All these reforms end up 
being deformities. But this in particular, financial reform? To get us 
out of the mess that had been building through the nineties and through 
this past decade, for the last 20 years?
  And nonetheless, as I understand, in this bill we're going to take 
up, it still has the Systemic Risk Council that is going to pick the 
winners and losers in America. That is so grossly un-American; it has 
no place in our law coming out of this body. That's the kind of thing 
that the Revolution was started over, that some King was going to get 
to tell them who would be the business that would stand and who would 
fall, because the Americans here wanted to be able to let the market 
decide that.
  Now, one thing we've seen, and it has been accentuated, is you do 
need a government that will ensure that people play fairly and play 
right. We saw that down on the coast as President Obama expressed that 
we have gotten a relationship too cozy between his administration and 
the Big Oil companies. Now we've heard people say on television that 
Republicans took contributions, Democrats take contributions; but it 
was the Department of the Interior in 1998 and 1999, some of the 
Clinton administration people, that pulled the language from the 
offshore leases that would allow the oil companies, ultimately, to make 
millions and millions and millions at the expense of the government and 
the taxpayer getting full value for the leases for those offshore oil 
and gas developments.
  When we had the Inspector General in front of us in the Natural 
Resources hearing a couple years ago, I asked why he had not talked to 
the couple of people that the Inspector General said were apparently 
responsible for that language being pulled out of the leases that hurt 
the revenue of the government and helped the massive oil companies at 
the time. He said, Well, they've left government service; we can't talk 
to them. Well, certainly you can at least try to talk to them, but the 
Inspector General indicated that they left government service.

                              {time}  2120

  Well, after I'd heard the President announce that we had to end this 
cozy relationship between people in his administration and the big oil 
company, I wondered: Whatever happened to those two people?
  Well, it turns out one of the people with whom, apparently, the 
inspector general did not talk but felt probably had the best 
information on why that language was left out--when she was not working 
for the government, she went and worked for a company called British 
Petroleum. Perhaps my friend has heard of British Petroleum. In fact, 
after the inspector general said he couldn't talk to her about why that 
language was pulled--the language that helped the oil companies so much 
during 1998 and 1999--and why she would pull language that hurt our 
government, it turns out she has now returned to government service. In 
fact, she did last summer. This administration hired her to be the 
Deputy Assistant Secretary of MMS, the Minerals Management Service, 
which is the agency of this administration that is supposed to ensure 
that blowout preventers work properly.
  Well, we've got people here in the House who had asked for the 
results of the tests that were done by MMS within 2 weeks of the 
blowout preventer's failing. Apparently, the information has come back 
from this administration's MMS: We are not providing that information 
to you, maybe to a Democratic chairman of the committee but not to you 
guys.
  You would think that this would be public information, that MMS would 
want to be as transparent as they're demanding the CIA be, but 
apparently, they're not willing to be as transparent as they want the 
CIA to be. They're more in the nature of obscurity like the Federal 
Reserve continues to try to be and is. So they won't release the 
information of how badly bungled the tests were. You have to figure 
they didn't go well or they would have released that information to 
show that they were exonerated, that they did proper tests.
  In fact, as a trial judge back in my days in the courtroom, 
oftentimes, one side would produce evidence to show that the fact that 
there is no evidence indicates a fact. I think here the fact that they 
won't produce those test results indicates that the MMS of this 
administration is too cozy with British Petroleum because of the 
interactive business that has gone on here. It must not have gone well.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Certainly, I'll yield to my friend.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Just remind me. I'm standing here thinking we're 
drawing a rational conclusion that the Minerals Management Service 
would not release the information that showed the results of the 
testing of the blowout preventer.
  Mr. GOHMERT. If they had even done the testing, actually, yes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. If they'd done the testing.
  There are reports out there that there is testing that had failed 
some 10 days or so before the well, itself, had failed. Now, I don't 
know if that's true or not. I don't want to start a rumor.
  Mr. GOHMERT. They won't release the records.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. But are we drawing a rational conclusion here that 
we could have a government that we could draw conclusions from based 
upon their response or lack of response and not the answer to the 
question?
  I would yield.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, yes, it would certainly appear that that's exactly 
right. If the MMS of this administration will not produce the records 
to show exactly what testing was done and exactly what the results 
were, which should be public record for heaven's sake--they're public 
waters controlled by our government--then you've got to pretty well 
figure it would not make this administration look very good.
  I yield.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. The gentleman from Texas, we've got an open 
government. This is the most open, the most honest government in 
history, and we are drawing conclusions based upon not getting an 
answer as opposed to the answer that we might get if they would just 
simply give us the information. I mean, this really saddens my heart to 
hear this. I'm not that surprised, but it saddens my heart, Mr. 
Gohmert.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, that also brings us back to this problem with the

[[Page 9316]]

Federal Reserve and with the Secretary of the Treasury. Yes, we had 
some people saying we've got to confirm Timothy Geithner as the 
Secretary of the Treasury because he worked with Paulson in the early 
days of TARP. He knows the plan. Well, that tells me he should never 
have been confirmed if he'd worked with Paulson on the original plan, 
because it was a disaster, and it should never have been allowed to 
have happened as it did; but now we've got these guys--the head of the 
Federal Reserve and the head of the Treasury--who are going to pick the 
winners and losers in the country.
  I yield.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Would we choose some mainline IV drug users off the 
streets to go in and take IVs in hospitals because they happen to have 
had the kind of experience that they're good at even though it's 
illegal?
  If somebody were proficient in how he operated Turbo Tax and were 
able to avoid paying his taxes, would that mean he'd be a good person 
to have as the head of the IRS so that he could probably set up a 
system to prevent other people from avoiding paying their taxes?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, that's an interesting issue.
  You know, obviously, Secretary Geithner had great problems complying 
with his certification 4 years in a row. He swore that he would pay the 
tax that was shown on the form, and he certified, if they would just 
pay him that money, he would pay it. Then he didn't pay it.
  In answer to the question, I guess an analogy comes to mind, which is 
the FBI. For example, there was a movie about a gentleman who was so 
good at forging and acting as someone else, and he could create a 
forged document out of anything. Well, the FBI ended up hiring him 
because he was so good at forging checks and making fraudulent checks. 
The FBI hired him because he knew more about ways to cheat other people 
and to cheat the government. They felt like he could be an immense 
help, and apparently he was. As I understand, he has helped prepare 
more secure documents and more secure institutions because he was so 
good at cheating those very institutions and the government.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Who best to catch tax cheats.
  Mr. GOHMERT. So perhaps that was the thinking, that this is somebody 
who would be an expert in not paying taxes. Maybe that's who we want in 
charge of the tax entity, the IRS. It's an interesting point.
  It still cuts to my core to think that the land of the free and the 
home of the brave is being converted into a land of the unfree where 
liberties are taken away because people have decided that the Secretary 
of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Chairman get to pick and choose 
what entities or what banks get to stand when the smoke clears.
  I mean, what happened to competition? Why not let people play and 
play fairly and just enforce fair rules?
  That's what is needed here. We don't need the Federal Government 
saying what companies they're going to support and will never let fail, 
because as soon as the Federal Government says they're not going to 
ever let this bank or this company fail, then that's going to be the 
last one standing, because it knows it can operate in the red and that 
its competition cannot do that. At the end of the day, that government-
supported entity or bank will end up being the one left.
  That is outrageous. It is un-American. Anybody who would stand for 
that proposition that we're not going to let these companies compete 
fairly, that we're going to come in and pick the winners and losers, 
needs to start wearing a name tag that reads, ``King George III 
wannabe.''
  I want to pick the winners and losers. I want to tell you who 
prevails and who doesn't. I will tell you who ends up getting to be the 
dominant force in America instead of letting people live in freedom and 
in liberty and letting them pursue happiness and pursue opportunity. 
The Constitution never guaranteed equality of outcome. It guaranteed 
equality of opportunity, and that's what ought to be done.
  Anybody who says they support a systemic risk council that gets to 
pick the winners and losers--these are too big to fail, and we can't 
let them fail--are enemies of this country as it was founded.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, in reclaiming my time then, I have to pose 
the question:
  If you're in business, if you're an investment banker, for example, 
if you have a large credit operation going on and if you've watched the 
Barney Frank bill and the Chris Dodd bill and now your knees are 
knocking on what might be going on in a future conference committee 
that's going to produce a bill that likely spills out over here in the 
House for passage, that's sent over to the Senate and rammed through 
there and that's put on the President's desk, we know the President 
will sign the bill.

                              {time}  2130

  But what is your business model? Let's just say you are providing 
credit transactions, Mr. Speaker, to a large portion of America, 
whether it is credit cards or whether it is the toxic assets of 
mortgage-backed securities, the subprime loans that might be out there. 
Whatever that might be.
  Now, if you are sitting there with billions of dollars in those kind 
of assets and you are making your profit off of those margins of those 
assets going through, I am going to suggest that if you don't already 
have a lobbyist, you had better hire a bunch of them. Bring them into 
this Congress and start to convince people like chairman of the 
Financial Services Committee Barney Frank, a majority of the members on 
that committee and others, perhaps through the Ways and Means 
Committee, start to work your angle. Because your business model, Mr. 
Speaker, is no longer the business model of providing the most 
competitive, the most service-oriented, the most customer-focused 
service that there is.
  Your business model is do what you have to do out here on the streets 
in the business world in America, treat customers fine, that is good, 
come here into Washington and get that playing field not leveled, but 
tipped in your favor, because you can't do business without, so that 
you have those kind of chips when the time comes that the regulators 
would come in and take a look at your balance sheet and determine, 
well, you weren't quite big enough to be allowed to fail, so we are 
going to shove you into receivership and we will chop you up and deal 
you out to our preferred companies.
  I know the model, I know the pattern, even though it is done in a 
pretty good fashion with the FDIC when a bank has to go under. We have 
had too many of them go under. In the farm crisis years in the eighties 
we had 3,000 banks that went under, and those banks were split up 
sometimes and dealt out and sold to other investors that had a better 
track record with managing banks.
  All right. Well, that looks good and it works well in the micro 
version. But when you get into the macro version of big business and 
you have Tim Geithner as the Secretary of the Treasury making the 
decision on a business that is too big to be allowed to fail, and 
calling in Sheila Bair and calling in Ben Bernanke and saying, well, 
don't you agree? They are too big to be allowed to fail, so let's go 
prop these people up. And, by the way, what would help is if we go in 
and shove this company into receivership and we deal the assets of that 
company over into the company that is too big to fail.
  You pick the winners and you pick the losers out of government. And 
who wins? The people that pay the lobbyists. The people that have paid 
for the most political influence. Government cannot make rational 
decisions on business. They make political decisions on business.
  Peter Wallison spoke today on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the 
American Enterprise Institute scholar, one of the brightest minds we 
have on free enterprise economics in America, a very solid man. Many 
times I have listened to him illuminate the issue for me in a way that 
helps me understand it even better.
  He spoke today about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his sense is 
that

[[Page 9317]]

they aren't yet nationalized, that they are still quasi-government. My 
position is they are nationalized, because the Federal Government calls 
all their shots, and we have got roughly $50 billion each dumped into 
either one of them and roughly another $30 billion rolled on top of 
that $100 billion. So we are around the $130 billion range.
  Peter thinks that there is not $360 billion, but $400 billion in 
losses that will have to be swallowed up by the American taxpayers. And 
we knew and we know now that we were looking at $5.5 trillion in 
contingent liabilities that the Federal taxpayers would have to swallow 
if Fannie and Freddie were flushed down completely the way the markets 
might drive them.
  Concluding my statement and then yielding, that was an example, 
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are an example of how government can't set 
values, neither can they evaluate risk, because they are doing 
political calculations based on political pressure, not economical 
calculations based upon the risk of success and failure.
  I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I was just asking if the gentleman would yield for a 
question, if he would.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would.
  Mr. GOHMERT. With regard to the financial deform package that 
apparently is going to be coming to the House, is the gentleman aware 
of whether or not these two entities, Fannie and Freddie, that kicked 
us into the spiral downward in the fall of '08, whether they are 
included in this reform package? Is there any reform of these two 
entities that nearly brought our economic house of cards down?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, in scouring the financial 
reform package and the Barney Frank bill or the Chris Dodd bill and 
setting up the word search and chasing it through there, Mr. Speaker, I 
don't find anything in either one of those bills that addresses the 
necessary reform for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They are completely 
insulated.
  I recall a debate here on the floor of the House on October 26, 2005, 
that the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Frank, was 
very much engaged in. He came to the floor to vigorously oppose an 
amendment that was offered by Mr. Leach of Iowa that would have 
established higher levels of collateralization for Fannie Mae and 
Freddie Mac, higher standards for underwriting in the secondary market, 
and higher standards for capitalization for Fannie and Freddie.
  The vigorous opposition of Mr. Frank flowed out that day. And the 
gentleman from Texas remembers the exchange that took place on the 
Thursday before Easter in 2009 here on this floor. The gentleman from 
Texas was there, the gentleman from Massachusetts was there, and I 
think me up there somewhere. Because we talked about what had happened 
with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
  In that debate on October 26, 2005, the gentleman from Massachusetts, 
Mr. Frank said, If you are going to invest in shares of Fannie and 
Freddie, don't do so believing that he would ever vote to bail out 
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because he would never do that. He would 
let them go down instead. That is the core and the essence of the 
statement made by the gentleman from Massachusetts, who now is the 
chairman of the Financial Services Committee.
  Well, we know what has happened. Fannie and Freddie have been bailed 
out. And on that day, the gentleman from Massachusetts said that he 
wasn't biased in favor of or against Fannie or Freddie because the man 
whom he had had an intimate relationship with was not a senior 
executive. It is in the Congressional Record. I don't pull this out of 
thin air. I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that you check the Record. For me, 
that is an astonishing confession. To draw a fine line between the 
reason for bias and not bias is because this individual was not a 
senior, but more apparently a junior executive for Fannie Mae.
  So that is a little too intimate for me, Mr. Speaker. I don't choose 
to go there any further, except to point out that there are a lot of 
things going on in this United States Government that are not what 
meets the eye. There are undercurrents here that threaten to swallow up 
the United States of America. There is a driven philosophy on this side 
of the aisle that wants to swallow up free enterprise capitalism, that 
abhors the words of capitalism.
  There is a driven philosophy that is reflected by 77 members of the 
Progressive Caucus who come to this floor with their blue charts and 
say come visit our Web site. Well, not that long ago, a few years ago, 
the progressives' Web site was hosted by, managed by and taken care of 
by the socialists in America. But when they took a little bit of heat, 
they decided they would manage their own Web site so they didn't have 
to take the criticism. So the socialists ran the progressives' Web 
site.
  Now, dsausa.org, that is the socialist Web site, it stands for 
Democratic Socialists of America, dsausa.org. Mr. Speaker, you should 
go visit that Web site and understand who your colleagues are. Seventy-
seven of them are self-professed progressives.
  The progressives, according to the socialist Web site, are their 
legislative arm. They write that they are not Communists; they are 
socialists. That is a step above a Communist. They don't want to 
nationalize everything, they just want to nationalize the Fortune 500 
companies in America. And they have got a big start on it.
  They don't run candidates on the banner or under the political party 
called the socialists, because there is a stigma attached to being a 
socialist in America. So what do they do, Mr. Speaker? They push the 
candidates that are self-professed progressives.
  Progressives are not distinct from socialists. They are one and the 
same. They are just wearing a little bit different-colored jersey. And 
they are the people here who have driven the idea that we should 
nationalize the Fortune 500 companies, nationalize the oil refinery 
industry. Mr. Hinchey in New York, take over the oil industry. Maxine 
Waters from Los Angeles, operate these Fortune 500 companies, and I 
quote, ``for the benefit of the people affected by them.'' That is the 
unions.
  The Speaker is a member. The Speaker advocated and said that she 
would not give, in the case of the car companies, a bargaining 
advantage of the auto makers over that of the unions. Right off of the 
Web page of the socialists, and she followed through on it.

                              {time}  2140

  And today, 17\1/2\ percent of General Motors is owned by the unions, 
without a cash outlay, without a concession of any kind. The President 
of the United States, who voted to the left of self-professed Senator 
Bernie Sanders, crammed that down the throats of the investors, the 
secured investors in General Motors; and now we have the unions owning 
17\1/2\ percent, the Federal Government owning 61 percent, and the 
Canadian Government owning 12\1/2\ percent of General Motors, exactly 
off of the playbook of the socialist Web site.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people need to go visit the Web site. They 
need to understand the playbook is written. It's being carried out by 
the progressives in this Congress; 77 of them are the core driving 
force here. When you add to that the Congressional Black Caucus, the 
Hispanic Caucus, a whole lot of these people that are self-segregating 
caucuses, instead of integrated caucuses, you understand who's running 
America today, Mr. Speaker.
  I'd yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, if we go back to the day that the Wall Street 
bailout passed, that first week in October of 2008, I made the 
statement that when the Federal Government buys private assets and 
holds them in order to try to make money, or the Federal Government 
decides it's going to start trying to make money for the taxpayer, it's 
called socialism. And I was belittled by colleagues that serve here in 
this body for saying that it was socialist. One person even said, well, 
I only know three Socialists in America, and they're all against the 
Wall Street bailout.

[[Page 9318]]

  Well, I was pretty depressed and devastated when the Wall Street 
bailout passed. The next morning, Saturday morning, I was watching Neil 
Cavuto, and he had the Presidential nominee of the Socialist Party, and 
the Socialist candidate for President being interviewed by Neil Cavuto 
was asked, basically, what's the deal? I thought you guys were against 
the TARP bailout, the Wall Street bailout? And now this morning you're 
saying it was a good thing. And in essence, the Presidential nominee of 
the Socialist Party said, well, yes, they were against the TARP, Wall 
Street bailout.
  In essence, they didn't feel like the government should pay anything 
to take over the assets they were taking over. But once it passed and 
was signed into law, they realized this is probably the greatest day 
for socialists in American history because the Federal Government has 
begun the takeover, in a substantial way, of private assets.
  And of course he went on to say now that they've made this wonderful 
great step of taking over, socializing, nationalizing private assets 
from the financial sector, the government just needs to go ahead and 
finish taking over the rest of the financial sector because, he said, 
because we know then the government takeover of all of that area would 
not be done out of greed, and so they would do a much better job of 
spreading the wealth around the country, and that under the present 
system, greed rules the day, and that just that great, wonderful step 
of the TARP bailout, socializing America, as he saw it, just needed to 
be followed by the final step of completing the takeover of the 
financial sector.
  So the gentleman from Iowa is exactly right: according to the 
Presidential candidate of the Socialist Party in 2008, this is a 
socialist move to nationalize more and more of the assets, just as the 
Presidential nominee of the Socialists had hoped would happen.
  I yield back.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming and thanking the gentleman from Texas, 
I'd point out into the Record, Mr. Speaker, that some months ago the 
Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, came before a couple of 
committees, Financial Services and Ag. And the question that I posed to 
him, and he was bound to answer that question under oath, was I made 
the point that President Obama was elected at least in part because he 
had declared and effectively made an argument, however it might have 
been true or untrue, that President Bush had gone into Iraq without an 
exit strategy. So I made the point in my question that President Obama 
had engaged in, supported, and participated in the nationalization of 
about half of our private sector, and that is the three large 
investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, 
Chrysler, I didn't go on into the nationalization of our skin and 
everything inside it which is ObamaCare. But in that letter that he was 
obligated to answer under oath, 2 months later I got a response back.
  And I do want to give Secretary Geithner credit. There are some 
members of this Cabinet that simply don't answer my letters. They 
apparently don't think they're accountable to Members of Congress, and 
they don't think that we might decide to send them a little less money 
when it's time to do the budget. But Geithner did answer the letter. It 
was seven pages long. It took 2 months to get it back, and that's not a 
particular complaint of mine because I know that it's difficult to make 
the machinery of government work. But in those seven pages of answering 
the question, What is your exit strategy for taking over all of these 
huge chunks of the private sector, his answer was, well, it's not a 
written strategy, and he would know when the time was right, and he 
would execute that when the time is right. In other words, don't you be 
asking me. I'm the Secretary of the Treasury, and I don't need to 
answer to you or to anybody else.
  I'm going to submit this, Mr. Speaker: there is no plan; there is no 
exit strategy. The President of the United States is delighted to see 
these companies taken over by the Federal Government and managed by the 
Federal Government, as is the Secretary of the Treasury and most or all 
of the members of the United States Cabinet because it fits in with the 
Web site of the Democratic Socialists of America.
  You know, there used to be a little bit of resistance that came up 
over here on this side of the aisle when someone might imply that the 
President of the United States is a Socialist. But I've made the 
argument I think so effectively that they don't try to rebut me 
anymore; and if any of you choose to do so, I'd be happy to yield.
  But the President of the United States as a United States Senator 
voted to the left of Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is in the Senate 
still today, self-professed Socialist. And no one argues with him. But 
there were three Senators that voted to his left. Barack Obama was one 
of them, and he is the chief nationalizer.
  And when I saw the picture of Barack Obama standing next to Hugo 
Chavez, and he's doing the double grip glad hand handshake with that 
great nationalizer from Venezuela, the Marxist Hugo Chavez, I thought, 
you know what? Hugo Chavez is a piker when it comes to nationalizing. 
Barack Obama has way outdone him. And I don't think that he would have 
been a man that could have done that on his own. He surrounded himself 
with people that had for years worked toward this vision.
  Had I been assigned the task of writing the screenplay to turn 
America into a Socialist state, and if they would have even created for 
me a charismatic figure that matches that of the President and started 
me down the path of my imagination, and with 3 years to get ready to do 
it, could not have unfolded a scenario even close to what is reality 
today for the businesses that have been taken over by the Federal 
Government. Neither could have been anticipated some of the things that 
they're seeking to do now.
  But when you add these up, and you add up the takeover of three large 
investment banks, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, and when 
you see that AIG, for $180 billion swallowed up by the Federal 
Government, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for the tune of $130 
billion and perhaps another $400 billion piled on top of that, and 
still remaining at $5.5 trillion in contingent liabilities, and the 
takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, both of them now under the 
control or influence of the Federal Government, being managed now, 
exactly off the Socialist Web site, ``run for the benefit of the people 
affected by them,'' the unions, who made no concession whatsoever, 
except to concede future claims that they think are going to be paid 
anyway by ObamaCare.
  And the student loan program taken over completely, exactly within 
the mold of what happened when we had Federal flood insurance that came 
in to provide one more competitor for the private market back in 1963. 
Now there is no private market. Now the Federal Government runs it all.
  When the Federal Government stepped in to compete on student loans, 
people said, well, you know, we need to keep these people honest. 
Somebody's making money off these students. Now the Federal Government 
runs it all.
  And the President's idea was that he would set up one more insurance 
company to provide health insurance for Americans to compete against 
these insurance companies whom he demagogued relentlessly, for getting 
one more company, correct?

                              {time}  2150

  But there existed, up until ObamaCare passed, 1,300 health insurance 
companies in America, 1,300 companies that produced a variety of 
policies numbering to 100,000 policies. So who can imagine that one 
more company and a handful more policies was going to provide more 
options for people that would help with the competition and take some 
of the profits out of the industry? If these 1,300 companies competing 
against each other, Mr. Speaker, couldn't take the profit out of the 
industry, how could the Federal Government do that? Regulate and 
subsidize. And that's what governments do. They regulate and they 


[[Page 9319]]

subsidize their competition out of existence like they did on the flood 
insurance programs from 1963 and the student loan programs culminated 
this year.
  And now here we are, ObamaCare, the law of the land, the law of the 
land that has not just nationalized three large investment banks, and 
Fannie and Freddie, and General Motors and Chrysler, and the student 
loans, now they have nationalized our very bodies, the most sovereign 
thing that we have. The Federal Government has taken over the 
management of our skin and everything inside it and decided who will 
buy what policy and what the premium will be.
  And now they're trying to decide our diet. And now they have decided 
a mission across the country that the retailers need to cut 1.5 
trillion calories out of the products that are going to these kids. 
Because one-third of our kids are obese, they want to cut the calories 
down on a bag of Doritos. I didn't ask them how to do that. I think 
they just take a few chips out of the bag of Doritos.
  But I know what they do to a PowerBar. A 150-calorie PowerBar gets 
reduced to 90 calories because some fat kids will eat too many and they 
will get a little heavier. But I don't know what we do with those two-
thirds of the kids that are probably too skinny, that need more than 
the 150 calories that are in the PowerBar. And I don't know what we do 
with the fat kid that hoards three PowerBars now for 270 calories as 
opposed to maybe one at 150 calories. But we cannot put a one-size-
fits-all regulation in and reduce calories going into kids that need 
them for energy and need them for growth.
  More kids need more food rather than all kids need less food. And so 
those kids that are overweight, they need more exercise. And maybe they 
need to watch their diet a little bit, and that's education and that's 
parents, yes. But don't starve the hungry kids so that those that are 
eating too much have to work a little harder to keep getting too much.
  The super nanny state. The recycling of all of these components. Here 
the Speaker of the House in the House of Representatives has decreed 
that you can't go to the cafe over here and eat an omelet unless the 
eggs that are broken are from a free range hen. I think that the 
chicken that you eat is probably not free range because it's pretty 
tender and good. I didn't check on that, but I'd like to know. Doesn't 
taste like free range to me. But the eggs are from a free range hen.
  The paper, the napkins that we have around this Capitol, most of them 
are brown because they are recycled paper. And when I go look at my 
coffee filters, I wonder why they're running over, they're recycled 
paper. So we have these decrees that come down from on high. And the 
light bulbs themselves are regulated by the Speaker of the House. How 
much nanny state does this country need? And how much nanny state can 
we stand?
  I want American people making their own decisions. It's a free market 
economy. I want them to be able to exercise all of their constitutional 
rights. I want them to be able to own guns and defend themselves and 
hunt and target shoot and be in a position to defend us against 
tyranny. And if we do not, you know, there is something about 
constitutional rights and liberty. It's use it or lose it. If you don't 
use it, you lose it.
  You've got to use your freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press, 
second amendment rights. You've got to exercise those rights. We must 
do so. Mr. Speaker, we have to take this country back.
  I yield back the balance of my time and thank the gentleman from 
Texas for joining me tonight.

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