[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 1417-1420]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1630
       THE UPCOMING CONTINUING RESOLUTION AND REPEAL OF OBAMACARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of being 
recognized to address you here on the floor of the House. And there's 
been some dramatic changes that have taken place in this country and 
dramatic changes that have taken place in this Congress.
  I believe that as we move forward we're going to have some 
significant debates here on the floor. I look forward to the regular 
order component of this that's being initiated by Speaker Boehner, the 
process of using the committee process, the hearing process before 
committees, the markup before subcommittees, the markup before full 
committees, and bills going up to the Rules Committee after they've 
been approved by the actual standing committees, and that be the same 
bills that are passed by the committees that arrive at the Rules 
Committee where the Rules Committee can work their will and, wherever 
possible, provide for an open rule so that we can have the maximum 
amount of debate on the floor, so that Members can have their will 
debated and require an up-or-down vote, recorded vote on their issues.
  That's not something that has been going on in this Congress. It's 
diminished each of the last 4 years. And the more than two centuries 
old, not necessarily a rule, not necessarily something written into the 
rules, but the practice and the tradition of open rules on 
appropriations has been essential to allow Members to have their voice. 
And I am thankful that that's the new tone of this Congress. It's been 
a great frustration to me and many other Members, Democrats and 
Republicans alike.
  So we're here today, Mr. Speaker, on the cusp of a great big decision 
for this Congress; and as we make this transition from the era of 
Speaker Pelosi to the era of Speaker Boehner, and as he lays out the 
parameters of let the House work its will and let's go back to a 
regular order as it was devised and approved in the constitutional 
structure by our Founding Fathers, with all of those parameters in 
mind, we have coming up before us a continuing resolution. And the 
pressure points that we have, the opportunity to bring leverage has 
been envisioned as the Constitution sets up article I, II, and III of 
the Constitution. And here we are. Taxes and appropriations need to 
start here in the House of Representatives.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I'd just make this point, and it's an 
unequivocating point, and that is that unless the House approves of 
Federal appropriations, there shall be not a dime spent by the Federal 
Government otherwise. So whatever we do here, and we will bring a 
budget through and it will be a far more fiscally responsible budget 
than the nonbudgets that have been processed in previous Congresses and 
the extension by CR, not by the legitimate appropriations process, but 
there will be a budget and that budget will cut current spending 
significantly. And it probably won't be enough to satisfy me, but the 
budget process is another essential component of what we're doing here.
  And another component of it is to be able to legitimately fund the 
balance of this fiscal year. If we do nothing, if this Congress doesn't 
act, if the House of Representatives doesn't act, Mr. Speaker, then the 
Federal Government will go into an immediate and automatic shutdown at 
midnight on the night of March 4 of this year. That was the provision 
that was written into the continuing resolution last December, when 
Democrats and Republicans got together and compromised.
  If you remember, the Senate was going to pass that huge omnibus bill, 
all of the wish lists of the departing Senators and those that hadn't 
been up for election, the big spending bill that was just grotesque in 
its vision when you look through all the dollars they were going to 
spend in the Senate and send it over here.
  Thankfully, the American people rose up, jammed the switchboards in 
the Senate, and even those hanging on the fence decided that they would 
get a hold of their better responsible nature and they decided to pull 
down that huge omnibus spending bill. And so we ended up with a small 
continuing resolution, a continuing resolution that funded the 
government from, I don't remember the exact date of the expiration of 
the last one, but in December, whenever we passed this, through January 
and February and into the 4th of March.
  Now, some of us anticipated they would try to pass a CR for the end 
of the fiscal year, and that didn't happen. And a lot of us would have 
liked to have spent less money up to this point. But in that CR there 
isn't any funding that funds ObamaCare. Even though ObamaCare has 
passed and it's been signed into law and it's the law of the land, 
there's not funding going forward in the CR that we're operating the 
government on today. If that had been, the funding that was called for 
had been in the CR, there would have been about a billion dollars 
appropriated in the continuing resolution that passed last December and 
expires this March 4.
  That money was not put into the bill because they needed the votes of 
then the seated Republicans and some Democrats to vote for the 
continuing resolution. So the old Congress, the 111th Congress, didn't 
vote to willfully fund the implementation of ObamaCare.
  Now we're faced with the prospect of a continuing resolution coming 
before this Congress that's been announced to be five times greater 
than any appropriations bill ever voted on by this Congress before, and 
perhaps four times greater than any cuts that have been offered before. 
Well, that's because the whole string of 13-or-so appropriations bills 
gets packed up into one, and all that spending that's normally spread 
out over about 13, and perhaps a supplemental or two, packaged up into 
one bill with all that money in it. That's why it's that big.
  Now in it, well, I think it's unlikely that there will be a line item 
anywhere in it that will fund ObamaCare. But I don't see resistance 
either from someone bringing an amendment that would declare that none 
of the funds in this CR shall be used to implement or enforce 
ObamaCare. That's pretty close to the language that I have advocated 
for, oh, ever since last March when I first introduced the repeal 
legislation to ObamaCare.
  And by the way, Michele Bachmann and I were within 3 minutes of each 
other in exactly the same language to initiate the repeal of ObamaCare. 
We've worked together on this, with others, Connie Mack and others. 
Jerry Moran of the United States Senate today has been one of the 
leaders on repealing ObamaCare without hesitation and actively and 
aggressively. There are a lot of supporters across the board.
  But, Mr. Speaker, I want to lay out the strategy that I have planned 
here on the repeal of ObamaCare in sequence so that people that think 
chronologically like myself can put this into the right context, and 
that is this:
  I spent about a half a year of my life fighting the passage of 
ObamaCare. When it finally passed and was signed by the President, the 
night it passed here, I went out off the balcony and down into the lawn 
on the south lawn where there were thousands of people yet there 
pleading, keep your hands off my health care. And I said to them that 
night that we would start the repeal process the next day.
  Now, I went home exhausted, thinking I would sleep until I was rested 
up. That didn't last very long. I got up and wrote the request for the 
repeal, as did the Congresswoman from Minnesota, Mrs. Bachmann; and we 
submitted those repeal requests at the opening of business that same 
day because it was after midnight when ObamaCare passed.
  It was on that time, the strategy that I put together then was that 
we would file a repeal bill, seek the maximum number of cosponsors to 
repeal ObamaCare and then, Mr. Speaker, move forward with the discharge 
petition to seek to get 218 signatures on

[[Page 1418]]

that so that then-Speaker Pelosi couldn't block the repeal from coming 
to the floor. We followed through on all of that to the point where we 
peaked out at 178 signatures on the discharge petition that could have 
circumvented the Speaker seeking to block the repeal of ObamaCare.
  That discharge petition was one of the tools that was useful in 
winning the majority on November 2 of this past year. And there are 
Members here that openly say they wouldn't be here if they didn't have 
the discharge petition to point to their opponent and say, sign the 
discharge petition if you're serious. If you're against ObamaCare, 
here's the vehicle to repeal it. Sign it.

                              {time}  1640

  A number of those who did not and would not were voted out of office, 
and we have a new freshman class here that is 96 strong, 87 of them are 
Republicans, and I know of none of the 87 that did not run on the 
repeal of Obamacare. I don't have confirmation, Mr. Speaker, but I 
believe that every one of the freshmen Republicans, the 87, ran at 
least in part, if not centrally, on working to repeal Obamacare.
  After winning the majority, so we could actually bring legislation to 
repeal Obamacare, the next phase was to bring a repeal bill here to the 
floor of the House. I wanted it to be H.R. 1. It turned out to be H.R. 
2. I don't know what H.R. 1 is yet, Mr. Speaker, but I'm very, very 
happy that the leadership took that high a priority to hold a vote here 
in the House to repeal Obamacare so early in the first session of the 
112th Congress. We saw a vote here that was bipartisan and it was 
unanimous among Republicans to repeal Obamacare.
  That is a very sound, a ringing, sound rejection of Obamacare by the 
American people as a result of the election of November 2, by the 
people they sent here, 87 new freshmen Republican, many of them very, 
very solid.
  Then, after H.R. 2 passed the House with unanimous Republican support 
and bipartisan support, Mr. Speaker, it went over to the Senate, where 
they said, ``It could never pass over here, and it's a symbolic vote.'' 
Well, the Republican leader Mitch McConnell did force a vote on the 
repeal of Obamacare. It would have taken 60 votes to break the 
filibuster under those rules. Well, every Republican in the United 
States Senate voted to repeal Obamacare.
  So we are in this situation today, Mr. Speaker, where, if you look in 
the House and in the Senate, with far larger Republican numbers than we 
have had in past years, every Republican in the House and the Senate 
has voted to repeal Obamacare. Every single one. They are serious, and 
they want to get the job done, and their constituents insist that we 
get the job done as well.
  So now that we have taken this position that we are, all of us, for 
repealing Obamacare, and consistent with two thirds of the American 
people, if we voted to repeal it, it would be completely inconsistent 
for us to vote then to turn around and fund Obamacare.
  Well, if the CR has language in it that allows for funding of 
Obamacare, then a vote in support of the continuing resolution is a 
vote that funds the very thing that we voted to repeal, which would be 
inconsistent. And I do not believe that we will have inconsistent 
members here in the House of Representatives.
  I think they voted to repeal Obamacare, I think they are happy to 
vote to cut off the funding to Obamacare, and I believe that we will 
have universal support for that among our conference. And I believe the 
Senate, if they have an opportunity for the vote, would do the same 
thing. Down party lines, perhaps, but they would do the same thing.
  But herein is the difficulty, Mr. Speaker, and it's this: That the 
funding that might otherwise be in this continuing resolution or may 
perhaps actually come out tomorrow in it is not very large in 
comparison to the overall cost.
  The chairman of the Budget Committee has said that the spending under 
Obamacare is $2.6 trillion--$2.6 trillion. Now, there are taxes enacted 
by it, and we know how the CBO scored the information that they were 
given. But $2.6 trillion in spending would be shut off if we repealed 
Obamacare today. We have voted to do so in the House. The Senate wasn't 
successful. The President likely would veto. It is his signature bill; 
it is his identity. He is the one that called it ``Obamacare'' at the 
Blair House February 25, and now it's in our dictionary. My spell check 
spells it out for me: Obamacare.
  But in any case, the $1 billion or so that might be cut out of 
Obamacare in the CR, if we say none of the funds that are written into 
this bill can be used to implement or enforce Obamacare, that $1 
billion pales by comparison to the funds that are automatically 
appropriated that are written into the Obamacare bill itself, and it is 
an unusual practice to have that happen.
  When you have a large authorization bill like Obamacare come through, 
generally it authorizes the appropriations. They are authorized to be 
appropriated under this section, X many dollars, to go to implement or 
enforce the various provisions of Obamacare. That's where the money is. 
And the real money that's up in that, that's automatically 
appropriated, Obamacare anticipates and authorizes trillions of dollars 
to be appropriated to fund it, and it authorizes the collection of, I 
believe, trillions of dollars in fees and taxes to fund it over time. 
But the automatic appropriations that are unusual but written into 
Obamacare that a lot of people didn't know was in there when it was 
voted on, they will automatically appropriate a number that approaches 
or exceeds $100 billion in automatic appropriations.
  We are crunching these numbers now, and I have to qualify these 
numbers, Mr. Speaker. Our low number is down around $65.3 billion; our 
upper number is up around $107 billion. CRS doesn't have a number, CBO 
doesn't have a number. Apparently, nobody has pressed them to produce 
the numbers of the automatic appropriations in Obamacare in all this 
time. So we are taking this apart and putting it back together, and 
that's why the range is, it's my shop doing the math on this range, 
$65.3 billion on the low side, $107 billion on the high side. Let's 
just call it around $100 billion for round figures, Mr. Speaker.
  We could come here on the floor next week and debate a CR, and we 
could see an amendment come that's in order that would cut off all 
funding in the CR that would be used to fund Obamacare. If we do that, 
we are cutting off about $1.2 billion in spending.
  If we bring an amendment that shuts off all the funding that's 
automatically appropriated in Obamacare, and if we are successful, we 
shut off maybe $100 billion that would be used to implement and enforce 
Obamacare.
  One billion versus $100 billion. A 1 percent solution versus a 100 
percent solution. And if we don't use the 100 percent solution, then 
$100 billion, as much as or perhaps more, will be aggressively used by 
the Obama administration to implement and enforce Obamacare. And if 
they do that, the cancerous tumor that's growing because of what it 
does to our liberty and our freedom sends its roots down deeper, and it 
gets bigger and stronger and harder to eradicate. That is part of the 
strategy.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful that leadership and the chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee will get together, and sometime tonight, as 
they put the finishing touches on the CR legislation that they say will 
come out tomorrow, that they will write into the bill the language that 
I have proposed. And since we deal with 2,500 page bills here in the 
House, and we are chastised if we don't read and understand every word 
of them, I have an amendment here that I can read every word of, and 
perhaps it could be understood by everyone in America. This is the 
amendment that shuts off the automatic appropriations to Obamacare. It 
is this, and I quote:
  ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, none of the funds made 
available in this act or any previous or subsequent act may be used to 
carry out the provisions of Public Law 111-148, Public Law 111-152, or 
any amendment made by either such public law.''

[[Page 1419]]

  That's the amendment, Mr. Speaker, that shuts off not just the 
funding in the CR to Obamacare, but it shuts off the self-enacting 
automatic appropriations that were, I believe, inappropriately written 
into the Obamacare bill and the reconciliation package that came over 
from the Senate as part of their deal. That is why I gave you two bill 
numbers instead of one, but they encompass what we commonly refer to as 
Obamacare.
  That is the amendment that needs to be made in order here on the 
floor that allows the House to work its will, that allows the House to 
work within order under the rules. And, by the way, regular order is 
holding committee meetings, holding hearings, holding subcommittee 
markups and subcommittee appropriations. Chairman Rehberg would be 
seated at one of those markups, I would think, and that would be 
useful, a full Appropriations Committee markup at all of those stops. 
There would be an opportunity to introduce this language in committee, 
and then succeed, I believe, in dealing with a parliamentary challenge. 
Or, if it's written into the base bill, certainly there would be no 
parliamentary challenge. And if this goes out of the Appropriations 
Committee up to the Rules Committee and doesn't have my language in it, 
at that point the Rules Committee can protect this language, Mr. 
Speaker, from a point of order.
  But if I bring this language to the floor under an appropriations 
bill, I know that I am facing a parliamentary challenge to this 
language. And it will be hard for the House to work its will if we get 
to the point where we have a parliamentary challenge on a piece of 
language that mirrors the will of the American people, mirrors the 
wishes of the American people, and mirrors the will and wishes of the 
Members of Congress, the majority of the Members of Congress, and 
mirrors the will and the wishes and the votes of 100 percent of the 
Republicans in the United States House and the United States Senate, 
and is bipartisan, at least in the House.

                              {time}  1650

  That is the endeavor that we need to be successful with, Mr. Speaker, 
and I am very determined to have this kind of debate and find a way to 
have this vote. If we are blocked from a vote that is essential to work 
the will of the House, how then can we say, how then can we say that 
the House has worked its will, if the House has been denied an 
opportunity to work its will?
  I know there are arguments on both sides, Mr. Speaker, but I would 
point out that the language that I have read into the Record is not a 
precedent. It doesn't stretch the rules or the history or the 
traditions of this House. It doesn't stretch any written rule that I 
know of, and it is this. There is ample precedent, ample precedent in 
the form of the appropriations bills that were used to shut off the 
funding for the Vietnam War.
  Now, I disagreed with the decision back then. I remember reading 
about it in the news in 1973 and 1974. In fact, my recollection says 
also 1975, but I don't happen to have those notes, Mr. Speaker, but I 
do have the notes to draw from a report by CRS out of the Congressional 
Record.
  I am saying that we can bring an amendment that shuts off all 
funding, notwithstanding any other section. All of the automatic 
funding that was enacted by ObamaCare can be shut off in an 
appropriations bill in a continuing resolution. It can happen next week 
in the United States Congress, and we can put an end to ObamaCare then 
until such time as we elect a President who will sign the repeal as, 
hopefully, the first act of office in January of 2013. That is my hope 
and my wish and my work.
  But for those who might wonder that this is language that stretches 
the parameters of tradition, it completely does not; and here are two 
examples of the House of Representatives and the Senate concurring.
  Here is one, a supplemental appropriations bill, not a CR, but a 
supplemental appropriations bill that is in 1973, and actually the date 
on it is August 15, 1973. It says this: ``None of the funds herein 
appropriated under this act may be expended to support directly or 
indirectly combat activities in or over Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam 
and South Vietnam by United States forces, and after August 15, 1973, 
no other funds heretofore appropriated under any other act may be 
expended for such purpose.''
  So, Mr. Speaker, this supplemental appropriations bill that is dated 
enactment of August 15, 1973, and signed by the President July 1, 1973, 
says that none of these funds and no funds in the pipeline can be used 
to support directly or indirectly combat activities in Vietnam. If 
there were bullets that were on the way to be unloaded on the dock at 
Da Nang, they put the brakes on them and they went back. Those funds 
were on the way. They shut them down.
  That doesn't mean they stopped everything, but none of those funds 
that were unobligated, would be a better way to put that, were allowed 
to be used by this act of Congress in a supplemental appropriations 
bill. Yes, the precedent exists. Yes, we can do this. Yes, it is a 
common practice, Mr. Speaker.
  Those who might think this is a rare exception, I would go on down 
the line to another piece of legislation which actually was a CR, a 
continuing resolution. This is dated 1974, July 1, 1974; and this 
language in the continuing resolution then says this: ``Notwithstanding 
any other provision of law, on or after August 15, 1973, no funds 
herein or heretofore appropriated may be obligated or expended to 
finance directly or indirectly combat activities by United States 
military forces in or over or from off the shores of North Vietnam, 
South Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia.''
  There is the language again: ``No funds herein and no funds 
heretofore appropriated may be obligated or expended directly or 
indirectly.'' That is an all-encompassing example of language that we 
have used as a template to shut off the funding that is automatically 
appropriated within ObamaCare and, I think, inappropriately 
automatically appropriated within ObamaCare.
  That is where I stand on this, Mr. Speaker. And for those who think 
that is an ancient piece of legislative history and something that 
hasn't been used in the modern era and so therefore isn't a model or 
precedent, we go back 200-plus years for those things. I don't have 
trepidation about the Constitution that was ratified in 1789.
  But just in the 110th Congress, the first 2 years of Nancy Pelosi's 
Congress, Mr. Speaker, she forced 44 votes. They might have been some 
in the Rules Committee, most of them came to the floor; 44 votes by 
this United States Congress that were designed to unfund, underfund or 
undermine our troops. I have those all on record and spreadsheet with 
hyperlinks to the language and the vote results.
  We stood here and fought this off through the 110th Congress because 
the effort by the then-Speaker was to end the war in Iraq by shutting 
off all the funding and forcing us to bring our troops back home again. 
I am very thankful that George Bush prevailed in the surge and we have 
the optimistic situation in Iraq that we have today because of that 
decision that was made by George Bush. But it wasn't with any help from 
Speaker Pelosi, who forced 44 votes. Many of them, and I have not 
scored it in this fashion, but probably most of them follow down the 
same lines as the legislative procedure that I am advocating here.
  So, Mr. Speaker, this is a very sound practice. It is a very 
constitutional practice. It is tried and it is true and it has been 
effective. It put the end to the Vietnam War, and we can put an end to 
ObamaCare if we bring language either as written into the bill or if we 
go back and have an Appropriations Committee, which I don't expect will 
happen, or if the Rules Committee protects my language so that the 
amendment can be legitimately debated here on the floor of the House 
and we can have a recorded vote. We can shut off 100 percent of the 
implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare.
  If we don't take those steps, this Congress will not be allowed then, 
will not have been allowed at that point to work its will; and we have 
at best the

[[Page 1420]]

chance to shut off $1 billion, which amounts to 1 percent of the 
overall appropriations that are automatically enacted by ObamaCare. So 
we can come with a 1 percent solution and posture ourselves as we 
provided a solution, or we can come with a 100 percent solution with 
the best tools that the House has now to do the best job, to write the 
toughest bill that we can, send it over to the Senate, because we know 
this: it is going to get worse in the Senate, and they are going to 
leverage back on us.
  If it were just me, we could hold our ground. But; it isn't just me. 
So, Mr. Speaker, my advice to my colleagues whom I adore the privilege 
of serving with and whose judgment and statesmanship I greatly respect 
is this: We can't have people blink in this Congress, not when the 
destiny of America is at stake. And if you are wondering about 
blinking, just sign up with me, wait until I blink, and when I do, I 
guarantee my eyeballs will be dry and so will yours. But we must hold 
our ground. We must not blink.
  We must send the language over to the Senate that cuts off all of the 
funding of that up to and perhaps exceeding $100 billion that would be 
used to implement and enforce ObamaCare, that will be used aggressively 
by the Obama administration to send the roots down and grow this 
malignant tumor and metastasize this malignant tumor. We can pull it 
all out by the roots. We can do so if we move my amendment and make it 
in order under the rule or write it into the bill. If not, the America 
people will look back on this time and say, Where were you when it was 
time to stand up for the will of the American people?
  Mr. Speaker, I have had my say. I appreciate the privilege of 
addressing you here this afternoon, to be on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. I entreat my colleagues to join with me, and let's get 
this job done. Let's repeal ObamaCare; let's pull it out by the roots, 
lock, stock and barrel, a 100 percent repeal, not a 1 percent repeal.

                          ____________________