[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15497-15500]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Collins of Georgia). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to also express my love and 
appreciation for Howard Coble. There is not a more honorable, noble, 
humble, able man in all of Congress, and it has been a great 
opportunity and a great blessing to me in my life to be a friend of 
Howard Coble and to pray with him, to worship with him, to study with 
him, to discuss with him. And I will always be grateful to the most 
eligible bachelor in all of Congress. I don't know who will fill that 
role when Howard Coble is gone.
  But thank you. You will be missed.
  Mr. COBLE. On that note, Mr. Speaker, I am going to depart. Thank 
you, Louie.
  Mr. GOHMERT. It is amazing, a man who has given so much of his life, 
as Howard Coble has, to this institution, to working to make the 
country better, safer, efforts to make it more free, to help free up 
the economy so that it can achieve the high plateaus that it could 
reach if the government would release the boot from off the neck of the 
economy.
  Whether you agreed with Howard Coble or not, his honesty stands in 
stark contrast to what we have learned about recently with respect to 
the man Jonathan Gruber, who was not elected but was selected by the 
United States President. President Obama had gotten him basically to be 
what they call the architect of the ObamaCare bill.

[[Page 15498]]

  The name on the bill was the Affordable Care Act. Actually, the real 
name of the bill involved being a one-time tax deduction for first-time 
home buyers who were veterans and for other purposes. But the Senate 
took that bill, they stripped out every single word of the bill that 
would have helped veterans, and, instead, after deleting every word of 
the bill to help veterans, substituted therein about 2,500 pages of 
something that people now call ObamaCare.
  And we find out, most of us having seen the video of the ObamaCare 
architect, Jonathan Gruber, saying:

       This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO 
     did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate 
     as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it's written to do that. In 
     terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said 
     that healthy people are going to pay in, you made explicit 
     healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not 
     have passed. Lack of transparency is a huge political 
     advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the 
     American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, 
     really critical for the thing to pass. Look, I wish Mark was 
     right, that we could make it all transparent, but I'd rather 
     have this law than not.

  Staggering. The man who designed ObamaCare admitting that if the 
American public, or even the Democrats in Congress, had known what was 
in ObamaCare, the Democrats alone would never have passed it.
  It was not transparent, as the President had promised. It was a 
travesty forced upon the American people without a single Republican 
vote, not one single Republican vote.
  And I still hear people say, Well, you know, nobody read it. I read 
it. And I knew how bad it was going to be. It should never have passed. 
And if the Obama administration and our Democrat friends have been 
honest, then it would not have passed.
  I will now yield to a very dear friend from Texas, Lamar Smith. I 
think the world of his opinion.
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. If the gentleman will yield briefly, I will just 
say that I purposely stayed on the House floor just because I respect 
and admire the gentleman and what he has to say. And I happen to have 
agreed with everything he mentioned tonight about ObamaCare.
  And let me say also that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) 
oftentimes speaks on the House floor. And he is speaking to an audience 
that is listening to us on C-SPAN. And we do appreciate his speaking 
the truth. We appreciate his bringing out the facts, and we hope that 
those who are in a position to make changes or to even repeal ObamaCare 
will do so. And if that occurs, it will be in large part a tribute to 
Louie Gohmert's persistence in pointing out the flaws in ObamaCare.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from San Antonio.
  You know, it is ironic. There are so many people here. And a lot of 
new people have gotten elected. Three were sworn in here tonight. And 
the ones I have come to know, they appreciate honesty.
  And I know I was in the national media not long ago with Dennis 
Kucinich, and people were surprised. Well, even though you and Dennis 
Kucinich disagreed, you seemed very friendly, like you were friends. 
Dennis Kucinich and I are friends. And the big reason is--even though I 
think he is wrong on a lot of issues--the man has never lied to me. He 
has always been honest.
  Honesty in this body is such an important commodity. And certainly 
Howard Coble is one of the most honorable, honest men that have ever 
served. And that stands just in such stark contrast with the statements 
that have been discovered by the ObamaCare architect, Jonathan Gruber.
  There is another story from foxnews.com. And they found this. Of 
course he had been commenting, Oh, well, that was just off the cuff 
and, you know, just kind of kidding around.
  And then another videotape was found of him talking:

       Referring to the so-called ``Cadillac tax'' on high-end 
     health plans, he said: ``They proposed it, and that passed 
     because the American people are too stupid to understand the 
     difference.''

  The article says:

       He suggested that taxing individuals would have been 
     politically unpalatable, but taxing the companies worked 
     because Americans didn't understand the difference.
       Gruber said the ``lack of transparency'' in the way the law 
     was crafted was critical. ``Basically, call it the stupidity 
     of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was 
     really, really critical for the thing to pass.''

  Then Gruber went on MSNBC to express regret:

       On Tuesday, he said, ``I was speaking off the cuff, and I 
     basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made 
     those comments.''

  Well, it is interesting. He never says that he regrets having those 
opinions.
  After that video, a second video came to light, where the designer, 
the architect of ObamaCare, called the American people stupid, too 
stupid to realize how bad ObamaCare was. His apology is not that he is 
sorry that he thought the American people were stupid or that he didn't 
really think they were stupid or that he is sorry there wasn't more 
transparency or that he is sorry that the Democrats in Congress were 
the only ones that voted for the bill in the House or Senate or that 
the American people were snookered. He makes no apologies for deceiving 
the American people, deceiving the Democrats in the House and the 
Senate into voting for a bill through their dishonest shenanigans. No 
regrets for that. He only regrets that he said these things so they 
were caught on video.

                              {time}  2030

  If the man were cut out of the same cloth as a Howard Coble, a man of 
honest candor, then he would come before the American people, and he 
would say, yes, I was the architect of this bill, ObamaCare. It wasn't 
right to trick the American people and to trick the Democrats into 
voting for a bill they hadn't read when some of us knew how bad it was 
going to be. That was wrong, and I apologize for tricking the American 
people, for lying to the American people, and for not having 
transparency.
  I think real nobility would require someone who helped with 
ObamaCare--even the President--to say, do you know what? Back in 2008, 
when I was Senator Obama, I was running for President, and I promised 
the American people, if you give me the Presidency, we will have a 
debate on C-SPAN. We will do it all transparently. We will have it out 
there for everyone to see and everyone to hear who is taking what 
sides, because that is the way the health care debate should be, 
completely transparent.
  After he became President, he puts Jonathan Gruber in charge, and we 
get a bill that Gruber has admitted tricked the American people and was 
nontransparent.
  I just want to mention back again what he brought up, the Cadillac 
tax, when he said that the American people are too stupid to understand 
the difference. Actually, that Cadillac tax, it is not really going to 
be a Cadillac tax, but in the original bill, they were clever enough to 
put that 40 percent tax into place after the 2016 election, so that 
Democrats can run for President in 2016 and say, no, no, it is all 
right, it is going to be okay, when they know good and well that under 
the massive 40 percent tax--as if the middle class and the poor haven't 
been slammed enough with this terrible economy, with the lower wages, 
and with the part-time work, if they are fortunate enough to find an 
employer who gets them any kind of decent health care plan, any amount 
the health care plan costs over $10,200--even if they pay for it--it is 
going to be 40 percent tax on all above $10,200 for an individual 
health insurance policy.
  So if say, for example, the policy costs $15,200, $5,000 over the 
amount for an individual policy, then that poor, middle class, 
hardworking union member--because the union members will have policies 
that are worth more than $10,200--so that poor union member that is 
just already soaked to the gills with taxes, charges, and fees will pay 
another 40 percent tax on the $5,000 extra that is spent by his 
employer for that policy.

[[Page 15499]]

  In other words, a guy that is just getting a barely decent health 
insurance policy is going to add another $2,000 that that middle class 
individual is going to have to pay to have insurance that may give him 
a massive, several thousand, 5,000 deductible.
  I have heard from so many people. Only a few that we have heard from 
are paying less. Most everybody my office has heard from is paying 
massive amounts more for their health insurance, and some report our 
deductible went from $500 that we could barely afford to cover, that 
$500 deductible went up to 5,000, and our premiums went up.
  What is affordable about ObamaCare? We can't afford it. We can't 
afford to pay $5,000 in health care before the insurance even kicks in, 
and then we still have a copay and all kinds of other requirements.
  I heard one female couple that was in their sixties saying, gee, the 
last thing they ought to have to pay for is maternity care. Well, they 
are right, but under ObamaCare, it doesn't matter if you are 80 years 
old, you are still going to pay for maternity care if you buy 
insurance.
  So the best we could do is return individual Americans control of 
their own health care back into their hands, and there are many of us, 
Republicans, that have had proposals for health care bills. I had a 
bill, and I could never get CBO to score it, and to just remind, Mr. 
Speaker, our Members that may be listening, it was CBO, the 
Congressional Budget Office, that does official scoring.
  And they actually scored ObamaCare as costing over $1 trillion--$1.1 
trillion, I believe--and the President was upset because he promised 
the American people it would actually be lower than $1 trillion. So the 
head of the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Doug Elmendorf, got called 
over to the Oval Office, and magically, after a meeting with the 
President, they came back and redid their numbers and said it was 
actually only $800 billion. The President said, whoopee, see, I told 
you it was going to be less than 1 trillion.
  Then after it passed, CBO came back and said, do you know what? 
Actually, it is going to be over 1 trillion, and then later came back 
and said, oh, it may be more like 1.7 or 1.8 trillion. And then we have 
other entities saying, no, it looks like it could be even $4 trillion 
it is going to cost.
  As I said before and will continue to say, if the scoring entity's 
margin of error is plus or minus 400 percent, it is time for a new 
scoring entity, and I think we could do that.
  I talked with Arthur Laffer about it a number of times, Reagan's 
chief architect of his economic proposals, and unlike Mr. Gruber, 
Arthur Laffer is a very honorable, honest--great sense of humor--but a 
brilliant man.
  Despite his Ivy League education and his background, he is a 
brilliant guy. There are proposals that we have that would not even 
cost $1 trillion that would return the control back to the patient.
  But Mr. Gruber has finally been caught, he said it over a year ago, 
but he has finally been caught admitting that the only way they got 
ObamaCare passed was the American people were too stupid.
  What he was talking about on the Cadillac tax is he was saying that 
if we let the American people know that they were ultimately going to 
pay that 40 percent tax on everything over $10,200 for an individual 
policy, they would never have gone along with it.
  But instead of saying that the individual is going to pay for it, we 
said, oh, the corporation is going to pay for it, and therefore, it 
won't cost the individual anything.
  Well, that is about as dishonest and insane as people in the 
administration telling our senior citizens, oh, don't worry about the 
fact that ObamaCare cut Medicare by $716 billion. Don't worry about 
that because that only goes to the doctors, the hospitals, and the 
people that provide the knees and the things like that, but it won't 
affect you at all.
  Well, I think we saw, in this election, the seniors are a lot smarter 
than Mr. Gruber gave them credit for. Yes, many of them were fooled 
when they were lied to by the administration, but now, they figured 
out, wait a minute, you said that $716 billion in cuts to Medicare that 
ObamaCare did wouldn't affect me, and now, I can't get my knee surgery, 
I can't get my back surgery, I can't get my pacemaker, I can't get the 
things I need.
  Apparently, that was a lie as well. It did affect seniors. It is 
affecting seniors, and it will affect seniors until the day it is 
finally repealed.
  I know there are people out there, Mr. Speaker, that have said, well, 
there were a couple things that were good. We ought to just leave the 
good things in it.
  Generally, they point to two things, number one, a young person who 
is living at home and is under 26 years of age can share their family 
insurance with their parents, and that neglects to recognize the fact 
that when the Democrats controlled the House, they controlled the 
Senate, and they controlled the White House with President Obama, we 
offered repeatedly, look, guys, let us have a little say in this bill. 
In fact, why don't we just pass a freestanding bill?
  And I know the Democrats said they wanted to cut off at 26 years of 
age, but there were a lot of us that said, look, if the economy is bad 
and a young person is living at home, they are 26, 27, I don't really 
care, if you are living at home with your parents and they have got 
health insurance, and you are willing to pay the little extra the 
insurance company charges to add another family member, then let them 
be on their family's insurance.
  We were okay with passing that. Republicans were. We welcomed that. 
We were never, ever given the chance. We were told, we have the votes 
to pass it, we don't need your help, we don't need your input.
  As a former chief justice, judge, and civil trial attorney in prior 
lives, I have seen a lot of insurance litigation, and I have seen cases 
where insurance companies acted very unfairly in canceling people's 
policies when it was wrong and it was unfair because they said, oh, 
well, you had a preexisting condition they already knew about.
  Republicans offered to work with our Democratic friends that were in 
the majority to fashion a bill that would deal with the issue of 
unfairness and, at times, even fraud by an insurance company, dealing 
with insureds unfairly and using the gimmick of a preexisting condition 
claim to deny coverage. We were willing to work with them on a bill 
like that.
  Fortunately, most insurance companies don't act like that; and, 
fortunately, in most situations, even those that do occasionally don't 
all the time and, in fact, don't most of the time.
  But we were okay with the bill that would address those issues, but 
it should have only applied to policies that went across State lines 
because, otherwise, it is a State issue.
  And I know in Texas we have a State insurance commissioner, 
commission, there are people that are watching over these issues, and 
it is a whole lot easier to file a complaint in your State capital, 
even if you are a State as big as Texas or Alaska, than it is to have 
to file a complaint and deal with the morass right here in Washington, 
D.C.
  Well, on the heels of all the admissions of lies that were told to 
pass ObamaCare that have now come out, an article Monday by Elise 
Viebeck, and the title is ``HHS''--that is Health and Human Services--
``lowers ObamaCare enrollment expectations.''
  It says:

       Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services on 
     Monday projected that up to 9.9 million people would be 
     enrolled in ObamaCare in 2015, millions fewer than 
     Congressional Budget Office estimates.
       Federal health officials are projecting that ObamaCare 
     enrollment will include at least 3.1 million fewer people 
     next year than Congressional Budget analysts thought.

  Well, there goes the Congressional Budget analysts once again being 
off in the nature of 30 percent. That is a plus-or-minus margin of 
error of 30 percent. It is not really so good.
  We need another vehicle for competition for scoring that would be 
less expensive and would be more accurate, and then the only way you 
could really get it accurate is if you have competition, and then you 
begin to score the scorers, because what CBO did in

[[Page 15500]]

ObamaCare and what they have done on these enrollment expectations, I 
mean they are just outrageous.
  Anyway, there are plenty of articles about the American people being 
too stupid according to the man who designed the ObamaCare bill. It is 
unfortunate that people in this administration thought that the 
American people were too stupid and too gullible.
  Unfortunately, since there are honest people in government, the 
people like Mr. Gruber that were so dishonest to pass a massive bill 
that took away patients' health care rights and the things that would 
prolong their lives, the things that would make their lives more 
comfortable, it is just a tragedy, but there are honest people in 
government. Now, people will have to be even more cynical than they 
already were of government.
  This interesting survey was done by Kellyanne Conway, this article 
from November 7 of this year, the survey in the article points out that 
a majority of respondents, 76 percent, consider laws that require 
voters to present a photo ID before casting a ballot to be ``mostly 
fair,'' and a total of 69 percent of Americans consider it ``not a 
burden at all.''

                              {time}  2045

  Amazing.
  Another point mentions, when asked, ``Do you agree or disagree that 
President Obama should, through executive action, allow illegal 
immigrants to remain in the United States?'' 63 percent disagree. That 
is 53 percent strongly, 10 percent somewhat. Only 30 percent agree.
  Another point of the survey, corruption in the Federal Government 
continues to be a serious concern among voters, with 92 percent now 
saying they consider it a serious problem. That is 92 percent of 
Americans consider corruption a serious problem.
  Well, perhaps the fact that Mr. Gruber was getting paid and had a 
motivation, a pecuniary, a financial motivation for being out there 
selling ObamaCare as being such a great thing, and as he says now lying 
about it so much and obscuring the truth as much as he did, that kind 
of helps contribute to the 92 percent of Americans, or rather of 
voters, saying that they had serious concerns about corruption in 
Federal Government.
  The survey also indicated a full 80 percent said that the Federal 
Government has become ``less transparent'' or ``stayed about the same'' 
over the past 6 years.
  When asked about ballot integrity and voter fraud, 74 percent 
consider it a problem.
  So much for those who say it isn't a problem. It is a problem.
  I think because of photo IDs being used, for example in Texas this 
time, we had better election integrity. I know the Indiana law was 
upheld that required photo IDs, and Texas largely modeled their law 
after Indiana. It is a matter of protecting ballot integrity.
  I have been over to the Department of Justice, and I find it 
interesting that the Attorney General who is outgoing right now 
requires you cannot get in to see the Attorney General unless you can 
produce a photo ID. Apparently, the incoming or the nominated candidate 
for Attorney General thinks photo IDs for elections are a problem, and 
it will be interesting to see if she changes the policy if she gets 
confirmed. The Senate needs to make a thorough investigation. They need 
to take their time and do it right. But we will see if this stands as a 
policy that photo IDs should be required to see the AGs but not to 
vote.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________