repealing. republicans have said they don't want to bring forward a big 2,700-page bill and republican leaders have said they're waiting for the senate to act on repeal. you've never shied from waiting for the senate to do anything. why not take up some sort of replacement bill and show the american people a little bit about your alternative to health care. >> we're not going to make the mistakes that were made in the past. we're not going to pass a 2,700-page bill that no one read. we're not going to pass a bill an hope people find out what's in it after we pass it. we're not going raise the taxes on the american people. we believe in a common sense step by step approach that will make our current system work much better. things like allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines. things like ending junk lawsuits that not only drive up the cost for doctors but require doctors

to call for more tests than are required simply because they're afraid of being sued. how about allowing small companies to group together for the purposes of health insurance so they can buy health insurance at more competitive rates just like big companies and unions can. there are clear ideas that we've had out there for some time that we continue to believe in. >> did you vote on any of those? >> mr. speaker, regardless of the legality of it, how patriotic do you think it is for mitt romney to keep some of his wealth offshore either in switzerland or in the cayman islands when he's running for president of the united states? >> i'm not aware of it. >> speaker, late last -- >> whoa. remember, there's a rule here. >> several congressional committees have gotten an unclassified report indicating

that iran may test fire in the next couple years. how do you think th-- [ inaudible question ] >> i'm certainly not going to disclose classified information. >> this is unclassified. >> the threat from iran is real. it's real for our closest ally, israel, and it's real for all of the countries in the region. i think that we passed an iran sanctions bill where we gave the president a full toolbox of tools to use, sanctions to use, to help bring the iranians to heel. the president ought to use more of the tools that were given to him to get iran to declare that they're not going to produce

nuclear weapons. >> mr. speaker you mentioned closing of loopholes as part of tax reform. republicans are talking to democrats about closing those loopholes in exchange for getting rid of the defense wester next year. do those have to be closed only for comprehensive tax reform? >> raising taxes in a weak economy is not a good idea. we're serious about bringing down corporate rates and personal rates, closing those loopholes, those special deals and other credits in the tax code and need to come as part of overall tax reform. >> mr. speaker, on the president's proposal on income taxes, he says that everybody agrees on 250 and below. why not take it for now and when

mitt romney wins the election, he can easily undo it and if president obama wins, will you continue to insist or oppose delinking the tax cuts for the rich from the middle class. >> listen, raising taxes in a weak economy is not going to help create jobs in america. we believe that extending all of the current tax rates is the appropriate course of action. our proposal would be to extend them all for one year so that it would provide time for us to do real reform of the tax code, both corporate and personal. the president has been trotting this idea out now for four years. it started during the campaign in 2008. not even democrats will support it. senator mcconnell yesterday offered to have a vote on the president's plan. it was rejected by the majority

leader. democrats in the house will have an opportunity later on this month to offer the president's plan. i hope they take advantage of it. >> asked about a report last night of the u.s. olympic team that's going to be wearing chinese made uniforms for opening ceremonies. can you talk a little bit about those dollars going over to china and wondered if you're concerned about this? >> i would think they know that. >> back to the farm bill. you said the committee has done good work. conservative groups issued a statement earlier in the week that the bill is too expensive and doesn't make reforms. over the years you have advocated a smaller farm bill. do you share or do you have any reaction to conservative criticism? >> there is some good reforms in this farm bill. there are other parts of the farm bill that i have concerns about.

we've got a soviet style program in america today and one of the proposals in this farm bill would actually make it worse and so there are parts of the farm bill that i could be critical of but having been a committee chairman, i understand the difficulty in trying to put together a very complicated bill. and i understand the challenge that chairman lucas had trying to get a bill put together. but i'll reserve the rest of my comments over the farm bill until i have a closer look at it. >> what are your thoughts on governor romney's speech yesterday specifically him being booed when he spoke about repealing obama care. what did you think of that? >> well, you know, there was that one moment. if you look at the broader speech, there were a number of times when he got a very resounding applause.

i congratulate governor romney for going to and accepting the invitation to speak. governor romney is running for president of the united states to represent all americans. and so he ought to be congratulated on reaching out to all of us. >> you silenced our voice, sir. >> it's one of the best things i've done. >> mitt romney talks a lot on the campaign trail about cracking down on chinese currency manipulation. 2010 vote came before the house, passed with over 90 republicans, you voted against it. the senate had a bill in october of 2011, 16 republicans, you voted against it. how can mitt romney talk about chinese cracking down on manipulation where you have shown no effort to do it here in the house of representatives? >> there's a way to deal with

this problem and a way not to deal with it. congress passing a law outlying stringent requirements for dealing with the chinese and value of the currency i think is inappropriate. every administration for the last 15 years has worked with the chinese, a central bank and the chinese government to get them to revalue their currency. if you watched the value of their currency has continued to come up in each of these 15 years. i think that each administration, treasury secretary in these administrations has worked to try to resolve this problem. more work needs to be done and so there's no differences here in terms of the need to solve the problem. it's just a matter of how best to solve the problem. >> do you have any issues with congressman jackson's

explanation for his absence and do you think his office should give more information? >> we hope he gets well soon and that he gets back soon. this is an issue between him and his constituents. i wish him well and hope to see him back soon. last one. >> -- defunding the hss sterilization contraception mandate. >> i'm not seeing the letter yet. i have read it. i'm about to get one. when i get it, i'll be able to comment on it. thanks. >> just before these remarks,

nancy pelosi spoke to reporters to talk about repealing the president's health care law. >> good morning. as you know, yesterday once again for the 30-something time, the republicans tried to take away protections for patients in our country. whether it's a little baby born with a birth defect, a child with a disability or asthma, cancer, diabetes. there's the senior who is getting prescription drugs much less expensive because of the affordable care act or free wellness examinations once a year, whether it is woman who are getting services already and

those will increase in august, whether it's this very, very powerful protection for patients and that is removing lifetime limits on the coverage that they can receive. whether it is young adults who are on their parents' policy until they're 26 years old enabling them to follow their aspirations and not make decisions only based on where they have health care rather than what aspirations and skills and talents take them to. so once again the republicans on the floor of the house spoke for and voted for the special interest over the people's interest. today as we have been doing day after day after day we're calling upon republicans in congress to pass middle income

tax cuts. as you know, president obama laid out a step that we can take right now that will bring more certainty and stability to our economy and be fair to the middle class. republicans must stop holding middle income tax cuts hostage to their tax cuts for their wealthy friends, big oil, special interest. what's really important about all of this is that the policies you see them advocating are directly related to the politics and political climate that we are in. you cannot have fairness to the middle class and your policy if you have complete unreported, large significant special interest money pouring into the political process. to suffocate the system, to suppress the vote and to poison

the debate. that's why we've issued a dare to say we dare, disclose, amend the constitution to overturn citizens united, reform the politics, increase the role of small donors in the political system and elect reformers of any party who are willing to do that. our founders knew our system depended on a democracy for the voice and vote of the many determine the outcome of elections and therefore the policies that would spring from that. not the check books of the very, very few. government of the rich. government of the few. not of the many. it was in the interest of our democracy that we have accountability and transparency and that's why after the supreme court's misguided decision on

citizens united, disclosed disclosure was one course of action, one of the few courses of action that was able to us. a person who took the lead on this strengthening by our democracy holding firm to vows of our founders is chris van holland. he's parts of our leadership. he's our ranking democrat on the budget committee and because of his knowledge of these issues, he sees that direct relationship between politics and policy and we're proud of his leadership on the disclose act. i'll yield to him to talk about that now. advice van holland of maryland. >> thank you, madame leader. as leader pelosi said at the outset, yesterday we saw the 33rd vote in the house of representatives to repeal the important protections that are contained in the affordable care act.

there are a number of bills where we had zero votes. the president's jobs initiative is one. no votes on that. another bill with zero votes on is disclose bill. designed to make sure that voters know who is financing these campaigns and so that we can understand what special interests are trying to rig the rules of the economy in their favor. now, this is a house of representatives that is pretending that it is one of the most open house of representatives in recent times and yet they have refused to even hold a hearing on the disclose act. not even a hearing. it's been requested many times by congressman brady, congressman gonzales, and others on the house committee on administration. nothing. those members had to hold an unofficial hearing to bring out

the facts on this issue because the majority refuseded to hav d hearing. ironic on a bill that calls for greater openness, house republicans refused to even have an open hearing to talk about it. the disclose act stands for a simple proposition. voters have a right to know who is bankrolling these campaigns and we all recognize that when a lot of these groups are financing these campaigns, they are doing it to try to elect to congress, to try to buy congress that will rig the rules of the game in their favor and among the rules of the game that they want to change, relate to important pieces of our economy. we've been working hard to try and overturn some of the parts of the tax code that reward corporations that move american

jobs overseas to special tax havens like the cayman islands and switzerland. we would like to close those tax loopholes. there are lots of folks who would like to continue to have a tax code that tilts toward the very wealthy. we see strong republican opposition to our proposal to extend tax relief to middle class americans unless they also get continuations of tax breaks for the very wealthy instead of asking the wealthiest to contribute to reducing our deficit so we don't have to reduce the deficit at the expense of middle income taxpayers and seniors. so that's what this is all about. shining the light on those contributions and it's unfortunate that our republican colleagues oppose that. i think we want to both commend

senator reid for the decision in the senate to take up the disclose act next week and we think that members of the house, democrats and republicans alike, should have that same opportunity, which is why we just filed a discharge petition in the house of representatives and we're encouraging all members, democrats and republicans, who believe that voters have a right to know who is financing these elections to sign that very simple measure and let us have a vote on it in the house. again, we had 33 votes on repealing important patient protections. let's have one vote on allowing voters the right to know who is financing these campaigns through secret donations and trying to rig the rules. there was a time when republicans favored disclosure and i do think it's worth just pointing out what mitch mcconnell said not that long ago when he was asked by tim russert on "meet the press" and here's

what he said. "republicans are in favor of disclosure. if you're going to do that and senate voted to do that and i'm prepared to go down that road, then it needs to be meaningful disclosure." we need to have real disclosure and so what we thought to do was broaden disclosure so you can include the major political players in america. why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure? mitch mcconnell asked. we agree with the old mitch congressional. we believe that voters have a right to know. we believe in full disclosure and all senator mcconnell and the house republicans need to do to ensure that full disclosure is vote in favor of the disclose act when they bring it up in the senate and sign discharge petition that we filed today to bring up the disclosed act in the house of representatives.

we hope that they will do that. thank you. >> thank you very much, congressman van hollen. when the decision came down under chris van hollen's leadership, we did pass a disclose act in the house. it won't over to the senate which of course had only 59 democrats and we couldn't only democrats and we couldn't get one republican despite public statements of mcconnell and others they abandoned that because they knew they didn't want accountability and transparency and contributions that are made under something that is so bizarre that the court would say any and all money secret or otherwise from who knows where, should be allowed into our system. so thank you for your leadership on that. it's very exciting for us that this is taken up again and that our members are very enthusiastec about signing a discharge petition to that

effect. any questions on that? >>. >> it's a different matter. in the judiciary committee there was a lot of discussion on the intelligence committee and they're familiar with this, john conyers had suggested that he would like to see the judiciary committee maybe conduct an investigation and they're taking you up on that. do you think that's the appropriate course of action and who do you think that they should possibly look at and question if they want to forge ahead? >> i believe right now the administration has put in place a look at how these leaks occurred. it's not in anybody's interest. as i said to you before, the sign in the intel is loose lips sinks ships. let's exhaust one remedy and that is the investigation that

the assignment that the administration has given to look into this. >> what about congressional oversight? >> congressional oversight is a major part of it and the committees can always bring in any agency of government and the jurisdiction to ask those questions, but you asked a very specific one about do i think there needs to be a judiciary committee investigation. i said let's -- excuse me, how the other investigation goes first. >> what would you like to see happen with the farm bill? >> we haven't talked about the farm bill. i want to first focus on this. mr. holland has many responsibilities and he has many responsibilities this morning and this is fundamental to our democracy and for the vitality of the middle class in that democracy. >> what efforts have you made to get republicans to vote with you

on disclosure. as you quoted senator mcconnell, did you make overtures to get their cooperation and what happened? >> the short answer is yes. we've tried over a period of time to get republicans onboard, a number of republicans have privately indicated that they're in favor of the disclose bill and the republican leadership has been very clear on this that they don't want to allow any kind of transparency and any kind of disclosure and we've seen the total flip-flop from senator mcconnell on this issue. interestingly, while this decision has created big problems for our democracy, was there one issue on which eight of the nine justices agreed and that was that disclosure is not only constitutional, but good for the health of our democracy, the only dissenter on that was

justice thomas and so we hope that on a bipartisan basis we can take this up. there's been a disturbing trend among many republicans against transparency and one is their opposition to this and we're now seeing their presidential candidate refuse to dwilg divulge the tax records and his father set the standard for doing that and now he refuses to disclose in that area and there is a very important link between these secret donations and an effort to elect a congress that will rig the rules of the game for economic interests which will not serve the interests of middle income americans. >> it's important to note, just following on what mr. van holland said that governor

romney could not be considered to be a member of the cabinet because it is required that disclosure be made on tax returns and unrest. so he's running for president wanting to win and appoint a cabinet which would have more disclosure than he has as president -- and it's not going to happen, but nonetheless, he could not become a cabinet member for that lack of disclosure and on that lack of disclosure he wants to be president of the united states. >> mr. holland, is this, at this point, though, about legislating full disclosure and messaging? i ask it because in your preamble you went right to the buzz words like cayman islands and switzerland and in your answer you go right to mitt romney. mitt romney is not a member of this legislature. many republicans who say privately come up to you and say they're for it might turn around and say the election is a few

months away, there's no way i can do this even if i wanted to. you know? >> i don't know why any member should ever say we shouldn't -- as you promote -- but all people have to do is disclose. i mean, that takes care of the issue. so all they have to do is vote to allow the voters the right to know who's financing those campaigns. if they believe in that, they should vote for it and in the case of governor romney all he has to do is disclose just like his father did. the person who wants to be the chief executive and control the finances of the united states should tell the american people how he conducts his own finances and this is a question of disclosure and transparency and all people have to do to address the issue is vote for disclosure. >> and many of the republicans who have spoken out on

disclosure in their own states, they've had to come under the strict requirement by their leadership in the senate that they have to vote with them despite the public statements of the republican leader mitch mcconnell and their own efforts of transparency at home. >> on the subject? we'll go back to the farm bill then? >> on this subject. >> mcconnell always said that the disclose act treats the corporation differently than unions. how do you respond to that and is there some ground to give on the union question to get republicans? >> well, that's just totally not true. take a look at the house disclose bill. take a look at the senate disclose bill. it treats all interests

uniformly, business interests, union interests. so i'd be interested in hearing from senator mcconnell exactly what provision in that senate bill or house bill treats unions any differently than businesses. it's not true. there were on some earlier versions of the disclose act, provisions that people pointed to to make that argument. we didn't think that they were accurate then, but we removed those provisions, and so the extent people were relying on those proversions to make the argument, there is no longer any grounds to make it. >> except that he's always thinking that his friends in the special interests will get special treatment and to be treated like everybody else is a disservice to them, which could be. >> he's making two arguments now. he's actually making the argument you just made which is no longer valid, but he's gone

way beyond that at this point. he's now taking the position that justice thomas took. in his speech the other day he quoted justice thomas which puts mitch mcconnell, you know, way outside the mainstream here. you had every other supreme court justice, not only saying this was constitutional, but saying this was important to the health of our democracy and virtually every american would agree that the idea of disclosure and transparency is important to the democratic proce process. so i understand, and he recognizes what a vulnerability this is because the overwhelming majority of the american people believe in the simple proposition that the voters have a right to know whose financing and who is bankrolling these campaigns. >> and many of the people who are bankrolling these campaigns fall in the category of anti-government idea logs, so