of all to pay a great deal of increased taxes to help pay for the trillion-plus-dollar bill in this package, but also it requires those companies to buy the insurance that the government tells them they have to buy and if even one employee doesn't like it, then there are going to be additional penalties. so this is going to cost small businessmen a lot of taxes and a lot of regulations and red tape and so if you're a small businessman you're not going to like this bill. . if you're unemployed, it will cost jobs and how is it that this bill will make it harder? we'll get into that later, but the basic elements of creating jobs in our economy is allowing the small businesses to create the jobs by creating an environment in the small

business that makes jobs. how does that happen? well, one, you don't want to tax the guy who owns the business, because you want him to put his money back into the business to expand it, to buy new equipment or new wing on the building. this bill does the exact opposite. it burries the small business owner in taxes and red tape and unknown costs for health care. when you do that, it's going to make the shal business less likely to hire people, and therefore, if you're unemployed, it's going to make it harder to get a job, because this is a job-killing proposal. so if you are an unemployed person, this is not something you want to see passing right away. the people in america who own health insurance are not going to like this bill. if you are own health insurance, what this bill is going to do is, it's going to charge you more money for your health insurance to help pay for the

people who haven't bought any health insurance. so this bill is going to cost you more for the health insurance if you own health insurance. let's run through the list of who wouldn't like this bill. well, if you're older, you won't like the bill. if you're young, you won't like the bill. if you're married, you won't like the bill. if you are pro-life, you won't like the bill. if you are a small business owner, you won't like the bill and if you are looking for a job from that small business owner, you still won't like the bill. and also, if you have health insurance, you're not going to like the bill either. there's a whole lot of people that just naturally when they look at all this complicated maze, these are people who aren't going to like this proposal. is that all there are who don't like the proposal? oh, no, there are a lot of other people who won't like the proposal as well. let's look at some of the others. if you were concerned about

illegal immigration, you won't like this bill, because the bill provides no guarantee that illegal immigrants cannot come in and get health care and get the subsidies to health care that will have to be paid for by the american public and all the people who are taxed to pay for this measure. so if you're concerned about illegal immigrants coming and getting a free ride in terms of government paid-for health care, this bill does not contain the protections. so if you are worried about illegal immigrants coming into this country and getting subsidized health care, this bill does that, and there is no protection against it. if you're one of 36 states who do not want the federal government to mandate that everybody in your state has to buy government certified health care, if you want the people in your state to have some sovreignty, if you care about

state sovreignty and you want the people of your state to make their own decisions how they'll spend their money and you don't want the federal government to force the people in your state to pay for insurance, then this is something that you don't want this bill. and there are 36 different states out of 50, 36 states that have legislation that is in the process of moving in those states essentially banning the federal government from requiring citizens of those states to have to buy health insurance product. and so, if you are one of those 36 states where the legislateors are saying, we don't want the federal government telling our citizens that they have to buy insurance, then this is something that you certainly wouldn't want. the other people that might not like this, and this is going without saying, people who make

a fair amount of money. they are going to be taxed very heavily in a number of different regards to try and help subsidize this new health insurance plan. so if you are well-to-do and don't like huge taxes, then you certainly aren't going to like this plan. if you happen to be somebody that's concerned with doing things in a just way, that is, if you're concerned that every state gets the same deal, that there's no special deals in this legislation, you're not going to like it. we have been told that the special deals have been taken out, but unfortunately, that's not true. here are some of the special deals in this proposal that are still there. one of them is what they call the louisiana purchase number two, and that is something for -- i believe it's for mary

landrieu and provides a special assignment for states recovering from a major disaster. written to include just this one state. and it's $300 million to add to the state medicaid program. so that's a $300 million special deal for louisiana. how about for connecticut? yes, there is a special deal for connecticut hospital, $100 million, which appears to apply to only to some connecticut hospitals. there are millions of medicaid dollars for vermont and massachusetts. and that's $1.1 billion total. and it helps with medicaid programs and gives about $600 million to vermont, massachusetts $500 million. cash for new jersey drug companies. new jersey is getting a deal. cost is $1 billion for special deals for new jersey.

extra cash for union health care plans, this is a deal of $5 billion so that -- it says there's going to be a reinsurance program to defray the medical costs of union members. so that's $5 billion for union member health care costs. are there other special deals? yes, in fact there are. we don't have to pay any medicare advantage. remember how i said this bill is going to cut $500 billion from medicare, but it won't care medicare advantage for people in florida. so if you're in florida, you won't get that medicare advantage cut. the other states will. special funding for coal miners in montana. yes, it does. the cost, we're not quite sure what that is, but medicare coverage for workers exposed to environmental health hazards. there is a fee exemption for

politically connected insurers in michigan, apparently. higher medicaid payments for north dakota providers. hawaii hospitals are getting exempt from the cut. and longshoremen exempt from plans. there are a whole series of special deals. so if you don't like a special deal for various states that your state doesn't get, you won't like this plan. i think one of the groups, and this is probably not exactly small that doesn't like this plan would be doctors. why would that be? what do -- does a doctor become a doctor? many of them will say they wanted to take care of people and help them with their health care. why would a doctor dislike this plan other than its great complexity? well, one of the things that is extremely frustrating to doctors as well as patients is something

we don't like, but has happened, and that is, you allow an insurance company to come between a doctor and a patient. i think most people consider that doctor-patient relationship, certainly my republican colleagues would say if there's anything in that would be sacred is that the doctor and patient need to make the final decisions on health care. that is something we don't want to have disturbed. if an insurance company is allowed to come between the patient and the doctor, we don't like that. we don't want someone who is not a doctor getting involved in medical decisions. inversions, you have insurance companies who are allowed to make medical decisions and not held legally accountable for the outcome of those decisions. that's bad enough. but a doctor particularly won't like this plan because instead of an insurance company, which

you can always change or some chance to change, you have no chance to change the federal government if the federal government is the one that is coming between you and your doctor. so if you are a doctor, a lot of doctors don't like this plan. there have been a dozen republican doctors on this throor over the period of the last year talking about the fact that they don't like this plan. they think it's terrible and that should tell us something. there is another constituent group that doesn't like the plan. there is another group of people who will not like this plan. i happen to fall into this group and it's one you might not think of and that would be people who have cancer. why would people who have cancer not like this plan? well, one of the things that has been done is to take a look at survival rate in people who have cancer in various countries. and what you find in england, the survival rate is much, much lower than the survival rate in

america. the survival rate of cancer patients in canada is lower than the survival rate of cancer patients in america. if america changes our medical system to be more like england or canada, we have to assume also that the survival rate of cancer patients is going to be less. it's going to be harder to try to survive cancer when you have a state-run system doing cancer. the list does seem to be getting a little bit long. and is it really such a good idea on this great drama that is supposed to take place tomorrow in competition with the olympics, this great political drama, is it true that if the american people see this bill more closely, they're going to love it more? or is it possible that in this drama, the real villain in the drama is this very bill itself?

is it possible that all of these different groups of americans really do have it right? let's run through the list again. this is a pretty significant list. as i go through it, i ask you, do you fall into that group. is it going to affect me in a bad way. a great majority of americans believe it will hurt them and not a bill they want, but let's look at these people. first of all, if your he old, young, married, pro-life, if you are a small business owner, if you're unemployed, if you have health insurance, if you're concerned about illegal immigration and their getting health insurance, one of the states that has a government mandate, if you are well-to-do, if you are those who don't like the special deals that some states get and other ones don't get, if you're a doctor, you're

not going to like this plan, and if you care about the doctor-patient relationship, you particularly won't like this plan. and if you happen to be a person with cancer, you're not going to like this plan, but then again, you might be dead and you might care as much. you have leaders in state government, governors and people who have to deal, legislateors or senators in state government, why would they not like this plan? well, here, this is another group that has a pretty good concern and that is the trillion dollar bill that has been attached to this plan, that trillion dollar bill is not really the full cost of the plan. a lot of cost is going to be passed down to the various states. so this plan contains unfurneded mandates on the various -- unfunded mandates on the various states. because of the recession and high level of unemployment,

their state revenues are very tight. in fact, some of them are in the red. and if we, through this plan, produce something that, first of all, is going to create more unemployment and going to cost more money to the various states, people who have to manage the state budget, unlike the federal budget, many states have a balanced budget requirement. so if you keep adding more costs to those states, they're going to have to cut other things on the state budget in order to pay for this big government-run program. and the exact numbers on what unfunded mandates this includes are not entirely known particularly when a plan is being released and you have 24 hours for different economic experts to look at it. now, is it possible that the reason that this bill, after it's been put together behind closed doors is trotted out for 24 hours, is it possible that

people don't want a good economic look at what it's going to cost? i hope that's not the case. but it's very hard for the congressional budget office to say, well, here's what it's going to cost. even if you take their best estimates, in the past, their estimates of medicare were way, way off by a factor of two or three or as much as seven times off. so those numbers tend to be much lower than what the real cost of the programs are. so there are a lot of people in various state leps who are not going to like this government. people who don't like red tape, i don't think we need to explain that. if you don't like red tape, you aren't going to like this. this is a simplified version and every one of these boxes is a government creationtr make this thing work because the government is taking over. almost 1/5 of the u.s. economy.

and they have to create a lot of bureaucrats, boxes and flow charts. if you don't like red tape, you're not going to like this bill. . and then people who conet don't trust the -- don't trust the government to run the economy. well, i think there are a lot of people who think that the government is not proving to be very efficient in the way it runs a lot of things. even the premise behind this bill is, well, we've got a problem with medicare so we're going to take the money out of medicare and medicare isn't working quite right so therefore what we need to do is to replace medicare with a government taking everything over. there's something about that logic, if you take a look at the overall finances of the u.s. government, what you find is it's not a big problem with earmarks, the real big problem is with three entitlement programs which are growing because of the demographs in our yi and because of the nature of those entitle -- country and

because of the nature of those entitlement programs. the programs are social security, medicare and medicaid. two of those are medical entitlements. medicare and medicaid. both of those are growing to the point that over time and people disagree exactly what year it happens but they bust the entire federal budget. they grow so big, they balloon so large that you can't drive taxes anymore and they basically shut out all of the money that congressmen are supposed to spend on different things like defense or all other kinds of government programs. so these things, like a cancer, are growing so big that they threaten to break the federal budget and the federal piggy bank. in fact right now those three programs, medicare and medicaid, social security, have almost gotten to the point where they're taking half of the disposable budget of the country. so now we've got medicare and medicaid out of control and so what are we going to do? oh, well we're going to have the government take over all of

health care. that doesn't seem to be a credible solution to to that problem -- to that problem. now, this is an article from "the new york times." as a result this is talking about this great meeting, this great political drama that's supposed to take place tomorrow, democrats now are considering a plan to use a parliamentary maneuver called budget reconciliation to attach changes to the senate health care legislation as a budget measure which cannot be filibustered and requires only a simple majority for passage in the senate. now, does this look like a bipartisan effort to cooperate on health care? i don't think so. what this is is a call by the captain of the ship to go to

ramming speed, to take the bill which a majority of americans do not support and to try to jam it through. now, there can be a nice political drama tomorrow but is it really working in a cooperative spirit to go behind closed doors, put together a bill, pop it out within 24 hours and then demand that the republicans all go along with it? is that really working in a bipartisan way or is it really just more of my way or the highway? i will leave that to your decision, but that is what "the new york times," not exactly a conservative oracle, is saying. this is the plan, is to take the bill that went through the senate, which a great majority of americans do not support, and push it through anyway. and so this is -- this is from the public is -- this is where

the public is now. 58% of voters nationwide oppose this health care reform plan. will six hours of drama tomorrow change that? is this going to change? is it really going to be drama or does it lack credibility? i would suggest that when i take a good look at this i think people may yawn and say, this sure looks like the same old, same old. we haven't seen very much changing. and the olympics is a whole lot more exciting. as i started by saying, i have observed things about drama and plays and the things that i have observed are that they tend to be either really good or really bad and boring. and so that's my concern about the high level of drama tomorrow. now one of the connections that i think we need to make and it's something that has been made is the connection to something that i think is on the minds of americans maybe more than a

government-run health care program and that is the problem of unemployment. and i'd like to connect these two because these two do connect together. i see that i am joined by my good friend, jack, were you interested in joining our discussion? >> i certainly am. i wanted to ask the gentleman from missouri, as i understand it this theater tomorrow, this summit at the white house about health care, i want to make sure i understand, is it health care -- certainly they're going to talk about jobs. we had the stimulus program when the unemployment was less than 8%, it's now over 10%. the stimulus program which was over 8 -- $800 billion was spent over a year ago, deficit spending that borrowed money. and it was supposed to keep unemployment from going to 8%, now it's up to 10%. certainly tomorrow at the white house the topic isn't going to

be more spending for government health care program, certainly they do plan to talk about jobs. am i correct or incorrect? mr. akin: i wish. what you just said, congressman kingston, i would wish that that were true. i think the american public is concerned about unemployment. somebody made the comment that unemployment is an important issue but it really becomes critical when you're the one who's unemployed. and yet my understanding is that this drama, this political drama, is basically rehashing the same old play which is, here we go again with this health care situation. now, you made a comment that they had -- i think it was $787 billion -- some people called it a stimulus plan -- mr. kingston: if the gentleman will yield. actually as price tags tend to expand after legislation has passed in washington, the obama

stimulus plan was $787 billion but they revised it now another $75 billion. so it is well over $800 billion. mr. akin: over $800 billion. now some of us stood here and said, this is not going to work. i was standing in this floor a year ago and i said, this stimulus plan will not work. and it wasn't because some of us were such geniuses, it's because we had learned from henry morgenthau back in the 1930's who stood before the house ways and means committee and said, we tried this idea of excessive government spending, money that we didn't have, and we tried to spend money like mad and then this is the guy who was little lord keynes' buddy, he was f.d.r.'s secretary of treasure and he said, it doesn't work. i don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to figure out when you and your family are in trouble economically is what you do is don't go spending money like mad. if spending money was going to give us a good economy, boy,

we'd have a great economy right now. mr. kingston: i'm glad you brought that up. because as you know, as republicans we overspent. we did. we spent way too much money. now we'll point out this year's deficit alone at $1.4 trillion is more deficit than george bush had in the entire eight years. let me repeat that. eight years of bush is still less debt than one year of president obama. mr. akin: let me toss that number a different way. george bush's worst debt year was with a nancy pelosi congress and that was about $400 billion something. that was too much debt. but you go -- and that was 2008. you go to 2009 with president obama and his very first year was $1.4 trillion, more than three times more than president bush and then they want to say, yeah, but it's bush's fault. wait a minute.

mr. kingston: actually, also there might be something to it if the president had not been senator obama. because senator obama voted for every single appropriations bill and the bush bailout of may, 2008, not a bailout, it was a stimulus program in may of 2008, about $168 billion, july of 2008 fannie mae, $200 billion, bear stearns, $29 billion, a.i.g., $85 billion, going to $140 billion, done by the federal reserve. mr. akin: what you're saying, congressman kingston, a billion here and a billion there, that starts to add up, doesn't it? mr. kingston: it absolutely does. what i'm saying on this federal reserve spending is that neither senator nor president obama has spoken out against that. he embraced the tarp bill, the wall street bailout, with both arms. that's $700 billion. then there was $410 billion for

the omnibus spending bill and then as you pointed out, $800 billion for the stimulus bill, then -- now he's proposing $950 billion for this government health care plan and yet he still says that he wants to reduce spending. i'm on the agriculture committee, we had a hearing today with the secretary, the secretary's a very decent secretary, but the proposal of the administration is to freeze agriculture spending. agricultural spending has gone up 26% since 2007. so you have -- mr. akin: wait a minute. this is one of these ones just like we're talking about now. health care plan. this doesn't compute, does it? we say we're going to freeze something that we just raised by over 25% in a year or two. that's incredible. mr. kingston: there's no end to this. today at the business round table the president said, i am

-- i think something like a staunch capitalist, i believe, in the capitalist system and yet, let's look at the last record. there's not a government regulation that this administration hasn't embraced and said, look, we need the government to do this. mr. akin: the government's doing more and more things. if we go back to that whole thing you're talking about on that supposedly stimulus bill, this is such basic stuff and yet somehow the administration doesn't understand it. we have a lot of unemployment, we have a whole lot of americans that would like to get jobs and so the question is, what can the government do to try to get those jobs going? and i've made a list of all the wrong things to do. these are the things that are job killers. now, if you take a look, one of the things that killed jobs, first thing off the bat, we score the stimulus bill you're talking about with the health care bill that's supposed to be the centerpiece of this great

political drama tomorrow and it's supposed to be -- supposed to be something new and they're going to open the box and it's going to be the same old ugly thing that was there before, what is it that kills jobs? this stuff is not complicated. anybody who ran a lemonade stand as a kid will understand what these things are. the first thing is economic uncertainty. if a guy that owns a business -- you think all of these jobs, most of them are in small businesses, 500 or less, that's 85% of the jobs in america, if you take a look at those guys and if you say, hey, i don't know what the world -- the future's going to bring, you're going to go, i don't want to take any risks because we just don't know what's going to happen. week of got this huge tax for the socialized medicine bill, you got this global warming deal which is a tax on energy, tons of red tape to go along with it, a lot of uncertainty -- mr. kingston: the gentleman's right. investment money is going to sit on the sidelines until the government sets the rules and keeps them. businesses can adjust, even if the rules are a bit excessive

and high and unreasonable, business will adjust to it. but if you keep changing it they can't adjust. so of course investment capital is going to sit on the sidelines. that's just economic common sense. mr. akin: so the first thing is, if you take a look at what we've been doing, we've injected a whole lot of uncertainty into the system to deal with. mr. kingston: more to come. as you say, cape and trade. but you didn't mention the banking bill. this is another financial takeover. i haven't seen a lot of wisdom behind the government knows best mentality of the pelosi house. mr. akin: congressman kingston, i'm glad you mentioned that. because when i take a look at some of this uncertainty, i think of three nets that are being thrown over free enterprise. the first was a net on everything that has to do with energy and as an engineer, energy is very pervasive in everything. so if the government is regulating energy all over, that's, as you say, a government takeover of a type. the next net is over all of

health care. but the third net, most people don't know about and i'm very thankful that you've brought that up and that is the net over all of financial transactions. now you put those three nets in place and you don't have very much of free enterprise number anymore because the government is -- anymore because the government is tingering with the rules and all of those -- in all of those areas and that really builds that economic uncertainty and that's a job killer. . mr. kingston: as i see it, looking at the government performance, republican or democrat, it hasn't been effective. two weeks ago, washington, d.c. shut down because of snow. you know, it might be worth 48 hours, but this was a town where essentially everybody in the government took off for a week. my son works in washington, d.c.

in the private sector. somehow, his roads were open. and i thought about that, but private sector could get to work two weeks ago in the snow, not every day, not every hour, because it was a bad storm. mr. akin: you have mentioned that snow. i wish you could tell me if it's true. i heard the snow was going to continue unless al gore said uncle, is that true? mr. kingston: the global warming campaign has been a great disappointment except for the vice president's pocketbooks. he has done well. you think about government efficiency and think about hurricane katrina, $120 billion to rebuild new orleans? i would say republicans and democrats share the blame. government did not do a good job. think about the war in afghanistan going into the eight year. we haven't executed the war very well. think about social security,

it's going broke. my 24-year-old son isn't going to get it. that is not political spin. it runs out of money in 2030, period. now we can tinker around the edges and postponethat a year or two. mr. akin: did you know why the department of energy was originally created? mr. kingston: it was jimmy carter trying to get us off middle east oil. mr. akin: you go to the head of the class. the whole purpose of the department of energy was to make sure we aren't dependent on foreign oil. mr. kingston: i think at the time the import amount from the middle east was maybe 50% to 60% -- excuse me, 35% and now it's up to the 50% or 60%. mr. akin: the department has grown tremendously as we have grown more dependent on middle

east oil. the compassion of the i.r.s. and efficiency of the post office. mr. kingston: let's talk about the department of education. school systems have done well. there is no way you can argue that. mr. akin: did you know there was a report that was done on the department of education, i think it was during the days of ronald reagan and their conclusion of the report was that if a foreign country had done to america what the department of education had done to education, we would consider it an act of war. i thought it was an interesting report that we're paying money for a department what would be considered an act of war. mr. kingston: i'm from the government, i'm here to help, i haven't found a school board member back home or teacher in the classroom who can't spend the mr. moran: efficiently and effectively because there is an old loretta lynn song, one needs

a spanking, one needs a hug and one is on his way. not some bureaucrat, three doors down at the department of education in washington, d.c. what about medicare? medicare is very important health care program for our seniors. my mom's on it. and i think your parentsr and yet it's going broke. $36 trillion in unfunded assets. what are we doing to senior citizens? the program is going broke and we have our head in the sand. mr. akin: what i was just talking about, this great drama tomorrow, there is supposed to be one element of it being credible. science fiction movie, it is a cheesy movie if it's unbelievable. tomorrow, we're going to take $500 billion out of medicare.

now -- and then the idea is that after people watch this six hours of great debate, that they are going to be happy and going to like the bill when they find they have taken $500 billion out of medicare. and people are going to say, that bill is ugly. mr. kingston: there's a joke about a guy asks some friends, why don't you ever read the bible? he says, i don't understand all that stuff that's in there. and the guy says, i don't think it's the part that you don't understand that is bothering you. and the president says over and over again, i guess maybe it's his background and ivy league schools and the circles that run around in the northeast, well, the american people, bless their heart, they just don't understand this health care bill. has he given 50 speeches? i know i had 19 town hall

meetings. the people understand the health care bill. mr. akin: i understand. mr. kingston: the american people understand. mr. akin: i find it almost comey call because you look at the -- come call, because you look at the american people and this is my 10th year and i have constituents who are reading this stuff and they know the bill. you can't tell me these people don't know what's in this bill. they don't like it. mr. kingston: the town meetings you and i had, where you didn't have to have a an invitation, where you invite republican, democrat, independents, out of towners and open mics -- mr. akin: those were pretty exciting this last year. mr. kingston: people were reading the bill. and i got to say this to the people who supported the bill,

they found good stuff in there and said, you ought to support that. and i think there are things that are worthy of supporting, but it's very difficult to make a bad bill a better bill. it would be better to start all over, pick and choose ideas from republicans. you don't have to start at ground zero as if you never heard of health care reform ideas but should start over in this legislation. what if this was the pelosi, boehner, reid, mcconnell bill, that would be a different thing. we want to work with the republic democrats. we were shut out of the stimulus bill, omnibus bill. we were shut out of health care. i hope tomorrow is the turning point. i would like to see something get done. mr. akin: let me just respond to what you're saying because let's look at the form at. the form at is we're going to

huddle behind closed doors and produce a bill. you have 24 hours to look at it and we want you to come and tell us what you like about it. that doesn't mean working as a team. it's more like if you don't support me, it's my way or the highway. mr. kingston: who gets to look at it in 24 hours? mr. akin: the bill was supposed to be released 24 hours from the day they are talking about it. and the only thing i have seen are outlines and the outlines, the congressional budget office can't score it. and it appears to be the same thing as the senate health care bill, is everything we can tell. there aren't special deals in it and yet as we look at it, we find there are. a lot of them are still there. the louisiana purchase is still in it, as i understand. mr. kingston: there is special interests for louisiana,

connecticut and michigan and those are the deals we know about because those were more visible but you can imagine all the other stuff in there, hospital wings that will be built. mr. akin: hospitals -- my understanding is the hospital is in connecticut. medicaid dollars, vermont, massachusetts, new jersey, drug companies, extra cash for union health care plans. i have a list of some of these. montana coal miners, florida seniors don't have to pay ta medicare advantage. medicare is being cut, but in florida, not cut there. if you are a union guy, it's not. and then there's north dakota medicare payments. hawaii hospitals are exempt from the cuts. and longshoremen, but there are a bunch of these special deals in the program. mr. kingston: special interest groups have been all over the health care bill.

mr. akin: exactly. that's the situation. and i guess the other thing is, i think the american public is worried about this job thing. excessive taxation is a big deal. because if you own a small business and tax that guy really heavily, the small business owner isn't going to have money to invest. so heavy taxation on a small business owner is going to be a job killer and yet this bill on medicine puts a heavy, heavy tax on small business owners. in that sense, it's a job killing bill. mr. kingston: there will be a new tax on individuals, because when you are forced to buy something, that is a tax. and so there would be less money for customers of small businesses on a discretionary basis, whether they are buying hamburgers, clothes, tires or whatever, they will have less in their pocket. mr. akin: there are supposedly -- i know missouri is one of them. my home state.

there are 36 states that have legislation moving exempting the states from having to being required to purchase health care when the government demands that everybody has to buy federally approved health care? there are 36 separate states moving legislation to stop that. that doesn't say something's popular. mr. kingston: the american people do understand this health care package. one of the great examples of government efficiency we saw in august, cash for clunkers was a program, actually pretty simple program, you turn it in and trade it in for a more fuel-efficient car, get a tax credit, take your old car and put it out to pasture and put it down and that is an easy thing to follow. sthrates the car dealerships. wheel -- well, that program was supposed to last -- i think they

had 100 employees and said they needed 1,100 employees and $3 billion. and doing that, cash for clunkers was dead in a matter of weeks. now that same government that brought us cash for clunkers, $3 billion program is going to be able to run a $2 trillion health care bill. mr. akin: i thank the gentleman for joining me today. the question in the beginning was, is this going to be a credible performance tomorrow or people going to tune into the olympics. thank you so much. the speaker pro tempore: thank you, gentlemen. under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the chair recognizes the gentleman from iowa, mr. king, for 60

minutes. mr. king: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, i appreciate the privilege to address you here on the floor and i appreciate the dialogue that came from my colleagues the previous hour discussing this health care issue that has so consumed this nation. we are now on the eastbound of the six-hour meeting that is scheduled at the blair house that the president has invited both democrats and republican leadership to join. and mr. speaker, i came to the floor to talk about this issue and help to put it in a perspective so that as the american people watch what's going to happen tomorrow, they understand it in perhaps a better perspective than they might other wise. now, i would lay it out this way, there are two points, mr.

speaker, that need to be addressed by democrats. and these are significant points of vulnerability where there has been a persistent criticism from the public. they have made the point that of all of the agonizing national debate that has taken place on health care, that the democrats have been first of all shut republicans out. they shut republicans out of the room and shut them out of negotiations and out of the office and second thing is, the democrats haven't had transparency and have been cooking up these health care deals in secret. and as this thing unfolded, sometime in early september was the last time. and i'm aware of that a republican senator or a house member was sitting in a room talking with democrat leadership how to come about this health care policy. from that time forward, it

became secret back door meetings and secret deals in combination with the secret deals. the american people were r repulsed that if you live in nebraska, florida, maine, you've got -- vermont, you've got a different deal and different costs. and i would be happy to yield to the the gentleman from georgia. mr. kingston: i was looking at the tea party list of priorities, which they call contract for america and this is a grassroots deal, just popped up, and there are different tea party groups, but they have been surveying their members on what their priorities are and the number one priority is to cut the size of the federal government. number two priority, the gentleman from maze or iowa would like to guess? the number two priority is do

not put something in the bill that doesn't belong in the bill. so the gentleman talked about these secret deals to the senator of nebraska, senator from florida, senator from louisiana, people don't like that at all. if it is such a great deal for the people of nebraska, maybe it ought to go to the other 49 states and ought not to be brokered in some smoke-filled back room. what you're saying is so very important, it can't be underscored, if this bill is such a great deal, why do you need to have the special interests side deals in order to get the votes from nebraska or from florida or from louisiana? . mr. king: that's what it takes to get the votes for a bad bill. that's what the american people know. i'd even go further. when you start out and you have a good idea, let's say it's a stand-alone idea, what about the idea of putting an end to the lawsuit abuse in america?

we've passed that legislation out of this house and republicans were in charge and we sent it over to the senate where it was blocked? the -- in the senate. but it was a clear concise idea that makes everybody whole, some things are going to go wrong. if it allows for them to recover all of their health care costs, allows for someone who is a victim to receive their loss in income and establish pain of suffering and an additional $250,000 on top of that, in texas there are three different increments that go to three quarters of a million, but that's it. it is a very simple concept that can stand alone, that the american people can look at and see that it isn't a special deal but now if you put an idea out for health care and then you have to pass something else to it and something else to it and something else to it and when you get this whole toxic stew that i've talked about so many times and you still can't sell that to get 218 votes in the

house or 60 votes then in the senate and you have to go out and give a special deal in nebraska in order to get a vote for the nebraska senator and a special deal in florida to exempt florida from medicare advantage cuts or if you go up and you build a bunch of public health clinics in vermont out of that deal or louisiana, the list goes on and on and on. the american people know that when you're buying votes with their taxpayer dollars they reject that concept, mr. speaker. the american people know that if you have a good idea it should stand alone, it should be able to be passed on its merits and moved through the house of representatives on an up or down vote so herb no -- everybody knows what's going on. we're not at that point. this is a con glam ration of a bill and it is frustrating to me that we can't put a good idea out in front of the american people to vote it up or down, go on to the next good idea. mr. akin: when you start talking about what you're saying, the american public does not like these special deals. and special deals a lot of times

happen in the darkness, in little dark corners, kind of places where cockroaches breed and the special deals, people aren't real proud of them. and so they're done behind closed doors, they're done when people can't see it. and when they get all put together in a great big piece of legislation those special deals are rolled out in a big hurry, hurry up and look at it so that we can pass it before anybody reads it too closely because sometimes they're disguised in little ways and you won't see them. so when the public -- they're starting to get wise to this. the idea is that if the public sees more in this health care bill they'll like it. no, if you see something that's ugly, the more you look at it, the uglier it's going to get. when you put all these special deals in it, then people have a tendency to want to bring it out in a hurry and don't look at it too closely. if some used car salesman says, i want you to get this car but don't bother to look under the hood, you're kind of thinking, i

wonder if there's an engine under there or not. and that's what's going on and the public is wise and they're sick of this special deal kind of stuff. and we do this in a lot of different ways. we put two things together that would never pass and then we pass it on a regular basis. and i don't mean to step on toes but the farm bill is an example of that. you take the farm bill and there's a farm piece and there's all of this food stamp stuff and neither one can pass on their own but you put the two together and then you can pass something and i think the public is starting to say, time-out, we're tired of this because we can't afford it anymore. mr. king: reclaiming my time. i'd bring this back to the time when it was down to, they had 51 votes counted in the senate on the health care bill. i went back to the midwest and i usually fly into omaha, omaha, of course, is a central metropolitan area for the state of nebraska. and as i went in i did a whole number of meetings around on both sides of the river, nebraska and the iowa side, did a lot of meetings around there and took phone calls in on a telephone -- on a call-in radio

show and this was the day before the agreement was made for the corn husband er kickback. the senator from nebraska was the lynch pin that could put together and hold together the entire health care package. up or down. if the senator from nebraska decides to pull the the pin the whole thing would have fallen apart. and so on the day before we were talking and people calling in and they understood that the nebraska senator held the future of this socialized medicine bill in his hand and they didn't know what was going to happen. in the middle of the night some kind of an agreement got made, there were accommodations that got made and there was an announcement that harry reid had 60 votes and he could break the filibuster in the senate and they could pass his socialized medicine bill and what does it include? first of all it includes a provision that will allow for federal funding of abortion and it exempted nebraska from the increased cost in medicaid in perpetuity. now, no one should ever sign a

document or make a pledge for anything in perpetuity. actually perpetuity probably lasts longer than forever if you want to break the definition down. the gentleman from georgia. mr. kingston: i can't imagine what the harry reid u.s. senate was thinking. i mean, how stupid do they think the american people are? how callus can they be to the sense of fair play? what kind of almost thuggery is it when you do that to people? i just -- it doesn't sound right for the taxpayers all over the country to have to float the bill for one state and as the gentleman from missouri pointed out there was also a special interest bill for florida. and, you know, and i think the presumption was, people are christmas shopping, they're getting ready to have their families in, they're not paying attention, let's just push for whatever we can. well the funny thing happened in massachusetts, they were apparently paying attention. and i think that that has woke

up a lot of people around here. you know, we have a group in the house called blue dog democrats. i'm not exactly sure what a blue dog is because they certainly vote like the old dog democrats from what i can understand. but i don't think there's any distinction except for there's a lot of democrats right now who are saying, hey, i saw what happened in massachusetts and if this bill comes back i think i go vote no and maybe can make up for my yes vote previously. mr. king: i -- mr. akin: i just have a question if i could jump in. tomorrow there's going to be this big drama, i guess six hours, maybe it will be pretty boring, i'm not sure, but it's supposed to be dramatic. six hours of people sitting around a table talking about this same old health care plan basically and there were different people that were chosen to go to participate in this. and i'm just wondering if you

know -- there were, i know there were a few republicans invite -- invited but were there any democrat it's who voted no on the bill that were invited to participate? do you know of any? mr. king: i can't name a single one and i haven't looked over the list of the democrats but that would be quite unusual, it would be unusual to see democrats in there negotiating the vote of no on the bill. i would be very surprised if there was even a token democrat to vote a no. mr. kingston: how many democrats did vote no in the house? i think it passed by 220 -- i mean it was 220 unique, 218, so there were two votes over 218. mr. king: i guess that number was nearly 30. maybe 32 democrats have voted no. in that neighborhood somewhere. mr. kingston: you would think they might have something to say at the white house. that they probably would be a little bit more moderate and have some good productive contribution to make. mr. king: wouldn't you want to know what their objections are? i would think that would be a point. bart stupak on the pro-life

amendment who had work very closely with smith and our pennsylvania representative joe pitts, they worked very hard to pass and they received 64 votes on a pro-life amendment to that. i understand that bart stupak is not on this negotiation either. and what we're seeing come out and what came out of the senate and it looks to me like the package that's there is it's going to be a bill that still funds abortion, that compels americans to fund abortions through their premiums in one fashion or another or brokers them through an exchange and also one that funds illegals and those are two things that are completely egregious to me, to think we'd compel taxpayers to do that. mr. akin: there's a lot of stuff i don't understand. i got another question for you. and this -- after tomorrow, after this six hours of drama, do you think people are going to say that you, gentlemen, and i and my good friend, congressman kingstonnering do you think they're going to say that we're obstructionists? i'm trying to figure out -- i wish it were true that we could

be obstructionists, because that meant if we vote no it would stop the bill. but they've got 40 more votes than we do. so how in the world could we be obstructionists? i need some help on that because the logic seems to be very hard for me to grasp. mr. king: a lot of things that get spun around this thing as you know in this town and it's been republicans are blocking the bill. we have no capability of doing that, obviously. not from a vote count standpoint when the speaker of the house has 40 votes to burn, a 40-vote advantage and they're sitting behind closed doors cooking up a closed-door deal, they can't get enough democrats to pass 218 votes here. i don't think today they can bring a bill to the floor and get it passed. this is about, though, the public criticism of shutting republicans out and about opening up here about this bill being negotiated in secret. those are the two things that the president seeks to resolve tomorrow, six hours of c-span

time, and then you'll say, listen, we're doing what i promised we'd do, we're negotiating this bill out in the public and we're doing so with republicans so who can complain? well, for me, he controls the entire format, here's the real centerpiece that i don't think anybody has articulated this at this point yet. the president of the united states as senator obama and as candidate for president said to the iranians, if you just simply unclench your fist we will offer our hand, we will negotiate with the people that we have been at odds with since 1979, the iranians and ahmadinejad, with no pre-conditions whatsoever and offer an open hand to the guy with the clenched fist. and yet the president of the united states refuses to come to the negotiationing table with republicans with a blank slate. the president has insisted and demanded upon pre-conditions. he has to have his conditions of his bill that has failed, his concepts that have failed and he

also puts out there that traps that they have been putting together behind closed doors of reconciliation. reconciliation is what president obama and others call the nuclear option when it was republicans looking at a 51-vote opportunity on the other side of the aisle. in fact, this is posted today on the website biggovernment.com, this is a statement about the president. we think about reconciliation. this is what blows things up in the senate. this is the nuclear option. this is how they would circumvent the anticipated and very legitimate legislative process by taking a senate version of the bill that sits over here on the calendar of the house, pass amendments to the senate version of the bill in the senate called the reconciliation package, then both bills would be here on our calendar. then the house under the director of speaker pelosi would take up the fixes that the house members have insisted upon which is called the reconciliation package, pass it first and then

pass the senate version of the bill, message them both to the white house where the president would sign them in the proper sequence, one bill amending the first bill because this would be as far as i know the first time in history that the white house has replaced a legitimate conference committee which would be the members of the house and the senate, democrats and republicans, having an open dialogue about resolving the differences and what did president obama say about this reconciliation-nuclear option? here's what he said, passing a bill with 51 senate votes is an arrogant power grab against the founders' intent. that's what president obama said. the problem with it is -- the problem with it is, he said that in 2005, not 2010. the gentleman from georgia. mr. kingston: if the gentleman's saying it's an arrogant power gran, -- grab, he's certainly accurate and that's a model he wants to have. the gentleman may also have quotes from senator joe biden who denounced using this nuclear

option as well as harry reid and you know what? when they were in the minority i think they were right and when we were in the majority i think we were wrong. i don't think you should do that. i think that it is a desperation thing and if you can't get the requisite number of votes maybe you need to start all over on the legislation and so -- but you do have very strong unequivocal statements by senator obama, candidate obama, senator reid, senator biden and yet total hypocrisy, that's what it is. hypocrisy at this point. you know, the gentleman was talking about needing republican votes. they do not need a republican vote to stop anything or to pass anything and it's not just with this $950 billion health care bill, they could pass the jobs bill without republican votes. they could pass the tax and trade bill without us.

they could get out of iraq or afghanistan without a single republican vote. they could have energy independence without a republican vote. they could pass that card check, that special interest bill for unions, without a republican vote. why aren't they doing it? . they found out in massachusetts, and they're scared to death that this might not be an isolated election. we are seeing a lot of back peddling right now. it's hilarious when you see some of these people like the senator from nebraska who had the special interest deal on the health care bill. now he's all over this jobs bill. too much spending. $950 billion health care bill which he supports and $15 billion jobs bill that he's

against because of spending. only in this town. mr. king: the problem is that, republicans can't stop anything that democrats decide they want to get together and vote for because of the margin of 40 votes to burn here in the house, 19 in the senate. but the problem is, democrats can't agree among democrats on what they want to push for policy and can't find the votes among the extra democrats and still point their finger over to the republicans and say, you guys you won't support the stimulus package or health care bill or that cap and tax, cap and trade bill that passed off the floor of this house, a bill that didn't exist, passed off the floor of the house of representatives and a bill that didn't exist with a message to the united states senate. mr. akin: if the gentleman would yield, a bill that was still being amended at 3:30 a.m. before we started debating it at

9:00 a.m. in the morning, a bill which you could say that not one single member in the united states house of representatives had read. mr. king: to the gentleman, in fact, i can say that with a factual knowledge and i don't have to ask any of the 435 members, did you read this bill, because i was here on the floor that night when we suspended the debate for 35 minutes to resolve, where is the bill. i mean sometimes, they'll say to us, you don't have any ideas. we have a lot of bills, 40 some bills we filed on health care. we said where is the bill we are debating. this was representative gohmert and joe barton was very good that night. and so we looked out here at the well and the bill didn't exist. there was an old bill, an amendment that hadn't been integrated. even the amendment wasn't here. it wasn't findable. what was going on, we were debating a bill that didn't exist, so it was impossible to

have read a bill that didn't exist. and in that bill was then passed and messaged to the united states senate. a bill that didn't exist was passed and messaged to the senate and no one read the bill. mr. akin: the funny thing is, a number of us have served in legislative bodies for a number of years, aun one of the rules has always been that the public never pays any attention to the process of how we go about passing legislation. and that rule has been -- and you can complain about different stuff like, we had a bill that was done here that we had a choice of voting for a big tax increase or cost of living and we had to take a choice between the two. and the process or procedure there is unfair. so, anyway, we got this bill here, 300 pages of amendments passed at 3:00 in the montgomery and we are here on the floor and you know the congressman from

texas, he has the sense of humor and he just asked in this plain kind of way, is it normal procedure that we have a copy of the bill on the floor when we are going to be debating a bill. and there is talking to the parliamentarian and he said there is supposed to be a copy of the bill and he says, i have been wandering around the chamber and i'm trg trouble finding it. and then the speaker starts laughing and we go back and forth, four times in a row and he says, i have come up to the podium and the place where you say there is a copy of the bill, there isn't, because the clerk is trying to stick 300 pages of amendments in this bill and we are passing a bill that doesn't even exist. and the funny thing was, i guess it wasn't funny, the public was paying attention, and they understood that we passed a massive tax increase on energy

that's affecting very many small people who have to pay that power bill. everyone who flips a power switch is going to be taxed and it was done they thought in the secret and dark of night, but the public was paying attention. and in my opinion, that started a lot of that tea party movement, that very event that we actually were standing here on the floor for. mr. kingston: if the gentleman would yield, let me ask both of you, should republicans take over this house, would you be willing to change the house rules to say that any bill has pob posted on-line at least 72 hours before it's voted on? would you support that? mr. akin: i would support it. if you aren't proud of it, you wouldn't stick it out there. mr. king: i would go further and i would have a lot more bills come down here under an open rule. i would sign the pledge and oath

and every bill would be under an open rule. mr. kingston: i'm an appropriator and i can tell you generally all appropriation bills have been open rules. there have been a few rare occasions when we were in the majority that maybe we had a modified rule or closed rule, but traditionally open rules were the case on appropriation bills. when all else failed, at least there were appropriation bills to allow the minority party to put in some amendments. but the iron hand of the oppressive majority has closed down that system. it is not about republicans versus democrats but 435 people who have been elected to represent their constituents' views in the nation's capitol. mr. king: another thing that happens, the rules committee

sits up on the third floor where you seldom see press and only on one occasion have i seen a television camera in the room. they control what gets debated on the floor and what is voted on the floor. the last time we had a legitimate open rule on our appropriations process was the spring of 2007. that was when speaker pelosi first came in and got the gavel before this shutdown of the open debate process. during that process, i was successful in pass -- getting passed, those that actually passed this floor, nine amendments. that's the most amendments any member of congress during that period of time. and yet, i have taken dozens of amendments up to the rules committee and submitted them, and i can't think of a single one that they ever allowed to be debated. and that process has to change. that has to be out in the open. we need the rules committee on television, out front, meeting in published hours so they can be watched by the press and the

public. additionally, while we are here watching what goes on with the rules and the shutdown of what's going on, we need more sunlight. mr. kingston: i have to tell you one of my rules experience. the rules committee, when a bill is passed say the agriculture, education it goes to the rules committee and they determine how long it's going to be debated and what amendments will be allowed and what amendments won't be allowed. that's why they are called rules. 435 members, you have to have strict rules. i was going to the rules committee and i submitted an amendment and i was waiting my turn to present my amendment to the rules committee for their consideration and a staffer wrote me an email and said your amendment has been rejected, do you still want to sit in here and be presented? i said how could it be rejected because i haven't presented it.

and until i present it, they can't reject it. the staffer said, your amendment is not on the list. >> i said what list. the list of amendments they are going to allow. i said this is a far as. you have members of congress waiting in a room to present their amendments and rules committee decided which ones they are going to take and not take. mr. king: they got a list from the speaker which ones to approve and not approve. on the health care reform, i offered 13 separate amendments to be -- to ask to be able to debate and get a vote on. and i was chass advertised by members of the -- chastised of the rules committee because i wasted staff time and paper. because i should have known that they weren't going to allow

these amendments so j should i try. any time to debate a bill that doesn't exist here, pass a bill and message it to the united states senate, i could put out a list, i'm going to reject an amendment that you offered in advance. another thing that happened on this floor today, committee action. committee action that goes on is designed to take this language apart, look at it, examine the ramifications, hold hearings, get educated, evaluate the impacts of legislation and bring that legislation through the committee and amend it and perfect the legislation when you have a debate where you can focus it with people who are experts. the legislation that came through on this today, political bill that came to the floor, had been amended in the judiciary committee with an amendment by dan lungren, passed by republicans and democrats voting for the lungren amendment.

the bill passed out of the judiciary committee and on its way to the rules committee, it became a different bill without the lungren amendment language in the bill. that's what we voted on the motion to recommit today. so that is a farce and the rules committee and the debate farce, three agrogeous things that need to change. and i will stand to change all of those. mr. kingston: about that bill, despite that strange route that it went to the strange product that wasn't passed by the committee, we still had a decent debate on it and passed the bill. the importance of that is, if you want open debate on health care, we now have an example that shows, hey, you know what? it works. this was a health-insurance-related piece

of legislation. we had open debate on it. it didn't have special bills on it or price tag on it, it had some republicans against it, some for it. and the thing passed. hey, what about doing that on everything else on health care? wouldn't that be an interesting experiment in democracy. mr. king: i hope what we see tomorrow is more than a dog-and -pony show and resolve the two things, which are the very legitimate point that they have shut republicans out of the process and very legitimate point that the president has promised negotiations will take place on c-span. that is what is going to be presented tomorrow. i'm going to say again, the requirement of preconditions that the president wants to be negotiated from his position -- by the way, he doesn't have a bill, he just have bullet points out there, but to start with his

bullet points and maybe we will be guessing at a combination of the house and senate version of this, that all needs to go off the table. and this threat of reconciliation, the nuclear option needs to be rejected by the president of the united states, i would be happy if he just read his 2005 statement veer bait imtomorrow. he should start out the meeting and say, in good faith, i want to talk about health care with you. i know i campaigned and probably wasn't the best promise, so i'm going to follow through so i can resolve some of the criticism and i know we have shut you republicans out of this thing, but i'm going to open it up so we can have negotiations take place and to demonstrate my good faith and then read from the 2005 statement. and then the president should say, passing a bill with 51 senate votes is an arrogant power grab against the founders'

intent, closed quote. that's what the president said in 2005. that would demonstrate gl faith. and then we would have ar blank piece of paper, however you want to characterize it, except republicans have their packaged bill and i'm suggesting we should concede that, too. and really start with a blank slate and then bring up as the gentleman from georgia said, stand-alone idea can be debated and perfected and can be passed. we need to do it with tort reform in a real way that takes the money out of the pockets of the trial lawyers as opposed to taking it out of the pockets of our senior citizens. . mr. akin: it seems to me what you're talking about, it's defining bipartisan. people come to the table and say, i don't like this part of your idea, or this part of your

idea and what part can we put together and agree on. the way the president is defining bipartisanship tomorrow is what he's going to do is go behind closed doors, come up with a legislative product, then give the republicans a chance to agree with him. and republicans aren't allowed to bring anything they have in but he has something he's concocted, he's going to spring it on them and say, now you're going to go along with me. is that your concept of bipartisanship? mr. king: i think they have been sitting behind closed doors, cooging up this option for over a month. senator harkin announced after scott brown won the election in massachusetts, again, thank you, massachusetts, mr. speaker, announced that they had already reached an agreement within a couple of days before scott brown was elected in massachusetts. this is a continuation of it. the strategy is what i

described with reconciliation/nuclear option. they're working behind closed doors, operating in secret. just say take it or leave it. mr. akin: is that bipartisanship or ramming it full speed ahead? mr. king: it's only the show of bipartisanship designed for two things, to say, we've negotiated with republicans on c-span, didn't shut them out, that's really it. >> i was in the state legislature, we had 180 members , you could say a third of the people were fairly liberal a third were fairly conservative and the other third were right of center or left of center. you had to have the legislative deliberations to get a bill in order to get for the georgia house 91 votes to pass something.

so i assume that congress would be the same way, you'd have tom people from really safe, hard left, hard right districts, then people maybe from more swing districts, you know, it's reflective of the american people but every bill that had the mark of both -- would have the mark of both parties on it. i was shocked when i came here and saw that it's full speed ahead with the majority party. i think that's why when we took over the house in the 104th congress we had open rules. and you know what, we strayed from that. that's one reason the people threw us out and put the democrats in. now they see the democrats, they are sick and tired of this partisan stuff. they do want open debate on c-span and amendments. you know what, it would be nice if mr. akin offers an amendment and i vote against it and you vote for it and it's ok to vote against your party members. maybe you prefer a democrat

one. but you know, once you understand something, you have the opportunity to debate it, as we did today, you get a better bipartisan product. and so today, i don't know if the speaker is in town but perhaps she saw that and said, oh, my goodness, so this is the way democracy works. maybe we should do this on another dozen bills and have a collection of health care reforms. it seems to me somewhere in the town meetings, that's what people were saying, fix what's broken, don't throw out the entire system. if you did some one-shot bills, you could have targeted health care reform without some $950 billion government takeover of health care. mr. king: in reclaiming my time, i'd label the gentleman from georgia as not right or left of center but an optimist, the speaker has been around here for a long time she would have seen this time and time

again over the 20 years she's been here. i don't think it's about trying to arrive at a means to get republican and democrat votes, it's about moving a democrat agenda. now it's a matter, it isn't necessarily my view what's right or wrong with the way they're looking at this, i have said that before the election, a year ago last november if we elect president obama, the most liberal president in american history, the most liberal senator in the united states senate, if we elect him with a strong ideology, and by the way he told us in baltimore, the president said, i'm not an ideologue, i'm not, but i'm not aware of anyone that actually believes that. a strong, left-wing president, standing with the speaker of the house from san francisco, harry reid from las vegas, those three are the ruling troy ka in america. i said before -- the ruling

troika in america. i said before he was elected that the three of them could go in a phone booth and do what they do to america and they wouldn't have to ask any republicans and the only thing they'd have to do is verify they could produce the votes in their own democrat party. and what happened? just what i said, essentially. the ruling troika cooked up a bill but couldn't agree in the house and senate and had trouble finding enough democrats to get it potass. -- get it to pass. i would remind the speaker of this, mr. speaker, and that is, thomas jefferson's quote whency he said, large initiatives should not be advanced on slender majorities. this is a large initiative. it should never be advanced on a slender majority. it should be something that's deliberated and debated and perfected in a legitimate prosessdz, not a partisan process. mr. akin: i don't know, this is my 22nd year, i hate to admit

it, 22nd year in an elected office. and i've seen 22 years worth of bills, 12 in the missouri legislature and this is my 10th year here. i have never seen a bill like this that is going to affect so many different americans, profoundly, this is larger than anything we've dealt with before and i know there are a number of us that believe that if this bill were to pass, the way it stands now, not only would it destroy health care in america, it would destroy our budget and would be tremendously detrimental to the lives of americans from coast to coast. this is a very big deal and it is right for the american people to be very exercised about it. mr. king: reclaiming my time, i'll make another point of this that i think has been understated, if stated at all,

mr. speaker, here in the house of representatives or across the dialogue of this land, and that is this. this president, administration, participated with the with the beginning of the bush administration, the nationalization of a huge chunk of the private sector. we watched, we've seen three large investment banks nationalized, fannie mae and freddie mac, a.i.g., chrysler, they said 1/3 of their profits had been nationalized mostly by the obama administration, depending on how you pick the dates it's declared to be nationalized. 1/3 of the private sector profits. now another 17% of our economy nationalized. that take 3s3%, you add it up, you're at 50%. right there at half. but the important thing, the part that seems to be missed in the dialogue of this debate is, when the government nationalizes and takes over the

private sector economy, which they have done and they want to take over the health care and take over the management of everybody's health care in america, this unique thing happens. we look back to 1973, the decision of roe v. wade and since that time, when the supreme court made their ruling which i think is not grounded in the constitution and i reject the rationale of roe vs. wade, but we've continually heard ever since then, people on this side of the isle primarily a few on this side of the aisle, saying government has no business telling a woman what she can and can't do with her body. that's between the woman and her doctor and her priest. it's not anybody else's business, no one can tell a woom what to do with her body. that's what i heard from these folks over here mostly. since 1973. now the same people, the same voices are saying, government should tell everybody what they can and can't do with their body. government should take over and

nationalize everybody's bodies, our health care, and determine whether our health insurance is the one they'll approve, determine what tests we get at what age, what age you get a mammogram, how long you're going to wait for a hip replacement or knee replacement, the government taxing the nondiet pop to try to tell you, don't buy anything, drink anything but diet pop, the government punishing trans fats, managing our diet and our health care, they've done everything except promise to run us across a scale and tax us for our fat and tax us for failing to exercise. they already tax about every sin you can put in your body by trying to control our behavior this nanny state is wanting to fund the tack yoifer -- the takeover of our bodies. think want to do this and it is the most private thing we have. the federal government taking other our body the very people that said, government has no business telling a woman what

she can do with her body, they want to tell everybody in america what we can and can't do with our body. mr. akin: there doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency there, does there? there are 36 states trying to protect their citizens from us demanding that their citizens have to buy the government-approved health care. people are fighting back, they're soisk the nanny state tell peeming what to do. when you can yao talk about the federal government taking things over, what i have seen in the last year seems to me to be three nets that are being tossed over our economy. the first net was the net that the government is going to make all the decisions about energy and if you think energy is a key component of almost everything, the government want taos regulate and all kinds of very -- in all kinds of very fine ways the eyes of energy. the second net says we're going to control all of health care. that affects everybody because

everybody has a body. and the third one which is not received a lot of attention, but is equally insidious, that the government is going to throw a net over all financial transactions. in fact the bill thaffs proposed would allow the government to determine the salary of a tell for the a bank. -- a teller in a bank. when you put a net over energy, a net over health care a net over financial transactions, talk about big brother looking over your shoulder, no wonder people are exercised. mr. king: reclaiming my time from the gentleman from missouri, it causes me to think about what i have talked about for some time here on the floor and, let's me see if i have the notes on this. i can speak from memory, however. i have long talked about the democratic socialists of america and their website. it seems as though americans don't seem to want to take a look at what's going on at dsausa.org.

i got to wondering in one of my nights i wasn't sleeping well, i guess it was bothering me the liberals were deconstructing our constitution, i was looking to see what they were thinking. i went to the website, the socialist website and i just talk -- typed in socialist of america, dsausa.org and what i come up with is a website that says what we want to do. it says, we are socialists, we are not communist. i always want to trust those people who start out their introductory say irke no, ma'am a -- i'm not a communist. they say commune aces want to nationalize everything, but socialists don't want to do that, they want to nationalize fortune 500 companies and anything in their way. we do want to nationalize the fortune 500 companies and we want to nationalize the oil

refinery industry and the energy industry in america, we want to take that all over and manage these corporations and i quote, for the benefit of the people affected by them. close quote. now i read that. i might have been a little bleary eyed because i thought, you'd run a restaurant for the benefit of the customer, that wouldn't be profit-based. you'd run a bar the same way. can't benefit somebody by serving theme will the of drinks because they might hurt themselveses or somebody else. really what it is the benefit of the people affected by them would be the trade unions. they'd run the corporations for the purposes of creating jobs for trade unions to work in there and put the unions into the management of the companies. that's what they say in dsausa -- democrat socialists of america, dsausa.org. they say, yes, we're socialists and -- but we don't run anybody, any candidates on our banner. we don't have a party that

advances candidates to go on the ballot because our legislative arm is the progressives. the progressive caucus in the united states congress. of which, if you go to their website and they're quite proud of this, they put a poster up over here on a fairly regular basis, there are 78 of them listed, 77 house members are proud progressives and one, the other, is bernie sanders of vermont who is a proud socialist. he is a progressive, he's on the list with the others, the socialists say the progressives are socialists, i don't say he -- hear the progressives saying they're not socialists, i'll take their word for it, they're socialists. their agenda is the same agenda advanced on the socialist website and we hear it on a regular basis here and the agenda being advanced by the president of the united states is an agenda that for all the world looks like the one i read read on the progressive website, the socialist website.

i yield to the gentleman from missouri. . mr. akin: it was interesting to me that there was a country, the u.s. and they had a theory and their theory was that the government should provide you with a job, with an education. they should provide you with health care. they should provide you with food, with clothing and a place to live. and that was the job of the government to do those things. and we watched that country. it was a big country. and after a while, it collapsed. it wasn't just the u.s., it was the u.s. s.r. and not just they tainted people of the christian faith, that was their operating philosophy that the government is going to provide things that are necessary for your survival. you need food.

so the government is going to give it to you. you need health care and education, so the government is going to give it to you. that was their operating premise. and we sat there and said yuck, yuck, yuck when the whole thing fell apart, because we knew it was a dumb idea. what are we doing here under the pelosi and obama leadership? the government is not only providing education and housing, but now they're going to expand and take overall of health care and they're going to tell you where to work and my question is how come we are doing the same thing we knew wouldn't work before. and i think that's what a lot of american citizens are saying. time out. what is going on? we need not just to get the budget in control, we need to deconstruct washington, d.c. and we need to remove them as a threat to the freedom of this country. mr. king: reclaiming my time and

a free enterprise capitalism is what defeated the soviet union and ended the cold war because our economy could outproduce their economy. i don't know why we are trying to emulate them. i have a brief question to the gentleman from missouri, in the akin household, when you served kids to that whole conservative family, do you serve them grits? mr. akin: when you get to the state of missouri, it's one of those things that kind of depends. mr. king: can you show me? missouri missouri we aren't too bad on oatmeal, but i'll tell you what is a little bit of new england that i would want to recommend is you get cornbread and maple syrup and i would stack that up against grits. mr. king: i yield to the man who does have grits for breakfast,

dr. broun. mr. broun: i think the american people need to know socialism never has worked and never will work and we have people here in washington who are so arrogant, ignorant and so incompetent that they think their brand of socialism is going to work, but it will not. it has never worked and never will work and i don't care who is trying to force socialism upon our people, it's still not going to work. in fact, the progressives, as mr. king was talking about recently, has said that way back years ago with teddy radios velf, who was the first progressive and started the progressive movement in this country, the progressives back a september try ago were saying the best way to socialize america would be to socialize the health care system. and they have been trying for 100 years now to socialize the

health care system. we have a sham of a meeting tomorrow at the blair house, the white house has set it up. when it was first announced, i was hopeful that maybe the president had seen the light from everything that the american people are saying that they don't want to have the government take over the health care system. maybe he was beginning to see the light and reach out a hand to try to work with us as republicans. i'm a medical doctor, and i was hopeful that my input and even my bill, health care reform bill, comprehensive health care financing reform bill that looks to the private sector, would maybe be considered. but know, that's not what the white house wants to do. in fact, they have stacked the deck. they have written the final chapter of this whole sham of a ruse of a dog and pony show

that's going to occur tomorrow. now i have challenged democrats individually, in fact, many of them, to introduce a bill that would do four things, four things that are totally market-based that would lower the cost of health insurance for every american. one is to have cross-state purchasing for businesses and individuals so that people could go and buy their health insurance anywhere in this country. second thing is to develop association pools so people could join an association and have a choice of one or multiple products in the way of health insurance that they could buy. third thing is to stimulate the states to set up high-risk pools to cover people who are uninsureable and a have tax fairness for everybody so everybody could deduct 100% of their health care expenses and we don't have that today. last night, i led the discussion

about health care. and the democrats came to the floor and were talking about a bill that passed the house today. it's a big insurance company protection bill is actually what that was. but bet si markey from colorado, democrat, she said she had a small business and was remarking that she only has two choices of buying health insurance and she would like to see her employees be able to get insurance across state lines. and i have had democrat after democrat telling me they would like to introduce this bill, but they said that their leadership would punish them if they were to do that, if they were introduce it and promote it. john shadegg, and different republicans wrote an op ed to

challenge democrats to introduce that bill. and that bill, if we had it on the agenda tomorrow, we could introduce that bill, the democrats could take control of claiming the bill is theirs -- mr. king: reclaiming my time. i would make the point that what's going on tomorrow that you referred to as a dog and pony show, i don't take issue. the american people need to know this isn't a negotiation taking place tomorrow but putting up the front and the show that there will be c-span, discussions taking place and republicans in the room. there hasn't been any dialogue about the dineic of what happens on the faces of the democrats that will be in the room, whose job it is to enhance the president's image. this is the president's image and he has lost his mojo and he can't get it back while working in the back room with democrats. the president can't get his

juice or mojo back unless he has republicans in the room. and i'm going to suggest going cheek to cheek with the president of the united states after we have come all of this way and the american people have won the debate and we are with them and we have now recovered the fumble in massachusetts and we got the ball, and we are playing defense and this is the best they can come up with and allowing the president of the united states to set conditions on the negotiations that we're going to consider, his defeated bill that 47% of the people say scrap it and start over, 27% say don't start over and quarter of the people say pass the president's bill. 20% of the american people think that might be a good idea. we need to understand that this is about the show. it's not about getting anything negotiated. if it were, i would do tort

reform. mr. akin: we called it political drama. there isn't anything that the republicans could do to block his bill. the problem he's got is, he doesn't have enough democrats that want to do this thing. he is trying to drum up support for this thing to make it look like there are people supporting it, and yet he puts a deal together and comes out and says now are you going to agree with it? there is nothing bipartisan about that. it's just a scam. i don't think the american people are going to buy it. mr. king: this reconciliation package -- figuratively, gun to the head of the republicans that says -- cleaning their gun all weekend and spinning the cylinder and they say, we have cooked up this package and we've got our deal. they put the gun to the heads and say, accept the terms we

will offer tomorrow or drop the hammer and go with the nuclear option. i don't think they have the votes in the house or senate to do it. and i will say, mr. speaker, if they try to move that, they are going to be looking at a whole stack of amendments in the senate that will take more time with more exposure on the senate votes than there is in the blair house tomorrow. the gentleman from georgia. mr. broun: i believe the american people know what's going on and are going to say no. the american people have spoken. they are going to say no to this sham, putting things together that don't let democrats or republicans being engaged in. it's all a show, it's a joke. a bunch of clowns that are just trying to make something look to be different than it is. and it is nothing but trying to ramrod a health care overtake by

the federal government by this tration and -- administration and the leadership. people need to say no to this sham, no to obamacare and we can defeat it. and i encourage people all over this country to start calling first thing in the morning, mr. speaker, to call every congressmen in this congress, every senator and say no to this sham, no to obamacare and no to the government takeover. and my patients' families depend upon the american people just saying no. with that, we as republicans are not the party of no but k-n-o-w but we can lower the health care if our issues get on the tail and discuss those. mr. king: reclaiming my time and i thank the gentlemen in our last minute, i make the point that i'm happy to say n-o to bad

ideas. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. king: we are saying yes to good ideas, including lawsuit abuse and selling insurance across state lines, h.s.a.', catastrophic and transparency and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from iowa rise? mr. king: mr. speaker, i move the house do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is agreed to. accordingly the house stands

>> ben bernanke testifies about the economy and monetary policy. now, secretary lahood. this part of the hearing is 50 minutes. >> let me just raise a couple of questions with you very quickly. the committee has reviewed thousands of complaints regarding sudden acceleration in the toyota vehicles. before the crash thatñossñçkçñar membersñiñr of at( family in aut "tsjutñ.

ñrmy questionñi is, why did it e jjtxdñrñi to act? &ñignz+:çóx@%ylñx].sñiñr why did it take them so long to act? >> mr. chairman, i would say this. i have been in the job more than a year. prior to my time which would have been prior to january 23rd of '09, if there issues i can't answer, i will get back to you for the record. i will tell you this, 30,000 complaints come to nh tsa every year and we look at every one of them. we think every one is important. some come from people who are driving cars and some come from the industry. we look at what's going on from stakeholders and people in the

automobile business. sometimes they file complaints with us. then when we see a pattern, we will do an investigation or we will look at it. if our investigation shows there needs to be a recall, it will be done. that has been the work of nh tsa. with respect to your specific question during that time period, what i would like to do is put it on the record after i really can get the facts for you. >> thank you very much. again, i know you recognize how important safety is. do you think it's to drive a toyota today? >> i will say this. if people check our website we have listed every toyota that is

up for recall. i want anybody that has one of those cars to take it to their dealer and to make sure that it gets fixed. we again are going to work 24-7 and we are going to continue until every toyota is safe for their customers to drive. >> thank you for your commit and dedication in this regard. i yield to the ranking member. >> this is on, mr. issa. >> it dropped off all of a sudden. it has nothing to do with you, i'm sure. maybe they can give me the other one. >> switch to the other mike.

>> very presidential. i will pick up where the chairman left off. some companies including toyota, you can go to the website and punch in the one piece of information with anyone in possession of a car can see. at your website, you have to put in make and model. you have to know your trim level, et cetera, etc. can you commit to us that in the foreseeable future, the department of transportation could and if you agree, should have every automobile sold in america, a vin number on file so if somebody punches in the number, they can see every recall and every piece of safety information that you know of that needs to be applied to that vehicle? >> given the right amount of time, i will commit to you that we should make that information available. in the simplest possible way for

even people who are maybe don't have access to a computer or whatever. we should make it available to people. >> i appreciate that and a lot of my questions from opening remarks are about what do we do proactively for the future. we will all have questions for you and nh tsa and follow-up questions about the past, but let me go to another one. currently nh tsa as i understand it has 41, 42, 49 in the high year thousand inquiries or complaints. the auto companies have theirs. if an auto company reaches a threshold they have a requirement to send that in in the u.s. if a company has a recall in another country, they have an obligation to inform nh tsa. you are familiar about the open

source system is. can you me today that there is any technological reason or common sense reason that in fact we should not, the united states government h tsa should not see all claims from all of the first world partners and obviously to be arranged and all the collateral material from the people who want to sell vehicles in the country. meaning, is there a reason you have to wait until there is a recall to get information? great britain can have a recall, but they had a similar sticky pedal they didn't see as significant because they thought it only happened there on right hand drive cars. yet when we were getting a small amount, had he had that information like any open source bringing together of information, an agency of the

government would have been able to have an alert that would have been sent to the auto company for their attention and response. do you see any reason that's not something that should be part of a great organization rather than a good one? >> i agree it should be part of it. we believe in transparency. i believe information can be powerful. the more the better. >> the toyota blade sold in japan that had a pedal similar to this even though it was not an automobile in which they shortened the pedal because of entrapment. are you familiar with that? >> i am not familiar with that. >> i would appreciate it if you would respond for the record of how in the future a similar automobile in another country that does have a change can have

a change consistent in the u.s. as i said in opening remarks week took shortcuts with nh tsa's acquiescence and awareness, we took a shortcut on the map while in japan they reduce and increased the clearance on the pedal. the difference is the difference this san diego of that family still being alive. that's probably the most important question i have for you and consistency and dissimilar parts around the world. it is within existing law to bring about a real change so this will not happen again? >> i take your point and it's a good point. you have my commitment. >> i appreciate that. if at some time in the future you see the potential need for more authority or more specific

legislation that you would also come back to us? >> absolutely. >> thank you and thank you again. i yield back. >> thank you the gentlemen from california. i yield five minutes to the gentlemen from pennsylvania. >> i assume this is going to be more uplifting sessions that you had since in office. i think this is probably the greatest attendance i have seen in the hall ways and of the press. >> i would agree. >> obviously we struck a nerve. this committee and the occurrence that happened in california. i wanted to take a moment to congratulate you. exactly what this committee and

the office expected you to do. earlier i was watching the ranking member on cnbc and he made an interesting proposal to what he discussed with you today. maybe if that proposal could be encapsulated with greater authority, but even above and beyond the auto industry that we find a way since we are in a global market place find this and for availability to not only the citizens of the united states, but citizens of the world. i commented to the staff after i saw this, but i love portuguese sardines. if someone died from pot limp, i have no way in the world of knowing where to go or who to inform.

it's time now that we think about the fact that we are not in a if anything productive can come out of the hearing, it's that we take this positive action. i will join you in the sponsorship of authorization for the auto industry and all international industries to get this type of repository information made available and utilize the intelligence network and information to this country to commercializing it, if we will. to you, mr. secretary, this has been a tragic experience i think for toyota. i'm sure if i were a stockholder or japanese that the pride they have with that company in their 50 years of experience, this is

something no one wanted to see happen. what we have to do is handle this situation with a form of class, if you will. i hope we don't utilize it to beat up or e or overexemption size or exacerbate feelings that may occur between the two nations. >> we haven't done that. we have all done it. all of you feel this way. we have done it under the umbrella of safety for people who own toyotas. >> that's a good message. if we can put it out there, we want to drive from the theory and the fact is the best purposes in the world to accomplish things in the future so that it doesn't or won't happen again. we don't want to exaggerate situations that go beyond reasonableness. i thank you for your testimony and thank you for your attend

arns and i pledge to youing to w the ranking member that we will take such action as possible to see a positive result. >> we will work with you on that. >> thank you very much. i recognize the gentlemen from indiana, mr. burton, former chair of this committee. >> let me preface remarks by welcoming you here ray and mr. secretary. we have been friends for a long, long time and know you to be an honorable man. the questions have nothing to do with questioning your integrity. i want you to know that. there was an invitation made to mr. strickland to testify and there was an article in the "los angeles times" today that indicated that because of your request, mr. strickland was asked not to testify. is there a reason for that? >> look, mr. burton, mr. strickland has been on the job 40 days. i have been on the job 13

months. i will not have the administrator appear and i'm taking responsibility for this. as i said in my testimony, safety is number one. i'm going to be accountable. if somebody wants to criticize nh tsa or the department, i will be handle. that's my job. i will not duck it and give it to somebody who has oldsmobile been on the job 40 days. when i talk to mr. towns and mr. issa, it was clear they wanted me to come and i wanted to come when we originally talked. i don't know how that confusion occurred. that's the reason for it. >> don't get mad at me, ray. that was the "los angeles times". >> just because i raised a decibel in my voice, doesn't

mean i'm mad. >> don't give me that stuff. there is a question about whether or not there might be a kind of a sweetheart arrangement with the people who preceded you working at nh tsa. there a number of people, at least two employees who now work for toyota. they are on the toyota payroll. i have their names here. are you familiar with that at all? >> i read reports that was and we looked into it. what the law requires is that if you have been an employee at d.o.t. and you go to work for a company that does work with d.o.t., you cannot communicate or participate in the work that you did with this company. if you go to work for a company,

if you go to work for toyota, you cannot communicate on issues you dealt with the d.o.t. for example, if those employees worked at nh tsa which they did, they can't come back and if anybody here knows that there is violations, let me know. i wrote refer it to the ig, and there will be an investigation. there has been no more higher standard set for ethics in this administration. at the first cabinet meeting, the president made it clear. i do not want any ethical problems with anybody. >> this procedure, mr. secretary, but mr. christopher, toyota's assistant manager of technical and regulatory affairs did work for the agency, and according to general motors, ford, and chrysler, they do not have anybody formerly working

for him that regina in those capacities. you are saying that these gentlemen -- >> they cannot come back and talk about issues that they've worked on. they can talk to people in other modes, but they cannot come back and talk to our folks about issues. . . other modes. faa or other modes. they cannot come back and talk to our folks issues -- >> the one thing i would suggest is that the appearance is one of the things that right now i think the public is concerned about. a couple of people that work at nh tsa in a public relations position they can talk to people at nh tsa and the appearance may be that they are influencing decision-making going on. >> i agree with you on this, mr. burton. i think this law probably should be tightened up.

i really do. i really do. i agree with perception is reality. anybody that has been in politics knows that. i take your point on this. >> thank you very much and i still love you, ray. >> thank you. >> the gentlemen yields back? i now recognize the gentlemen from maryland. representative cummings. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman and mr. la hood. it's good to have you here. one of the things that we find ourselves in quite a deelementsa here. on the one hand we want to be careful about what we are doing here. we do have one of the main trading partners, japan involved. we have a safety of citizens. many constituents who spend thousands upon thousands of

dollars to buy an automobile. they have a right to expect to be safe. to that end there was very telling testimony before the commerce committee. we know you were there and heard about it where the president of toyota sales usa when asked about the issue whether it's a sticky pedal or the mat problem, whether recalls in regard to those issues would solve the problem, he was not sure. are you familiar? >> yes, sir. i was there and i heard his testimony. >> as i sat here and listened to you and you talked about -- you said go to the website and you said if they were people having certain problems, they should go to the dealership. then i heard you in answer to

the chairman's question -- i don't think you ever really answered the question because he asked you whether or not you considered a toyota to be safe. you are our safety guide just as you just said. you said it, i didn't. i believe you are concerned about safety. the question still becomes for our constituents, you as our safety guide. >> let me answer you very directly. for those cars that are listed on our website, d.o.t..kof for recall to go back, those are not safe. we determined they are not safe. >> all right. >> we believe we need to look at the electronics in these cars. because people have told us they believe there is an issue and we are going to do that. we will have a complete reviewo the electronics. for now, any car that's on the website needs to go back to the dealer to be fixed women determined those are not safe

because of a floor mat problem, because of a sticky pedal. >> it's the and that i'm wondering about. in other words, you just said you didn't consider those safe, but again we had them saying yesterday that -- i'm not trying to attack you. >> i'm not offended by any of this. come on. i'm not. >> we need to be clear. we have people who are driving these cars every day. i'm wondering, do you believe that -- it sounds like you do, there is something beyond just those two things as mr. lents of toyota usa testified yesterday. one more question. if those automobiles are not on the recall list because that's what i'm going to wonder about. what are they supposed to do? >> there people who believe that there electronics problems with toyota.

that's the reason we are going to do a review. for now, we don't have evidence right now to say conclusively that there these electronics problem where is we will get into it and get in the weeds. there were people in the committee that had some studies that showed that there were electronics problems. we want that information. the only thing i will say to the toyota drivers f your car is listed, take it to the dealer and get it fixed. please know that we are going to look at other issues because we had complaints about the electronics. >> do we have enough personnel to do that? >> yes, sir. i will tell you this. the president in his budget proposed 66 new employees for nh tsa. we have 125 engineers and we do have electrical engineers also. the answer is the president has proposed in our budget 66 new

employees for nthsa. >> when you talked about looking at problems, you said when you see a pattern, can you tell us what a pattern is? in other words, you said if you see a pattern, you take the next step. >> i would say if we get, i don't know, 50 complaints on an automobile. say we get 10 complaints, we look at those seriously. if those 10 complaints appear to be serious, we will begin to look into it. >> thank you. i see my time expired. >> thank you gentlemen from maryland. i now recognize the gentlemen from florida, congressman mica. >> mr. chairman, when i received the notice for today's hearing, this is from the committee and this says the panel includes david strickland, the administrator of nh tsa. he has only been on the job for

a limited number of days, but it's important he testify. i would ask consent that he be allowed to testify and be sworn in as a witness. >> it was chained earlier that the secretary indicated the fact that the decision was made, he was on the job 40 days. that's it is reason he is not here. they assures us that the decision in terms of the final decision was his and he is prepared to assume that responsibility. once he said that, i became comfortable with it. if he is going to assume the responsibility, then of course when we discussed it with the ranking member, we accepted that and of course i think we should move forward. >> i do understand that he is here and he is available. i never met him before, but i read his resume. this is from the department

website and said his work included -- he was with the senate committee advising the commerce committee members led to inclusion with several safety mandates including the electronic stability control mandate for every passenger vehicle. he does have a certain amount of expertise. if we look at the safety of equipment, i think it appears he not only is knowledgeable, but also had experience in passing legislation or influencing regulation in that regard. i can withdraw my request, but again i'm disappointed that he is not a witness. i was led to believe again that he was on the witness stand. >> would the gentlemen yield? >> i don't want to get out -- >> i will be brief. mr. chairman, we are anticipating having another panel in a week or two.

would you agree to work with us on the possible inclusion because we will be calling probably bush administration people and we can see the potential of that at the end of this hearing. >> i don't have a problem with that at all. let's face it, what we are talking about happened on the other watch. of course we need to recognize that. the oint is that i think that's where the emphasis should be in terms of trying to make certain we talk to them. i don't have a problem asking them to come forward and the point is that we should move forward today. we have the secretary with us. >> i will withdraw my motion if it's acceptable. we will work with you. if i'm now recognized. >> i recognize the gentlemen for five minutes. >> nh tsa is the primary

national safety transportation surface safety transportation agency in the united states and the department of commerce. right, mr. la hood? >> that is correct. every account i have heard to date says that nh tsa and toyota failed. the chairman said it in opening statements yesterday. we heard that -- eyeless i can't talk to the admib straighter today, but we will get an opportunity to hear from him. you opened your commentary rightfully so with safety being your primary responsibility of the department of transportation. am i correct? >> that's correct. >> you now set the policy and you have been there for a nob of months. i'm somewhat baffled by the

budget request of the administration from 2010 to 2011. the budget request that came out a few days ago. with the smallest request for increase in budget for our primary safety agency. it was only $5 million. yesterday i said the transportation committee that my dad used to say it's not how much you spend, but how you spend it. if you spend it wisely. i think you know the concern and i had about safety and making that a priority, particularly in transportation and in nh tsa in particular. it's a relatively modest amount. it's one of the lowest increases requested. any reason for that? >> we think that adding 66 new people at nh tsa gets us where we need to be in terms of

staying on top of safety issues. >> you have 632 current positions. how many for that. >> does mr. strickland, mr. strickland or your staff? >> i'll be happy to get back to you for the record. >> okay. and i would like, mr. chairman, i ask unanimous consent that the number of fte vacancies in nhtsa be included in the record. >> without objection. >> the issue of the revolving door of people going from nhtsa to the industry, it was stated that there is no communications, what you stated, allowed between them. i have a copy of an e-mail in 2008 between scott yohn of the u.s. department of transportation and the former nhtsa employee who works for toyota. are you aware that this type of -- these types of communications went back and forth? >> i saw that e-mail.

>> but you did admit that we should tighten things up. i think that was your term. >> absolutely. >> and is there now a two-year ban or one-year ban or are you familiar with the restrictions on the revolving door -- >> two-year ban. >> okay. so i would be glad to hear your recommendation and support your recommendation to tighten this, but -- >> i'll be happy to work with you on that. >> i would like to submit this document for -- to the record to show that in fact there has been communications and that we do need to close the revolving door if it is just limited to toyota -- >> without objection. >> thank you. it doesn't matter. so i have some disappointment, again, i don't want to get in all the specifics of where those bodies are directed or requested. it is not my intention to try to embarrass the department.

it is my intention to make certain that you have the resources to do the job that you need to do to ensure safety. is there anything else you could recommend to either our transportation committee or government reform in the way of additional authority, personnel or resources that would allow -- >> regarding safety? >> yes. >> i would love everybody to support the bill that mr. oberser introduced. that would give us oversight over transit systems. and i would encourage every member of this committee to look at that bill. it is a good bill. and it gives us the authority which we're prohibited from doing to get into the safety business with respect to transit organizations. >> well, and transit is one thing and, again, federal agency has say over amtrak and freight rails, which have probably the

worst safety record, but if you took all the fatalities in public transit over the years, and compared it to the one -- the incidents that have been cited today in this one automobile part, i think you -- we have a problem. >> mr. mica, i don't minimize any fatality. i think one fatality is -- are too many fatalities. and when eight people are killed, here in washington, d.c. on america's metro system, somebody needs to be looking out for safety. we want to do that. and i hope we can have your support to do it. >> finally, i would venture to say there is an article in today's "post" that if they -- if we had -- we do have equipment that could provide that safety. our money would best be expended -- >> you'll be happy to know the

president proposed $150 million in the 2011 budget for ramada, for equipment. >> the gentleman's time is expired. >> $5 million for the nhtsa budget, the lowest amount i have in recent history. thank you. >> gentleman's time has expired. i now yield to the gentleman from ohio. but let me just say before go that, we have three votes and, of course, we're going to continue through the votes. i want to assure you of that. so as soon as you vote, you need to come right back because we're going to continue. will the gentleman from ohio is recognized for five minutes. >> i thank the chairman. welcome, secretary lahood. >> thank you. >> cbs had an exclusive where they were able to gain some internal documents that showed that toyota redesigned software

in 2005 in response to complaints that cars were accelerating unexpectedly. are you familiar with those documents? >> no, sir. i'm not. >> is this the kind of issue that nhtsa has the ability to be able to get into? >> yes, sir. >> so are you interested in that kind of a report? >> yes, sir. >> one of the suggestions made in that report is that the -- by an electrical engineer -- is that there may be a problem with system systems design with respect to toyota and i would assume by reference to their electronic throttle control. does your department have the

technical ability to be able to analyze systems, design, engineering, mechanical, software, hardware, and all the elements that would be necessary to be able to come to a conclusion as to what the nature of unintended acceleration would be. >> yes, sir, we do. and we take our responsibility seriously. we have 125 engineers. we have electrical engineers. we're going to get into the weeds in a very thorough comprehensive review on the electronics. because that issue has been raised enough that we need to do that. been raised by people who drive toyotas, been raised by members of congress and we're going to do it. >> the distance between washington and japan is well established. but the question is what kind of

ability do you have to send those who have the technical skills to analyze documents to japan to get toyota's corporation in being able to review records of research from let's say 2004, 2005, on these models, internal documents, that would tend to show whether or not toyota was aware of any of these problems. have you sent people, specifically, to do that and if you haven't, do you intend to as part of your findings and your investigation? >> we have asked for a voluminous amount of information. if we need to go japan and meet with their engineer and get more information, that will be a part of our review. >> and so -- but you no doubt are aware that as a established

and respected automobile manufacturer that toyota would have research documents within their control that would show the function of various components -- >> of course. >> -- of their system. >> yes, of course. >> i think this is important, mr. chairman, or madam chair, that we hear from the secretary on this because his department does have the ability to be able to get into this. and while we as members get these documents, we can analyze them, we have help in being able to understand. on the time that i have remaining, for the instruction of the membership and the public, could you walk us through how complaints are investigated. you know, who does the investigation? can you enable us to learn -- is this all in-house? do you outsource any of your investigations? >> almost all of our investigations are done in-house by our experts. people file complaints with us.

and we take them seriously. we look into them. when we decide that this is serious enough, we interview people. we look at all the possible written material from the automobile manufacturer, from people themselves, from whoever -- we gather the most comprehensive amount of information through interviews and research and then make a judgment if a car needs to be recalled. >> thank you. and mr. lahood, i want to make sure that you put on your agenda the issue of the redesign of softwares -- software by toyota engineers in 2005 because we want to see if toyota's claim that electronics were not to blame, we want to see how that squares with the software redesign that occurred apparently in response to some

kind of an electronics problem. >> it is on our radar. >> thank you very much, mr. secretary. and thank you for your service to our country. >> thank you. >> time has expired. mr. secretary, i want you to know the chairman has not morphed into a lady in red. but he's gone to vote. and i am here pending the vote of the congress to give the residents of the district of columbia the same vote that your constituents had when you were here making trouble and doing good. >> as a former member, i supported your opportunity to do that, miss norton. >> we certainly will miss your vote when the bill comes up. so i thank you. and the members will reappear. i call on next the gentleman from indiana, mr. souder, for five minutes. >> thank you very much. and mr. secretary, i want to say i have always appreciated your intelligence and your feistiness. it is how you arrive at truth

and it is the only way we get at truth. and i appreciate that. first, let me say so nothing is misunderstood, i don't represent a toyota district. i represent a gm district. ft. wayne is the proud manufacturer of the silverado and sierra. my manufacturers supply all companies, but mostly the big three. but this is -- this whole ruckus about toyota bothered me personally in watching this process. 100% risk free is your goal, but it is not really achievable it is not achievable on bicycles or ice skating or horseback riding or anything. you try to get that, but we kind of held them up to artificial standard here and i'm concerned that even, just like dragging mr. toyoda through this or asking him questions like are you completely 100% safe in a toyota, what are you supposed to say, that it leads me to ask a couple of questions that you may

not be able to answer all of these today, but i would appreciate you looking at this because this needs a thorough looking at and a fair looking at and not acting like it is just one car company. one is is that no vehicle is 100% safe, isn't that true? >> our goal is to make sure that vehicles are 100% safe, mr. souder. >> but no vehicle is 100% safe. >> our goal will continue to make sure that cars are 100% safe. >> secondly, you said that all toyotas that are on a safety recall should -- you obviously can't -- you're even less confident of their safety if they're on a recall. wouldn't you encourage people if they had have a safety recall on any of the car companies of which you said this is one of the largest, but not the largest -- >> of course. no, of course. absolutely. in the last three years 23 million cars have been recalled. >> from all the companies. >> and the vast majority of them

have not been toyotas. so anytime there is a recall, people should take their car in and get it fixed. of course. >> yes. and that's very logical. right now the kind of whole world media is focused on one of the companies and i just want to -- >> i can give you a whole list of cars that are on recall, mr. souder and i would be happy to do that for the record. >> and isn't -- i'd appreciate that. and isn't one of the challenges here is that i know from my district, almost every supplier supplies all the big three, some are -- we don't have enough suppliers anymore to be unique in the united states. and most of them supply some of honda and toyota. and one of the things that strikes me here is that you should find out not just looking at toyota, but where is a common supplier and if that supplier was supplying just to toyota, as opposed to other suppliers, if it is supplying other companies and it isn't occurring there, what would be the unique thing that is happening in toyota? and don't have a confidence right now that that's occurring. but i would think it is kind of

a basic research question right now. you did represent an industrial district too that had companies and i think that's a fair thing. now, we also have a question of the difference between a -- first, let me ask you, you agree with this right, that there is some sudden acceleration and some a slow return? >> yes. >> and that the deaths which have dramatically increased since all the publicity, the allegations, but the proven number was 14, then up to 39 that are now in question and more coming, were all related to the sudden acceleration, not to the slow return. the slow return, i think you correctly said is a potential danger, but the sudden acceleration, every single one of the deaths related to that. >> that's correct. >> and this is the -- the cts is one of the suppliers. they're not in my district, they're in joe donley be donleyt of people work in my district.

it wasn't -- none of the parts on the sudden acceleration were actually made in the united states. they were all japanese suppliers. and i think we need to -- rather than -- we need to look comprehensively by model and start to look at this unique supplier question because, for example, cts supplies several different companies, whether those japanese suppliers in fact supply other companies as well in this kind of supply system. another thing that i would appreciate more detail on is that one of the things i'm worried about happening in the regulation is that -- just stated a number of times that toit with a w toyota was looking at this and researching this and europe had different standards so they started to do this. one thing with the lawsuits and particularly happening in toyota sales now, is they're getting attacked before all the evidence

is in, as i just suggested in the suppliers that part of the question here is will we in fact have a discouraging impact on companies doing -- checking out every concern if it is going to be drug into the public eye, that documents are going to be released, whether it is this committee, i'm not accusing you, but this committee may be responsible for that, before all the evidence is in? and one of the challenges here, we ran into this in the, quote, trailer controversy in fema, which now clearly has not been established, but had this big bubble, we said zero toxins and find out this room had more toxins in it than the trailer, we're finding this orthopedic devices and all kinds of things that we kind of react, and then the companies are afraid even to do the research. the bureaucrats and the organizations require more and more paperwork. we drive prices up because all vehicles and all parts are a combination of what's convenience, what's price, what's the tolerance when you go 99.9 versus 99.7.

there is cost to the consumers. if we all drive 20 mile an hour, we would have fewer deaths. in this process, are you at all concerned we're in fact going to silence research by the manufacturers and increase risk or increase costs or other types of things? >> not at all. i think what we'll do is sensitize manufacturers to the idea that safety has to be their number one priority and until they get to that point, they should only -- they should manufacture cars where they can tell the driving public that they're going to be safe. >> wouldn't lowering the speed limit to 30 -- >> pardon he? >> wouldn't lowering the speed limit to 30 save a lot more lives? >> the research doesn't show that. look, on an interstate highway we have minimum speed limits. you're not going to -- that -- look, mr. souder, that's not a very good illustration. lowering the speed limit on an interstate highway to 30 would make it very dangerous. >> the reason you have a minimum is because you have a maximum. if you lower the maximum to 30, you wouldn't need a minimum. the point being -- >> i don't buy your argument,

mr. souder. >> you can save lives with other types of things. the question is what is the trade-off of lives, convenience, so on, we have seen this in horseback riding in skateboarding, that you have a difficult job, your bogoal is 1% our second panel -- i would like to introduce our second panel. testifying on this panel, mr.

akio toyoda, president and ceo of toyota motor corporation. and mr. anaba, president and ceo of toyota motors north america. gentlemen, it is the committee's longstanding policy that all witnesses are sworn in. please stand and raise your right hand as i administer the oath. do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? if so, answer in the affirmative. let the record reflect the witnesses and r answ witnesses answered in the affirmative. you may be seated. let me begin by first welcoming you, and i really appreciate the fact that you have come to

testify and that, mr. toyoda, that you actually volunteered to come and to testify. i want you to know we're very impressed with that. that shows your commitment, of course, to safety as well, and we want to appreciate the fact that you volunteered to come. mr. naba, we welcome you here as well, and we've had conversations with you over the past few weeks and months. so at this time, we would ask you to -- actually, we will give you additional time. we generally give five minutes, but being he is all the way from japan, we'll give him more time. so mr. toyoda. yes, you may begin. >> his microphone.

>> thank you, chairman towns. i'm akio toyoda of toyota motor corporation. i'd first like to state i love cars as much as anyone. i love toyota as much as anyone. i'm here with my toyota family of dealers, team members and friends. i take the most pleasure in offering a vehicle that our customers love, and i know that the 200,000 team members and dealers across america feel the same way. however, in the past few months, our customers have started to feel uncertain about the safety of toyota's vehicle, and i take full responsibility for that. today, i would like to explain to the american people, as well

as our customers in the u.s. and around the world how seriously toyota takes the quality. >> mr. toyoda, could you just pull the mike a little closer to you? thank you. >> today i would like to explain to the american people as well as our customers in the u.s. and around the world how seriously toyoda takes the quality and safety of its vehicle. i would like to express my appreciation to chairman towns and ranking member isa as well as the members of the house oversight and government reform committee for giving me this opportunity to express my thoughts today. i would like to focus my comments on three topics. toyota's basic philosophy

regarding quality control, the cause of the recalls, and how we will manage quality control going forward. first, i want to discuss the philosophy of toyota's quality control. i myself, as well as toyota, am not perfect. at times we do find defects, but in such situations, we always stop, try to understand the problem and make changes to improve further. in the name of the company, it's longstanding tradition and pride. we never run away from our problems or pretend we don't notice them. by making continuous improvements, we aim to continue offering even better products for society. that is the core value we have

kept close to our hearts since the founding days of the company. at toyota, we believe the key to making quality products is to develop quality people. each employee thinks about what he or she should do, continuously making improvements, and by doing so makes even better cars. we have been actively engaged in developing people who share and can execute on this core value. it has been over 50 years since we began selling in this great country, and over 25 years since we started production here. and in the process, we have been able to share this core value with the 200,000 people at toyota operation, dealers and suppliers in this country.

that is what i am most proud of. second, i would like to discuss what caused the recall issues we are facing now. toyota has, for the past few years, been expanding its business rapidly. quite frankly, i fear the pace at which we have grown may have been too quick. i would like to point out here that toyota's priority has traditionally been the following. fir first, safety; second, quality; third, volume. these priorities became confused and we are not able to stop, think and make improvements as much as we were able to before, and a basic stance to listen to customers' voice to make better products has weakened somewhat.

we pursued gross speed at which we were able to deliver to our people and organization and we should sincerely be mindful of that. i regret that this has resulted in the safety issue described in the recalls we face today, and i am deeply sorry for any accident that toyota drivers have experienced. especially i would like to extend my condolences to the members of the saylor family for the accident in san diego. i would like to send my prayers again, and i will do everything in my power to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again. since last june, when i took office, i have certainly placed the highest priority on

improving quality over quantity. and i have shared that direction with our stakeholders. as you well know, i am grandson of the founder and all toyota vehicles bear my name. for me, when the cars are damaged, it is as though i am as well. i, more than anyone, wish for toyota's cars to be safe and for our customers to feel safe when they use our vehicles. under my leadership, i would like to reaffirm a value of placing safety and quality as the highest on our list of priorities which we have held from the time we were founded. i will also strive to devise a system in which we can surely execute what we value. third, i would like to discuss how we plan to manage quality control as we go forth.

up to now, any decision on conducting recourse have been made by the customer quality engineer division at toyota motor corporation in japan. this division confirms whether there are technical problems and makes decisions on the necessity of recall. however, reflecting on the issues today, what we lacked was the customer perspectives. to make improvements on this, we will make the following changes to the recall decision process. when recall decisions are made, a step will be added in the process to ensure that management will make responsible decisions from the perspective of customer safety first. to do that, we will devise a system in which customers'

voices around the world will reach our management in a timely manner and also assist them in each region and we'll be able to make a decision as necessary. further, we form a quality advisory group from north america and around the world to ensure that we do not make misguided decisions. finally, we'll invest heavily in quality in the u.s. through the establishment of an automobile center of quality excellence in the production of new divisions. sharing of more information and responsibility within the company for product quality decisions, including defects and recalls. even more importantly, i would ensure the members of the management team actually drive the cars and that they check for

themselves where the problem lies as well as its severity. i myself am a trained test driver. as a professional, i am able to check a problem in a car and can understand how severe the safety concern is in a car. i drove the vehicle in the accelerator pedal recall in the prius, comparing the vehicles and decided the remedy was the settings. i believe that only by looking at the product by sight can you make decisions. you cannot decide by a report or a meeting room. whatever results we obtain from the investigation we are conducting in cooperation with ntsa, i intend to further

improve on the quality of toyota vehicles and fulfill the principle of putting the customer first. my name is on every car. you have my personal commitment that toyota will work vigorously and quickly to restore the trust from our customers. thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. toyoda. mr. anaba? >> chairman towns, mr. issa, members of the committee. thank you for inviting me to testify today. my name is yashima inaba, and i'm the president and ceo of toyota north america and chairman and ceo of toyota motor sales usa. as you heard today from the toyota president, akio toyoda,

and as the subcommittee of oversight investigation heard yesterday from jim lentz, president and chief operating officer of toyota sales usa, toyota is taking decisive steps to restore the trust of the tens of millions of americans who purchase and drive our vehicles. our 172 team members and dealers across north america are making extraordinary efforts to complete our kurncurrent recall quickly and convenient as possible. we have rigorously tested our solutions and are confident that with these repairs, the toyota vehicle will remain among the safest on the road today. we also are going further by installing advance brake override systems in all of our

new north american vehicles before the end of 2010, and in an expanded range of existing models as a customer confidence measure and taking comprehensive steps to ensure strict quality control and increased responsiveness to our customers and regulators in the future. as you have heard, mr. toyoda is leading a top to bottom review of our global quality control processes and will seek input from independent safety experts to ensure that our processes meet or exceed industry standards. as head of toyota north american operation, i will be closely involved in this review, working with a new chief quality control officer for north america. i will also take responsibility

for ensuring we improve our dialogue with safety regulators and that we take prompt action on any issue we identify to ensure the safety of american drivers. in inviting me to testify today, the committee asked me to address several issues with regard to our recent recalls. let me summarize my answers here. our recent recalls addressed five separate issues that we have identified with certain toyota vehicles. in total, some 5.3 million vehicles across 14 models are affected by one or more of these recalls in the united states. the biggest recalls are for solutions our engineers have developed with regard to two specific mechanical causes of

unintended acceleration. one involves inappropriate accessory floormats that when loose or improperly fitted can then trap the accelerator pedal. the other concerns, accelerator pedals that can, over time, grow sticky in rare instances. the solutions we have come up with for both these instances are effective and durable. with respect to possible accelerator entrapment by the floormat, toyota recently designed a vehicle-based change that directly addresses the problem and announced a solution to the public in november 2009 as parted of the safety campaign. announced on september 29th, 2009. owners of affected vehicles can, in the meantime, drive safely by ensuring that they use only

properly secured, appropriate floormats. with respect to sticking acceleration pedal, a safety recall in the united states in january to address this issue. the sticking condition does not occur suddenly, and if it does, the vehicle can be controlled with firm and steady application of the brakes. we are confident that vehicles whose drivers are not experiencing any issues with their accelerator pedal are safe to drive and toyota is rapidly completing the repairs on our customers' vehicles. in both these cases, to thoroughly and carefully evaluate technical aspects of these issues, however, we now understand we must think more from our customer's perspective

rather than more of a technical perspective in investigating complaints and that we must communicate faster, better and more effectively with our customers and our regulators. our recent recalls of 2010 prius and hybrids braking system, camry cars to inspect the power hose and certain 2010 tacoma trucks to inspect the front drive shaft all illustrate this new approach. chairman towns, ranking member issa, and members of the committee, i ensure you that nothing matters more to toyota than the safety and reliability of their vehicles our customers drive. we are committed to not only fixing vehicles on the road and ensuring they are safe but to making our new vehicles better

and even more reliable through our redoubled focus to putting our customers first. thank you. >> thank you very much. and let me thank both of you for your testimony. let me begin by saying, have you told ntsa everything you know about sudden acceleration problems? have you told ntsa? >> according . >> translator: according to my understanding -- according to my understanding, we fully shared the information we have with the

authorities. >> our washington office has been always in touch with ntsa, and we are fully cooperating with ntsa in any information they require. >> has toyota disclosed all information about other potential safety defects with your vehicles to the regulators? have you done that? >> translator: i do not know the specifics, however, as i mentioned earlier, i do understand that all the information we have are shared with the authorities.

>> let me ask this question. today attorney general andrew cuomo of new york announced an agreement with toyota, and this agreement provides that if a customer might be afraid to drive his or her car subject to a recall, the dealer will pick up their cars, fix them, and return them to the customers. now, the customer will then be reimbursed for any taxi or rental car expenses that they might incur. will you commit to doing this for customers nationwide? if you want me to repeat it, i will do so. >> it's being translated.

>> chairman, let me address that question because i'm local here. >> i'd be delighted. >> i heard a number of instances that when this recall news came out, i think a number of customers who were very afraid and the dealers took care of customers very well, and in many instances dealers went to pick up their cars and also gave them a toyota rental car for the time that they're not able to drive. and this process we see going on. i think there is a good understanding on the part of the customers that the cars are being fixed well and they are confident about that.

>> my question is, are you just doing this in new york, or is this something that you're going to do everywhere? >> all over the world. i mean, all over the nation. nationwide, yes. >> i just want to make certain we have that understanding because i understand you're doing it in new york. and the last question that i have for you is that, mr. toyoda, you have offered a brake override feature for some recalled vehicles. why haven't you offered that feature for all toyota vehicles?

>> translator: allow me to explain the situation a little bit. >> you'll have to pull the mike -- >> translator: the fact orz that are contributing to the sun r unintended acceleration can be put in four categories. first, the problem with electronic system. secondly, the way in which a car is used or misusage of a car, and thirdly, the structural aspect of the vehicle, and fourthly, the structural aspect of the parts used in the vehicle. so these, i understand, are four

major factors contributing to unexpected acceleration. and of that, the electronic control system is designed based upon the concept of safety first, and therefore, whenever there is any abnormality or anomaly there in that system, the fuel supplied to the system is cut off. and even under a very vigorous testing conducted internally or by ntsa, no problem in malfunction was identified, and,

therefore, i am absolutely confident that there is no problem with the design of the etc system. >> translator: however, placing emphasis upon the fact that customers do have concern as to the possibility of unexpected acceleration which may result from the remaining three reasons, in order to offer extra measure of confidence as the chairman has just mentioned, we decided to add brake override system. >> is that a yes or no? that's what i'm trying to get to, if it's a yes or no.

>> translator: i yield to congressman issa, but i'm trying to find out, is that a yes or a no? >> let me address in a different perspective. we are -- just for the record, we are putting brake override system on all of the models for north america coming off the line by the end of this year. and now probably your question is retroactively. what about the existing models? we have already