2,000-page bill. let's summarize that bill. the house bill that was passed has a public option in there. that is not the case in the senate bill. in the senate bill and house bill, they are both individual and businessman dates to purchase insurance. we never have on a federal level compared it to a state issue of car insurance. it's not the same thing. we have never done that before. so there are some differences in these bills and they are coming to the house that passed by 220-215 and in the senate 60-40. . we have attempted on numerous occasions to go to the white house and lay out hundreds of years of experience and go over what we saw work and what didn't work.

what i saw in my state of tennessee about 16 years ago we looked at access, rising costs and people's inability, losing their insurance, same issues as today. we asked for a waiver if the health and human services to start a managed care plan called tenncare. i've discussed it here on the house floor and i'm not going into details but that project when it first starred was a $2.6 billion project in the state of tennessee to cover people. we had a lot of uninsured people, wanted to get as many people covered as we could. in 10 budget years in the state of tennessee that had gone to an $8 billion program. it had tripled in costs. unless people had some skin in the game, unless they had different incentives than we had, the cost would escalate. as a matter of fact, it escalated so much it took up 1/3 of the state budget and every new dollar we took in went to health care.

the governor, which was democrat and the legislature which was kem and republican, split, had to do something because we couldn't afford it. to show you how bad it is right now in our state, we're having to limit doctors' visits. that's currently i'm talking about, not with this added part. remember in the medicaid program, the state has a match. that's why the nebraska carve out was such a problem for other states there is a match that's required in medicaid. the federal government provides so much money, the state provides so much. our state can't provide anymore. it cut the rolls of 200,000 people because the state of tennessee doesn't have the money for the current plan. not the very expansive plan we talked about. i think last week, i agree with you, dr. gingrey, it was a year overdue, should have happened a year ago. it's good to show there are

differences, philosophical differences in health care. basically, do you want a larger nanny state but an ever-expanding government to make those decisions? certainly i believe individuals should. when you look at this plan that's there now, i can tell you it says it's budget neutral. there are some gimmicks that have been played. paul line pointed those out in the $500 billion being cut out of an already underfunded medicare plan. 2016, that gos upside down, more money going out than coming in. you take $500 billion out of that, you created another liability for the medicare program. i would tell you if you take that much money out, flee three things will occur. one, decreased access to care because doctors won't be able to take the patients, they won't pay. number twhork quality ill go down if you can't go in and third, the seniors will pay

more for the care they get, they'll have to, there won't be any other choice. we talked about some simple things, there's a 2,700 page senate bill out there we can cover 2/3 of the people in that senate bill with two paragraphs. number one is, in the house bill to simply allow young people who don't have health insurance after they get out of high school or college to stay on their parents' plan until they're 26 or 27 years old. that will cover seven million young people. number two, sign up the people who are already eligible for schip, the state children's health insurance program or medicaid already you've got those plans in place. have adequate funding and that will cover, dr. gingrey, almost 20 million people this complicated senate plan covers 31 million people. you hear people talk about bending the cost curve, keeping costs down. dr. gingrey talked about it a little bit on medical liability reform.

without liability reform, you will never be able to completely reverse this cost escalation. why? because doctors will order tests to protect them in case there's no disincentive for them not to. an incentive we've had in our state, 35 years week formed a mutual company, state volunteer mutual insurance company, when i first went into practice, premiums were about $45,000 a year. when we left, the physician who took my place, was $74,000. it had gone up 18 times over 30 years. what have we gotten for that? over half the premium dollars i paid in went to attorneys, not the injured parties. less than 40 cents on the dollar went to the injured party. we've got a bad system to basically compensate people whf been legitimately injured. until you get that fixed,

you'll never completely bend the cost -- bend the cost curve. i think the waste and fraud, everyone agrees with that. if there's waste and fraud and abuse in the medicare program, absolutely. i do have the president's letter. the four things agreed to discuss were waste, fraud, and abuse, i think we all agree on that, both sides, i don't think you'll get any disagreement thresm liability reform is more study, the study he was talking about was to not limit attorneys' contingency fees and caps on damages. that's the two problems causing the problems. in texas, we've done the experiment they passed liability reform and what's happening in texas, premiums have gone down, 30%, and physicians have streamed into texas, almost 15,000 new doctors have applied for practice in texas. mr. gingrey: if you don't mind yielding back to me for a second, i will yield back to you.

the chair needs to enroll a bill, i want to yield to the chair. the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house the following enrolled bill. the clerk: h.r. 1299, an act to make technical crecks to the laws affecting certain administrative authorities of the united states capitol police and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman may proceed. mr. gingrey: thank you and i yield back to the gentleman from tennessee. mr. roe: the third thing the president has in his letter is that the inadequate payment for medicaid patients. in our state they pay less than 60% of the cost of actually physicians are not able to take as many of those patients and many of them limit or don't see medicaid patients he said he would be willing to look at that, if it's physically -- fiscally responsible. the other is to encourage

health savings accounts. one of the things that has bothered me in this bill, that supposedly the president sat in this chair here not long ago, that he wouldn't sign any legislation that wasn't budget newt threasm sustainable growth rate, or how doctors are paid by medicare. as a matter of fact, right now, there is no -- we have had no doc fix we call it. there's a 21% cut in the budget for this that will occur this week if we don't do something this week. if there's a 21% cut in those payments to physicians, you'll see a lot less medicare patients have access to their doctors. that's a very bad thing. there are some good things about what the president said here and then there are some things that don't mesh with the current legislation. i want to talk about one other thing, then i'll yield back. when you see the c.b.o. and the estimates, you have to go back and look at history. when medicare first was debated

in this very floor here and passed, it was a $3 billion program. 1965. estimates then were it would be a $15 billion program in 1990. flash forward to 199 0. it was over a $90 billion program, today it's over a $400 billion program. if you look at the estimates and the history of our estimate in tennessee, that we were going to save money, keep premium downs and dr. gingrey what's happened, the bigger these government programs come that come along and don't pay the cost of health care, medicare provides 80% or 90% of the cost and tenncare pays 60%. those costs get shifted and they get shifted to businesses and individuals. it might as add -- add as much as $1,800 per family, it's a hidden tax. we can't continue to do that or you'll drive the insurance companies out of business. the insurance companies, they

have -- we have every right, i think to look at them very seriously, i know when i left practice, i had a case, one of the last cases i did, i spent as much time getting the case approved as i did doing the case, almost. there are some insurance reforms that need to be out there you've experienced the same exact thing. i yield back to the gentleman. mr. gingrey: thank you, dr. roe. i hope you can stay with us for a little bit more tonight as we continue the colloquy. i want to show a few slides to our colleagues, starting with the second opinion, subtitled when will the white house listen to the american people? when, indeed, mr. speaker, will the white house listen to the american people? the second slide, let's just go back to last august, seven months ago, americans attended

town hall meetings across the country in railroad numbers. in fact my town hall meetings, instead of having 40 or 50 people there, i have 1,500. i'm sure other members experience the same thing. these people were asking that the democratic majority stop their plans to implement a government takeover of health care. here's a quote, mr. speaker. from abc news. the date is august 5, 2009. that's when all these town hall meetings were going on across the country. and i quote, from the newspaper, there were no lobbyist-funded buses in the parking lot of mardela middle and high schools on tuesday evening and the hundreds of eastern maryland residents who packed the school's auditorium loudly refuted the notion that their anger over the democrats' health care reform plans is manufactured.

that's what abc news was saying back six months ago. now fast forward to today. march 2, 2010. americans are still trying to be heard by the white house and democratic leaders as democrats continue to try and ram a government takeover of health care through the congress by any way possible and this is a quote from rasmussen, the polling guru, everybody is familiar with the rasmussen poll. february 23, 2010, just last week. voters still strongly oppose the health care reform plan proposed by president obama and congressional democrats and think congress should focus instead on a smaller plan, smaller bills that address problems individually rather than a comprehensive plan. well, mr. speaker, that's what

we're talking about tonight. that's what dr. roe is discussing, that's what i said in my opening remarks about had i been at the blare house what i may have bush at the blair house what i may have said respectfully to the president to majority leader reid and to the speaker of this house of representatives, ms. pelosi. the american people were not an angry mob as they are not today, my colleagues. they're men and women, a lot of seniors, yes, very concerned about the massive takeover by the government. that's the thing that -- i think the bottom line is, people fear the most, having government take over every aspect of our lives and indeed, colleagues, we're talking about, and we all hear this

quote and don't argue with the statistics, this is 1/6 of our economy. $2.5 trillion a year on health care. we see the same thing quite honestly happen in education. we've got a bill on the floor tomorrow, mr. speaker, a bill with a special rule in regard to telling school systems all across this country how they can discipline children. well, you know, i'm sure there's some concerns and there may be some abusive behavior in very small pockets, a small problem. but we have this attitude up here, mr. speaker, that the federal government knows best and we have these knee jerk reactions to things and all of a sudden, we make a -- this huge mountain out of a mole hill, i think in some instances, and say, the federal

government has to take over. school boards, elected by local community, can't run their local schools. i think that's hogwash, quite honestly. but the american people have spoken about this, they want us to correct the things that they can't deal with themselves. and yes, they want us, mr. speaker to rein in the abuses in this instance of the health insurance industry, but you know, you have to understand, colleagues, there are a lot of good, honest, ethical men and women in this country who work in the insurance industry. . independent agents, and there are some great health insurance companies, large companies, small companies, probably over

3,000 total. and you know, we need to be careful that we're not beating up on them so bad that all of a sudden, we destroy an industry and how many thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process. mr. roe: would the gentleman yield? mr. gingrey: i would yield for comments. mr. roe: when i hear your comments, to put this in perspective, if you took all the profits that the health industry made, it would be two days of the health kay -- care. mr. gingrey: this is the kind of wisdom that we need to hear, when you stop and think. certainly dr. roe would agree and i fully agree, mr. speaker, if insurance companies are rescinding is the word that's used, rescinding a policy after

the fact. somebody's got health insurance for their family, including their children and they have a teenaged daughter and she's lo and be hold has to go into the hospital for an emergency surgery. the surgery is a success. everything goes fine and they expect that the insurance company will pay whatever, is above the co-pay and the deductible. and then all of a sudden, they're told, well, no, we looked back through your policy that you took out, dad, for the family, 10 years ago when your teenager was just three and you gave us the wrong birth date or you failed to dot an i or cross a t and therefore this $20,000 bill, you're on your own, buddy.

that's got to stop. of course that's got to stop. and also, not allowing people with pre-existing conditions, particularly if they're in the individual market, just makes it so impossible to either deny or make the premiums four times the standard rate, which is denying. all 435 of us agree that we need to stop things like that. well, those things can be done, but it doesn't take 2,700 pages and 32 additional federal bureaucracies to deal with that. so, again, i don't know what the president is going to say tomorrow. i read that ap report that he's going to, indeed, address four subjects in maybe yet another bill or in addition to the current senate bill, that were brought up last week on

thursday at the blair house by the republican members that were there. and i think i'm on my blackberry and i want to refer to that and just for my colleagues and maybe some of you already read that, but the proposals president obama listed are four. number one, sending investigators disguised as patients to uncover fraud and waste. i want to get back to that in a minute. expanding medical malpractice pilot reform programs. sounds good to me. increasing payments to medicare providers. absolutely. if we're going to have any medicaid providers, i hope we do that. and last, the fourth thing and i'm really interested in reading about this, because i'm most in favor of it, expanding the use of health savings accounts.

but i do want to go back to that first one, mr. speaker, if i may. sending investigators disguised as patients to undercover fraud, waste and abuse -- and i understand, i know that was brought up at the blair house by a republican. but quite honestly, if we don't already, mr. speaker, have enough inspector generals within c.m.s. and other government programs, health care, tricare, the veterans' program, chip program across the country, i think we can do a better job with combating waste, fraud and abuse than sending undercover patients into doctors' offices. i can imagine -- i haven't practices practiced in a while but i spent 31 years as a medical practitioner. it has only been seven or eight

years since i practiced. but i worried all the time, i worried all the time about making sure that i didn't make a mistake, that i ordered the sufficient number of tests and the fact that we practiced, probably dr. roe as well, what we call defensive medicine and getting a blood test, x-ray or ct scan or m.r.i., something i knew wasn't necessary. i would hope it wouldn't be harmful to the patient. if you draw too much blood, you could turn them into an anemic patient. we had a hearing last week in the energy and commerce committee about x-ray exposure, particularly from m.r.i.'s and ct scans that you really don't know. if 10, 15, 20 years from now if that exposure couldn't lead to a cancer that that patient

wouldn't have otherwise have contracted. all of that defensive medicine that we practice. and my colleagues, the ob-gyn specialists are in town this week and i had the conversation with them, and i know we have to stop that. but disguising people and go into a doctor's office -- i sure hope they don't go in as a fake patient and decide to have a hem rhode islandhe can tommy. some of this stuff is a little bit ridiculous. but i yield to my colleague from tennessee because he has clinical experience and i would like to know from him how he reduces waste, fraud and abuse.

mr. roe: i would like to go on record with you as ram, inc. this bill through as march madness and that's not basketball and 6:00, the night after that summit last week, i just happened to have a telephone town hall and 1,100 people vote in the poll and there were four questions, do you want to pass this bill as it is? number two, do you want to take a clean sheet of paper and start over? do you want to scrap it and start on jobs, or do you not have an opinion? 5% said pass the bill as is, 38% said a clean piece of paper and start over. 52% said stop all together and let's get working on jobs. and 5% is undecided. that cnn poll showed 73% of

americans think we should start over or do nothing. it's not that much different of the poll i did. mine was not a scientific poll. i want to point that out. it was a telephone town hall poll. mr. gingrey: thank you for sharing that with our colleagues in regard to the town hall and the poll you conducted with your constituents in tennessee because yeah, you referred to this next slide that i've got titled, and i want to point out to my colleagues and hopefully the camera can focus in, what americans want. poll numbers, 73% of americans think congress should start over on health care reform or if they can't start over and get it right, do nothing. i mean, for goodness sakes, when you're talking about health care and someone says to you, do something, even if it's wrong, think about that for a

minute. do something, even if it's wrong regarding health care, regarding operations, regarding a delivery of a child? no. don't do something even if it's wrong. you better get it right. and if you can't get it right with what your plan is, drop the plan. drop the plan and then go on the bottom half of this slide, mr. speaker. 56.4% of people indicated they 3 56.4% of people indicated they would prefer congress to tackle health care reform on a step-by-step basis and not take the comprehensive approach as embodied in legislation that passed the house and senate last year, but is now stalled, thank god, for the past month. and i yield back to my colleague so he can further elaborate on this. mr. roe: one of the things that's not mentioned in the president's letter that i'm

looking at here that certainly people who are either pro-choice or pro-life do not want taxpayer dollars spent on federally funding abortions. the way the senate bill is written and the way the house bill, without the stupak amendment it does do that. the stupak amendment forbids that. and no where in this language, why can't we say, a vast majority of the people do not want that and we should be able to come out and say no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions in this health care takeover. i think that's fairly simple. i think we saw how many -- the stupak amendment passed with an overwhelming majority in the house and did not do so in the senate. that is fairly simple. the president ought to say that tomorrow when he says, he should be able to come out and say just that. the second thing you brought up a moment ago were pre-existing conditions and for you and i, it would be in a patient that i

diagnosed and would have a breast cancer and maybe lost her job or retired from teaching or whatever it may be and then she's uninsureable. that is unacceptable. i fought with that for 30 years. and pre-existing conditions are a problem in the individual market. the year i ran for congress i was in the yilled individual market. it is expensive and most people can't afford it. 70% of our businesses are from small businesses. how do you create a situation where small businesses can afford this and become larger groups? well, i know it doesn't make sense and i have never been able to understand why anybody would care if you sold insurance across the state lines. and i use the example of bristol, tennessee. state street has a line right down the middle. one side you're in virginia,

one side you're in tennessee. one side you have a different insurance policy than the other side of the street. that makes no sense. you don't get your homeowners' that way, car insurance. it makes no sense. i can see where the health insurance industry wouldn't want you to do that because it creates competition. and once they can shop across state lines because there are vast differences, get on the internet and find out what a insurance policy costs you. you can evaluate whether the company is solid or not and you know what you're buying. we need transparency in insurance rates. and we need to allow small businesses to form groups. you can call on association plans, group plans, whatever. if you can spread those risks over thousands of people, then pre-existing condition goes away. i can't imagine why anybody would object to that. and he has this exchange that's

government regulated, instead of the free market regulation and that is a big difference. you want some government regulation? we have antitrust laws. but we want the free-market to work. and that's two of the basic differences. mr. gingrey: i want to continue on this point that you're making. i think what you just said, if i understand you correctly, mr. speaker, what dr. roe just said is that if we would allow individuals to go online. they wouldn't have to get in their car or drive to tennessee to apply to sign up foral health insurance policy that is offered in tennessee. from the comfort of your home, you do it over the internet. and if we would simply allow

that. and also, by the way, allow small employers that may be employed, 10 or 15 people, to come together with others in what we refer to as an association and very quickly you could get to 1,000 or more and form an association and that way, you spread the risk. you have some people that have pre-existing conditions, some people who have had an attack, high blood pressure, but if you spread it, you have lots of healthy people in that association, so you're able to bring down the costs. and the same thing with individuals being able to buy across state lines. people across the country might be getting on that computer and buying a plan that is offered in the state of tennessee or in the state of georgia. and that way, as i understand what dr. roe is saying, mr.

speaker, you wouldn't need these exchanges because that would be the exchange. and then to complete the thought, you also, within every state, or you could come together on a regional basis, have a high risk pools within the states so individuals who do have pre-existing conditions, these insurance companies, health insurance companies that offer their products within a state, they would have to participate and they would have to agree, well, you take one high-risk patient, i take a highrisk patient and do it in a fair and balanced way and have the premiums at the most standard rates. and then if you are low income and don't qualify for medicaid because they're not quite that low, but they certainly can't afford the premium, then the state and the federal government can help with some subsidies, but not this

business of $500 billion worth of subsidies. that's what's causing this bill to be so expensive. in fact, you know, if you cut money out of medicare, $500 billion out of medicare, tax the american people $500 billion. dr. roe is offering us -- it's a republican idea, yeah, but it ought to be bipartisan and we talked about it at the blair house last week, so we don't need these exchange, do we, dr. roe? and i yield back. . mr. roe: i don't know why anybody would mind if you bought your health insurance policy the way you buy any other insurance policy. let's take, for example, realtors. 10 or 15 people would be a large realty store. if they could buy their insurance through that

exchange, or through that association, i should say, pre-existing conditions go away. it's not an issue if you've got 100,000, 200,000 people. people talk about the plan that the federal government has, that's the same thick. you have nine million people in that plan you share those risks and you can then negotiate lower rates. another thing i think that we need to talk about tonight are health savings accounts. i want to talk about that a minute because most people don't understand it. you hear it's just for rich people and so on. that's the big argument you hear. let me explain what a health savings plan really is. you're given money, the way we've done since world war ii is we've gotten our insurance and pay a small co-pay for deductible, 80% up to a certain point, 100% after that. that means at the end of the year, if you've been totally well, the insurance company keeps all your money.

that's your money you're paying in you get some in lue of salary. -- in lieu of salary. i've had a health savings account and we put $5,000 in that health savings account if you got sick and used that $5,000, it paid 100% after that. that's my money i'm dealing with. at the end of the year if i've been healthy, had a healthy lifestyle, eat well, take care of myself, i get to keep the money. i roll it over and the next year i can use it. after several years, you may have many thousands of dollars for health care. the argument i hear is, only rich people do that. we have 100 or so people in my office that get insurance. 80% use the health savings account. they like it a lot. they become geshtors for the health care costs. they come to my office and they may negotiate a price for a

visit or they may go to whatever procedure they may have. they may go to the hospital and say, i want your lowest price, they can get that by negotiations. what continually makes the cost curve go up is if we're shielded from the costs of the health care. mr. gingrey: if you'll yield back, i think you make a good point, i hear the same argument, well, only people that are well-to-do, well-off, high-income people can afford to have a health savings account in combination, mr. speaker, with that premium low monthly premium and high deductible dr. roe just explained so well. but i have seen statistic, i think they're accurate that 50% of people that have these high deductible lork monthly premium, combined with a health savings account, make less than

$50,000 a year. 65% of them make less than $75,000 a year. we're not talking about wealthy people. i think dr. roe makes a good point. mr. speaker, as i was reading in the associated press article about what the president might include tomorrow, these four things, i did ridicule a bit this idea of combating waste, fraud, and abuse with fake patients. i embellished and maybe overstated, but i wanted to make a point. as far as expansion of health savings account, i say to the president, kudos, mr. president, i look forward to hearing that. i hope this report -- report from associateds preis true. i also hope, mr. president, that the report about expanding the medical liability reform is true. although i would guess it doesn't go nearly far enough.

because this report, if it's accurate, mr. speaker, says instead of $23 million of -- $23 million worth of grants to states to enact pilot programs on alternative ways of dealing with medical liability issues, it increases that amount to $50 million. that's not much, and that's not really, i don't think, i think dr. roe would agree with me, going nearly far enough to do what we need to do in regard to caps on pain and suffering judgments which sometimes can be in the millions of dollars in a frivolous case. and then a couple of other issues, mr. speaker, regarding medical liability reform. the defendant in a medical malpractice case could include somebody that was just covering, let's say, as an

example, dr. roe has a patient and asks dr. gingrey to step in and say hello to that patient on sunday morning while dr. roe takes his family to church. dr. roe is going to orpte on that patient the next day. dr. gingrey walks by and says hello to the patient and let's her know that dr. roe will be in later in the evening and that's the only contact that dr. gingrey has with this particular patient. well, if something, mr. speaker, and it's not likely that anything would go wrong under the care of a doctor like dr. roe but sometimes things do and that doctor gingrey who just really had essentially no -- nothing to do with the paint's care, would be drug into court and if he or she had the most, the deepest pockets and most liability coverage, then they will be the ones that

will be responsible for most of the judgment and settlement or whatever. we need some robust reform and i hope the president, mr. speaker, is talking about that. i yield back to my friend and see what his thoughts are on that. mr. roe: i thank the gentleman for yielding. i'll point out the california experiment they did caps on pain and suffering in 1976. the please , ma'am yums -- the premiums across the country have gone up 1,000% in that time across the country, but in california, 300%. in texas, they've had a 30% to 50% reduction in malpractice premiums and doctors, especially high-risk doctors like yourself and myself. many counties in texas have an obstetrician which before they did not have. nearly half the counties in tennessee do not have an on gin

-- an ob/gyn in practice. you want your most experienced people staying with it and we have another problem, i think, with this plan and i do believe that from what i've heard in my district, there's no question, i came out of church the week before christmas and one of my friends there said, doc, he said to me, what's the senate going to do with this health care bill? this is after the house passed it, it was christmas eve when they were trying to vote he grabbed me by my coat lapels and said, doc, you fix your cat, you kill this bill. what he was saying was this incomprehensible bill needed to be shelved and start over. i think last week was a start but it was too late. people put their neck out and said this has to be in the bill

and it didn't have to be. i can think or three of four things we should agree on. association health plans, doing away with pre-existing conditions, i think we all would agree on that meaningful malpractice reform, i think we could agree on. letting young people stay on their parents' health care plan when they graduate. i think signing up people currently eligible for the programs we already have. those things we ought to be able to agree on. mr. gingrey: we've already talked about the health savings plans and expanding that and allowing people, if there still is an exchange and you and i talked about it, mr. speaker, dr. roe and i talked about it, and i hope my colleagues understand this, we don't think that we have to have this exchange, this expensive

exchange where you have to subsidize people's premiums. that's how the president was able to say, last week, mr. speaker, that 47% of the people in the exchange will be paying less than they currently are for their health insurance. well, yeah, they are paying less out of their pockets, but they're reaching in everybody else's pocket, john q. taxpayer to help them pay those premiums. really when you get -- do a little fact check on that you find that most people under that plan are going to end up paying more. what dr. roe is talking about in the four or five thing he is mentioned, of course, if you -- even if you had an exchange you shouldn't say to people that the only kind of policy that they can buy is a first dollar coverage, the most expensive coverage, when young people, healthy people, people just out

of college or just out of high school or just back from the military and they're trying to pay for a car, trying to rent an apartment or buy a little starter home or buy an engagement ring for that fiancee and the last thing they can afford is $15,000 a year for a first dollar health care plan they don't even need. so for this, what's in this bill, in the bill, it prohibits a person from having one of these plans. it's counterintuitive, isn't it, dr. roe? mr. roe: one of the things this plan does, it mandates a certain level of coverage. you have to purchase a certain level of coverage. it's not a yugo, it's a fairly expensive piece of coverage. an example would be fertility. i can assure you in my family, we don't need that coverage. i should be able to purchase the plan i need.

many people can tailor pregnancy coverage, something i don't need. i should be able to go buy, just like when they buy the homeowners policy they need, that's what i that purchase. you should be able to do the same thing for health insurance. that's one problem when you mandate, some states have as many as 60 state mandates you have to have in an insurance policy to sell insurance in that state. one of the problems with is it is, if you're allowed to buy across state lines, you can buy a policy that fits your needs and your family's needs. you make that decision, the government doesn't make it for you. mr. gingrey: thank you for yielding back to me, that's exactly right. i have a daughter who lives in the great state of new york. her health insurance policy covers so much more than many of the policies cover in the state of georgia, as an example, and it's much, much

more expensive as a result of that. dr. roe, good point, buying across state lines but the one thing, before our time expires mr. speaker, i want to say, hope springs eternal. i don't know what the president is going to say to us tomorrow, but i hope i like what i hear. because the american people need relief. but as we stand here tonight, what still is in these bills, a government takeover, that's one thing. price controls, another. individual and employer mandates. i don't know that it's really even, mr. speaker, constitutional to say to an individual in this country, you under penalty of law, fine, and jail time have to buy health insurance. we hope they do, we hope we create the environment where we bring down the price and people can afford, maybe it's a health savings account combined with a high deductible, low monthly premium, but to hold a gun to their head and say they have to do it?

that's not right. it's not constitutional. in the bill there's no meaningful medical liability reform. as we talked about tonight, hope springs eternal. in the bill, it puts washington bureaucrats in charge of defining quality health care. that's where those 32 new bureaucracies do their work. it cuts medicare advantage $500 billion overall, but $120 billion of that is cut out of medicare advantage and 20% of our seniors get their care from medicare advantage, why do they call it advantage? because it is an advantage. it covers wellness, it does screening, appropriate screening, it keeps people healthy so that they're not spending all that money in the last weeks or months of their life. . it gives the government-run plan eliminates the private

insurance market. and many of our colleagues said it loud and clear, whether members of energy and commerce or ways and means or education and labor, that they want the government to take over just like it exists in great britain or canada. the american people don't want that, mr. speaker. they want us to do something in an incremental way and i think we can do it in a bipartisan way. with that, unless my colleague has a closing comment, i yield back to him. we're about ready to wrap this up. mr. roe: this weekend, dr. gingrey, mr. speaker, i had three friends, people i know, diagnosed with some very serious illnesses, just happened. and these three men that i know extremely well, all of them, are getting the highest quality care anywhere in the world and don't have to go far from home to get it. the american health system has brought to us are new

innovations, length thening of our life span. procedures, dr. gingrey, when you began your practice were not in existence. i heard about this for a year to hear the other side talk about how bad the health care is in america. we have problems with the health care system and getting ate an affordable price to all of our citizens. but the care that everyone gets is good care. i have done it myself for people who couldn't pay. i'm one of the few people on this house floor who has had to go to the emergency room at 3:00 in the morning and doesn't have health insurance. it isn't easy. we do better and do better than this bill right here. mr. gingrey: reclaiming my time as i bring it to a close. i thank dr. roe for being with

me tonight. there are 14 health care providers on the republican side. 10 of them are m.d.'s. two doctors in the senate. 500 years of experience. let us help. in closing, i refer to my colleague who was here a number of years ago, drm roland when the democrats were in the majority. dr. roland, a family practitioner from georgia, he had a bipartisan bill back then that he worked very closely with his democratic colleagues and republican colleagues and presented that bill, i think it was called the bipartisan reform act of 1994 and he offered that in lieu of hillarycare. don't make the same mistake, madam speaker and mr. president. let's do it in and incremental

way. thank you, mr. speaker. the speaker announced policy the speaker's announced policy of january 6, twirne, mr. braley is -- 2009, mr. braley is recognized as the designee of the majority leader. mr. braley: i'm here tonight to focus on economic issues that affect americans that iter make up the middle class or striving to enter the middle class. our country has been at its best when weft a large middle class and our economic policies reflect those values. and that's when we decided to settle upon our founding principles, we wanted to fight for families by providing them access to quality affordable health care to provide them

with the type of world class education they're going to need to compete, to make sure that we have a fair wage system for all employees in this country, to make sure that our trade policies provideal level playing field to american workers and american manufacturers who compete with trading partners who quite frankly don't live up to our standards, whether it's child labor, environmental issues, those are the types of issues we want to focus on as we chart a new future for this country to promote and expand the middle class that we all are so proud to have been a part of. one of the things that we talked about as we were trying to dig ourselves out of the greatest economic crisis since the great depression is what type of a blueprint for recovery we wanted to offer to the american people that was going to be a reflection of the

values and give a strong message that after bailing out wall street the american taxpayers deserved help on main street and not unreasonable to ask the very people on wall street who got us into this mess to help pay for the tab and help bailing out main street. two members of the caucus, my friend from ohio, betty sutton and good friend from wisconsin, steve kagen. i want to talk about the things we hear over and over back in our district. all of us have been talking to our constituents, going to town hall meetings, congress on your corner and other events ks and one of the things i hear from my constituents over and over is this question, when do i get my bailout? this is a legitimate question that americans deserve an answer to from democrats and

republicans. because if you're somebody who has lost your job or lost your home or lost your business or lost your health care coverage during this crisis, you need to know what is my federal government doing to help me out? some when we talk about our response, we're going to do it by talking about these three core values, the populous caucus wants to find a blueprint for recovery that's going to spur job creation, it's going to implement fair compensation for executives who helped put us in this problem and finally bring an end to excessive wall street speculation that drove our economy and global economy off of a cliff and put us into a deep hole that we have been digging ourselves out of. as middle-class families look to us and when will we bring

relief to their town and street, they want to know how we are going to spur job creation, fair compensation and end speculation on wall street. now one of the things we know is that it's very common for politicians and groups across the political spectrum to try to claim the populous mantle. and i'm going to let my colleagues expand on this. the populous caucus that we all came together to found was not based on a bunch of people running through the streets with pitch forks asking for blood. we are there because the problems of the middle class are real, the concerns of our constituents reflect the concerns of america and we want to come together and talk about serious answers to real problems to help change the lives of middle-class americans. with that, i yield to my

colleague from ohio before i yield to my colleague from wisconsin, to talk about some of the critical economic issues she's hearing about from her constituents and why this populous caucus response is so critical moving forward. ms. sutton: i thank you, representative braley, for your leadership in the populous caucus and the mission we are on to restore the middle class and stand up for the middle class and those who aspire to be in the middle class and make our country work. we are not something that is complicated. the populous caucus believes that strong, immediate action must be taken to create jobs in the united states and to put an end to excessive greed of wall street that brought us to the brink of disaster. and so, i am proud to join with

you, representative braley and representative kagen, to stand up and speak to the american people about the fight we are waging on their behalf, because that's what being a populous is really about. when i go home and you go home, i hear all about the need to facilitate employment opportunity for the people that i represent in northeast ohio. all they want is a government that will work with them and for them, to facilitate the jobs, jobs, jobs that are so needed out there. we have heard recently that there's a recovery under way and there are some signs of recovery. we certainly have seen a lot of signs of recovery on wall street. there can be no such thing as a jobless recovery and we started to hear that term bounced about. and the populous caucus is here to say there is no recovery if

our folks don't have jobs. because this isn't just about a country that stands up for the well-to-do. this body needs to be about -- this is the people's house. this body is about making sure people have opportunity, ordinary people have opportunity. and what we'll discuss and when we look back a little bit, it becomes apparent that it was evident, even when the economy wasn't working for americans, we saw a decade of flat wages, while we continued to see sky-rocketting health care costs and saw the g.d.p. rise and productivity rise in this country, but the american people who were doing the work were not sharing in the prosperity. so with look forward to developing policies. and that's what the blueprint is all about, that will help

deliver sustainable, quality jobs for the american people that will fairly compensate them and put an end to the excessive and disparate compensation that those at the top of the food chain have been taking for far too many years at the expense of everyone else. i yield back to the gentleman and look forward to the mission ahead. mr. braley: i thank the gentlewoman for yielding. one of the things we have heard a lot about, dr. kagen, we have heard people explain what went wrong on wall street is this concept that sometimes big financial institutions are too big to fail. i don't know how it is up in northeast wisconsin, but in iowa, something too big too fail is too bill.

maybe enlighten us about some of the economic policies that we pursued as a country before barack obama became president that have contributed to the enormous challenge we have faced this past year in trying to stablize the economy before we moved on to a broader response to real meaningful, financial reform. mr. kagen: i thank the gentleman for yielding and putting together the populous caucus once again. we are populous because we are standing on the floor. we don't have our heads sitting in a board room of a corporation on wall street. we do not share those values. we have the working life -- working-class values. we need to work our way through our troubled times and work our way through prosperity. this battle just didn't start 10 years ago or begin with 10

years net-zero job creation. i'll take us back a century, because it's really not 2010, but 1910 all over again. and in the words of teddy roosevelt, who on august 31 of 1910, in his speech entitled "the new nationalism" set forward the idea of the progressive movement and the populous caucus and i'll quote him in part. quote, exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the civil war, so now the great business interests corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. we must drive the special interests out of politics. that is one of our tasks today. every special interest is entitled to justice, full, fair and complete. and now mind you, if there were any attempt by mob violence to plunder and work harm to the

special interests whatever it may be, that i most dislike and the wealthy man whom ever he may be, i would fight for him and you if you were worth your salt. he should have justice for every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in congress, to a voice on the bench or top represent patient in any public office. the constitution guarantees protection to property and we must make that promise good but does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation, closed quotes. we the people have rights, corporations don't. . over the short period we've been here in congress, since 2006 work representative braley and sutton and welch, we've taken forth some good ideas. everywhere i go in wisconsin,

mr. braley, people are telling me, we want our money back. our jobsing are being shipped overseas. here on my left is a short picture of where the jobs have gone. in the previous administration under george bush, just before president obama came into office in january, we had lost 700,000-plus jobs. this january, 2010, 20,000. we're moving up in the right direction. yes we need to generation more jobs, but how did we get into this mess? it started really back in 1910, and we're not done yet. we've had two wars at the same time without paying a dime for it. we've had two tax cuts to the rich, without paying for a penny. we've had a $400 billion handout to the big drug companies on wall street. without paying a nickel for it. and then at the tail end of the last administration we had a

losing of the united states treasury of nearly $1 trillion while they fed their friends on wall street. again, without paying a single dime for it. well in wisconsin, much like in ohio and everywhere else across the country, including iowa, we have a saying. you know, there is no free lunch. we have to pay our bills. so we have to pay our bills, we have to live within our means and to do that, the populist caucus has put forward a blueprint for america's future. i yield back my time. mr. braley: that's a great segue. we're not only talking about values, we're talking about solutions. we're talking about legislation that's going to help us create jobs by yen rating new revenues, not putting this on the back of the middle class, but helping the people who got us into the mess, assume some of the responsibility and i think one of the cornerstones of our blueprint for recovery is this issue of fair compensation. my good friend from vermont, congressman peter welch, has

introduced a bill called wall street bonus tax act. i'm going to let him explain what that bill does and how it helps achieve this blueprint for recovery by putting some incentives for wall street to help rebuild main street. congressman welch, i'll yield to you at this time. mr. welch: thank you very much. i appreciate the opportunity to speak about trying to get jobs to go up along with the stock market. it was only a year ago in one week that wall street stock market was crashed to its lowest level in years. and in the past year, it's recovered. but while it has recovered, unemployment is still hovering in the range of 10%. underemployment is in the range of 17% or 18%. there are other 27 million americans who are seeking work or not working enough. we're not going to have an economic recovery until those folks are back to work. how did this happen? it happened, we know, because

of the excessive lending, reckless lending, largely engineered by wall street firms that stood to gain an awful lot of profit. what happened? we, the american taxpayers, had to bail out wall street, $750 billion. and people didn't want to do it, but they had a gun to the head of the american economy and the collateral damage of inaction would have been much more havoc to people's pensions, to unemployment, and to main street. but a year later, wall street is back. but lending by wall street to our small businesses has gone down, not up. if we're going to get jobs back where they -- if we're going to get people back to work we need your banks, it tends on our local banks, to do some lending. they have been doing the job but wall street hasn't. what they've been doing in the past year, and quite successfully, is returning to the casino economy. they've made an enormous amount

of money by buying and selling derivatives, commodities and turncies. how did they do it? with the help of the american taxpayer. the $750 billion tarp transfer. second, the open window at the federal reserve where those banks had access to zero percent interest money. they've been so successful that they've set aside this past year for their bonus pool $150 billion. $150 billion. they have three choices of what to do with that money. they could add it to their balance sheets, so that if there was a down turn they'd be able to absorb it themselves, not come hat in hand to the taxpayer. second, they could let it out. if you're getting zero% interest from the -- zero percent interest from the fed,

if you'll lend money out at 5% or 6%, that's a good return. the third thing they could do, and unfortunately decided to do is put that money in their pocket with a bonus. that's good for them but it hasn't been good for the american economy. our legislation, the wall street bonus act is very simple. it says that all those bonuses on wall street that went to banks that received taxpayer assistance through the tarp program, those bonuses above $50,000 would be taxed at 50%. every single dollar collected would be made available to the small business administration to work with our local banks that have been making loans, to lend to our job creating small businesses around the country so we would be taking a dividend for and on behalf of the taxpayer who basically put that money up in the first place. and we would be specifically making that money available for

lending with the partnership of the s.b.a. and our small banks. now this is important for a couple of reasons. number one, the money made on wall street, that $150 billion bonus pool, yes it was smart people, buying and selling and trading derivatives. but the question for us, when we put taxpayer dollars to work, is, is it good for the american tax pay her is it good for the main street economy? if it just goes into the pockets of wall street traders, it does a lot of good for them but not for the broad economy. our fundamental responsibility is to help people get back to work. the second is, if the bonus culture really is very destructive. what it encourages is placing a big bet. bet red, bet black. if you win uric make a lot of money. if you lose, -- if you win, you make a lot of money. if you lose, you get bailed

out. -- brailled out. people are -- bailed out. people are upset by that. we need to reward hard work and success but we're not going to have the taxpayers on the hook for gambling. the final thing is this. we face a question about what business model we want america to follow. do we want a business model where you make money by financial engineering, by having the quickest computer trading program, by lucky bet on a speculation, or do we want a business model where folks make their money by showing up for work, by investing in their community, by hard work for the lock term, by being satisfied -- for the long term, by being satisfied with a steady and sustainable rate of return and profit, which we need in a capitalist economy, and by paying our fair share. that's the question.

the populist caucus is strongly united in the view that hard work should be rewarded. that entrepreneurs, job creators, people with make money because they invest in their economy, because they invest in the workers, that's to be rewarded and encouraged. in fact, we have to do it if we're going to have an economy that works and expands rather than an economy that is based on flipping trades, about speculation, and financial engineering. so this wall street bonus act would put some money into lending and help our small entrepreneurs. i'm very grateful we have the strong support of so many members of congress for this. i yield back. mr. braley: i thank you for those insightful comments and i think everything we talked about earlier on why we promote the populist caucus, to create policies to help that happen, we know that small businesses make up a huge part of the

middle class. we also know that they're a huge driving engine for creating new jobs in our economy. that's why i'm happy to recognize my good friend from florida, ron klein, who's been a strong advocate for small businesses in his time in congress and is going to be sharing with us some of the things we can work on together to try to create the types of incentives to help small businesses take the risk with sound economic principles and lead us on the path of job recovery. with that, i yield to my friend. mr. klein: i thank the gentleman from iowa. it's great to be here with our friends from the midwest and the south and we represent the whole country. it's such a great thing to be here as we all got elected a couple of years ago and we've learned and listened closely to what people are saying back home. i know the gentleman from wisconsin talked about jobs and where we've come from. i know the gentlelady from ohio did the same thing. the where we've come from part is -- it didn't start in the

last 13 or 14 months. unfortunately, it's been going on for a long time. a lot of that was decisions made, in some cases by government, through incentivizing, to make decisions to send business overseas uncourage that through tax policy. some of it has been people making decisions that we've lost that american ingenuity. we haven't lost it, we all know that the greatest country in the history of the world, our economy is the strongest, we're being challenged right now. this is where we're at our best. this is a moment for us all to come together, put our arms around each other and say, what's great about america? our work ethic, ingenuity, technology, innovation. this is what makes it. but we have to recognize that some of these policies, certainly when this administration started 13 months ago, we were losing 720,000 jobs per month. that's incredible. now we're at a place where, fortunately, it's moving in the right direction, i think it was

20,000 or 30,000 jobs per month. that's not good. we want to gain. but boy, that is certainly moving in the right direction. that's what i'm glad to see. i come from a state, florida which had 15 years of incredible prosperity, a lot of growth, people in my community, their property values went up, all good, the american dream happening over and over and over again. but when the banks stopped lending, as we talked about, guess what, the merry go round stopped and a lot of people are hurting right now. they're hurting psychologically, hurting emotionally, hurting physically. the worst thing for, i know the gentlelady from ohio talks about, not to have the job, not to have the ability as a provider to bring that paycheck home to get up in the morning and know you're going to do something productive and make that example for your children. we want to make sure people have that opportunity. that's what we're working toward right now. two points i want to bring up,

one is the buy american concept. it's real simple. every opportunity when it comes to sourcing, you know, goods, services, things like that, they need to be done in the united states. if there's anything we can promote, it's us providing those goods and services. our local businesses you neighbor down the street, who you go to surge or synagogue or coach little league with. that's someone who works with the community. we want to give that business person and his or her employees or the people he works with an opportunity to be that source for government contracts and everything else. not to go overseas. we all understand the issue of free trade, but free trade is fair trade. we want to make sure that what goes on in this country, we're doing everything to promote our businesses first. i think most americans get it. i think we got a little offtrack over the years on this thing but that's a principle we need to pass and support and hold to.

mr. braley: will the gentleman yield? i think there's a big misperception that our trading partners and our competitors in a global economy don't have any buy chinese trade policies. buy japan, trade policies. is that true? mr. klein: no, it's not just about what they call tariff, that's a tax. if you bring something into a country, there's a tax to make it less competitive. there's a lot of other twice stop our wonderful american goods from beginning into other countries, and they have lots of obstacles. it goes on in the auto industry all the time, emissions, lots of things that make it practically impossible for us to sale. -- to sell. we cant force someone in korea to buy one of our cars, but we have to give them the choice. if we have the best product, they'll buy our product. what's going on is, there's a lot of things going to stop our products from going to other

countries. mr. braley: will the gentleman yield? in wisconsin, we've got a number of -- mr. kagen: we've got a number of companies that run into buy american problems. we have buy american clauses in our government contracts today. bumiller electric company, which makes the finest welding apparatus in the world, put in a bid for a shipbuilding company for the navy and this foreign-owned shipbuilding corporation down in the south decided instead of buying american, to use a loophole and they bought something from a competitor from germany. can you explain how this bill this buy american improvement act, would it close the loopholes in these contracts? mr. klein: i thank the gentleman with that example. i have a company in my community called cross match, it's a technology company. they were bidding for a census contract. and a company that was sourcing it through a korean company came

in and with all sorts of mash nations, this closed loopholes. the second thing i want to just if i can, the gentleman from iowa, mr. braley, is just talk about something think a think we all understand is the life blood of our economy. and that's access to capital. bank loans. small business loans. and one thing i can say about this congress, i'm really proud about the efforts that have been brought about through this congress, is to make s.b.a., small business administration loans, much easier to get, 90% guaranteed by the government at this point, if you're a qualified veteran, 95% is guaranteed, these are good quality loans, these aren't loans made by the government, they're made by banks and they're guaranteed by the government. we need to get our banks to start focusing on making those loans and other commercial loans. we're not asking banks to make ridiculous loans like some of those that took place before that are not properly

collateralized. there are loads of small businesses that have a long history in a local -- in our local communities, they know the loan officer at the bank and they can work together and make a loan happen. one of the ideas that's being suggested is take some of the payback money from some of the big banks, they pay some of this money back, and bring it down to the local level. main street, small banks, community banks, and we're not so much as giving the money like it happened before, instead it's an incentive to make the loan. if they make the lope then they get a discount on the interest rate. this is what we got to do. mr. braley: would the gentleman yield for another question? one of the things that's frustrating to many americans is they just don't understand how their government can actually help stimulate economic depofmente. and one of the best examples of this -- development. and one of the best examples of this is when i first came to congress i served on the small business committee and i was fortunate enough to chair the

contracting technology subcommittee. and this is when the previous administration was in control of the executive branch and as i talked to people on the committee it shocked me to learn that the former administrator of the small business administration saw it as his job to bring about the end of the small business administration. and many of the policies weredy signed to contract the agency whose sold purpose was to stimulate small business growth and gofmente -- development. when we're talking about how we create capital and provide economic incentives for small businesses, we've come a long ways in three years to get to the point where this agency is trying to fulfill its basic purpose and i think that's going to be critical for achieving the types of results you just talked about and i hope you can enlighten us further. mr. klein: i'll just conclude. there's so much more everyone wants to say, there's so much to add, and that's what's getting exciting about this work we're doing here.

small businesses are the life blood of our economy. i mean, many parts of our country do not have a lot of fortune 500 companies, those are great companies and add a lot of value to our country, but small businesses are going to be the businesses that get us out of this down turn and we're beginning to see some good things, bank lends something better than it was, but we need to encourage and find ways to make sure that the banks are lending to our -- so our small businesses can buy up some inventory, buy up that capital equipment they need, a little deferred maintenance and hire more people. that's the bottom line. i just want to thank the gentleman for having the spur job creation, because i think this is a huge part how we're going to get our country back on track. mr. braley: in order to spur job creation you've got to be able to have revenues that will help people create jobs. through incentives that will help them take that riskment and one of the important things -- risk. and one of the important things that the this does is it talks not only about how you change

behavior through the policies that you implement but also how you transfer some of the burden from main street, which has been suffering so much in this recession, to the very speculators whose wild gambling, which is what most economists call what they were doing, drove us over the cliff. and that's why one of the key elements of this ending speculation piece is one of the bills introduced by another vice chair of the populist caucus, congressman peter defazio, who introduced his, let's let wall street pay for the restoration of main street act. this is a very simple concept that existed in this congress -- country for almost 60 years and worked very successfully including during the great depression. and what it says is that if are you trading in excessive transactions on wall street, we're going to ask to you pay a small transaction fee on those

high volume trades so that we have an incentive to keep from you engaging in excessive speculation that puts all of us at risk. and his transaction fee is estimated to create somewhere between $100 billion and $150 billion in new revenues that can be used for two basic purposes. one is job creation which is what we all agree is going to create a huge emphasis for an economic recovery because when people go back to work they not only pay federal taxes and reduce our burden -- the federal treasury, they pay state and local taxes, too, to help relieve the burden on our states and cities. so that's why job creation actually helps -- the speaker pro tempore: would the gentleman suspend for a moment? the chair will receive a message. the secretary: mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: ms. secretary. the secretary: i have been

directed by the senate to inform the house that the senate has passed without amendment h.r. 4691, to provide a temporary extension of certain programs and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman may proceed. mr. braley: thank you, mr. speaker. what we were talking about before that news -- welcome news arrived, is how you create economic incentives to change corporate behavior from excessive speculation and also provide new revenues to stimulate economic development and help us reduce the deficit. and i'm going to ask one of our newest members and youngest members for the populist caucus, our good friend from virginia, tom perriello, to talk about this -- the importance of having a bill like this to guide us on a new direction for economic

recovery and what that means to the people in his district in virginia. with that i'll yield to my good friend. mr. perlmutter: thank you very much for that news and for the -- mr. perriello: thank you very much for that news and for the news from the house of lord -- i mean senate, that has just come our way. it's very exciting. we as a caucus have been fighting so hard to shift the focus from speculation on wall street to job creation on main street. we understand that two out of every three new jobs in this country are coming from small business. now they may not make the headlines, it may mean you have lots and lots of small businesses, but that's the engine of our growth. one thing we still do better than any other country in the world is innovate. we are better entrepreneurs, we're really good at this. and it's our small businesses where we see that innovation taking place. and we need to make sure that we're giving the kind of support that small businesses need whether that's through direct lending, whether that's through suspension of capital gains tax for small business to bring non-traditional lenders in, whether that's providing the

infrastructure in the work force development which allows those small businesses to flourish. we also need to understand that the phrase buy america should not be seen as bad language. the speaker pro tempore: will the gentleman suspend? the chair lays before the house the following enrolled bill. the clerk: h.r. 4691, an act to provide a temporary extension of certain programs and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman may proceed. mr. perriello: again, i think it's timely that we look at this extension because stimets while there are many policies that are out there that may seem fancy, sometimes we have to get back to the basics. we are within weeks of the new building season beginning. the spring building season leading into the summer building season. there are thousands of small businesses around this country that have held on and taken losses for two years, whether it's the construction firms, the engineering firms, the supply stores, that supply those guys, whether it's the diners where

folks go to eat, if we're not building anything in this country we will not continue this path of recovery that we have worked so hard to lay out. this is a chance. and we need to act here in washington with the same urgency that a previous congress did when wall street was in trouble. main street is in crisis. we need to understand we can rebuild this country. now we may not see how things start, pick up in the way some would like this summer but we can rebuild our infrastructure and we can reinvest in the existing building stock, whether that's municipal, commerce or residential through a major retrofit program that puts people to work rebuilding america's competitive advantage. because what you understand, mr. braley, from your experience in iowa and around this country, is that we have to reinvent america's competitive advantage. we will outcompete the world. but we cannot do it solely through supporting the financial sector. we have to start building things, making things and growing things again and we can

still do that better than anywhere in the world but we need a trade policy, we need a work force development strategy, we need an economic development strategy that understands those are things we can still do. there are sectors like the energy sector where we can outcompete the world but everyone else, they're not playing for second place. they're looking to do the same thing we're trying to do but we can do it better. this is our time, this recession right here that we are starting to crawl out of is an opportunity for to us reinvest and rebuilding that competitive advantage and reemploy america, the work that so many in this room have worked so hard to do. there are families out there right now, proud, hardworking people, looking for jobs. we can work together across the aisle to make this happen. but we must have that commitment to basic commonsense things like making sure we don't miss this summer building season. we have that timing, we must have a deep sense of urgency because i know people out on main street do. mr. braley: i appreciate the gentleman's comments about

investing in infrastructure because most of what i learned about the need for infrastructure improvements came when i was working for the secondary roads department, helped pay my way through college. one of the things that i learned is that as you try to create opportunities for transportation improvements that are going to move goods, services and people you see a lot of trickledown that happens from the federal government, the state government to the county government to the city government as right of ways are transferred after they are abandoned for bigger and better infrastructure improvements like four-lane highways. and one of the corner stones of our blue print for recovery that deals with job creation is a bill introduced by congresswoman rosa delauro and co-sponsored by one of the vice chairs of the populist caucus, our friend from minnesota, keith ellison, the national sfrass development bank act. what it does is it creates an

opportunity to take advantage of existing infrastructure needs by identifying about 47,500 jobs and $6.2 billion of potential economic activity that are currently ready, willing and able to be acted upon but because we have not had the opportunity to marry private development with public infrastructure projects we are missing an opportunity to stimulate job growth through this national infrastructure bank. so i would ask my colleagues who support investments in infrastructure improvements, that cross the spectrum from expanding access to energy created by wind in the midwest, by building out our abblet to transfer that energy and electricity throughout the country, by building out our world broadband, by investing in roads, bridges, public

improvements, how to type of an investment development bank would make a difference in their districts and i'm going to yield to my friend from ohio. ms. sutton: i thank the gentleman for yielding. this is infrastructure creates such ripple affects in our economy and spurs economic development and economic activity for the people we represent. every time i go home people beg, please, please, invest in our nation's infrastructure. we know that the need is tremendous and one of the bills in addition to the national infrastructure bank bill which i think we should talk about more, but you mentioned about representative defazio's bill, the bill entitled what wall -- let wall street pay for the restoration of main street act. i think this is also a bill that deals with infrastructure because when we get the money from those transaction fees, of those risky trades that are something that we would really like to have cut back on, we're going to use it to invest in

infrastructure and all the good that goes with it. but we also have in that bill, and i think it's important to tell people, part of the revenue that would come in in addition to the huge amount going to invest in main street, the, you know, main street, after all, is who bailed out wall street and we didn't do it because we were fans of their behavior. we did it so they would start lending, and as we discussed they didn't start lending system of we need to continue to push until things are right. but also in that bill, there is a -- a part of the revenues raised are going to deficit reduction system of we often hear this argument that it's all about the deficit. well, it's about jobs and the deficit. and in order to get rid of the deficit, people do have to have jobs. frankly, obviously, people need to have jobs because this is the united states of america

and people, that's the american dream, having a job and raising your family and aspiring to a quality of life that is second to none across this country. so in that bill, in addition to putting money into infrastructure, we also take a piece of that money, let wall street help to pay down some of the deficits -- deficit that was created by helping wall street get out of the mess they were in. so back to the other bill that you mentioned, which is critically important and you asked how important it was back in ohio, in my district, and it just can't be overstated. just yesterday, i received a whole list of infrastructure projects that are ready to go that need funding, and the thing about infrastructure is that we all know that it can't be ignored.

but often times we come to a place where we don't address it until a crisis occurs. and that doesn't make any sense either. if we can put people to work doing that work that we know has to be done and spur greater economic development and recovery, why wouldn't we do that? this national infrastructure bank legislation is a critical component of taking the idea, the concept that we all know, make -- that we all know make sense and maybe that's what the populist caucus represents more than anything, common sense, it's about common sense, people know what we need to do for our country to strengthen the middle class and putting people to work, rebuilding our infrastructure, other couldn't i are -- other countries are building the infra structure. they're invest -- infrastructure. they know the value it creates beyond the job that is put forth just in doing the construction. with that, i yield back to the

gentleman. mr. braley: i think that's an a great opportunity to talk about the importance, when i served on the transportation and infrastructure committee, in the 110th congress, our chairman, the ledge dare jim oberstar, always reminded us that our global competitor -- the ledge dare -- the ledge dare jim observer -- the legendary jim oberstar reminded us, you have to look at global competitor. you look at china which is past -- which has passed the united states in number of automobiles, if we are competing with these people in a global market, dr. kagen, we have to similar types of commitments so our infrastructure system can make us competitive. i know from visiting your district in northeast wisconsin, it's a very spread out and remote area, in some

parts of your district, yet the stilts you represent in those areas depend just as much on an infrastructure system as the people here in our nation's capitol. mr. kagen: i'll summarize what everybody here understands, we're $1.1 to $1.2 billion behind in investment in infrastructure. what good would it be if we generate several million job, even 10 million job, when we manufacturer things and we don't have -- we manufacture things and don't have the railroads or the infrastructure to transfer our goods to the world's marketplace. we are several trillion dollars behind in our infrastructure development. i'll point out one fact about the american recovery and invest re-investment act, that few people realize. apart from the fact that it was the largest tax cut in american history, little known is the

fact that the transportation and ininfrastructure development, 4 kthkt--- 4% of the amount of money invested in that, generated 20% of the jobs. nearly 900,000 people are working because of the american recovery and reinvestment act of 2009. it put people back to work and that multiplier is significant. for every person working in transportation, that money turns over many times over. so let me just see if i get this straight. if i understand where we're going with our ideas about rewarding people or encouraging people with the taxation code. if you're sitting in a boardroom on wall street and you're rewarding yourself for your failure with the taxpayers' money, according to the populist caucus, we would like to put a significant tax on that bonus and use that revenue and put it back into the american economy to generate small business activity through the s.b.a.

put it back into people's hands. we want to, and we do believe that people are more important than profits, that we should in fact reward work rather than wealth. if i understand the transfer tax on wall street speculators, it's 1/4 of one penny being traded on nanosecond trades. this is not a fee or transfer tax placed on those speculating for the long-term investment. it's going to exclude any tax favored retirement accounts, any h.s.a., health savings account, education savings account, and would exclude the first $100,000 of you are your income generated from your investment in america's future on our american exchange. some people push back against the wall street transfer fee by saying people will trade overseas. in london, the most active trading floor in the world, they do have a transfer fee that's twice what we're

suggesting. so again, the idea is that we want to use the tax code to reward people for their good activity and most especially we want to use existing structures like our community banks, credit unions and regional banks to find the financing and credit necessary for small businesses once again to have access to the credit they need to generate the economic activity and generate the jobs. don't think for a minute that the federal or state government can employee you and work our way through this recession with government sponsored jobs. we can't do that. so it's the role of government to set up a system wherein you're rewarded for your work rather than your wealth and by focusing on our transportation infrastructure needs we can begin to generate millions and millions of jobs to do just that we want people to stay in their own homes once again rather than have this foreclosure crisis come back and bite us. mr. braley: i appreciate the observations. i want to engage a couple of my colleagues in a conversation about behavior modification on

wall street. i'll start with my friend from vermont because he served on the oversight and government reform committee in the last congress when he we had the hearing with the c.e.o.'s of a.i.g., trying to explain why they stood by and watched as their london financial services division drove this economy off a cliff by engaging in excess and speculative trading and high-risk credit default swaps and complex derivatives. one of the things we learned in that hearing from the economic experts who study those high-risk investments was that long before any of us came to congress, congress was confronted with the issue of how we provide some type of oversilingt of this highly complex and evolving marketplace which at that time in the late 1990's was a small fraction of the $100 trillion marketplace it has become.

but what was most shocking to me as they testified was that they said, when congress was trying to decide what are these products, in a way they're like an insurance product because they're an agreement to pay upon a contingent future event. but they're really not insurance because otherwise we could regulate them through the state insurance commissioners. so then they said, well, these are kind of like stock trading, and so we can have this regulated by the securities and exchange commission. but it's really not a stock transaction. so what is it? ability 10% of these products, those experts testified, if you remember, mr. welch, were real insurance products. and these economists testified, the other 90% were pure gambling. people trying to make money by turning over transactions, betting that at some point when those commitments came due they'd be able to generate a

profit without adding anything of value other than risk and a possible payment in the future. so why is it necessary when we're talking about ending excessive speculation to get to the very core, not only of how you do that with a tax policy and with a transfer fee but also how you deal with the financial oversight of the marketplace to make sure this never happens again. mr. welch: i appreciate that. what it's about is whether banking is about an activity that's lending money to businesses, small businesses, families to buy their first home, or it's going to be a mechanism for financial speculation. it's two totally different models. i want to take up on what you were saying. we need a banking system. we need a strong banking system. we need local bankers who actually engage in their community, can make judgments

about who is good for a loan. i want to give an example of the local bank in the wall street operation. in vermont, we have a small bank, the people's bank, the president of the bank, ring manahan, his desk is -- ric manahan, his desk is in the entry of the bank. you walk in, see the teller windows thrarks vestibule area, a public area, his desk is there. people do not have a hard time asking rick what's going on. he knows the folks in his community. in his bank, his board of director, they see a good day's work when at the end of the day they've been able to authorize a loan to a local business, might be a retailers, might be a construction company, knowing that that business is going to use that money to help create a local job. or it's the young family getting started and they've got a make a tough underwriting decision but they know that family and know they'll do their level best to be good for it. at the end of the day, the

house has been sold, the family has a new place to live and they go home and they sleep pretty good at night knowing they make a -- made a contribution to the community. another model, one of our most esteemed wall street banks is goldman sachs. they have the best and the brightest of folks doing the work there. but here's one of the things they did. it was very successful for them making money. they bought a mortgage origination company in the south. they hired 26 30-year-old young people to go out and income on doors and sell mortgages, subprime mortgages -- mortgages people couldn't afford and didn't need. they brought those mortgages back to new york and bundled them into products that they sold. but before they sold them, they got the best and brightest m.b.a.'s to knock on the doors of the rating agencies and persuade the agencies that these toxic instruments were triple-a. then they went to their sales department and had them contact

trusted investors, pension funds, and said, we've got some triple-a products here, you ought to be to the buy them, it's a good return for our your pensioner. they sold them. then they went to the trading room, they said, these are junk. how do we know? we sold them and they bet short against instruments they sold long that would not happen at people's trust in vermont. they couldn't imagine doing that, selling something that wasn't worth investing in. they couldn't do it. and i know that every single one of us, republican and democrat have local bankers who have met that standard, where the goal is to serve the community and they know that their responsibility with this trust this after the -- that they have of depositor money is to put it to good work to build the economy. wall street has a different, they have a different point of view. not that they're not necessary, they obviously are, but when

they are helpful, they see that the work that they do should be in service of the work that main street does. and you know, that's why with the reforms we must implement, whether it's a bonus tax a consumer products safety commission, whether it's tightening up on lending regulations, derivative trading, all of that the bottom line is really very simple. is the banking system going to be there to serve us or are we going to be there to serve the financial engineering of the banking system? that's the question that this congress faces and america wants an answer to it. i yield back. mr. bay braley: we are just about out of time. i'm going to ask my friend from ohio for closing comments, especially on this critical issue that affects the middle class homeowners, the mortgage foreclosure crisis. >> we all know that home ownership in the united states

is crucial. it's crucial for people knowing where they plan -- when they plant their investment they're working hard to make sure they have a place to live. but the same description that mr. welch just gave us about banking practices, in some cases resulted in a, unfortunately a whole lot of people getting in way over their heads, a whole lot of lending that shouldn't have been lent in the first place, and the foreclosure situation is really bad in many places. i witnessed something over the weekend in west palm beach. there was a -- in the west palm beach convention center, a group came into town and said, we're going to bring together the lenders who in many cases have not been answering their phone, the line is busy or people haven't been getting answers, along with people who are having problems, they can't make their mortgage payments. and the not like they're totally out of it. they may have had a job that was earning $50,000 a year and they lost it but now they're earning $35,000 or maybe there's a

two-income household but they can't make ends meet. they want to stay there and we as americans want them to stay there if they can. we don't want abandoned houses. at this event over the weekend, it was running for five days, 24 hours a day, and all the major lenders were there except for one, really interesting, 5,500 people were in this building at one time, i've never seen anything like this, and they had the lenders sitting across the table here to here and they were actually ironing out one after another, one guy had an 11% mortgage, it was reduced to 5.5%, his payments from $2,100 to $1,300. i asked him, with your reduced income, you can make do? he said, yes, i'm keeping my house, i'm sleeping tonight. my children know they have a place, a roof over their head tonight. well, this has been frustrating, but help is on the way. help is on the way. i think this is a very -- the model's been created, it's working in different parts of the country but i'm really gratified to see that some

people in south florida were given that opportunity. a lot more to work through in all of our communities but i'm starting to see some success and that's part of how our recovery is going to happen. by putting the necessary pressure for people to get together and make this work. and that's why the blueprint for recovery we've been talking about that the populist caucus has put forward, real solutions. mr. braley: concrete solutions that are going to help us get out of this mess. by ending speculation on wall street, making sure we have a fair compensation system for the people who have gotten us into this mess and spurring job creation with things like the wall street bonus tax act, the national infrastructure development act, the make wall street pay for the restoration of main street act and the buy american improvement act. this -- these four commonsense bills will make an enormous impact on the quality of life for middle class families. they also represent true populist policies that are about building mesh um -- america up, not tearing it down. it's about giving voice to the legitimate concerns of the

american people who made this country great and with that i thank my colleagues and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. 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. it's a privilege and honor to be recognized by you to address you on the floor of the house of representatives and having watched the collection of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle over the last 60 minutes, a lot of subjects were brought up and i think delivered in a professional fashion by my colleagues and i hope they know i'm always open to dialogue if they have things they'd like to exchange with me. i'm here and i have often asked my colleagues to yield and if they should ask me to yield i'm happy to do so. i think it's important to have an exchange dialogue and first we learned last thursday that republicans have a lot of good ideas. we also learned that many of those good ideas are suppressed by the iron-fisted gavel of the house of representatives.

and and also as i looked at the -- i'll say the event as it unfolded, mr. speaker, that 6 1/2 hours of discussion that took place last february 25, last thursday, at the blair house, on health care. a number of things came to me. but looking at the at that da -- data was quite interesting. just to boil it down to raw numbers and regular comparison, it was this, that for every two minutes that a republican spoke, the president spoke for an additional two minutes and another democrat spoke for another two minutes. so it was really -- it was really two to one in the time that was used. and as the president said, well, it's ok if he talks a long time, even though the time was very limited to the others that were talking, because after all, he's the president. so the time doesn't charge against him. it's an interesting concept. i think that heretofore has not been uttered by the president of of the united states. in any previous administration.

and then another thing that struck me, that appears to have not been mentioned by the pundits or the people that observed this, were the number of times that the president interrupted those who were speaking. now, i can identify with what this is like. i have a number of times in my legislative life run into the situation where there's a limited amount of time to speak and maybe the clock has one minute on it, two minutes on it, five minutes on it or as it does tonight, mr. speaker, it has 60 minutes on it. so you watch the clock and you try to pack as much information into that period of time as you can. and when something happens to break that up and change the rhythm and shorten the time that you have, you have to adjust your methods to press it down into the time that you have left. and i believe that the clock that was set for the members of congress to speak was set at 3 1/2 minutes. i don't know that, i believe that. and i was thinking of the moment

that the republican leader in the senate, senator mcconnell, introduced the senator coburn for his 3 1/2 minutes to speak. and i do remember the log on the time. and the pretty close to this. senator coburn spoke for a minute and 14 seconds. he was interested -- interrupted by the president of the united states for four minutes and 20 seconds. then he came back and spoke for a little more than a minute and was interrupted again by the president of the united states. and that happened about one more time in that interation. the time then that was left for senator coburn had expired and it was the thought and the concept that was driven by senator coburn was completely split and delayed because the president interrupted and burned up the time and even though they may have reset the stop watch on senator coburn's time, it isn't the same as having three uninterrupted minutes. the president claimed more than that on many occasions throughout the entire day.

to where it came down to this, the president spoke as much as either republicans or democrats altogether and he interrupted members of the house and senate, republicans and democrats, without reservation, apparently he believes he's the president of the united states and he can do that. and that may be true on certain occasions and limit. but there is a limit, mr. speaker. and the limit was this, the president of the united states interrupted those who were there to be heard 70 times. 70 times in 6 1/2 hours, a little more than 10 times an hour, and of all those interruptions, he interrupted democrats 20 times, republicans, 50 times. 50 interruptions. and the kind of way that it breaks up the rhythm and the flow of the message that's being delivered and the fashion that i've talked about with senator could he person burn, whom i have not had this discussion with by the way, for all i know he has no objection to the

process that was there, but for me, i do, mr. speaker. so it was not possible for a consistent continual flow of could he jent thought to flow through with the president interrupting on 70 different occasions over the course of 6 1/2 hours. it's hard to get to the bottom of something, it's hard to make your point when you're continually interrupted. but i listened to this last hour and i think the gentlemen had an opportunity to make their case and there were plenty of them. as this flowed around, i don't know that there was anything particularly stunning except i looked at the gentleman from wisconsin's poster that was on this easel just a few minutes ago that showed the jobs that were either created or lost not by the president of the united states, president obama, or president bush but the jobs that were created or lost during their administration which is a far more accurate way to discuss this. and that span was over about a two-year period of time.

it would have been hard to see the poster and understand it, i had to walk up closely and analyze it, but it flowed back through 2009 and through 2008 and into december of 2007. the curious thing about that chart which showed an upside down par bolic curve of the bar graphs of jobs lost under those two administrations, it appeared to be about equal, the last year of the bush administration, the first year of the obama administration, the curious part was that on the chart there was only one month where there were actually jobs that increased, that was during the bush administration. and we all know that if you would take that month and then you would go back into 2008 and on into 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2000, all of the bush years, one would see -- 2002, all of the bush years, one would see there were some up months and off months. here's what happened. these are the real -- the real

viewpoint on what happened with our economy that seems to be ignored. now, the gentleman that stood at this particular podium had on his chart that under the bush administration we had two wars, two tax cuts, one drug entitlement and an asterisk for the wall street bailout. well, ok, first i'll bring us up to these two wars, mr. speaker. i can do fairly briefly. that is this. when president bush was elected in the year 2000 after we went through all of the recounts in florida and the supreme court decision and the allegations that the president wasn't an appointed president, not an -- was an appointed president, not an elected president, which no recount or analysis would support, all of the reviews of the elections in florida and everywhere else in the year 2000 support that george bush won

that election. it's too bad it was so close, it was too bad we had to have such a fight, it's too bad it had to go to the supreme court. but in the end no one has made a legitimate case that there was anything other than a legitimate election in every state including florida and that the count that was 527 or 537, i think 537, was the difference in florida. very, very close. and it wasn't supposed -- so close in 2004. but in the year 2000 when george bush was elected president, already we had seen the bursting of the dot combubble. this was this false sector -- com bubble. this was the false sector of the economy that was created because the investers in america and around the world saw that we had developed the microchip and with the microchip we had developed the ability to store and transfer information more effectively, more efficiently and more quickly than ever before. and more cheaply than ever before. so the investors began to bet on the dot-com companies and as they invested in the dot-com

companies, there were companies out there that had capital that they could utilize and they invested it into the new industry that was growing and it was, you know, it was the information age. the information revolution. and as that grew it outgrew its ability of the technology we were developing, it outgrew its ability to produce a good or a service that could improve our productivity or efficiency. so when that happened it created a bubble. it was the investors' bubble created on the speculation that there would be a value that was inherent in our ability to store or transfer information better than ever before. there's more to be said about that, mr. speaker, but that was the description of the bubble. the bubble was bursting at the end of the clinton administration. that bubble was going to burst because the markets had to adjust to the -- um, to the irrational exuberans of the investment in the dot-com bubble. and so as the double was

bursting and george bush was becoming president, we saw a decline in our economy. and alan greenspan, chairman of the fed, saw the bursting of the dot-com bubble and concluded that something needed to be done to shore that up, to fill the hole that was created in our economy because the bubble was collapsing and shrinking and to fill the hole alan greenspan decided, with or without the support of president bush, that we should create a housing market that would help shore this up. and so we ended up with unnaturally low interest rates and while that was going on it played into the hands of the people who were driving for lower understood writing standards, lower standards of capital. and this was contributing to later on the mortgage crisis that we saw unfold about a year and a half ago. that builds us up to september

11, 2009. where i see on the gentleman from wisconsin's chart, where he said two wars. well, we had a dot-com bubble that was bursting, we had a chairman of the fed and others who had decided to shore up the hole created by the bursting of the dot-com bubble which, by the way, that bubble was pierced by the lawsuit against microsoft. the bubble was growing, it was big, it was fragile, it was going to burst, i believe, but the bubble was pierced by the lawsuit against microsoft that was brought about by a collection of state attorneys general who decided to file a class action lawsuit and took microsoft to task and took them to court and it cost millions and millions of dollars. . that accelerated the dot com

bubble. we saw economic decline. some would argue and if you look at the numbers, technically probably was not a recession. but to fill a hole, the effort was made to create a housing bubble to fill a void that was created by the dot com bubble. that's what happened when george bush was being inaugurated. he kept alan greenspan on. as these two things were happening, the dot com bubble was deflating and housing bubble was being created to fill the hole. along came the september 11 attack on the united states of america. the attack on what may have been this capitol building or the white house. i think it would have been the capitol building, the attack on

the pentagon where we lost our braved servicemen and women there and the attack on the trade tours by the price that was paid by innocent civilians. that happened on president bush's watch. i don't know that one could point to any act of omission or comission. that happened. they found a vulnerability that always existed and al qaeda exploited it. so we ended up at war. the gentleman from wisconsin said we were involved in two wars. we drove al qaeda out of afghanistan. and with a minimal number of troops in u.s. uniform, liberated the country of

afghanistan and eradicated afghanistan of al qaeda terrorists, who need some kind of habitat if they're going to operate. it was a decision that had to be made early. it went very well with a minimum number of casualties and afghanistan was freed and liberated. and then, because of intelligence worldwide, i found no one who disagreed with because of a decision that was made, we went into iraq and not to deliberate on that, mr. speaker and not to kick that dead horse, but once we put our troops into action and asked them to put their lives on the line for our liberty and freedom and destiny of america and the free world, it is our obligation to stand with them. and i have stood with our troops, not just our troops, but also their mission continually since the beginning of these operations as i came to this congress and watched as

the liberation of iraq unfolded before our eyes on television. so the poster that was hear that said under george bush we lost ail these jobs, the chart only the last year of the bush administration. and then we lost all of these jobs and we were under two wars and then we had two sets of tax cuts and drug entitlement and wall street bailout, all of that blamed on george bush. well, i would like to think they could get over this and quit revising history. yes, we have two wars. which one would they have avoided? both? would anyone say we shouldn't have gone into afghanistan and slugged your soldiers and pointed your finger and said this is a job for the attorney general. shurnl we couldn't be against

people that killed 3,000 americans on a single day, the worst attack on american homeland in the history of our country and i see it listed on the poster as something we should not have been engaged in. mr. speaker, it was nearly unanimous here in the house of representatives to grant the authority for the president of the united states to engage in this -- in these operations. there was only one exception. so that's the only person that would get to come here to the floor and say, i told you so, she'd be wrong. but only one person that has the credentials to make that statement, not the people who were down here tonight. yes, two wars. the war in afghanistan was necessary and unavoidable. the war in iraq was a decision that was made off the intelligence we had and that is a separate debate. but we engaged and once we did,

i throw my lot with our troops and their mission and i don't believe you can separate the two. and i think it's hypocritical to say you are for the troops and opposed to the mission because you find ourselves in a position where you're arguing to support the troops and asking them to put their lives on the line. and i cannot abide to that. yes, two wars. and another little bullet point on this poster that was here from the gentleman from wisconsin is tax cuts, two tax cuts. we had an economy that needed some help. and i'm not a great fan of the rebates that took place in 2001. it would give the economy a little sugar high and then it goes on the way it was. but i am a fan of the tax cuts that unfolded in 2003 that were

signed into law by president bush on may 28 of 2003. those were real tax cuts. those were real economic sthration tax cuts and caused people to free up capital and re-invest and get this economy again. those cuts in capital gains and dividends, those cuts let people invest money and with some confidence believe it was going to improve their return on investment were smart and they were prudent and they were useful and they worked. and it is a far, far better thing to stimulate our economy with tax cuts than it is to try to stimulate our economy with debt, as this current administration is seeking to do. so the bush administration had two tax cuts, 2001, which is essentially a rebate. they realized it didn't work. by 2003, they came back and

asked for real sthration tax cuts. we provided those in 2003. and they did work by any measure. so when we look at the bush administration, that little chart that shows only the last year of the bush administration is not indicative of the bush administration. look at it on the balance. i just seen the chart. that is indicative of the obama administration. we are in february. we have 13 -- we are in march -- 13 months of the obama administration, there has been negative job growth every single month during the obama administration. i'm not blaming that at his feet. he inherited the situation. the cycles of the global economy are part of this. the decisions that were made in this congress are part of it. president bush isn't fully to blame if he is to blame at all. what i saw was charlie rangel,

now chairman of the ways and means committee, was the chairman -- the anticipated chairman of the ways and means committee and he in the aftermath fert takeover of the democratic majority in the house of representatives when nancy pelosi became speaker, charlie rangel, the ranking member on the ways and means committee, went on the national talk shows and went everywhere all the time. he talked about as much as newt gingrich did. and all of america watched and listened to charlie rangel because they wanted to know and the question was asked, mr. rangel, which of these tax cuts would you keep, which would you want to get rid of? and i don't recall a single straight answer, mr. speaker. but i recall by time november,

and december and january and part of february had rolled around, it had become clear to the analysts and the pundits in america, that there was not one single tax cut of the bush administration that charlie rangel would have liked to kept, not one. in that period of time, from november of 2006 until december of 2006, january and february of 2007, we saw industrial investment in america drop like a rock. mr. speaker, it did so, because capital is smart. capital is intelligent and will do the wise thing. when capital investment realized that the costs of investment were going to get higher and higher, then it backed away from the marketplace and slowed down dramatically in the industrial investment and that industrial investment that was lacking was

the precures -- precursor. people on this side can make their arguments. but i have laid this scenario out, there is a dot com bubble, organized by some of the attorneys general started our economyn th decline and alan greenspan made a decision to prop it up by creating a housing market to bring this economy back up with favorable terms and low underwriting requirements and that was the beginning of the subprime mortgage crises that brought about this economic decline. we saw the majority's change in the house and the charlie rangel position of not being committed to preserving a single bush tax cut. and the result was, capital

left the investment out of the industrial side of this marketplace and slowed down our industrial production and it was part of -- mr. speaker -- i have a person in the gallery that is making gestures that is inappropriate and i would like to ask him to be removed. the speaker pro tempore: request that the person be removed from the gallery.3 the speaker pro tempore: request that the person be removed from the gallery. mr. king: i request that he be mr. king: i request that he be removed.

the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman may proceed.

gentleman may proceed. mr. king: i appreciate your attention to the decorum in the chamber. and i appreciate the chamber. the part i left off, the analysis on how much of it be longs on this side of the aisle and this side of the aisle and the or beganism that is the free enterprise economy coupled with the politics that churned back and forth. so we make our arguments. we could make them on the floor, in the media and go home to our districts and we trust the american people will sort this out and that they will then come to a decision that will elect the people that come back to this congress and next cycle of our elections can be able to make even better decisions than we have in the past. so the argument here is that

even though the people in this chamber a and those who happen to be watching on c-span, have seen these bullets -- the bullet points to make it clear on the chart from the the gentleman from wisconsin, who is a friend, by the way, and i have a good personal relationship with, two wars, this side will argue they were both necessary. this side of the aisle can argue they were both necessary. and the tax cuts, i've argued that one was only a sugar high and the other one was effective and necessary. apparently this side of the aisle will argue they wrnt necessary. the drug entitlement language, as i recall, there were large number of democrats that voted for that bill and the argument was, would you actually set up a medicare proposal that would not have included prescription drugs today as much as prescription drugs are involved

in providing health care to everybody in america? you wouldn't imagine you can go to the doctor and specialists and get your examination. you might get your surgery in outpatient care, but the pharmaceuticals that are part of the stability for our health care would not be part of medicare. so that argument, i think, stands pretty clear. . then we had the wall street bailouts. well, i was not a fan of wall street bailouts, mr. speaker. i among half of the republicans voted no on the $700 billion tarp legislation which by the way was only $350 billion worth of tarp legislation -- only $350 billion -- that's a relative term when you're looking at $700 billion, you can say that, mr. speaker, but this $700 billion tarp proposal that came from the secretary of the treasury, henry paulson, his request was for

immediately $700 billion, no strings attached, and he would spend the money as he saw fit and he was the only one that could save our economy from going into a downward spiral and the global collateral and the global currency from crashing. well, this congress pulled it back, held it to $350 billion, i voted no on each component of that because i believed that there wasn't any entity in this country that was too big to be allowed to fail, that we should simply let them fail, because if we do so, it would remove the implication, the interference frat federal government was going to provide a guarantee. and if they believe that it's implicit that the federal government will bail out companies that are too big to fail, then they take greater and greater risks and the markets don't work anymore because they're propped up by the government. so wall street bailout, i stand here, mr. speaker, and about half of my republican colleagues stood with me each time opposed to the $700 billion tarp fund

bailout. maybe about the same number of democrats stood in opposition and in favor of it. so it was both parties and roughly equal numbers, although not precisely, that supported the wall street bailout. but, mr. speaker, then senator obama, now president obama did support the tarp bailout. he was in support of the $700 billion and when it came back as a vote of $350 billion now and $350 billion to be requested by the next administration and approved by the next congress, president obama, then senator obama, voted for that legislation. he was in favor of it. when they went to the white house john mccain and senator obama to sit down with speaker pelosi and mitch mcconnell, the leader in the united states senate, and roy blunt was there as well and the list of people

in the house side goes on, at that table then candidate obama, senator obama, was in agreement with the request for $700 billion. and voted for it. so it doesn't work very well for a democrat to come to the floor of the house and point his finger at george bush when he can clearly see that his president, and by the way my president, was in support of tarp. i was not. i stood in opposition to tarp, the wall street bailout was approved by then senator obama, the first half at $350 billion and later on the other $350 billion that was requested by the president to be elected later which was president obama and approved by the congress to be elected later which was the pelosi-reid congress, sent henry paulson another $350 billion to go to the new secretary of the treasury. that secretary who by the way was having trouble -- had tax troubles of his own.

so we can spin this a lot of ways. but what happened was the beginning at the end of the bush administration and at the beginning of the obama administration and with the cooperation, support and assent of then senator and later on president-elect and then president obama, here's what we saw happen, we saw the tarp funding approved late september, early october of 2008, with the support of obama and mccain and president bush, not mine. we saw three large investment banks begin to be nationalized as the flow of this election came through, we saw the huge insurance company a.i.g. nationalized, taken over by the federal government. we saw fannie mae and freddie mac nationalized, taken over by the federal government. and then pretty soon we saw general motors and chrysler nationalized and taken over by the federal government and we saw the bankruptcy court accept the deal that was proposed by

the obama white house without one shot or tittle amended, no matter what the testimony was before the bankruptcy court, the proposed package that was endorsed by and for all i know shaped by the white house to put these car companies through bankruptcy was never bait am approved by the -- verbatim approved by the bankruptcy court. what a curious thing that the white house can write a prescription for a bankruptcy and a takeover of private sector companies, two proud american companies, and the bankruptcy court couldn't find a single flaw in that proposal no matter what the testimony to end backup -- to then end back up with the same language proposed by the white house and supported by speaker pelosi and the language that she used was, i'm not going to allow the automakers to get bargaining leverage over the unions. and so the secured creditors and the car companies lost their

investment, completely lock stock and barrel, wiped out, mr. speaker, and shares of stock were handed over to united workers auto union. how could that happen in a nation that believes in the rule of law? how could that happen in a nation that allows for a collateral to be held for secured creditors? the people that held the collateral for those companies lost their collateral and part of the reason was because the large investment banks that had been investment -- invested in those shares had also received the bailout from tarp and when that happened the troubled asset relief program, in case there's anybody that needs to know that, when that happened then it was leveraged against these large investment banks to capitulate, give up their secured interest in that collateral for general motors and chrysler so it could be transferred over to the unions whose concession was, they conceded claims, insurance claims, in the future.

that's it. no realtime, now transfer of anything, simply some concessions down the line that look like, if they're able to pass socialized medicine would be irrelevant anyway. that's what i saw happened. tarp, troubled are he leaf program, $350 billion under bush, $350 billion under ob, so the a.i.g., the insurance company, nationalized, fannie mae, freddie mac, when one of them lost $13w6 billion in the last quarter, $16 billion, mr. speaker, all of that out of the pockets of the taxpayers. the taxpayers are on the hook to ensure that these now wholly owned government entities, fannie mae and freddie mac,, those liabilities have been accepted by executive order of president obama last december in the amount of contingent liblingts of -- liabilities of $5.5 trillion. still the taxpayers continue to go to work every day and send

their money into the federal government and still this federal government's heart is hardened and can't seem to come to grips with the massive responsibility that they have accepted and transferred over onto the people of america. and while all this is going on, the community reinvestment act which was passed in the late 1970's, modernized in the early 1990's under bill clinton, that community reinvestment act that was designed to put an end to red lining around districts in our inner cities, mostly inner cities, wouldn't have to be exclusively that, mr. speaker, and it was an activity that i disagree with and object to but there were lenders that could see that there were neighborhoods where the asset values were going down. inner city neighborhoods, inner city -- any of the inner city properties where the asset value was going down, they took a more or less red pen and drew a line

around those areas in the inner city whereas et values were going down, they were red lining them and they would draw a boundary around them and then declare and make a decision that they were not going to loan any money into that area because the collateral value was diminishing rather than appreciating. so when that happened and it became apparent here in this congress, the hearts of the members of congress went out to the people that were trying to make a living and live in those areas and passed the community reinvestment act which essentially said, if you're going to make loans, if you're going to expand your operations with branches or continue to go into other neighborhoods, then you need to comply with the community reinvestment act which means in short that lending institutions had to make bad loans in bad neighborhoods. that's the short version of what it is. there are a lot of nicer ways to say it, but that is the blunt version, mr. speaker. so these lending institutions were having trouble defining

what that meant. well, acorn was there to help them. they were there to shake down these lenders and push the lenders into making more bad loans in bad neighborhoods, but the problem was that the lenders couldn't make any more loans because they were having trouble selling these mortgages off into the secondary market, fannie mae and freddie mac, because the underwriting requirements for fannie mae and freddie mac were not loose enough to allow those mortgages to be sold into the fannie and freddie secondary loan market. so this wonderful organization called acorn came to this congress in the early 1990's and lobbied the congress, they weren't the only ones but they were very, very active and forceful organization, they lobbied the congress to lower the underwriting and the collateral down payment standards for the borrowers so that fannie mae and freddie mac could buy up these loans in the secondary market and the loans

that would be made by the lending institutions that were seeking to comply with the community reinvestment act, make those loans -- bad loans in bad neighborhoods, sell them off to fannie mae and freddie mac, shed themselves of it, take their profit and their margins out and let fannie and freddie worry about that as they rolled them forward. all of that was going on and it wasn't going fast enough, but once the underwriting requirements for fannie and freddie were approved here in this congress in the early 1990's then acorn went to work and accelerated their effort to promote more and more and more bad loans in bad neighborhoods. and while that was going on the shakedown was being accelerated. it wasn't enough to have -- let me say a lobbying operation here in washington that was pushing to lower the standards for fannie and freddie but there was an activist shakedown operation diagnose going on out there in the neighborhoods where acorn's people were proudly saying that they went into lending institutions and they would

shove the banker's desk over against the wall and all surround the lender and chant and intimidate and scream at hem him to indiana tim date him into making more bad loans in -- to intimidate him moo into making more bad loans in bad neighborhoods. the lenders made more bad loans in more bad neighborhoods and then acorn found themselves in a position where they could score the lenders as to whether they were in compliance with the community reinvestment act. well, think about what that means. an outside organization that emerges today as a criminal enterprise scoring lending institutions as to whether they're in compliance with the very vegas language of the community reinvestment -- very vague language of the community reinvestment act, alan greenspan out there lowering interest rates, extending the terms, lowering the standards for a down payment, all of this accelerated bad loans in bad neighborhoods, subprime mortgages made that all happen, and you had this snowball that was rolling along underneath the

radar. and we saw this start to break apart a year and a half or so ago, mr. speaker. and that's when henry paulson came to this capital and did -- capitol and did his chicken little routine and said, the financial sky is falling and i can prop it up with $700 billion. what's your guarantee? he said, i have no guarantee but that's anything that has any chance of working. you have to give me the money and i'll do what i can with it. that's the picture of what happened. community reinvestment act, shakedown of lenders, acorn engaged in the middle of this, acorn finding themselves as the broker for bad loans and the approver of the lending institutions that are making enough bad loans that it meets their standard. that's what we saw happen. and we saw this economy start to crack apart again and when it cracked apart and the economy started to spiral downward, yes that was under george bush's watch. but it was also, mr. speaker, under nancy pelosi's watch. it was under harry reid's watch.

and i have stood here on this floor and sat up in these seats and listened to enough debate from this side of the aisle where over and over again democrats in this congress would say, give us the gavels, we'll make it better, we can fix this economy, we can grow this country, we will take care of our national defense, everything will be right again. this is before president obama was even elected to the united states senate. the declarations from this side of the aisle that could you fix everything if you just had to get -- well, you got the gavels. you got the gavels in 2006 and we saw industrial investments spiral downwards and we saw the subprime mortgage crisis spiral even further downwards. and by the way, in 2005 i stood on this floor and i supported raising the standards of underwriting for fannie mae and freddie mac, requiring them to have the same capital -- similar, not exactly the same, capital requirements as the other lending institutions and

similar regulations of the other lending institutions and what happened, mr. speaker, was the now chairman of the finance committee, mr. frank, came to this floor and vigorously opposed an amendment that was offered by mr. leech of iowa, october 26, 2005, that would have fixed fannie mae and freddie mac. . . jim leach understood what we needed to do, i understood what needed to be done. but the defenders of freddie mac and fannie mae would become the chairman of the financial services committee and open authorizations to fund acorn and accelerate the downward spiral of our economy and i hear it's george bush's fault.

i have trouble with this logic, mr. speaker. i will fast forward to another circumstance that's taking place, yesterday, day before, day before, day before and will be taking place tomorrow, and that is the position that senator bunning has taken with regard to the position of unemployment benefits. if you believe we should pay as we go, that the people should find a way to pay as they go. they passed pay-go here. it's a sham. they bypassed it or ignored it and do whatever they want to do. there's no standard anymore. the integrity has diminished substantially. jim bunning has said, find a way to pay for it. this is in the trillions of

dollars. we have a president who is a keynesian. he has an appetite to spendor grandchildren's future income. today, by my numbers, a baby born in america owes uncle sam $44,000. somebody else's number is $46,000. by the time that child starts the fifth grade, if the president's budget is approved, authorized and appropriated, we will see that child owing the federal government $88,000 when they walk in to meet their fifth grade teacher. at the same time, the same administration, laments the college debt that they have. now if you have a student that walks out of college and gets their degree with $88,000 worth

of debt, that is more than they want to bear. you don't have the sheepskin to help you with the revenue stream and have to find another way to do it. i empathize with the college students who have high debt and i feel for the american babies born in this country with a huge debt over their head that they had nothing to say about and don't have a means to take that and call it an investment. it is unconscionable that we put our children and grandchildren in debt. and the numbers work out to be something like this. we have had something like an $11.3 trillion national debt. national debt has been raised to $14 trillion and if you look

at the obama budget, that takes it up, when you project it out over 10 years, $28 trillion. this is a massive burden, and how do we work out of it? let's say we raise minimum wage 30 some beers or so and davis-bacon wage scale and union scale on every construction project in america that has $2,000 or more invested in it, inflates the quoss of every project that has federal dollars in it, 5% to 38%. average of 22% increase because of davis-bacon wage scale which truly rl union wage scales. while the federal government is

managing minimum wage and managing imposing union wage scale -- and by the way, davis-bacon wage scale is the last jim crow law left in the america. it is the remaining jim crow law. it was designed to lock african americans out of the trade wages in new york city in 1932. there was a contractor let and a contractor from alabama was the low bidder on the project and brought a lot of african-american work rs to bill that federal building. they came in and worked cheaper and the unions lobbied. and they said they were republicans. but two new york legislateors called davis and bacon died decided they were going to

prevail a prevailing wage on america, which is an increase of 22%. so the decision we have is do we want to build four miles of road or five or four bridges or five, build four schools or five, name your project, you want to build four buildings or five, how many shovel-ready projects? four or five? that's the difference between non-davis-bake shop and davis-bake con wages. i'm confronted with the chairman of the financial services committee that the federal government has no business injecting themselves into two consenting adults and do whatever they want to do, that's their argument. what business is is it of ours

if two subsequent consenting adults want to do whether we can discuss it here. the same individuals who make that argument feel that the federal government should inject themselves between two consenting adults providing there is federal dollars involved. now we have uncle sam felling david king what he has to pay his employees in iowa. if i want to climb in on his ex castor in iowa, it takes me back to my roots or if i say, pay me $10 a an hour, he can't do it. it would be a violation of federal law. i cannot interan agreement and work for $10 an hour or

nothing, because the federal government has decided they want to tell two adults what they can do, what they will be paid for work that's done. it changes dramatically from district to district. you might go across the road, the center line of a highway and find out there is a 40% difference in this thing called privailing wage, called union scale. the federal government is messing up the works. the free enterprise system has to be allowed to flourish and a floor established under labor that is supply and demand. there needs to be a wage and benefits package that is reflected of supply and demand and skills of the employees and that's not the case when the federal government is involved. so, mr. speaker, there is a lot of distortions that have been taking place and our economists

on steroids in the oval office have further distorted this and we need to take this country back to our roots and let the free enter rice -- enterprise system works. there have been flash cards made. those flash cards, about like this and they'll ask you a question, one side will say who is the father of our country. the other side will say george washington. who saved the union, abe lincoln. free enper fries capitalism. it is -- enterprise capitalism. it is hard a question that one-third of the private sector, given the efforts to nationalize our body.

there's a concept that has some people raise their eyebrows and ready with their fingers on their keyboard because they think steve king has said something that is completely outrageous. here's the point. ever since 1973, a significant percentage of americansal be it today in a minority have continually made the argument that abortion should be available electively because nobody has anybody business what a women can or can't do with their body. the pro-choice crowd has argued you can't tell a woman what to do with her body, it's a zpwigs for her -- for her. that's the argument. can't tell a woman what she can

or can't do. it's a decision for her, her pastor and doctor. well, the same people that have been making that argument since 1973 that you can't tl a woman what she can't do with our body are the ones that are making the argument that the federal government should have 9 sthort to tell everybody in america what we can and can't do. it's uncle sam taking over our body, the most private personal thing we have, this physical body that we should be managing, taking care of. and even in the legislation we see language that would tax your pop if it's not diet or outlaw or tax transfather and try to manipulate your behavior so that your body treats you

less than a demand on health care. the federal government telling us. we heard talk about death panels. but those panels would be a component of the thought process that i'm discussing. you would have a federal panel or committee that would be run by the health choices administration czar who would determine when you could have tests, when a woman was too young for a mammogram, too old, when she had too many mammograms, when you needed to be checked for colon cancer. it's the federal government managing our health care. why would we let the federal government nationalize our bodies and decide what will pay

for health insurance premiums, what health insurance premiums will be offered to us and by those decisions, they would decide the cost of premiums, the benefits of the premiums and what would be offered, the federal government takeover of the personal and private thing that we have and in fact are would be the nationalization of everybody's body in america. what does that mean? we grant -- it's we, the people. the people get their rights from god. and we take those rights and confer them upon government. and deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. but if you look back at the old monarchy that were the present sewersors to this country, those subjects were for the king. they were the king's subjects. he controlled them and managed

them for his own benefit and some were benevolent and some were not. we rejected the monarchy. the communists where the individuals exist for the benefit of the state and everybody's work and labor is for the benefit of the state. there isn't a system out there that respects and reveres the power of the individual and our individual rights that come from god and how people confer their powers that come from god and the consent of the governed passes it over to our elected representatives. that's the system we have. and why would the p.m. of the united states of america give up their sovereign rights to control their own persons inin spite of all of the things in the bill of rights that define

our individual rights. why would we hand over our health care to the federal government and why would anybody propose such a thing? i would submit, mr. speaker, they would propose this if they were anti-liberty, anti-freedom, if they were pro, some other form of government that didn't respect the sovreignty of the individual and the god-give i don't know liberties that are invested in all of us. . tomorrow president obama will unveil as he's announced another series of bullet points, the last time was 11 pages, no legislative language, of principles he thinks that we all should agree to, and he would give -- and he would give some opportunity for republicans to accept a few more dictates and he's indicated he would be interested in a couple of changes, but in the end they

have created a toxic stew that started with that tainted old soup bone of hillary care 15 years ago and they've -- hillarycare 15 years ago and they've added bells and whistles to it to attract more people to this, but if you start out with something toxic, whatever you add to it dilutes it but it's still toxic. this is a toxic stew, this national health care act. it needs to be thrown out and we -- need to start fresh and three out of four of the american people agree with me, that we can't go forward with what we have in front of us, we've got to start all over again and we need to start with tort reform and the lawsuit abuse, allow people to really and truly and honestly and hopely buy insurance across state lines, we need full deductibility of everyone's health insurance premiums, we need to expand health savings accounts, we need to allow people to use h.s.a.'s, we need to acceptity -- set up portabilities so people can take

their health insurance policies with them every time and we need to address pre-existing conditions in a fashion that doesn't turn out to be socialized medicine. all of that we can do, all of that we should do but we should do it one bill at a time, stand-alone, very clear, tort reform first, take this money out of the pockets of the trial lawyers, give it back to the rate payers and the taxpayers and the patients. if we do that, that will be a powerful sign that this administration would finally be ready to work in a bipartisan fashion. until i see that, mr. speaker, i do not believe that that is the case, i think the effort is socialized medicine, i don't think it's about the liberty of america, nor do i believe it's about the efficiency and the quality of health care. so with that, mr. speaker, i appreciate your indulgence and i would yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. 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 ajournal. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no.

the ayes have it. the motion is agreed to. accordingly, the house stands adjourned until 10:00

the west coast service potentially faces losses over the past 10 years. the discussion was held today at a forum in washington. >> you might remember that i had wanted to start a dialogue

about the future of the postal service. affordable and dependable mail service represents a key component of the business plans of countless companies and organizations of all kinds. today, in this audience, are some of the largest customers of the u.s. postal service. some spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year for post services. also present are small businesses and organizations. small businesses represent the heart of the nation's economy in the same way that the postal service has been at the heart of the communication system. other stakeholders are represented such as unions and management, the administration and congress, consumer groups and suppliers to the mailing industry. each of you are effected by any

changes made to the business model. that is why i believe i have a special obligation to fully inform you of the problems we face. i believe that you are entitled to know about the options that we have. any successful outcome depends on your continued support and most of all your full understanding. there have in advances in technology. while the postal service remains a key communications -- congress told us to operate like

a business. the board of governors and senior management have taken this challenge seriously. we cared deeply about the traditions and the role that the economic services. we provide universal service and opposite citizens and a low cost medications resources. in 2006, total mail volume reached 230 pieces. of one in five pieces has disappeared. as a result, the cost of delivering mail has risen. of about halfway through our fiscal year, we protected the postal service could lose $7

billion. these declines in volume and revenue have caused us to rethink everything that we are doing. when i meet with the ceo's i am always asked this question, who is at fault? quite frankly, no one is at fault. the simple fact is that technology has altered the economic environment and marketplace. it has made obsolete many aspects of the model that worked so well for us and for so many years. the great advances in technology and the internet have changed the landscape to an extent unimaginable a decade ago. our board and senior management recognizes the efforts of the internet years ago. we look to to increase -- reduce

our costs. we began to do that in the year 2000. we accelerated to $6 billion in 2009. we plan more this year. postal employment, 800,000, is now below 600,000. we reduced in employment levels without massive layoffs and displacements. we are making the point of diminishing returns. there is only so much you can cut. i am listed three of the world's most experienced and highly regarded organizations. all three will rain.

each of the firm's were told that there are no sacred cows. we did articulate two principles which we are committing to. first is our obligation commitment stemming from the constitutional mandate. you've also service has guaranteed affordable postal service to every citizen in the u.s.. the second principle is that the postal service has no interest in receiving taxpayer subsidies for our core operations. i feel strongly that we should not revert to the days when the postal service was dependent on tax dollars for over 20% of its operating costs. as a result, we need to

redefine and reinvigorate the value of mail to business and households and to structure a organization in a way that restores its fiscal integrity. representatives of the consulting group are here to report their findings. they will share with you the input we have used to question, supplement, and to validate the new business plans developed in our group. this response reflects what they told you. this report will be presented by mail wolfgang. the center studied operations of other postal services. we are interested in how the

ancillary services of their posts offer to supplement their revenues. for example, banking, insurance, telephone. we are looking to have a broad view of our business. . we conducted our own research. we hired mckinsey in the hope that they might show us the way to convert a crisis into an opportunity. we sought their help in formulating a new business model that will result in a more lean and more responsive service that will serve our country for decades to come. one partner will present his firm's report. let's hear it for -- wolfgang of the boston consulting group.

[applause] >> good morning. the boston consulting group was engaged to develop a volume forecast for u.s. mail. from that also the revenue projection over the same time. the volume projection that we were asked to build was called the base. this was a volume projections through 2020. several assumptions are important. first of all, no new revenue or cost initiatives. no new regulatory changes were there to change the forecast. within the next couple of