indefensible and the law in america even after this bill passes, says to the little guy, to the least among us, to those just barely getting by, to that person who works for a small garage or maybe in my state of arizona, a small lawn service company or maybe even a small doctor's office, if their employer doesn't give them employer-paid health care coverage, here's what we do to the little guy. here's what we do to the least among us. we say, oh, you really ought to be insured, but we're going to smack you down. we're going to make you pay income tax first before you buy that health insurance. that is to say, we're going to punish you if you decide to spend your money on health insurance. so, the $5,000 health insurance policy that this guy got over here from his employer that cost

him zero in taxes, maybe it cost his employer $5,000, that plan for the little guy who doesn't look for an employer who buys health care coverage, that plan cost $5,000 or close to another $1,500, that plan cost the little guy $6,800, because he has to earn the $5,000 and earn $1,800 on top of that and spend the $6,800 to get the same policy that the guy that worked for the big employer got for free. how can we morally justify that in this nation? how can we say it's right to treat those people lucky enough to work for the federal government or a big employer, you name it, ups, you get essentially health care and not taxed to your employer or you,

but this little guy, who works for a small day care company, or who works for a small sewing shop, she gets no health care for free and has to pay income tax on her income before she gets to go buy an insurance policy? how can that be justified? and why isn't that fixed in this bill? . mr. burgess: great point. another point that is so often missed in this discussion. you have the arizona cardinals, i have the dallas cowboys, a player who is lucky enough to be traded from arizona to dallas, i'm thinking it's an upgrade, their health insurance goes with them. if they had a knee injury in arizona they're covered for that knee injury day one in dallas on the new team. but if the fan who wants to follow their favorite player moves from arizona to dallas, they cannot take that insurance policy with them necessarily across state lines and, oh, by

the way, that new policy you're buying in texas, that knee injury may be excluded because, after all, it was a pre-existing condition. we will not apply the same degree of portability for the little guy that we do for the person who's covered under the large multistate plans that the multistate corporations can provide for their employees. make no mistake i think that is wonderful that the large employers do that and i don't think there is anyone among white house would want to see that system changed, but you are correct, we should provide the same breaks across the board. mr. shadegg: going back to my board here, why don't democrats want to force united to have to compete with aetna for the business of that little guy so that he or she can buy health insurance tax-free like intel can or motorola can or the federal government can? why is it that america's

politicians about to pass this bill perhaps as early as this weekend don't want to force those health insurance companies to compete? what's wrong with competition? you mentioned auto insurance. i turn on the tv at night and i see tv commercials for every single auto insurance company i can imagine. i see one for geico, they've got their little gecko, i see progressive, i see all state, i see state farm, i see farmers, i see all these insurance companies, they're all pounding me with their ads and every ad says, come buy your auto insurance from our company and we will charge you less and give you better service. and yet there's not a single ad like that i've ever seen on tv where aetna or united or any of those health insurance companies who by the way don't want competition from a public plan but do want an individual mandate compelling us to buy their product -- i never see

them advertise to me and say, hey, john, come buy our health insurance policy and we'll charge you less and give you better service. could that be because they don't have to compete for our business because under the tax code that we're not fixing in this bill you and i can't afford to buy health insurance directly from them so they don't have to compete? they're expected -- protected from competition. they just want an individual mandate. since they don't have to compete with each other, they complain that not enough people buy their policies, you i think it's because their policies are too expensive, they don't have to compete. now they need a mandate to force us to buy their policies. why don't they have to compete like the auto insurance companies do? mr. burgess: well, of course the life insurance business, the premiums for life insurance plummeted with the introduction of the internet, with these companies that would advertise and then sell their policies on the internet. mr. shadegg: so competition brought down the cost of that kind of insurance. mr. burgess: yes and the power of the internet could apply to health insurance as well but as

you know there is some difficulty selling in the individual market across state lines. and therein is where the regulatory part what have we -- the regulatory environment that we set here in congress that we're not figuring in this bill is -- mr. shadegg: not fixing in this bill. not fixing in this bill? mr. burgess: not fixing in this bill. that will continue to exist. there are sites you can go to, you can go to google and type in health savings account and get a variety of plans that will come up and i encourage people who are looking for individual insurance, that is a reasonable thing to do. yes, you have to pay with after tax dollars, some of those policies can be quite affordable if you're willing to accept the fact that it will be a high deductible type of policy. but realistically when you look at health care expenses, i'm a physician, i've watched people spend their money in health care for years, some expenses are so small that they're actually financed out of cash flow. as principal and band-aids, some expenses are predictable but larger, braces, having a baby,

maybe a knee injury, those could be saved for or borrowed for if we allowed the correct flexibility within the health savings account, for example, and then there are the, boy, i hope that never happens to me event, the leukemia, the heart attack, those are the ones that -- where this catastrophic insurance really is a god send when people have that. so, but again we did nothing, we had -- we both said in the committee that deals with this, did we have a hearing on how to provide more flexibility, more competition with the insurance market? no. it was, if you want everyone covered, it is an individual mandate. that really wasn't the only offering -- was the only offering. we never had a hearing to ask the question, is there a way to cover people with pre-existing conditions without an individual mandate? we never asked that question. so it's not surprising that we don't know the answer to that. mr. shadegg: it stuns me that you just said that under current

law in america, if you work for an employer who gives you health care through your employment it's tax free, there's no income tax paid on it by your employer, no tax paid on it by you and your -- when you receive it. but you can go on the internet and you can buy health insurance on your own. but you got it buy it with after tax dollars making it 1/3 more expensive. isn't it shocking, then, or more accurately, not to be cynical about it, isn't it pretty logical then that the health insurance companies don't compete, they don't care about our individual business because they know you and i can't afford to buy with after tax dollars what we can get from our employer for free? tell me, i guess i just do not understand why we wouldn't want to fix the tax code so that every single american could buy their health insurance tax free just like their employer so they could third and fire it and hold it accountable -- so they could

hire it and fire it and hold it accountable. i think the gentleman knows full well that in 2006 we passed legislation through that commerce committee which dealt with the problem of pre-existing conditions. we as republicans in 2006 said, you know what? no one in america should go uninsured or go without care because they don't -- because they have a pre-existing condition. so we passed legislation encouraging all 50 states to create a state high risk pool. under a state high risk pool the state would be required to accept and insure anyone that had a pre-existing condition. i happen to have an older sister who has breast cancer survivor. she's now lived 20 years beyond her breast cancer. she has a pre-existing condition. if arizona had taken advantage of that legislation the state would have created a high risk pool and she could have, if she

was denied coverage or told her premium would cost too much, she could have applied to the state high risk pool, she would have been entitled to be admitted to the state high risk pool, she could not have been charged more than 110% or 120% of the cost of health insurance for a healthy person but all of her care would have been paid for and the extra cost of her care as a member of that state high risk pool would have been shared, that is, would have been spread, the extra cost would have been spread, amongst every single person in the state of arizona who purchased health insurance or would have been spread over the state tax base and subsidized by state revenues. that legislation passed the commerce committee, passed the floor of this house by voice vote, passed the united states senate by unanimous consent and was signed into law and is the law today. it didn't force the states to create high risk pools, but 33 states have. now, we can approve -- improve

upon that. i'd like to make it mandatory. but we've already dealt or with he can -- or we can deal with pre-existing conditions without a mandate, an individual mandate compelling people to buy health insurance from the same health insurance companies that are already doing a lousy job of offering us health insurance. and yet when the president of the united states, this is very important, when the president of the united states held his health care summit and i note you didn't get to go and i didn't get to go, but at the health care summit the president misdescribed and so did secretary sebelius, a high risk pool. both of them said, if you put all the sick people in and give them no help of course their premium it's are -- premiums are going to go up, but no state high risk pool in america puts the sick people in and says to them, now pay your own premiums. they put in the sick people, they guarantee them coverage, they cover their pre-existing conditions and then they spread the extra cost amongst all the taxpayers or all the people who

buy health insurance in that state and the reason people are willing to do that is because, but for the grace of god, you and i don't know that tomorrow we won't have to be in that high risk pool and i know you've dealt with high risk pools. mr. burgess: that's correct. 34 states do have the high risk pools. the ranking member on our health subcommittee and i tried to put some further refinements out there this year during the health care debate. i don't like mandates, i know we had that discussion in committee today. i don't like mandates. so what if we allowed states either a high risk pool or an option for re-insurance, provided some federal subsidy to the state they don't have to take it, but if they do take it then whatever they decide they want to do they need to then set up that high risk pool or that re-insurance for that set of business that is otherwise likely to go without insurance coverage. because we all know folks our age, we're in a recession, you

lose your job, you have the heart attack, you didn't keep up with the cobra payments, boom, you're in that category and now there's nothing you can do to extract yourself and the only option we were give be was -- given was an individual mandate or let the government take everything under their control. mr. shadegg: federal legislation already passed in 2006 offered all 50 states some federal money to help set up the state high risk pool, it to care for these people with pre-existing conditions, and offered federal money to subsidize or to underwrite the cost of those high risk pools. the reality is, every republican plan, every democrat plan deals with pre-existing conditions because it's something that we as a society have already decided that we should do. every single one of us knows that any moment we could be struck with a heart condition or diabetes or, like my older sister, breast cancer, we might be in the position and we oppose

the even concept of someone being denied care because of a pre-existing condition. but i don't think the answer is a mandate. you said you don't like mandates. ok, some people may like mandates, i guess the issue is, do they work? and of course the answer is, in massachusetts they worked to provide coverage but the cost of care goes up. mr. burgess: it may not be constitutional at our level and the other thing to remember about a mandate, for a mandate to work you have to know that it's in existence and you have to know what the penalty is and the penalty has to be pretty stiff. you alluded to the i.r.s. already, the i.r.s. has a mandate on every one of us that we'll pay federal income taxes. every single one of us knows, we may not know exactly what bad thing happens but we know it's bad and most of us know we don't want it to happen to us. so what is the compliance rate with the i.r.s. in filing tax returns? well, it's about 5%. what do we have as -- well, it's

about 85%. how much more are we going to get coverage if we give up that much freedom by allowing us, us, congress, to set a mandate as a condition for living in the united states of america how much more coverage are we going to get? i mean the point is arguable but just a first glance it might not be that much. now, on the issue of the pre-existing conditions bill, i know when nathan and i looked into this and the congressional budget office scored, what would it require in the additional federal subsidy to make these things really work for people? and the congressional budget office came back with a score of $20 billion over 10 years. real money, to be sure, but at the same time it's nowhere near the $1 trillion or $2 trillion that is on the table today if the house takes up and passes this senate bill that they passed on christmas eve. .

there is no public option in the senate bill but allows the personnel to oversee the changes and guarantee there is one for-profit and one not-for-profit in an exchange if an exchange doesn't have an insurance product available. it will set up a for-profit or not-for-profit in that exchange. suddenly, you are going down the road of a public option because what is the office of personnel management? it is a federal agency not used to doing that much work because they oversee the federal employee health benefit plan but now will be tasked with these new powers and it's anyone's guess how it will work out. mr. shadegg: you mentioned the shooting down of the switchboards and whether or not individual citizens could get

through to their member of congress today and express their feelings, and i would suggest right now their intensely felt feelings in opposition or in support of this bill. and it seems to me that the american people who are frustrated by that process maybe ought to think about what organizations or groups they are a member of that might be able to get through. i'm a little concerned that individual members of this body maybe aren't taking phone calls right now, maybe aren't reading the faxes are are are emails. but you know what? everybody who sits on this floor listens to the big organizations in their district. they listen to the chamber of commerce. they listen to the farm bureau. they listen to the cattle growers. might listen to the home builders, who are singled out for particularly mean or unfair treatment, high taxes in this

bill. they might listen to the contractors' associations. it seems to me anyone who wants to make their voice heard and is a member of any kind of a professional association or a political association that has contact with members of congress, if you can't get through could your member of congress, maybe you ought to call the local chamber of commerce and say, i read where congressman smith or jones is going to vote yes or no. that's not what i want. why don't call her and say i want a yes vote or a no vote because i'll bet those members of congress will take calls from the local chamber of commerce or the local farm bureau or local cattle growers' association or some other who has spoken to them in the past or supported them in the past. it seems to me that you can use

those organizations to reach out and talk about some of the issues in this bill. you and i haven't talked so far tonight about some of the procedures. we haven't talked about the slaughter solution, under which it appears the majority is going to push this bill through and try to say they aren't voting for the senate bill. or, for that matter, some of the special deals in the senate bill. i find it interesting, yesterday, apparently, speaker pelosi said, quote, nobody wants to vote for the senate bill. she actually held a meeting with the press and said, quote, nobody wants to vote for the senate bill. i guess that's why they have come up with the slaughter solution. maybe i'll ask you this question, doesn't the constitution say that for the senate bill to pass the house, members of the house have to actually vote for it or vote on it? don't have -- they have to pass that bill? mr. burgess: that is my understanding and we both have

to pass the exact same bill. we learned that in december of 2005, the deficit reduction act had one-word difference between the house and senate bill and the whole thing was held up. mr. shadegg: one-word difference? so the house has to pass that exact bill word for word, can't have one word missing? mr. burgess: that is a house bill that the senate passed. we would have to concur with the senate amendment and that would be the identical bill. in this case, the slaughter rule would say, we don't even have to bring that bill to the floor, we just deem it -- deem me up, scotty -- as passed and go onto the reconciliation process to try to fix some of the problems with the bill. mr. shadegg: i think the american people are fairly bright and i think they see

through this. if you are deeming this, aren't you passing that bill and voting for that bill? isn't that a trick to get around the requirement that members actually vote for the senate bill? mrs. pelosi said, this is a quote, right here, nobody wants to vote for the senate bill, but when they vote for a rule that says it's deemed passed, aren't they voting for the senate bill? mr. burgess: no question. and the american people can see through that and it is a charade and will provide no protection. mr. shadegg: elaborate charade. the american people think we are engaged in trick erie, why not engage in trick erie? mr. burgess: i wouldn't want to stand in front of people in a hot town hall in texas and say, i never voted for that but voted for the rule. mr. shadegg: the reason you

wouldn't want to vote is not because of the policy in it is because that bill will contain the cornhusker kickback and louisiana peace and gatorade and $100 million for a local hospital that chris dodd got in, $1.1 billion for medicaid in vermont and massachusetts, i guess not arizona or texas. our states didn't get that deal. those states got the deal because dodd, sanders and kerry got them in. $1 billion that senator bob menendez got them in for new jersey pharmaceuticals. my constituents would say, why didn't you get $1 billion for companies in arizona? we are talking serious money when you go to john kerry and

senator staben now, $5 million in massachusetts and massachusetts -- michigan. you talked about the medicare advantage. this is one my constituents find offensive. apparently senator bill nelson got a provision saying medicare advantage won't be cut in florida. i don't know how i go home and explain to my colleagues that it will be cut in arizona and i don't know how my arizona colleagues go home. the president wanted some of these special deals taken out, but ap reported over the weekend that these senators don't want those special deals taken out. you know what? i think i agree with nancy pelosi. she said nobody wants to vote for the senate bill because of all this junk, all of these secret special deals.

so somehow they're going to not vote for it but still going to pass it? how do you do that under the constitution? how can you pass something without voting on it? newt gingrich said it today, there was a point in time when members of congress didn't read the bills. now they aren't going to vote on the bills. why are we here? mr. burgess: the deficit rezucks act, it led to a court challenge and we came back in january. we left in december -- 21 or whatever day it was when we passed that bill out of the house and went over to the senate and there was a problem they couldn't fix under unanimous consent because of an an objection and had to repass the bill in january. the reason i know this is because one of those doc fixes in that bill. and it did not go into effect on

december 31 and every doctor who saw a medicare patient took a 6% hit in their reimbursement rates because we had not passed the bill by january 1. dr. mcclellan who was the director for medicare and medicaid services said you don't have to refile those claims, we will take care of them if congress passes the bill, which we did. so they went back and reimbursed. but a terribly complicated process. one or two word differences in the bill because the constitution says we shall pass the same bill and goes to the president for signature. mr. shadegg: if the medicare advantage participants in arizona are having their policy cut and those in florida who

aren't having their medicare advantage cut, is the house only deems the bill passed, can they sue and can they win or will the courts say, no, no, no, your congressman may have said he didn't vote for the bill, he just deemed it passed, but trust me, we, the courts say, he did vote for the bill? and so as our taxpayers on medicare advantage lose out, florida takes pairs and senator bill nelson because of the deal he cut, they win out. pretty good deal. by the way, i look at some of the other deals, special funding for coal miners in montana. there's just a provision after provision in north dakota. there are special provisions providing higher medicare payments there. special provisions for hawaii that the two hawaii senators got in. special provisions for long

shoremen in oregon. it looks like it's full for special deals for special members, special senators who say, well, you know, i want a special deal or else i won't vote for it. and mrs. pelosi says, no one wants to vote for the senate bill, but doesn't the constitution say, you have to vote for it or it don't pass? mr. burgess: two problems, the constitution says we have to vote on the bill. and then the whole question of equal protection under the law. we have a constitutional scholar with us and we turn to the the gentleman from texas, the judge from east texas for perhaps his rendition of this complicated process. mr. gohmert: clearly, the majority leadership thinks that the american people are so stupid that if you have a rule that says, you know what?

if you vote for the rule, then the bill automatically is deemed passed, i just don't know anyone in the american public that can't figure out, if you voted for the rule, i don't care what you say, you voted for the bill. as far as it passing constitutional muster, who knows with this court. both of you have been talking about the deals and medicare advantage. you know -- and i've got the senate bill here, this lovely thing and the truth is, the only people that ought to pass this bill are people that eat it, digestive humor there. otherwise this bill should not be passed. if you look at page 904 of part one of two parts of the senate

health care bill and you wonder, gee, i wonder why aarp came out a couple of weeks ago and said, yes, we like the proposal and we are on board and if you look at the senate bill, it says that nothing in this section shall be construed as requiring the secretary to accept any or every bid submitted by medicare advantage organization. and also, the secretary may deny a bid smithed by -- submitted by a medicare advantage organization for a medicare advantage plan if it proposes significant increases. but the bottom line is, the secretary doesn't have to accept the bid. and what is the consequence of saying we aren't going to allow any more medicare advantage bids. we are just going to cut that

out. do you know war organization is in the business of selling a kind of supplemental insurance. mr. shadegg: wait. could it be aarp? mr. gohmert: maybe they do sell supplemental medical insurance. mr. shadegg: better deal out of this? mr. gohmert: 04 is one of several reasons that aarp said, we could get millions and millions of new insurance sales but did you see the pharmaceutical industry said they like this bill. and i read a headline that the pharmaceutical industry was going to spend millions trying to get people to vote for it. mr. shadegg: aarp likes it and big drug companies like it, all the big insurance companies like it because you are mandated to buy their product and there is no public option competing with them and don't have to compete

across state lines, looks like the big guys like this bill and are getting a lot of out of it. what does joe six-pack get out of it? speaker pelosi, but we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. wow. pretty stunning quote. maybe those are things she doesn't want you to find out until after we passed it. i know the gentleman has a point to make. talking about deals in the bill and special deals for health insurance companies, according to the "washington post" -- according to the "boston globe" of december 22, 2009, the senate bill waives from any annual fee on health insurance companies

certain additional fees and this provision exempts two insurance companies, blue cross/blue shield of michigan and nebraska. that might be one of those special deals put in by a couple of powerful senators, cut a little deal for a couple of blue cross/blue shelled michigan and nebraska companies, maybe that is what she meant when she said tough pass the bill so you can find out what is in it. . mr. gohmert: if you look at page 1957, this has to do with health savings accounts, we know that there are millions and millions of dollars in health savings accounts that only can be used for health care. well, i know i have an h.s.a. and i if i can get an over the -- and if i can get an over the

counter drug, a generic drug, that's what i buy. well, good deal for the pharmaceutical industry here beginning at page 1957 because it sation -- because it says that such terms shall include an amount paid for medicine or drug only if such medicine or drug is a prescribed drug. so, you may want, like in my case, i have a fever, i have since i was a little kid, i go get a little generic like $2.50 and now, though, if i want to spend my h.s.a. i can't go spend $2.50, i have to go pay megabucks to the pharmaceutical companies in order to get a prescription drug. wow, maybe that's part of the deal that made them think, you know what? joe six pack, as my friend from arizona says, may not get anything out of it but by golly

we're going to make a lot of money off this bill, let's throw our support behind it and the president will love us for it, too. mr. burgess: one interesting point, though, you have these groups that went down to the white house in may and june and no one -- i'm not going to criticize them for going down and advocating on behalf of their industries, on behalf of their groups. but what is so onerous about this is the president has proclaimed this sunshine week. transparency is going to be the watch word of his administration, you heard it over and over again, everything will be up on c-span, everybody will be able to see it except for these deals that were struck down at the white house in may and june. and now they come back to us and say, well, there wasn't anything written down. $2 trillion in savings and you didn't write a word of it down? now, in texas as the gentleman knows we trust each other, a handshake is as good as a signature a lot of times, but when it's $2 trillion, probably

going to need a little bit more than that handshake, even in texas. because our people are going to perform as they said they were going to perform. when senator mccain wanted to push an amendment that dealt with reimportation in the markup of the senate bill, in the debate on the senate bill at christmas time, i don't agree with reimportation, i think it's unsafe, i think it's unwise. but senator mccain was prevented from offering that amendment because, to quote somebody at the time, that wasn't part of the deal that we had. well, wait a minute. if there is a deal that someone knows about, is it written down somewhere? could we see -- please see what else is in that deal? we're the legislative body. if there are deals struck at the white house and it is sunshine week, if there are deals struck at the white house let us see what those deals are. i'm not criticizing the groups that went down there and advocating on behalf of their groups, that's fine.

they should have done that. but we as the legislative body should have been privy to that information as we tried to craft the legislation that would have to either enact or conform ordeal with those deals. mr. shadegg: it seems to me that while we do not know what the quid pro quo was for any given deal, we know a couple of things. we know the insurance companies went in first and foremost and said, we want an individual mandate, we want the government to compel every american to buy federally approved, federal government approved health insurance, and we want the i.r.s. to enforce that mandate. you must buy federal government approved health insurance. that's what the insurance companies wanted going into the deal. funny, that's what they got. they got an agreement that there would be an individual mandate. so if this becomes law every

single american will be required to buy a government approved health insurance plap and if they don't the i.r.s. will tax them. ha. we also know, although the gentleman points out that there is no individual mandate in the senate bill, there are some things that are pretty close to it, the insurance industry didn't want competition and they certainly didn't want to cross the state line competition, they didn't want the tax code too to say you and i could buy it tax free so they'd have to compete with each other like the auto insurance companies, it sounds to me like we can kind of decipher some of the outlines of the deal that occurred. mr. burgess: well, and, before -- you know, i can be as critical of the insurance companies as anyone else, but they take the path of least resistance, their capital is not necessarily any more courageous than anyone else's. the easiest way to get to what they want is an individual mandate. but i suspect if we set up pre-tax expenses, buying across state lines, if we develop that market for them, i'll bet they'd find a way to compete, i bet

they'd find a way to work in that market and win in that market. mr. shadegg: i think the gentleman makes an excellent point. the truth is america's health insurance companies are playing under the ruleses we set. and the rules we -- rules we set. and the rules we set say they don't really have to compete for my individual business by john shadegg as an individual customer or yours or our colleague from texas because the tax code says we cannot buy health insurance like our employers can, we can't buy it tax free but our employers can. i think the gentleman's absolutely correct. i think the reason that the auto insurance industry competes every day, day in and day out, pounding us on tv saying, you buy our plan from geico or progressive or all state or farmers, we've give you better service for a lower cost and the health insurance companies don't compete day in and day out saying, you buy our health

insurance plan from united or from aetna or from blue cross/blue shield and we'll give you a better price at a lower cost, the reason they don't compete like that is because the government sets the rules and the rules say that they sell pretty much exclusively to big companies and we say to the poor working stiff who can't get employer-based health care, too bad, pal, you kind of don't count in the system. the insurance companies don't really want your business, they do not market to you and, oh, by the way, if you buy their product you have to buy it with after tax dollars. not fixed in this bill. mr. burgess: let me point out one thing, we hear republicans have no solution for health care, health caucus -- healthcaucus.org is a website that deals only with health care policy. on that website dr. burgess' prescriptions for health care reform, the seven to nine things i heard consistently in my town halls this summer are up there, people can download that and look at that themselves.

suffice it so say that we really have been frozen out of this process from the beginning. they weren't interested in our input last year because, my god, they had a super majority in the house of representatives, you can't pass a bill with 40 extra votes, what's the matter with you? well, now the entire argument, the entire argument is within the democratic caucus. they don't have the votes on their side because it is a badly flawed product and a badly flawed process that they are trying to push through on the american people. people do need to understand this bill has nothing to do with health care any longer. this bill, as has been pointed out tonight, if we really wanted to fix these things, we would have fixed them. this bill is about higher political power for the party in charge and they want to obligate the american citizenry to re-up their contract every two years in order to not lose the benefits that they are going to get with this bill. the bill is a bad deal, mr. speaker, i would submit that the american people need to continue to weigh in on this, all is not

lost, time is not up, there is still time to make a difference. i'll yield to the two gentlemen for their final thoughts. mr. gohmert: i just appreciate all the work you've done. there are several bills that have been proposed by republicans. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. burgess: i thank the gentlemen for their time this evening. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the chair now recognizes the gentleman from ohio, mr. ryan, for 60 minutes. mr. ryan: thank you, madam speaker. i appreciate the opportunity to come up and continue the discussion on health care from a little different perspective than my friends on the other side have been giving the american people. i want to talk about the need for health care reform in the united states of america and what we need to do here in this congress to get it done. we had a nice discussion yesterday in cleveland with the president of the united states.

i've been one who has said that, you know, if we're going to do this we need to do it, we've got other issues that we're dealing with simultaneously now, with jobs, passing a second jobs bill . my community back in northeast ohio has benefited a great deal from the original stimulus package that has passed here but we need to continue the work of getting the american people back to work. and in the short term that means job packages, that means financial reform so we bring some integrity back, but in the next week or so we've got to pass this health care bill. and i know there's been a lot of controversy surrounding this bill, there's been an extended discussion over the course of the last year or so on this issue. we've talked about all the issues and now it's time for us to have a vote in the house of

representives, hopefully here in the next week, and pass this bill so that we can move the country forward and start addressing the other issues of regulatory reform on wall street, trying to bring some discipline back to the financial system. it's also allowing us to go back and continue to focus on the jobs issue. but under this bill, when you talk about long-term economic growth as we try to be competitive in the united states , globally competitive, competing with china, competing with india, the american business person now has an anchor strapped around their neck in the form of health care costs. and if we think that we can continue to grow our economy, hire american workers, make the proper capital investments, make the investments in technology, if our businesses are asked to compete while dealing with the

health care system that over the last five years has increased over 120% for small business people, we are asking our small business owners to go into the shark-infested waters of the insurance market so that they can cover their citizens, their workers and then asked to compete on a global playing field. they can't do it. the small business people are screaming for health care reform. now, you want to get into an ideological battle, but what we're trying to deal with on this side of the aisle is practical, pragmatic solutions to the problems that are facing us. looking at the facts, looking at the issues that are facing our country and addressing those issues in a bipartisan way. and i know many on the other side have said, well, we've been

locked out of the debate. i want to know one time when the last president spent seven hours sitting around the table with people from both parties to discuss any issue, let alone health care. president bush never sat down, madam speaker, for seven hours, president bush never came to our caucus and had the kind of discussion and question and answer that president obama had a few months ago when he went to the republican caucus and i think shows why he's the president of the united states, by dealing directly with their questions. he was able to do that and has included the republicans and tried to include the republicans every single step of the way. . but the republicans are getting their marching orders from their poll sters and one of the memos

was leaked that said, do not let obama pass health care, because he will succeed and the democrats will succeed and you will be in the minority for decades. that's what their consultants told them. so right from the get-go, our friends on the other side of the aisle had no interest in being part of the solution here, because their poll sters were telling them that they had to defeat this bill before we even knew what the bill was. our friends on the other side of the aisle were calling it socialism and government-run medicine before we had a bill to look at and discuss. so they got the media machine all cranked up, got everybody fired up before we had something to talk about. so fast forward through a long

discussion, long talks, where we included both sides of the aisle to try to solve these problems and now we have a solution. we have a compromise that president obama has submitted for us to vote on and we continue to get some numbers hopefully tonight on the exact scoring. we know give or take a few bucks where we're at. and we know that this bill will cover 30 million more americans. and this bill has a number of issues in it that are going to benefit the american people. let's look at some of the issues, some of the pieces of this legislation that will be implemented within the year. small business tax credits. the president's proposal will allow small businesses, tax credits up to 35%. we close the doughnut hole in

medicare. now our seniors have a couple -- $3,000 where it's covered through medicare part d. and then they fall into a done utility hole for months and -- doughnut hole for months and months until part d picks up. our medicare recipients have to come out of pocket. we close that doughnut hole up. we end the recisions, so that people, insurance companies can't kick you off the rolls once you get sick. we eliminate insurance companies from being able to deny people coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. that's in this bill. we have a provision in this bill that says no child can be denied health insurance because they may have a pre-existing condition.

we eliminate the lifetime caps of policies so that when someone in your family gets sick and they need coverage, that all of a sudden the insurance company can't say, well, you spent your money, you're on your own. it is our moral responsibility to prevent millions of americans from getting hurt, from getting hurt under the current health care system. and there's no denying it. free preventive health care under this provision, free preventive care under this piece we are putting together here. also, for people who are 55 and older, between 55 and 64, this creates a temporary re-insurance program until we get the exchange up and running to help offset the expensive health claims for employers that

provide health care benefits for those people between 55 and 64 years old. that's what's in this bill. those are the things that just come on-line this year. and the improvements will continue. this is a good bill. is this a perfect bill? of course it's not. but we have people on the left saying it doesn't go far enough in voting against the people and people on the right are saying it is socialized medicine. this is a practicing matic bill, a practicing matic solution to the health care crisis. and our friends on the other side of the aisle and our friends in the insurance industry say we should start all over, we should start from scratch and get out a blank sheet of paper. maybe the insurance industry should back -- go back to 1992 and 1993 and revoke all the

increases that they have given to the insurance consumer over the last 20 years or so, rescind all of those increases sm --. you start over and maybe we will consider starting over. but people in my district over the last few months were getting 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% increases. small businesses going bankrupt because of the increases. this fixes. this allows small businesses to go into the exchange to get tax credits so they can provide insurance for their employees. now some of those things that i read, and i know a lot of our friends on the other side say that people don't want this, here's the poll that says american people don't want this.

and i'm the first to recognize and acknowledge that we probably haven't done a good job of telling the american people of what's in this bill. and that's what the essence was of speaker pelosi's comments when you pass the bill you will eye find out what's in it, when you pass the bill, the fiction will fall away and there will be a document that we can point at and the american people will be able to look at what has passed. we know what's in this bill. we have been debating this for a month. i like how our friends on the other side say we are trying to jam it through and then you look, the american people are tired of the debate. you can't have it both ways. now all of those things that i mentioned, here's a kaiser poll.

tax credits for small business, 73% of the american people more likely to support the bill. tax credits are in the bill. in fact, these are all in the bill. insurance exchanges, 67% of the american people support the insurance exchanges. the ability to keep what you have, 66% of the american people, more likely to support this bill if you can keep what you have. you can keep what you have in this bill. ban pre-existing conditions denials. 63% more likely to support this provision ever banning pre-existing condition denials. expanding medicaid, which is what we do, 62%. dependent coverage through 2026. if you are 26 or under, you can stay on your parents' insurance. how many people support it? 60%.

closing the medicare doughnut hole, 60%. subsidy, 56%. we have not done a good job of messaging this bill. but we are going to have an election in november and i'm looking forward to it. i'm looking forward to the debate because the debate is going to be our friends on the other side are going to want to repeal this legislation and run their campaign about repealing health care reform. they will run commercials saying those small business tax credits are up to 35%, we want to repeal them. the ban on pre-existing conditions, we want to repeal that. the ban that says no kid, no child can be denied because they have a pre-existing condition, they are going to run a campaign in the fall saying we want to repeal that.

the lifetime caps that we are going to eliminate so you can get coverage no matter how sick you get, our friends are going to run an lks in november -- election in november saying we want to repeal that. our friends on the other side are going to run a campaign in november saying we want to repeal that. helping people 55 to 64 get re-insured, they're going to want to repeal that. closing the doughnut hole in medicare -- i can't wait to go to the senior centers in my district when this has been implemented and we started to close that doughnut hole and the seniors have seen some of the progress and we go in there and say our opponents want to repeal that provision where we closed up that doughnut hole. let's have this debate. let's have this discussion.

let's do it. that's what this is all about. we implement our agenda. then we go out and defend it. and we know what happened. the eight years more like almost two decades, 14 years, 12 years actually that our friends on the other side were in charge and then with president bush controlling the house, the senate, the white house, our republican friends on the other side had an opportunity to implement their political philosophy. house, senate, white house. we got surprise-side economics. we got their foreign policy, health care policy, energy policy. we get their education policy. and look what happened. we got their wall street policy. and look what happened. we had a collapse of the financial markets, tuition ballooned through the roof and

health care costs ballooned through the roof, the collapse of our health care system, a prescription drug bill that was not paid for with a doughnut hole you could drive a truck through, a foreign policy that forced us an war in iraq. all of these things were implemented when our friends were in charge. and now, we're going to pass health care and we're going to pass our agenda and you look and see what happened with the stimulus package. the economy is starting to open up, trying to straighten up wall street. but we know we can't move forward until we get health care costs under control. we know small businesses are never really going to be able to grow at the pace and the capacity that they need to grow to with this health care anchor hanging around their neck.

i believe that and many of us on this side of the aisle believe that the government has a moral mission, a mission, a moral mission to protect its citizens, whether it be terrorists or criminals on the street. there's a moral mission to the government to protect people and that doesn't stop at the borders or that just doesn't stop with the issues of crime. that responsibility hits every aspect of our society. and if we have an industry that is hurting people, then we have a responsibility to step in and push back that industry and say enough is enough. you're hurting people. and in our country, the government has a moral mission

to stop that from happening. that's what this debate is all about. yes, the role and the responsibility of government. and the government is not allowed to just completely step aside while industry abuses happen and happen and happen. and that's what this debate is about. that's what this bill of rights health care bill of rights is all about. and our friends on the other side, you know, they say, we're for this stuff. they say, we're for it. you pull it out, we're for it. well, that's interesting. because we had some votes over the last day or so in committee. this is the house budget committee, that is starting to pass the legislation that's going to be needed, here we go. protecting medicare for american seniors and closing the prescription drug doughnut hole.

15 republicans voted against it. closing the doughnut hole, you talk to them, we are for it. protecting americans from insurance caps and banning annual and lifetime limits on health care coverage. 15 republicans voted no. we don't want to do that. holding health insurance companies accountable, 15 republicans voting no. bringing down the cost of health insurance for everyone and providing tax credits to small businesses. all of them voted no. every republican on the budget committee voted no for putting tax -- giving tax credits to small business people. i mean, this is the equivalent of our friends on the other side

who all voted against the stimulus pack and then they go back to their districts when money's coming in and they say, this bridge, this road, this money is going to create jobs in our district. but you voted no against the stimulus package. don't tell anybody. that's the kind of thing that's been going on in washington, that's called the old potomac two step. the old potomac two step. so we have these provisions in this bill that when you pull them out and you explain them to the american people, have anywhere from 57% to 73%, this is what the american people have been crying out for and when this bill passes we're going to have a lot to campaign on and run on. but our friends on the other side like to talk a little bit about pollerizing issues. so one of the most recent polarizing issues that they have tried to pull out is the issue of abortion. and trying to say that this is

going to publicly fund abortions. well, we have a letter here from i believe 25 or so of the top pro-life citizens in our country, joel hunter, senior pastor, northland church, i believe he was the head of the focus of the family at one point, jim wallace from a magazine, a lot of evangelical and catholics, the former society general secretary of the -- associate general secretary of the conference of the catholic bishops saying that this senate health bill upholds abortion funding restrictions. the catholic health association, 600 catholic hospitals. i went to catholic school for 12 years. i know where the catholic church and the catholic hospitals stand on the issue of public funding for abortion.

and believe me, believe me, i had a lot of nuns and a lot of priests and a lot of brothers going to our lady of mount carmel and i will tell you that those nuns and those administrators who run catholic hospitals, 600 of them, would not support this legislation if they believed that there was public funding for abortion. and i think the head of the catholic hospitals said that, we're all pro-life but they believe that the language in the senate bill, some of the language that we kicked around here early on in the house version, will sufficiently prevent public funds for being used for abortions. that's 600 catholic hospitals saying that, that's not me

saying that, that's not the democrats saying that, this is joel hunter and the variety of others who are professors of christian formation and discipline -- designbleship, pents could tal, leadership institute, loyalty university, university of dayton, due cane, these are some of the leaders, jim wallace from sow journalers d -- sojourners, catholic alliance for the common good, on and on and on but our friends on the other side, because i know, i was getting cause in my office today, -- calls in my office today, getting people all hopped up on the abortion issue. let's look at the facts, let's look what's in this bill and we're going to have that debate and just like the discussions in august about death panels and we're going to -- they were going to kill people's grandparents and all that nonsense that we heard in august, where did that go? it dissipated, it just disappeared because it wasn't

the truth. and so it just faded away. and all of these arguments that our friends on the other side are making now are just going to fade away because they do not reflect the facts. what reflects the facts are the things that we're trying to deal with here. now, look at some of the stuff that we're trying to address. between 2009 and 2010 monthly prices in the doughnut hole increased by 5% or more for half of the top 10 brand name drugs. so increased by 5% or more for monthly prices for these drugs that most of our seniors get. now, from 2006, full negotiated prices for top brand name drugs,

between 2006 and 2010, and i'll just use some of the percentages here, plavix, for example, 25%, lexipro went up 25%, advair, 32%. unbelievable increases in prescription drugs. and we're asking our seniors to continue to pay these increases that happen when they fall into the doughnut hole. so, madam speaker, we've got a moral responsibility because so many people are being hurt in our country today and i stand here this week as we stand on the brink of passing a significant piece of legislation that is not perfect and i don't think anybody says it is. we're all human here in this

chamber and in the senate and the president and his team, we're all human, we're going to make mistakes, it's not going to be perfect. but what we are doing is moving forward in a significant way. one of the huge issues we have in this country is that we have millions and millions of americans who don't have health care. so what they do is they show up at the emergency room and have no money, they're not on medicaid, they're not on medicare, they don't have private insurance, they're not a veteran, so they go into the emergency room when they get sick. this is what happens. not only is that inhumane and not only i would think we'd have some kind of moral duty as elected officials in the united states to say, you know, that's just -- i got a problem with that, that's just not right, what do we do? we got to do something. so, this bill is an attempt for us to do that.

to step in and help people, empower them to be able to afford insurance and create a system where they are able to afford their health insurance and go into this exchange and be able to afford insurance, because some people say, well, i don't want to pay for those people. i got mine and i got my health insurance and i'm cool, i got a job and it's all right. but you're already paying for them because what happens is, four or five uninsured go into the hospital, go into the emergency room, costs a lot of money, don't have any way to pay for it and you walk in behind them and you have your insurance card, guess who's paying for their treatment that they didn't pay anything for? you are. and the next guy who walks in with an insurance card and the next person. these costs all get shifted. so you see these huge increases. so we have a system where we

don't prevent anything, we wait until people get deathly sick, go into the emergency room, stay there for a week instead of getting a $20 prescription that would have saved us all a boat load of money. this is not a discussion about whether the government's going to run the health care industry or the insurance companies are going to run the health care industry, this is about doctors running the health care industry , this is about making sure doctors don't have to call up the insurance companies and haggle with them over what's cover and what's not covered. it's 2010 in america, we're the wealthiest country on the planet and we have the most dysfunctional health care system going. yes, we've got tremendous high end care but if you were setting up a system you wouldn't certainly say to 30 million people in your country, just wait until you get absolutely deathly sick and then show up at the emergency room, we'll take care of you then.

that's not how you would set it up. and our friends on the other side love to have this, you know, discussion about we're losing your freedom, you're losing your freedom, you're not losing your freedom. how free are you when you're sick and you can't get anybody to take care of you? how free are you then? how free are you when you want to leave your job and go get another job but you can't because you have a pre-existing condition or your spouse has a pre-existing condition or your child has a pre-existing condition and you're stuck? that's not our idea of freedom. how free are you if you want to go start a business and create wealth and jobs in the united states but you can't because you have a pre-existing condition? how free are you as a small business person if you're just the average small business person, you have 126% increase

over the last five or six years? now how free are you to run your business the way you see fit? to make the investments that you want to make into capital, into technology, into worker training, into wages for your workers, more into the pension plan for workers, hire more workers. how free are you? and these folks that can't afford health care and they get a lot sicker than they would normally have gotten, what kind of quality of life is that? life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, these things mean something and when you talk about what the founding fathers meant when they said life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they meant that government has a responsibility,

a moral responsibility to protect people's life, liberty and their ability to pursue happiness. and when we have a system in place now where an industry is limiting that freedom, reducing that quality of life, the government has an obligation to protect them so that they can be free and that's what we're doing with this piece of legislation. i mean, you look at what is happening here, the issues that we're addressing, think about this, this is what's in the bill, this big boogey man that you hear about on fox news that's going to end western civilization as we know it, if this thing passes, has a 35% tax credit for small businesses, it says that children cannot be denied health insurance because the kid has a pre-existing

condition, it's going to say that the lifetime caps that people have on their insurance will be eliminated so no matter what kids will get covered. it will extend coverage so that young people can stay on their parents' insurance until they're 26 years old, if they're getting out of college and want to go on to get an advanced degree or they hate rough patch with the job market -- hit a rough patch with the job market or they're trying to figure things out, you're not going to be booted and how many parents aren't going to have to worry about that anymore? free preventative care under private plans, free preventative care under medicare so we can prevent a lot of these problems from happening. if you're 55 to 64 there will be re-insurance opportunity for employers who are employing people 55 to 64 to make sure that those people have coverage. the doughnut hole will be closed

over time so that senior citizens can afford their prescription drugs and when you look at all of these things from time and time again these are very popular among the american people, tax credits for small businesses, 73% more lickly to support, -- likely to support, keep what you have, 66%, ban pre-existing conditions, 63%, medicaid expansion, 62%, dependent coverage through 26, 60%, closed medicare doughnut hole, 60%, subsidy to individuals, 57%. and all of these things, as we start to vote on them, our friends on the other side say, well, we're for those. so in the last day or so the house budget committee was working on this legislation and they had some opportunity to vote on these issues and so i just want to share with members

of the house how our friends on the other side on that committee voted. protecting medicare, closing the prescription drug doughnut hole, 15 republicans voted against that. protecting americans from insurance caps, banning annual and lifetime limits on health care coverage, 15 republicans voted against that. holding health insurance companies accountable, 15 republicans voted against that. bringing down the cost of health insurance for everyone and providing a tax credit to small businesses, 15 republicans voted against that. these are the basic provisions of our health care reform bill that between 57% and 73% of the american people support. this is not medicare for all, this is not single payer. there's no public option in

this bill. many of us on this side don't like some of that. the fact that those aren't in there. but this is a significant step forward, some basic reforms, and we have 15 members of the budget committee on the republican side consistently vote against tax credits for small business to get health care, you know you're doing it for one reason, they're doing it for politics. madam speaker, this is all about politics. go back to fromm's memo that someone left somewhere in some room that the press got hold of that told the republicans, do not let barack obama pass health care reform. do not let him. do not let the democrats get this big victory because you'll be in the minority for another decade or two. right out of the gate, they had no interest, madam speaker, our friends on the other side had

no interest in cooperating, no interest in adding to the debate. they were against this bill before there was even a bill written. they were calling it socialism before there was one item printed on this piece of paper here telling us what was on this bill. that's not what the american people want. the american people want us to sit down, work together, no one is going to get everything they want, and pass something and move it forward that's going to help the american people, that's going to allow us to meet our moral obligation to protect the american people to protect those did being denied because of a pre-existing condition. to protect the seniors who fall into the doughnut hole. to protect the families who get denied because of a pre-existing condition. to protect these families who hit a lifetime cap and get thrown out on their own. this is what this is about, to throw out the small businesses

who have an anchor around their neck because they get 20% or 30% increases in health care. it's about protecting our citizens, it's about empowering citizens, it's about making our -- our citizens freer than they are today when they're trapped in this ungodly health insurance system that hurts many of them. we can't stand by and stick our finger up in the air and see which way the wind's blowing and allow millions of people to get hurt and then 30, 40, 50 years from now sit on the rocking chair and our children are going to ask us what we did when we were in congress, what did you do to move the country forward? and we're beginning to say -- what? we failed. we didn't muster up the courage to make the tough vote. we didn't have the ability to look through the clouds and the smoke and the mirrors. look past the bogeymen that

have been created on this bill. i love it. i love how these arguments have just fallen apart from death panels, now abortion, they're saying everything is publicly funded abortion here, 600 catholic hospitals are endorsing the bill. now how do you say that this is public funding for abortion when 600 catholic hospitals have endorsed this piece of legislation? so our friends on the other side of the aisle need to go to all these 600 hospitals and all the sisters that are there, intimately involved in the health care of their patients and all the catholic administrators of all these hospitals and say, you're pro-abortion. good luck. having that argument. it's a phony argument being created for politics, just like the death panels were, just like the illegal immigrants would be covered under this bill, all those issues have

been demagogued in this house and across this country to try to scare legislators and the american people. and the dust is going to settle and we're going to be able to look back on this vote, and i look forward, madam speaker, i will tell you this, i look forward to the debate in the fall about discussing with the american people exactly what is in this bill. i look forward to talking about , to my chamber of commerce, my friends in small business, that they're going to get a 35% tax credit and they're going to be able to go into this exchange and negotiate with a bunch of other small business people, thousands, to have some bargaining power to reduce their health insurance costs. i look forward to going into a

debate saying, you know what was in this health care bill? we made sure no insurance company could deny any child because they have a pre-existing condition. no insurance company could deny a citizen of this country because they have a pre-existing condition. that our seniors are going to get more prescription drug coverage. that our citizens when they hit a catastrophic health event in their life, that there won't be any lifetime caps or limits to how much they can be covered. ladies and gentlemen, that, madam speaker, that is what this health care debate is about. and no matter how many time ours friends on the other side try to say they want to work with us, they've been given the opportunity. to sit down and work. and they say they're for a lot of these things, but again, already, in committee, peeling

out the votes, closing the prescription drug hole in the budget committee, 15 republicans voted no. we don't want it close -- we don't want to close the doughnut hole. protecting americans from insurance caps, banning lifetime limits on health care coverage, this is a vote, that's all the vote was on. 15 republicans from the budget committee voted no, we don't want to protect americans from the caps and ban annual lifetime limits. holding health insurance companies accountable. 15 republicans said, no. we don't want to hold them accountable. bringing down the cost of insurance, providing a tax credit to small businesses, 15 republicans voted no for a tax credit for small business because their consultants and pollsters told them they couldn't let this bill pass. out of 15 republicans on each one of these votes, a majority of the republicans on all of

these votes, out of the 15 voted no. we don't want to do it. in some instances it was close to all the 15. ladies and gentlemen, madam speaker, we have an opportunity here to make history, but that's not why we're doing it. we're doing it because this government, from its inception, this government, from its inception, has had a moral mission. a moral mission to protect and empower its citizens. and when an industry, and their unsavory business practices, are hurting the american people, we have a moral obligation to intervene. we have a moral obligation to empower by making sure that our citizens are free to go in and have expanded choice, that they

are free from an insurance company saying, you're off the role now because you got sick, you're empowered because you can be healthy and get access to care, and you can experience the liberty that this country has provided. life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, that's what this bill is about and i look forward to having an opportunity to continue to advocate for it. with that, madam speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. 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, madam speaker. it's my privilege and i'm honored to be recognized to

speak here on the floor and address you tonight. having listened to my friend talk about the high moral calling that there is for them to pass socialized medicine, i'll tell you, madam speaker, it's hard for me to reconcile those things. it's hard for me to think of a country, a beautiful country with a deep, rich, free tradition that would give up its freedom, liberty and sense of responsibility for the sake of government providing something that people are 85% of them providing for themselves. and the statements made by the gentleman from ohio about what's not freedom, it's not freedom to be able to start your business and have to worry about paying health care premiums or it's not freedom to see those premiums going up by a large percentage every year. that whole spiel, madam

speaker, i think it misses the point, entirely. i think the freedoms i'm hearing him talk about are the types of definition for freedom that i hear people talk about that live in places like canada or the united kingdom or france or one of those countries that has socialized medicine, one of those countries that says freedom is having free health care provided by somebody else paying for it as a taxpayer. that's not the measure of freedom. it's not the measure of liberty. the measure of freedom and liberty is entirely different. you can't ever measure freedom by what's free because freedom is never free. it is a huge di cotmy in this congress that people on this side of the aisle that want to subvert the definition of freedom, i'll just take us -- freedom is not about what's free. liberty is to be able to make decisions for yourself but by bridled by morality. that's the difference between

liberty and freedom. other people in the world talk about freedom as in what's free from government as if that's the measure of liberty. when you talk about what's free from government, first of all, it's never free, somebody has to pay the taxes, whether it's the people who are earning and paying taxes now, or whether it's the children or grandchildren that they would foist this debt upon with this socialized medicine bill. madam speaker, we could stand here tonight and we could talk about nuance after nuance of what's in this bill and what isn't. truth is, the gentleman from ohio doesn't know and i suspect that nobody in the entire democrat caucus knows and i'm confident nobody in the republican side knows what's in this supposed negotiated change. a night or more ago, there was a bill brought to the budget committee. and it's a shell bill. it doesn't have in it the

changes they're trying to get established here. it's a shell bill. it's designed to start the clock ticking so that when they get the arms twisted and the speaker uses all the leverage at her disposal and we can hear the bones breaking across capitol hill from arms twisted up behind people's back, some of them carrots, some of them sticks, when all of that is done, they want to have this machinery in place so that the speaker who sits up in her office, making these deals behind closed doors, will have a bill come down here to the floor that nobody has seen, at least so far. and a bill that will be a reconciliation package that is unprecedented in its tactics, in its procedure, to propose changes to a bill that is the senate version of the bill and this is the unbelievable part, madam speaker. the very idea that we have

before us, this week, and at least threatened to come forward if the votes can be put together this week a socialized medicine bill a bill that could not today pass the united states senate. the senate version of the bill wouldn't pass in the senate. everybody in america thes that. that's why the result theefs election in massachusetts made so much difference. the people in massachusetts, arguably the least likely in this moderate era to say liberty for americans voted scott brown in as their senator. he said he would oppose the senate version of the health care bill. the bill that passed on christmas eve can't pass today on the eve of st. patrick's day. not out of the senate, it can't, madam speaker. so we are in this odd, perverse situation where perhaps for the first time in the history of america and if this happens, certainly with the largest magnitude of impact a bill that can't pass the senate in its

current condition, that being the configuration of the senate as reset by the people in massachusetts and the american people a bill that can't pass the senate, comes to the house that's to be passed here on the floor of the house under the slaughter rule, which deems it has been passed but doesn't require people to vote on it, so we have a bill that could very well go to the president of the united states, where he is salivating to sign it, a bill that couldn't pass the senate, a bill that couldn't pass the house, but nevertheless could become the law of the land. that is the breathtaking anomaly of what we're facing here and a bill that cannot be brought here to the floor of the house because even though speaker pelosi can let 37 democrats off, right now, according to the most recent news report, those 37 happen to represent noes, hard noes, and

the others are undecided. she's got to run the table on the 55 undecided and held the noes together. every undecided would have to decide they're in favor of socialized medicine for this to work and the brokered deal that would be that they would bring the senate version of this to the floor under a rule that would be self-enacting, a rule that would be configured right up here on the third floor and that -- in that little old rules committee that i call the he will in the wall, where the hole in the wall gang usurps the liberty of this deliberative body and usurps the franchise of the members of congress and sends a bill down here under a limited amount of debate time, probably, be a rule so there would be no amendments to the rule and the rule would be self-enacting, it would automatically deem that the bill passed the senate in the pass that couldn't pass the senate today is deemed to be

passed by the house of representatives even though the members on this floor don't have the will to vote for it, so that it would go to the president of the united states, who i said is salivating to sign it he would sign it and we would have the law of the land a bill that swallows up 1/6 of the economy of the united states and nationalizes the management of the health care of every american, over 300 million of us, into law, enacted, without the majority support of the united states senate, without being able to pass, excuse me, the united states senate, without being able to be supported and passed for the purposes of becoming law in the house of representatives, and then, behind that, the speaker is asking people who have gone through a crucible to get here, and i will say, madam speaker, i respect the intelligence of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. i think it would be hard to

believe that there are people in this congress that would be so stupid to believe that they could be promised that if they just vote for the senate version of the bill with all of its warts and moles and scars and all the smelly things that are part of it, the cornhusker kickback, the louisiana purchase, the national health clinics to the tune of $11 billion and about six or seven other special packages and components in the senate version of the bill, none of them passing the smell test, but asking this house to vote for a rule that automatically enacts it so they don't have to vote for the bill on the promise that there would be a reconciliation package that would be passed here in this house that would go over to the senate that would be designed to fix the flaws in the senate bill. strip out the louisiana purchase, strip out the florida gatorade, strip out the $11 billion worth of public health clinics that have been leveraged by bernie sanders in vermont and

those other six or certain seven egregious bargains that have been made and convince the democrats, 216 of them, to vote for a bill that would be followed by a rick sell -- reconciliation package that may or may not have the votes to pass the house of representatives and then go straight down that hall to the senate where the senate would have to take the changes to the bill that they passed, that are dictated by the house, and expect that that's going to happen even though procedural obstructions fall in the way in a breathtaking fashion down to the point where just the parliamentary rules would threaten to strip out half or 2/3 of a reconciliation bill including the stupak language which isn't going to go in here anyway. so you end up with the senate bill becoming law and a futile effort on the part of the house to follow through on a promise

to the members of the house that don't want to vote for this thing, that have been leveraged to vote. and what is the configuration of the democratic caucus, madam speaker? what are they thinking and what would they like to get accomplished here? this is what they said. they said, just in three places to analyze the configuration here, this isn't policy anymore, this is politics, the politics are there, hard core left wing liberals, every member of the progressive caucus which is linked to the socialists in america, they're all for this bill, it nationalizes health care in america, it may not do it in the first stroke of the pen but it gets us there and to be fair there may be one or two of those that will decide that it's not lefty enough for them. but that's core of the progressives, the socialists, the lefties, they're going to vote for this bill because they believe in it. it's a deep conviction on their part. second component will be those

democrats that believe that they will take the risk and they think that they can somehow figure out how to get re-elected to come back to this congress, even though the american people, by the hundreds of thousands, have risen up in you every way they know how to say no to this socialized medicine. and then the next component of this, these are the people that are members of the democrat caucus that have decided that they need to vote for this bill for the sake of preserving their president's, let me say their president's mojo, their president's political capital, to keep the caucus together on the senate side they would say, i'm going to have to sacrifice myself because this cause of keeping speaker pelosi in power and barack obama's mojo flowing is more important than their seat in congress or the voice of their constituents, which by the way reflects to be almost one in the same thing. so there's the configuration.

left wing liberal progressives that will vote for the bill because it moves us toward socialized medicine that either is or gets us there eventually, those that will take the chance and decide that they think they can hold their seat even though they'll vote for something that the american people have rejected, spit out, madam speaker, three to one for the most part in this country and then those that believe that they can somehow either hang onto their seat or they're willing to pay the sacrifice. three categories. that is what's going on. and then of course you have the democrats that will vote no. if 37 of them vote no this bill can pass by a vote of 216 to 215. if 38 of them vote no then the bill fails and i will predict that if it's clear that the bill is going to fail, even by one vote, we will see, madam speaker, a line-up of democrat members of congress come down

here to the well and pull their red cards out of the box that will be sitting on this table and take their felt tip pen and they will write in their -- they'll change their yes to -- yes to a no. this bill will either pass by one or two votes or will it fail by 40 -- or it will fail by 40 because they don't want their name on this turkey but they're determined politically to move this through. here's what we also have, madam speaker, and that is that this all started, this started back a year and a half or more ago, two years ago during the democrat presidential caucus and it started in iowa. i mean, it is my home territory, i see it, i know it. hillary clinton had pushed a national health care act as the first lady in the early 1990's in the beginning years of bill clinton's presidency. yes, she closed the doors and she had backroom deals. she did write a bill, though, and it was socialized medicine, federal government takes it over and manages it, creates these new agencies, it was a scary and

threatening thing to what it would have done to our freedom and our liberty. and then the american people rejected that, spit it out, so to speak, and back here we are 15 years later with hillary clinton's opponent in the democrat primaries pushing a socialized medicine program that is in some republicans different than that that hillary pushed, the american people see this and they reject it and they spit it out. what has been created is a toxic stew. they went in and put this all together, the president, president obama wanted and still wants a single pair plan, single pair -- single-payer plan. and he has said so, it's a matter of record and so they went together to try to figure out how to write a bill and from the beginning it would be this, and i'll do the metaphors, madam speaker. they went back into old hillary care and they took that -- hillarycare and they took that

old soup bone that was laying on the shelf, been sitting there for 15 years, all the meat stuck to the bone was tainted, and they took hillarycare off the shelf and they put it in the pot, added some water. then they said, hey, look what we have, we have socialized medicine -- no, excuse me, single payer plan, and people looked at that skeptically and they said, that's not enough. so they added more bells and whistles, other ways to try to blur the taste of that tainted meat that was in that stew. by the time this had been churned through from june of last year, july, august, september, especially august, and september, october, november, it passed the house, by then the american people knew that there was a taxic stew what had been cooked up and created -- toxic stew that had been cooked up and created by the democrats in this congress. a toxic stew, dropped that old

tainted bone into it and then they added other things to blur the taste and mask it. it's still tainted. and the american people have said over and over again, every way that they know how, that they don't want a pot full of this toxic stew. they don't want a bowl full, they don't want a ladle full, they don't want a spoon full of this toxic stew. the american people do not want any measure of the toxic stew of social idsed medicine but that's what we have. because the elitists and the arrogance of the liberals have decided that they understand what's right for posterity and they can manage, madam speaker, the people and the country who apparently can't manage themselves. but what i see are 85% of the american people that are insured and 85% of the american people that are happy with their insurance and these are the people that want to be able to make their own choices for themselves. and that's what would be rejected. there are a whole list of things that go out the window if this socialized medicine bill is

passed. we are not the kind of people who should be moving towards greater and greater dependency classes, we're the kind of people that have the -- that believe in freedom in the true sense of the word, we believe in liberty, we have our constitutional principles, our constitutional values and this bill does not reflect them. and i believe if it does become law there will be court challenges to the constitutionality of it, we will see as a matter of certainty health insurance premiums will go up for americans, the younger you are the more you'll see the premiums go up and there will be a large amount of nonparticipation, people that decide they're going to pay the fine, whether it's $800 or $2,000, because it's cheaper than the higher premiums that will be driven by this bill and then when they get sick they're going to go buy health insurance to cover them after they're sick and one of the first things that's enacted if this legislation should become the law of the land is the -- they'll call it the fix, it's

the change in pre-existing conditions. so it would prohibit an insurance company from considering that an applicant had pre-existing health problem conditions. which means that if you prohibit that consideration of pre-existing conditions who would buy insurance until they got sick? wouldn't you just wait until qur house was on fire and buy your property and casualty insurance? wouldn't you wait until the hail was pouppeding the roof to shreds and buy your property in casualty? that's what will happen with health care, that's about the home thing that happens right away, madam speaker. except for the increases in fees, the increases in taxes, the increases in revenue that have come with this, in this bill which is according to judge gregg a $2.5 trillion bill and that's when they scored it almost a year ago and now you can add another $400 billion to $500 billion to the cost because the revenue has been shut down

and they would sign a lot of people up over the next four years before the benefits kick in. that, madam speaker, is what we're dealing with here today and it's one of the reasons that my good friend, judge gohmert from texas, has come to the floor. he carries a tremendous amount of knowledge, a tremendous amount of passion about freedom and liberty, he's been here defending this night after night after night here on the floor in press conferences, at rallyies, every -- at ralies, everywhere in america. he stepped up to defend our freedom and our liberty, like all americans should be doing and like the americans that build this capital city up today. i'd be happy to yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from texas. mr. gohmert: i appreciate my friend from iowa so much and i appreciate the wonderful points you're making. i was here just off the chamber for the whole discussion by our colleagues across the aisle and

i appreciate the gentleman yielding because i made a number of notes of things i wanted to -- i always appreciate when people across the aisle attempt to speak for me and what i support and what i would like to have happen and what i will and do vote for and vote against. but the great thing about debate is that the other side can be presented, of course, you know, there was the occasion a year and a half ago where the speaker cut off the microphones and that was prevented, but we stood in on the floor and spoke anyway. it's a great thing about america. but i would like to correct some thing, i know my friend had the best of intentions, speaking on republicans' behalf, but when he said republicans have no interest in being part of the solution, i have to differ on that. i appreciate my democratic

friend saying we don't wish to be part of the solution, but that's simply not true. in fact, i know republicans have begged and pleaded to be allowed to have input into this bill but it's hard to have input into a bill that's negotiated secretly. you get the union and aarp and you don't tell any republicans when they're going to be meeting, when they're going to do their secret deals. you get the pharmaceutical industry and you get insurance companies to be part of secret negotiations. i can promise you, every industry, every individual who has come out and said, i think this is a great bill on behalf of some industry, they got a deal cut for them in this bill. now this is the senate bill here. i've had our house bill, until

this week, that's what i'd been working from. but it looks like they're serious about cramming the senate bill down our throats. they use real thin paper and print on both sides so that it's this small but some other things that need to be corrected, my friend across the aisle said during his time, our friends on the other side of the aisle support the insurance industry wanting to start all over. well, my friend's not completely informed because there are those in the insurance industry that said, you know what, this bill, the senate bill, it's ok with us. it will be all right. and if you're in the insurance industry, and you have the federal government mandating that everybody has to buy a policy, then you know, your eyes get big and you start thinking, wow, think of all

those sales. of course they don't look far enough into the future and realize that that plan and they themselves as insurance companies won't last very long. they go the way of private insurance companies, like flood insurance when the federal government got involved, it's hard for a private company to compete with the federal government that goes in the red and stays in the red as the federal flood insurance policies have done. he also commented that the democrats are holding health insurance accountable. and that's nice to hear being said, but if they're holding health insurance companies accountable, you would not find one insurance company going to be ok with this and there are those out there. my friend also commented that 67% of americans support an

insurance exchange. well, in the house bill, of course we've talked about it, there's the federal insurance exchange program and that's what will take over as they finish killing off private insurance companies. as my friend and i both agree, we don't want insurance companies between us and our doctor, we don't want the government between us and our doctor, and the proposals we've made get them out from between us. they get insurance companies back in the position of insuring and out of the business of managing. why would we want the federal government to come in and manage our health care decisions when we don't even want private insurance companies managing our health care insurance? i do appreciate my friend's honesty and candor when i understood him to say first that we have a moral mission to

get criminals off the street and that moral imperative doesn't stop at our border. this is just a difference in philosophy. i have a few other points that i want to make here but i feel like my friend from iowa will want to comment on this, because we've had such lengthy discussions about this issue. and it is just a difference in philosophy that we have friends across the aisle that believe we have a moral mission to protect terrorists, to protect criminals on the street and that that moral mission does not stop at the border. see, my belief, and i believe it's shared by my friend from iowa, is that when i took an oath to the constitution, when

i was in the united states army as a prosecutor, as a judge, as a chief justice, and as a member of congress, there was nothing in my oath that i take so seriously about supporting and defending those on the other side of our borders or supporting and defending all enemies, foreign and domestic that want to kill me. it was not that i want to support and protect and defend all terrorists and enemies foreign and domestic, no it was i'm going to help protect america from all enemies foreign and domestic. protect from those enemies. not go across the border and take my morality oto other countries and be the policeman of the world. in fact, i think we do make a mistake when we begin to be country building, nation building, government building in other nations. our job is to protect this

country. and when there are terrorists in this country, our job is to take them out. eliminate the terrorists so that they are no longer a threat. now what normally happens when people declare war on another group or country, and you capture some of those people, in a civilized society like ours, you hold them until such time as their friends, their colleagues, their comrades decide and announce, we're no longer at war. then you can release all of those except for the ones you believe, or have reason to believe, probable cause to believe committed war crimes. then you go ahead and try them. it's a difference in philosophy. i'd like to -- i'd love to hear my friend from ohio if -- from iowa if he has a comment on that. mr. king: as i listen to the gentleman from ohio talk and to spread this philosophy that

somehow first, there are principles they've been trying to drag back and establish rights that don't exist for a long time this goes back to and probably woodrow wilson or earlier but f.d.r. comes to mind. if one goes to f.d.r.'s memorial here in this city, you'll see the memorial that displays the four freedoms. back in those years, franklin delano roosevelt made a speech about the four freedoms. norman rockwell painted the cover of a magazine on that that showed the four freedoms, one at a time. the first freedom was freedom of speech. second one was freedom of religion. the third one was freedom from want. and the fourth one was freedom from fear. now, i go back and look at that, i don't think i was very old when i first realized about that speech of franklin delano

roosevelt's freedom speech, freedom of speech, religion, want, and fear. i knew even then there was no freedom from want and there is no freedom from fear. these are things that can't -- these aren't rights that come from god. our liberty comes from god. it says so in the declaration we hold these truths to be self-evident, we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable right, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. by the way, the pursuit of happiness in the left wing version means anything he donistic you might want to do that makes you happy or gives you pleasure for the moment. the pursuit of happiness our founding fathers understood was rooted in a greek word that means pursuit of truth. both the physical and the mental versions of truth. so we have these liberties that

come from god that are clearly delineated in the declaration of independence and the foundation for our laws in the constitution and no one in america has a god-given right to -- for freedom from fear or freedom from want. those are manufactured rights that jerk this country off onto the left, toward the socialist side of this. as i listen to this debate on health care, it comes back to a position that's continually made that people have not only a right to health care, but they have a right to their own individual health insurance policy that they own. and the folks on this side of the aisle, the democrat side of the aisle have continually con flated two terms. many more, but the two i'm talking about are the terms of health care and health insurance. over the last year and a half or two years, the subject has been con flated to the point where -- conflated to the point

where people say health care they mean health care. if you say health insurance, you generally mean health insurance, but if you say health care you might mean health care or health insurance. many on that side of the aisle have made the statement that everybody in america has a right to health care. and that they have a right to their own health insurance policy. i'll make this point that everybody in america has access to health care. albeit in some cases it's the emergency room. everybody has access to health care. we don't let people die in the streets. you'd never see that happen in the united states. we take care of people. we don't have a collapsed system as the gentleman from ohio would have us believe. we have the best health care delivery system in the world. we have the best health insurance system in the world. both of them can use improvements and we should do that. but we should not throw the baby out with the bath water. we shouldn't give up on the great things we have that give so much quality and so great a life expectancy in this country

for the sake of moving toward the socialation or nationalization of a policy. that diminishes us as a people. we've got to have -- so going to those four freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, which i agree with, those are god-given rights, freedom from want and freedom from fear, takes me back to a hearing we had in the ag committee at the beginning of the markup for the last farm bill we did. there, the president of lara sa, la rah sa, i'll point -- la raza, it's spanish for the race. if we had a caw decision organization exclusive to that that called themselves the race they would be called the racists. meanwhile we accept la raza as the people doing the negotiating for our food stamps. excuse me.

and the president of this group testified that one of the obesity problems we have in the united states comes because people know where their next meal is going to be, they couldn't find somebody suffering from malnutrition, but the she said they may have anxiety about where their next meal is coming from. i think i'll pick this up in a moment and yield to my friend from texas. mr. gohmert: thank you very much. i would like to follow up on that with something our friend across the aisle said before us tonight, he said that when this bill passes, we'll have a lot to run on. and i agree. i think they'll need to be running a great deal after this bill were to pass.

because the vast majority of americans don't want it to pass. that's very clear. so you ask yourself, why would the majority of the house of representatives and the senate and the president try to cram a bill down the throat of the majority of americans that don't want the bill when it could hurt them politically? well there is so much government in this bill that they know if this bill passes then the government intrusion, whether you want to call it socialism or progressivism, it's the government taking over such a massive part of our lives, basically taking over our lives, but i would want to point out, page 100 of the senate bill, why were the unions so happy to jump on this? unions are beginning to have --

look at their health insurance policies as some of them are, as a massive debt and they'd like to get rid of it. we know that they'd be unable to do this under the bill, but people will be glad to know, people who are in unions, who are retired and have union health insurance, they'll be glad to know that they won't lose their union negotiated health care, at least not until the date on which the last of the collective bargain agreements relating to the coverage terminates. so people will be able to keep, you're in a union, madam speaker, people are in a union, or they've retired and they have union health care, they can be assured they do not lose their health care, at least not

until the date on which the last of the collective bargaining agreements relating to coverage terminate, then of course once a new union contract has to be negotiated, all bets are off. . that should provide a year or two. they have got that insurance if they like it and get to keep it until the bargaining agreement terminates. mr. king: thank the gentleman where i was forced to leave off. the situation of the president of la raza to testify as to why we needed increased food stamps by 46% before the ag committee and not being able to find people not suffering from malnutrition, she testified that there were people that had

anxiety because they didn't know where the future meals were going to come from. because they had this anxiety, they tended to overeat and they ate not knowing there would be plenty of food for them there. she argued if we would give everybody 46% more food stamps, people wouldn't have this food ampingseyite and would eat less and have this lister problem. here i am sitting in the united states congress and i'm listening to a witness begin to tell us why we should begin to expand food stamps and her argument is if we give more food stamps they won't be fat.

they wouldn't eat out of anxiety any more and would lose weight and be slender. my response is to the statement about the manufactured rights that came out of the presentation of franklin roosevelt, freedom of speech and religion. the other two of the two, freedom from want and freedom from fear. those are breathtaking principles to lay out, but if you listen to the president of louisiana raza, she argues that people have a right to freedom from want. they get obese and give them their freedom from fear of want, then they won't eat as much and be thinner and healthier. this is a bizarre, upside-down world we live in, madam speaker. and when we think about what

freedom and liberty is, americans that understand it, have an entirely different understanding of what liberty is and people in canada and great britain and around the world, their argument is that whatever is free expands freedom. if you have a lot of food stamps and rent subsidies, you would have a lot of freedom, i suppose you would, you wouldn't want to go to work. you would have the freedom to sit around and be a couch potato and golf and fishing every day. not the freedom to be irresponsible and not take responsible for yourself, we are talking no liberties, the liberties to speak freely, to worship as we please, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to bear arms, the right to face

your accuser and have a jury trial, the list goes on and on, free from cruel and unusual punishment, those are liberties. they are in the constitution and laws that come down from god but he never promised us we would have freedom from want because there is something in human nature that says, you have to get out there and strive and struggle. but this democrat health care bill is about expanding the dependency class in america. they are the representatives of the depeppedsi class, we are the people who want to work and expand families and provide for and encourage more personal responsibility and see that spark of vitality come out of every human being and we want to join together and we know our job is to find ways that we can to lay the grouped work and help nurture so the average annual

productivity goes up. if it does up -- goes up, well, it requires individual responsibility, not growing the dependency class. if you take people and they are on a safety net already, a welfare state today, some 71 different welfare programs that in this safety net that was designed to keep people from falling through and freezing to death or starving to death now has been cranked up to where it has become a hammock and the more comfortable that is, the less incentive there is for people to take care of themselves. they lose their incentive and lose their will to be creative and they don't think they have to put themselves out to the extent that their parents did or

grandparents did. i look at the people that settle the part of the country that i live in. these ancestors came out and stuck a stake in the ground. they would walk 1ound. they would walk 1 miles a day on a good day. something went wrong, they broke a wheel or whatever it is. 10 miles a day to get out on the prarie to drive a stake on the ground to say this is my 160 acres and if i make it productive, i can keep it. it's the american dream. they lived free or die out their on the prarie and had to protect themselves from the elements and from whose tills and that independent spirit is the thread of the americans that we are today.

we didn't think about giving up. we never thought the winters were too tough or days too long or too hot, too sweaty, dusty, snowyy or rainy. we were driven to succeed the american dream. and it wasn't a fallback position and that would have been frezz to death and let the hostiles take over. that american spirit has brought about the thriving of the american people and our ten asity globally, if you look at where we are economically, american businesses around the globe, we set the standard and set the patents and creativity and military security standpoint and cultural standpoint and religious standpoint. all of these things that i'm talking about are undermined by

this side of the aisle and unminded by the socialized bill that the senate did not pass today and diminishes us and expands our dependency so it can expand the political class that supports and votes for them. this is a cynical, political move. and if it was about policy madam speaker, then one of them, i have a question i want to project to the gentleman from texas, but if it was about policy, then the president of the united states, the speaker of the house, the harry reid of the senate or someone out of all of these democrats over here would have pointed to a country in the world that has a better health care system than the united states and said let's emulate that. should we emulate russia, cuba,

china, great britain, germany. all of us would reject those proposals. if there is a country that depose it better, i would like to know. but a real question of substance has been unanswered and i yield to the the gentleman from texas wherever he would like to take that. mr. gohmert: we just happen to have a chart here. and this is a chart of -- as it says government-run care means lower survival rates for cancer. now, we have been told by our friends across the aisle, well, if you look at england or look at other countries, you find that they have a longer life expectancy than we do in america. well, not if you are looking at cancer survival rates. you compare apples to apples and you find out as my from iowa

said there is no better health care in the world than if you want the best survival rate whether it is cancer or heart disease. the place where the statistics get skewed is our life expectancy in the united states has added in and this is terribly unfortunate a higher murder rate than some of those countries have. and one of the things that really skews the figures in the united states when a baby is born, it doesn't matter if that baby is 20 weeks premature, 10 weeks like my wife's and my first child, if that child is born alive and subsequently dies, even if it's an hour later, that counts in our statistics because in america,

the majority still feel that every life counts. well, in many of the countries that they try to compare us with with our life expectancy, they don't count that. we count it here. when you have a child that dies within an hour or two hours, it brings down the life expectancy. but we count about lives here in america. if you look at this chart. if you can choose a country to go to if you got cancer, well, you could go, this green here is england, but that's not the greatest survival rate. my goodness, look at prostate cancer, 50.9% survival rate. that's not so good. in the united states, we have a

91.9% -- you know that is fee nominal. that means in the united states if you get prostate cancer, every two people who get prostate cancer in the united states, most of the time, both of them are going to live. however in england, you get two people who get prostate cancer, one of them will die. and it's so unnecessary, because they have access to the same types of health care we do. mr. king: would the gentleman yield? i look at the statistics here. and i see the 91% survival rate in pros tailt cancer in america, that means out of 10 patients, nine will live. i look at the ratio in the united kingdom at 50%, two patients, one of them will die. one out of 10 will die in america, one out of two will die in england. that is the comparison in this

health care and i yield back. mr. gohmert: why would you want to go to any other country. who can blame the new foundland prime minister, love you, canada, and totally devoted, but i'm flying to the united states for heart surgery and he did. he is a smart man. you get breast cancer and i have been shown statistics that are not on here. for example, in breast cancer, if a tumor is found localized in a breast, then we have a 98% survival rate. 98% survival rate if a cancerous tumor is found localized in the breast. in england, 20% less than that.

in other words, even though both countries have wonderful technology, when you have a government-run program, you have to put people on lists. and the president's right. he is not being disingenuous when he says we aren't going to deny coverage. for the most part, he's right. you put them on list so they die before they get what they need. and i was talking to a really sweet secretary in tyler, texas, my hometown, and she has emgrated from england and told my her mother got cancer in england and died of that cancer because she was in england. each step of the way, finding the tumor, having surgery, having therapy, all the things, chemo, all those things, you get on a list. she said my mother was found to

have cancer and she died because she lived in england after i emigrated to the united states, she said i'm alive because i'm in the united states instead of england because i didn't go on the list. and this isn't some wealthy person. this is middle-class secretary with a lot of class and she knows just how good we have it here. and so you got all men's cancer, 66.3% survival rate. here in england, 44.8%. here in england, 44.8%. 53% in canada. i mean, that's a lot of people -- you know, we heard our friend from florida come down and rant and rave about people in here killing folks in our district. all i can see when i look at

these cancer survival rates and death rates is, when you want us to go to a government-run health care, i know it's not intentional. i know it's not intentional, but the fact is, you will cause people to die unnecessarily. there is no reason to have this kind of drop in prostate cancer success, but that's what we have. and it's so unnecessary. you got all women's cancer, 62.9, 55% -- mr. pallone:.8% in england. there's not quite as big a zrep answery. but if you are one of the 9% or 7% in these different categories or even 41% that are going to die because you don't live in the united states then you

probably think the united states is the place to be for health care. you take out the murder statistics and make all countries deal with the statistic of premature babies who die after they are born, the united states would be at the top of the life expectancy chart. i appreciate the gentleman yielding. mr. king: reclaiming my time, i appreciate that input. we've seen what the data is on survival rates for cancer in the united states versus canada, great britain and one other country and there's another point that has been made. i say it's been made consistently by the president of the united states. it's been made by the speaker of the house, and that's this point that there's nothing in any bill that's likely to pass

the house or senate that could become law that doesn't fund abortion or illegals. this is the joe wilson argument. i'll deal first with the issue of illegals. and the house version of the bill is looser than the senate version of the bill. but when the president says we're not going to fund illegals, he's not right on that. the senate version is a little tighter but if you go to the language in the senate bill, it says essentially that it lowers the standards. we had an a standard under the medicaid standard which is close to the gold standard as far as the government is concerned, if an individual were going to sign up for medicaid, they would have -- they would have to prove their citizenship by providing a birth certificate and a couple of supporting documents or a series of nationalization paper that would allow people to sign up and receive medicaid

benefits. but when this house under the leadership of speaker pelosi changed the language under schip, the state children's health insurance program, which i called socialized clinton-style hillary care for illegals and their parents, when they changed that language, they lowered the standard. the standard for medicaid and the standard for schip became the same. that's standard that exists in the senate language of the bill. even cho it says we're not going to fund illegal the proof is simply a requirement that they introduce and offer, let me say attest to a nine-digit social security number. if you have people who so bad at tricking the system that they'll be unable to produce a nine-digit social security number, it's unlikely it will

be checked. the congressional budget office, when it examines their call cue ligses, -- their calculation, but under the senate bill, it would cover 6.1 million illegals. in a bill the house is ready to pass. yet the speaker and the president said we're not going to fund illegals because they say in the bill they're not going to fund illegals but you have to look at the standards. this is akin to the no earmarks edict delivered to this house at the beginning of the 110th congress, the first year of the pelosi speakership when the chairman of the committee, david obey, brought a big appropriations bill to the floor and when he was challenged for the earmarks that were in it, even though they pledged they were not going to provide earmarks, this is the pelosi speakership, he

said, there are not earmarks in this bill, it was pointed out that there were hundreds of earmarks he went to the first page of the bill, i believe it was the second paragraph, and he read verbatim from the bill, generally speaking, not verbatim, from me, is this, there are no earmarks in the bill by definition, therefore be thill doesn't have earmarks. we can't believe our lying eyes because somebody said by definition it doesn't exist? they argue by definition they don't want to fund illegals, but the result is, 6.1 million illegals taking advantage of the senate version of the bill by the call cue lage of the nonpartisan congressional budget office. the house version funds illegal the senate version funds illegals and the house version, i know a little better, it funds them in a myriad of ways. also the senate version funds

abortion with american people's tax dollars. that's something else the president says they're not doing and something the speaker of the house say they're not doing, i haven't heard majority leader harry reid say one way or the other. but there are a couple of way this is happens. one is in this chart right here. so, madam speaker, it goes like this. when you have americans that have to fund into these three different systems, pay taxes, or enroll in exchange plan, or enroll in exchange plan that covers a i abortions, some of them will be enrolled in an exchange plan that covers abortions unintentionally because their employer will sign up for that. they won't ask the question and won't know. in any account, they'll enroll in the red version that funds abortions. mr. gohmert: will the gentleman yield? mr. king: i will. mr. gohmert: if you look at page 122, the exact point is

made that you're making. it says that there is at least one such plan, health care plan, that provides coverage of services described in clauses one and two of subparagraph b, you look at subparagraph b, little i, and it says the services described in this clause are abortions for which the expenditure of federal funds appropriated for the department of health and human services is not permitted based on the laws in effect at the date that is six months beginning before the plan year. this has misled people into thinking, there's a provision here that prevents you from using money -- i'm sorry, we were told we had six minutes, we used four. mr. king: in this case, i take the gentleman's point and i think it's been driven home

effectively by this chart and the language we know. mr. speaker, i appreciate your indulgence if i called you madam speaker, i apologize, i didn't have a rearview mirror and i ayield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from iowa for a motion. mr. king: i move that the house do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it, the motion is agreed to.

>> it includes $73 million for the transfer of 18 detainees from guantanamo bay and $600 million for local police. attorney general eric holder was on capitol hill to discuss the budget. among the topics was the treatment of detainees and federal efforts to prevent prison rape. he begins with questioning from the committee chairman.

>> should be placed in continuous attention. doj was tasked with coordinating fabric year. what other agencies were involved in making decisions about which suspects to transfer, who to prosecute, and who to detain? >> we have the department of defense, department of state, the partly -- department of commons occurred, the office of the national director of intelligence in the joint chiefs of staff. >> after they went through the discussions to make decisions, were those votes unanimous? >> when the principles of those

agencies met to make final determinations with regard to the disposition of the detainees, all decisions were unanimous. >> what were the criteria of the task force members? >> we focused on the national security in trying to decide if a person could be released and where that person might be transferred. national security was always the primary concern. when looked at the person's history and possibility for future violence. we also took into consideration trying to repatriate certain people out of concern that if they went there, they might be abused. it was a mix of those factors that led to the decisions that were made. >> are these detainees come up to they have access to habeas corpus? >> yes, they do.

>> all of them? >> they have not all filed petitions at this point but they certainly have that right. >> have some detainees actually filed? >> some have and some have filed petitions and have been released. >> in the last administration, this administration, both? >> i believe that is true with regard to the last administration as well. i did not have specific figures >> how are you handling of those cases? >> we have a dedicated crew of lawyers headed by the head of the civil division, a tony west. they have tried about 50 cases. we have people coming from around the country in addition

to washington d.c. they're helping putting these cases together and trying them before judges here in the district of columbia. >> deciding between military and civilian forms for trial, there is a lot of consternation and regard to several administrations. want the task force that you just described decided which individuals would be referred for prosecution and then there was a subsequent process set up to make the charging decisions for each detainee. this process has been the source of some of the most vigorous debate and as there are

a significant number of individuals who are opposed to even the consideration trials and civilian courts, these individuals advocate for holding any of these trials and a military commission. just past experience with previous administrations, we have held a number of terrorist trials and article 3 savoyard courts, have we not? >> your opening remarks were accurate. there are approximately 300 people who are in the federal prison system now.

>> there is some indication in the press that we have picked up that there is nothing determinant of the question that it appears that the administration may be considering the possibility of moving the 9/11 trials into a military setting foot of is that an indication of a change in the policy of the administration. >> i would not say so. we remain committed to using all of the tools that we have in trying to win this war. that means trying people and article 3 courts and military commissions. when i announced my decision to try ksm, i indicated five or six detainees would be tried in military commissions on the certain cases are more appropriate and article 3

courts. some are more appropriate in military courts. we want to hold on to the ability to hold our discretion to try these detainees in the appropriate forms. " why should we keep open the option of civilian article 3 prosecution for these terrorist suspects? which one can look at the history of what we have had an article 3 court. they are tested. we have tried a number of these cases. they are secure. we have tried these cases in a safe manner. our allies around the world support us in bringing these cases and to article 3 courts. we have the ability to disrupt and detain people for the long sentences we get out of particle three courts. we also have the opportunity to

get cooperation from people who are charged and who did not want to face long sentences or the prospects of serving long time. people cut deals so that it would have the ability to share information and intelligence that we wanted and they could receive some favorable treatment. lastly, one thing you can clearly do that you cannot so clearly do in the military commission is accept a guilty plea in a capital case. >> looking at this as a lawyer, there are a lot of tools and the civilian court that the court has to manage to manage the process and the decorum of the defendants.

that seems to be a real concern that defendants take the opportunity to propagandize. >> that is a very good point, mr. chairman, and one about which there is a misperception. if we have a trial and article 3 court, it will become a forum for these defendants to spout their hateful language and propaganda. if one prepares the way in which they are treated in military commissions, that is anything but the truth. one woman was in article 3 court in new york city and she was in her trial for one day. the judge determined she was a disruptive influence and that she was trying to disrupt the proceedings and she was removed from that court room and watched her on trial from outside the courtroom. the military commission that we have seen with ksm, long

speeches about a variety of nonsensical things that the judge's did not feel as comfortable removing or clamping down on a defended trying to do that. >> who was involved in the process of deciding which detainees will be tried in a civilian court and which might be tried in a military commission? >> ultimately, my decision in consultation with the secretary of defense. have a protocol that we have put together and that we use because these are national security determinations of the president is consulted, as well. there is a protocol that has been worked on and the secretary of defense and i apply that in making determinations and decisions. it involves consultation with the president. >> you may have touched on this but could you elaborate on this

point for us for the overall debate, there must be circumstances where their proponents of your consideration or criteria suggests an article 3 course in situations where a military commission would be the best forum. could you elaborate on that a little bit? what is going through your mind? what is the criteria being used as these decisions are being made? >> on the same day i announced the decision to try ksm a civilian court, one of the people responsible for the bombing of the u.s. as coal was going to be tried in a military tribunal. that is one of the distinctions

that we made. there are rules of evidence that exist in the military commissions that are more favorable toward the acceptance of hearsay evidence. you have to look at these cases individually but on a case by case determination, you make the decision as to where the case can be best tried. it does not mean you are being unfair to the defendant. you are simply looking at the forum that best suit the particular facts of each case. military commissions certainly play a role. the modifications and amendments we have done a couple years ago, i think those are fine places in which to try these cases. >> what about the question of national security concerns? does that enter into these decisions? not to the degree that some of the critics have indicated

concerns about the leaking and the protection of national security secrets can be equally accomplished and article 3 courts as they can and military commissions. the system that is in place in the military commissions to protect secrets is based on which has been an extended period of time in the article 3 system. >> do you have anything else to add? that has been a major criticism with the outburst and the security aspects in an article 3 court. >> article three judges who are

familiar with disruptive defendants, not only in a terrorism context but in other cases as well, article three judges are used to dealing with people like this and know how to deal with them. i look back to that very recent case that included two or three weeks ago in new york and held the defendant appropriately treated given the way she conducted herself. >> what about the concerned members that represent communities and the disruption to the communities and the safety of the courts hold in such trials? >> i can understand how people would ask those questions. my answer to that would be to look at history. look at the way in which these cases have been conducted, safely and without incident, to neighborhoods and communities that surround the courthouse

where these have been held. we tried one defendant in virginia just across the river. we have tried cases of this nature in all parts of our country and always without incident because of the experience that we have, the training that our marshal service goes through, the work that they do with their state and local partners to prepare for these trials which sometimes involves the closing of streets and sometimes causes disruption but at the end of the day, these cases have always been held in a safe manner. >> finally, there is the concern for argument made that holding trials in civilian courts somehow afford detainees too many rights.

as a lawyer, i always wondered about those arguments but i would like you to hear you speak to that. >> that is one that tends to get my blood boiling condemn the notion that a defendant in an article 3 court is somehow being treated in a special way or being curdled is anything but the truth. the person charged with murder, as many of these defendants are, are treated just like any other murder defendant would be. faugh are they getting more rights than the average american citizen is not an apt one. the question is, are they being treated as murderers would be treated? the answer to that question is yes. they have the same rights that a charles manson would have.

any other kind of mass murder wrote. those are the comparisons that people should be making in the -- in making the determination if terrorists are being treated correctly. it cannot compare them to an average citizens that have committed no crimes. >> is it true that military tribunals, the rights of the defendants are skewed in favor of the defendants and the military commission and merriment. is that correct or incorrect? >> i am not sure i would say they are skewed toward the defendant. one of the things that you find is because of the lack of familiarity with these kinds of cases, there is a greater comfort in the article iii

setting to be more strict and interacting with defendants then you perhaps see in military commissions. that is not to say that you cannot try successfully and appropriately these matters in military commissions. with regard to choosing a specific figure for a civil trial, the request -- id requests $73 million for holding the 9/11 perpetrator trial in federal court in the southern district of new york since the time the budget was finalized. have announced the final choice of a forum is still under consideration and could theoretically change and if we accept recent news reports that it is possible that the trials will be held in a military setting, when a final

determination has been made on a forum for these trials, will you submit a budget amended to reflect the cost estimates? >> yes, we would. the money that weeks -- the money that we have sought for the potential trials i think would probably be appropriate almost regardless of where the trial would be held. if, however, we end up in a venue where the costs are substantially less than what is included in our budget, we would come back to this committee and seek to amend. >> another budgetary concern, we are concerned about costs in different areas. the other is with regard to the present requirements. would any such budget amendment

affect your request for $107 million to renovate the present and thompson, ill.? with the thompson -- with the decision to try these detainees and where they would be held, is your budget request for the thompson acquisition and renovation contingent upon these terrorist trials and the ultimate disposition and location of the suspects? >> no, not at all. our budget request money to acquire two facilities put one in new hampshire and one in illinois. the bureau of prisons has great interest in acquiring these new facilities at a cost substantially smaller that we would incur if we build these new facilities and our interest in thompson exists irrespective of whether or not any people

from guantanamo ever set foot there. that is a place that could be used as a medium or maximum- security facility and one that the bureau prisons justice department would like to acquire regardless of what happens with the detainees at guantanamo. >> is the administration committed to paying for costs that might be imposed on local communities in any given venue? >> yes. i think what i said on the day of the announcement is that if the trials of these matters are not global trials. and september 11, the buildings fell in the york. the pentagon was hit and there was a crash in pennsylvania, all of this country was affected. these are truly national trials. as a result, it seems to me there should be a national responsibility in paying the

bills that these trials would generate. it is unfair that the local communities, wherever they may be tried, should bear a disproportionate share of what in essence -- our national crimes. >> thank you. simon and garfunkel has a song the boxer. it's as man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. to a large degree, i think that is taking place. without debating all of these issues, i would like to put into the record a number of articles and position papers by a group of lawyers that go to the heart of what of the answers -- that you have made. the difference is ksm, the mastermind 4 9/11, he was in alexandria for four years.

the cost for ksm if you were there for three years, the figures we had gotten from york city is $206 million per year for the city of new york police department. we have also gotten a briefing from the marshall service. it is around $1 billion to try him there. a little bit of a different thoughts. and the second thing is there are major differences. the administration and the chairman and i talked about the process. but to release people back to if yemen was a bad idea. and when one of them may have gone back.

the administration released two to somalia. there is no government there. to put it to people back into somalia and al qaeda, the government of yemen controls the capital of yemen and not much else outside. we spoke to the white house about mentioning names. one day they say they're pushing ahead and two days later, when this blew up, they said they are stopping that. there were some problems. i had a problem about you releasing several guantanamo bay people and to our congressional area and your people came up to me and at this time last year asked me at a hearing to please not to ask that question.

out of respect, because i thought there would be some consultation, i did not ask the question because i did not hand it is for members to do a got it type of thing. whenever asked and then we got calls saying they are coming to northern virginia and here is what is going to happen. there has been a strong difference on a lot of these issues. i would just put a number of things into the record with that. i want the record to show that in 1942, german saboteurs arrested in new york were arrested by the fbi and transferred to military custody for trial. france and brazil -- franklin roosevelt treated them as war criminals and not common civilian criminals. if you talk to most of the family members and other people, they believe this trial should

be in a military court. when would you be making a decision on ksm? when the you expect that to come out? >> i think that we are weeks away from making that determination. i do not think we are talking about months but probably weeks. on the difference between civilian and military, the pentagon is a military system. there are military people killed. you could have used the same argument for him to be tried in the military is he did for the other one because there were people wearing the american uniform. it was the pentagon where most of our military generals are. the other thing is i sent a letter and we have a hard time getting answers from the administration. they're going to be differences

of opinion. if you call me, i will try to get you anything i can. if you ask me a question, i will do you the answer. i say publicly, call me. i will try to cooperate in every way possible. we can never get any kind of cooperation. we got a letter from your department at 11:00 last night. there was nobody in my office at 11:00. that sort of got away is not a good way to do things. i sent a letter back in january asking the administration to bring back the 9/11 commission. i was the author of the rock study group. we asked the secretary and a congressman to come and they did a great job. i cannot get an answer. will the administration bring

back the 911 -- 9/11 commission to look at where we are to see what was adopted and what was not and what should have been? i have had that requesting since january and i cannot get any response. will the air administration bring back the 9/11 commission per my request? >> i am not familiar with what the decision might be by the president but one of the things that strikes me is the 9/11 commission did a great job. exhaustive hearings with a specific set of recommendations. i think that almost any objective observer can look at that report and compare those recommendations do with the past administration was and where this administration is but the courts correct. they have the expertise. i call the congressman and he thought it would be a great idea

to come back for six months. he and the governor of new jersey to come back and look and see because they have the historical history of what they said. i think that would make the country safer. i think it would be a good thing. i guess the answer is you are not sure. >> i am not sure. from my own perspective. >> i am just trying to get an answer. >> they put together a team of outstanding people, bipartisan, to look at the same circumstances to see where we are and that what we are doing to fight terrorism is everything we should be doing. on the request was to bring back a team. i cannot get an answer. is there any interest in the in administration and responding to burning back another team approach? >> we have good people, experienced people, who have

dedicated their lives to doing the very things that they're doing in very responsible positions for the national security council and in the armed forces. i have great faith in the decision making they make. i am not sure that outsiders are necessarily needed. >> a lot of people think it will be a good idea. i ask that the administration have the tsa administrator be a set term, similar to the director of the fbi. any thought about them doing anything about that? >> one thing i would call on is the senate to confirm tsa administrator before we talk about limiting the terms. >> you can certainly confirm this gentleman put we have had five in the past six years. for continuity, it has been a pretty good system.

any thought of doing that? >> that is not something i have not had any conversations about. >> i asked that the hvit to be located at the counter-terrorism center. i know that comes under you to a certain degree. what is the thought or recommendation. the letter has been there for two and a half months. you have the breaking down of the stovepipes. they are all together. what about that? >> it is to the house at the fbi. >> it is not at the fbi. it is out in virginia. i know were the building is. i have asked that the location of that be with the counter- terrorism center directly there

so that there is an exchange of information. that is the whole purpose of the center, to break down the barriers so that the fbi and cia are talking to each other. what about the recommendation? >> the question is not necessarily physical proximity as much as it is having communication between them and the variety of governmental entities is to be in touch with. >> but it is the physical proximity. that is the whole purpose of the counter-terrorism center. that is why walls were broken down and put everybody together. that was the purpose of it. >> by its nature, it draws people together from different agencies and gets them ready to go out. >> that is what the counter- terrorism center does. the answer to that is probably not. >> i think we have co-locations. " no we do not. >> they signed a lease on a building and it is not near

there. i am asking that it be located there. you have the whole team there. that is where it makes sense. everybody i have talked to off the record thinks it should be there. i have made the request that it be there. i am just trying to get an answer. will you co-located there? >> i will take that recommendation into consideration but as i said, the fact is that the hig is that multi-agency entity. the fact of its existence means that there is co-location, where every the unit is actually placed. >> ok. that is probably a maybe, perhaps. the washington times reported that the consequences of the aclu's john adams program said that cia officer