mr. latta from ohio. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker ear tissue d under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the gentleman from the -- the gentlewoman from the virgin islands, mrs. christensen, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. mrs. christensen: thank you, mr. speaker. it's my honor this evening to anchor an hour for the congressional black caucus on health care reform. i have several of my colleagues here to join me and interestingly enough, the three are from the three relevant committees that put together the bill in the house. when i left my private practice

of 21 years, i promised my patients i would continue to do everything i could to ensure they got the health care they needed, even though i was leaving that practice. too many were uninsure. too many had several chronic diseases. too many could not afford even one month's supply of medicine. our low capped medicaid funding was of very little help. last night, the democratic leadership and my democratic colleagues helped me make good on that promise. because of the landmark legislation we passed last night, the most momentous piece of legislation since social security, medicare and the civil rights bills, not only my constituents but all americans will have access to affordable, quality, comprehensive health care. african-americans and other minorities will benefit because of the provisions that are included to reduce the disparities that the surgeon

general called an afrond to american ideals and the genius of american medicine. tonight, mr. speaker, some of my colleagues will help explain the many benefits of the bill we passed last evening and the way that our communities will be able to be helped by the legislation. i'd like to first call on congressman butterfield of north carolina, a member of the energy and commerce committee and the health subcommittee, who played a very important role in developing the bill as it went through energy and commerce mr. butterfield is recognized for such time as he might consume. mr. butterfield: i thank the gentlelady for yielding time and especially thank her for her good work on this legislation. for the past 12 to 14 months i have watched you, congresswoman christensen, as you have worked to get a finished product we can all be proud of.

i want to thank you on behalf of the 600,000 people i represent in the first congressional district of north carolina. mr. speaker, every president in this country for the past 50 years or more has tried to reform health care. unfortunately all of them have failed, both democrat and republican. we have a health care system in this country that is in serious need of reforming. president barack obama, during the presidential campaigns of 2008, campaigned on the platform that if elected, he would bring health care reform to the american people and for the american people. it was a hotly contested campaign as we can all remember, but he was victorious because the american people have had confidence that president obama had had the ability and vision to bring people together to enact this worthwhile legislation and to do other great things for our

country. we started the 111th congress and president obama told us from day one that he was ready to deliver on the promise he had made to the american people. we in the energy and commerce committee and congresswoman christensen and many of us worked very hard to put together a good, strong piece of legislation. but i can tell you we would not have enacted this bill last night without the courageous, visionary leadership of president barack obama. in the energy and commerce committee we worked very hard to craft legislation we were very proud of. at the same time, as we were doing our work, the united states senate was also crafting a piece of legislation and they completed their work on christmas eve as we all remember. well, what the american people may not fully understand is that in this body, before we can have a piece of legislation delivered to the president's desk, both the house and the

senate must agree. and so during the christmas holidays, the democratic leadership from both chambers worked very hard to try to reconcile the differences between these two bills. the unfortunate thing, mr. speaker, and mrs. christensen, is that we had no participation, no help whatsoever from our republican friends on the other side of the aisle. when i say we had no help at all, we actually had none. the fact of the matter is that out of the 178 republicans who serve in the house of representatives, not a single one worked with us on this legislation. we tried unsuccessfully on many occasions to try to include republicans in our deliberations. but there was apparently a strategic decision a political decision, on their part, to not participate. over on the other side of the

capital, the tissue on the other side of the capitol, the same thing happened in the united states senate. out of the 40 republicans in the senate, not a single one worked with us. it was democrats who had to try to get this legislation shaped and do get it ready for passage. so during the christmas holidays, the democratic leadership worked very hard. they work through the christmas eve and new year's eve and all through the holidays to try to reconcile their differences and finally, toward the end of our holiday season, there was a compromise between the chambers and we reached a decision on this legislation. the problem was that we lost a seat in the united states senate due to the unfortunate passing of our hero, senator edward kennedy from the commonwealth of massachusetts we lost a democratic seat in the united states senate and senator kennedy's replacement was not from the democratic party. so we found ourselves,

unfortunately, with less than the super majority required in the united states senate. so president obama called the leadership together many times and we decided we would go forward, not withstanding the fact that we had a setback that we would go forward and that this house of representatives would take up and pass the senate-passed bill. that's a point, congresswoman christensen, i want to make tonight. the bill we passed last night was parliamentary -- was correct, it conformed with the rules of the house and the senate, they was identical bill that the united states senate passed on christmas eve with 60 votes. we passed that bill last night in the house with 219 votes in favor of passage. we only needed 216 votes to get it done. today, the bill is on the president's desk and we will go

down to the white house tomorrow morning for the signing of the senate bill that was passed by the house of representatives. now, here is the problem that we have. the senate bill that we passed has some shortcomings. it has some areas that need improving. so the president has worked with the leadership here in the congress and we have come up with some fixes, if you will work some amendments work some changes to the senate bill that will make it better. we all know about the provision of the senate bill that was put in by a single senator, that's going to be removed. there are going to be other provisions of the senate bill that will be removed. so once we passed last night, not only did we pass the senate bill and send it to the president, but we also passeded the fixes the president asked us to pass. those fixes are now pending in the senate for consideration

this week and the senator reid, the majority leader and the united states senate has told us that the senate will begin working on the fixes tomorrow after the president signs the bill. but mrs. christensen and mr. speaker, we have made monumental progress. no president has ever been able to do this but because of the vision and the masterful leadership of the president and the speaker of this house and the majority leader and the majority whip, all working together, we have been able to finally pass this legislation. this legislation does not go into effect immediately. there will be a phase in as you can imagine. we cannot reform the health care system in america and the health insurance system in america overnight. it's going to take time. but i can tell you, and i can tell the american people that by the year 2019, 95% of the american people will have

health insurance and access to quality health care. that is what we promise to the american people. that is what we're going to deliver. there will be a phase in starting within the first six months of this year. we're going to help our seniors with their prescription drugs. those who fall into the doughnut hole. they will be given a stipend to help them purchase. we will allow families to maintain their children on their insurance policies up to age 26. and we have not had that before. so there will be a gradual phase in. finally, mrs. christensen, and you've been very patient with me and to the other speakers waiting to speak, let me conclude by saying that i represent a low-income district. the first district of north carolina that i represent is the fourth poorest district in the united states of america. we have a lot of low-income people. i am happy to report to my

constituents and to people across america that for the first time in our history, individuals will be able to qualify for medicaid. low-income individuals will be able to get medicaid. right now, families can qualify for medicaid, but not individuals. an individual who makes less than $14,400 a year will get medicaid. a family of four who makes less than $29,000 a year will be able to qualify for medicaid, which is free. for an individual who is between the incomes of $14,400 a year and $43,000 a year, you will be able to get assistance, you will be able to get a subsidy in purchasing insurance. if you're at the low end of $14,400 a year, you will pay

$36 a month in order to get a quality insurance policy. if you're at the high end of $43,000 a year, you will pay $342, in order to get a high-quality insurance policy now for a family of four, it's a little bit more, but it is very affordable. for a family of four that makes $29,300 per year, your premiums will be $73 to insure four people in your family. at the high end if you make $55,000 a year, you will pay $369 per month. we have made tremendous progress with the passage of this bill. we are very proud of the progress we have made. i just want to publicly thank the speaker of the house of representatives, the majority leader, the majority whip, mr. clyburn and the leader, steny hoyer, as we all know and of course the speaker, nancy

pelosi, thank all the leadership and the chairman of each of the relevant committees who participated in this bill. the energy and commerce committee under the leadership of henry waxman and formerly john dingell and the ways and means committee under the leadership of charles rangel and now under the leadership of sander levin from michigan. thank them very much. the energy, mr. scott what's your new committee name? energy, education and labor committee under the leadership of mr. george miller of california. all of these committees working together with the budget committee led by john spratt of texas and louise slaughter of new york -- did i say texas? excuse me, from south carolina. i'll personally apologize to him for that. john spratt from south carolina and louise slaughter from new york leading the rules committee. all these individuals working together to get us to the point where we were last night.

the passage of this bill is monumental. it is historic. yesterday was not an ordinary day in the house of representatives. i thank my colleagues who voted for this legislation and i look forward to the results that it will yield. at this time, i will yield back my time to the congresswoman from the virgin islands. mrs. christensen: thank you, congressman butter feel. thank you for going through the process we have gone through over the past year. it's been a little difficult, i think, for the american people to understand and i think you helped to clarify how we got to where we were last night and also, you were able to put some of what those exchange subsidies and medicaid would mean to the average family. i just wanted to say before i recognize congressman scott that when you look at the uninsured that are going to be helped in this country, 10.8%

of non-hispanic whites are uninsured. the uninsured rates of african-americans is 19.1%. for asian-americans, 17.6%. and for hispanic the latino american the uninsured rate is 30.7%. so just providing coverage for the 32 million americans that will be covered for the first time by this legislation will make a big difference in the lives of of people of color and their families. but insurance is not enough and there are other provisions that we'll talk about a little bit later. a -- at this time i'd like to yield such time as he might consume to the gentleman from virginia, congressman bobby scott who not y, but also on th committee, a senior member of the budget committee, which had a major role in preparing and reporting out the

reconciliation bill we voted on last night. . very much. and i want to thank you, dr. christensen for your hard work and dedication. the congressional black caucus is fortunate to have a leader who is a physician and knows health care and particularly a physician in public health. i thank you for bringing us together. you have worked long and hard on health issues and particularly those issues in which there are health disparities. african americans suffer disproportionately in certain diseases. america has been debating health care for 100 years and we have come to some agreement. there is general agreement within this house that the status quo is unsustainable. 14,000 americans losing their health insurance every day. the costs are going up.

20 years ago, the average american family spent about 7% of the family income on health care. now it's 17%. and it's going and continuing in that direction. millions have no insurance at all, particularly those with pre-existing conditions who are unable to get any insurance. so we know that one thing if we're going to deal with the problem, one thing that we have recognized is that any solution that is going to be meaningful has to be comprehensive. you cannot solve the problem of pre-existing conditions, not getting insurance, unless everybody has insurance. if people can wait until they get sick before they buy insurance, many people will wait until they get sick before they buy insurance. and those in the insurance pool, on average, will be sicker and sicker. the average costs will be higher. more people, healthy people will drop out and the costs will

spiral out of control. we know that. so we know if we're going to deal with pre-existing conditions, it has to be in the context in a system where virtually everyone is buying insurance. we know that we have to make some comprehensive changes. we know we need to debate the issues, but unfortunately during the recent debate, we have heard complaints, blames, a lot of misrepresentations and slogans and even name calling. and yesterday, we finally took a huge step in guaranteing quality and affordable health care for all americans. and we have a bill that we can discuss. you can talk about what might be in the bill, what isn't. we have a bill. and let's talk what's in the legislation. first, the bill will provide affordable health care insurance for millions of americans without health insurance including those with pre-existing conditions.

those at the very low end of the spectrum will pay very little, those higher in the spectrum will pay more, but easily affordable compared to what people are having to pay for today. this bill will provide security for those who have insurance because 14 million americans will no longer lose insurance every day and those with insurance, will not have to watch their insurance skyrocket every year. insurance companies will not longer be able to cancel policies by looking back and seeing a comea out of place so they can cancel your policies. they also can't stop making payments in the middle of your illness because we remove lifetime caps on benefits. just because you have an expensive and chronic disease, with the insurance we are providing, you will get the

medical care you need. no longer those with health insurance will have to pay co-pays and those with insurance won't have to go bankrupt because the bill provides affordable limits on co-pays and deductibles. most of the people in bankruptcy court are there because of health expenses and most of those have insurance. but the co-pays and deductibles are such that they still have to lose everything in bankruptcy court. and because the legislation will provide affordable health insurance to virtually all americans, families with insurance will no longer have to pay an extra $1,000 to offset costs that show up in the hospital without any insurance. seniors will not have to fall into the doughnut hole where they are getting no benefits. our youth will be able to stay on family policies until they are 26 years old. small businesses will see

significant savings in health insurance, because they can purchase insurance with the same price advantages as big businesses do now, with the large cost of managers of volume and many small businesses will receive temporary tax credits to provide insurance to their employees. this plan is more than paid for. c.b.o. projects significant savings in the first 10 years. the major funding for it is treatment of unearned income for those making more than $250,000, just like earned income. whatever your earned income, you pay a medicare tax on that income. if it's unearned income, stocks, bonds, trading and interest, you don't pay a medicare tax on that. we have major funding in this that provides whatever your income, you will be paying a

medicare tax for those making over $250,000 will pay on their unearned income just like everyone else is paying on their earned income. the gentleman from north carolina has indicated some of the provisions that go in fairly soon. most won't go into effect until 2014 because it takes time to put all of the provisions together and get them active. but there are a lot of things that go into effect right away. small business tax credit for those small businesses who make employee coverage -- to make employee coverage more affordable, tax credits up to 35% of the premiums will go into effect immediately. we will begin to close the doughnut hole for those seniors in the doughnut hole. we will provide a $250 rebate. we will eliminate the doughnut hole. present preventative care under medicare. we will eliminate co-payments

for preventative services and exempts them from deductibles under the medicare program. those who are getting preventative services won't have to pay co-pays and deductibles. help for early retirees. we will offset the costs for those businesses that are providing health care for early retirees, those 55-64. before they get on medicare, there will be a program to help those and many companies want to cover them and can't afford it. we will provide an affordable way to cover them. we will end recisions. a ban on insurance companies from dropping people when they get sick. there will be no discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions. prohibit health insurance from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. there will be a ban on lifetime limits on coverage. prohibit insurance companies

from placing lifetime caps. if your chronic illness is very expensive, they can't cut you off in the middle of treatment. there will be a ban on annual limits on coverage. there won't be a complete ban early on, but restrict plans to make sure you get all the coverage you need. eventually there will be a total ban on lifetime ban fits. require all new private plans to require preventive service with no co-pays. we will provide a new independent appeals process to ensure that consumers in new plans have access to effective, interm and external appeals process. so if you aren't treated properly, you have an effective means to appeal. there will be immediate help for

those with pre-existing conditions. eventually, those with pre-existing conditions will get insurance just like everybody else and won't be able to discriminate. until the plan is fully implemented, they will be able to buy from a high-risk pool. the cost of that insurance should not be affordable but we'll make it affordable. those with pre-existing conditions can get relief right away. extends young people up to their 26th birthday on their family's policy. if young children aren't getting health insurance on the job or while they're in school, they can get -- they can stay on their parents' policy up until their 26 tfer birthday. we increase funding for community health centers. and that starts right away. we will double the number of patients being seen at community

health centers. and we will start making investments in training programs to increase the number of primary care physicians, nurses and other public health professionals. all of that goes into effect right away. some are criticizing the plan. it's interesting to listen to the criticism. of all with this bill does, one of the criticism is, well, the bill has too many pages. another is, we don't like the order in which we are casting the vote. look at all of this comprehensive health care and all they can talk about is the order we are voting in and the number of pages. some believe that the program is unconstitutional and when pressed, they'll say that medicare is unconstitutional, too and want to repeal medicare. when we talk about repealing medicare, i would like to refer everyone to the budget introduced by the lead

republican on the budget committee, the long-term budget on that committee, offered by the republican side does not i clude a medicare program but a voucher program where the cost increases will not keep up with medical inflation so gradually year by year, the value of that voucher erodes where 50 years from now it will be worth 25% of the cost of medical care for senior citizens. they will allow it to widther on the vine. when you talk about medicare being unconstitutional, be careful because they want to repeal medicare. others complain it takes away the freedom to be insured. i was first elected to the virginia house of delegates in 1977. this is the first year i heard anyone talk about the urgency of the need to enjoy the freedom to

be uninsured. now, i would like -- well, they say they're going to debate it during the campaign for re-election and i can't wait. so what will the campaign be? seniors, get in that doughnut hole where you belong. we're going to repeal the law. young adults, get off that family policy. small businesses, give that tax cuts back and start buying insurance and paying 18% more. those are pre-existing conditions, give me that policy back. you weren't supposed to get the policy. that was in the legislation we want to repeal. i can't wait for that debate. before we took that important vote, i said the future generations will look back at the votes we cast last night, just as today, we look back at

the votes on social security and medicare. and when they passed social security and medicare, the votes were not unanimous. there were those that voted no. but future generations will look back and see that many of us proudly voted in favor of health care for all. and i hope they look back with the same pride on those votes we cast last night, as we do on the votes cast in favor of social security and medicare. i yield back. mrs. christensen: thank you, congressman scott. and th mrs. christensen: thank you, congressman scott. and thank you for going over the positions and those that come into play this year when the president signs the bill, when the reconciliation bill is signed and which provisions start perhaps in a year or so. because it's very important to understand that as this bill was passed, within six months, many of the provisions that provide

-- that stop the exclusion for children with pre-existing disease, for example, is already in place. that the doughnut hole will start to be closed, that we'll start to build our primary care workforce to meet the needs of the 32 million newly insured. and that the small business tax credits will begin all within 2010. i would like to now yield such time as he might consume to my co-chair of the congressional black caucus and also a valued member of the ways and means committee, again one of the committees that had a major responsibility for casting the bill and the pay-fors in the bill that we passed in the house and the bill that we worked on and passed last night. thank you, danny, for joining us. .

>> thank you for the leadership you have shown the whole time we have been together in congress. as a matter of fact, we came at the same time. and you've been engaged in health activity before getting here and been a leader ever since. as i listened to representative butterfield, i was reminded of the fact that the bible says that where there is no vision, the people perish. and i think we've been very fortunate to have a bold, courageous, and visionary president as the leader of this country. as a matter of fact, he was bold enough, brave enough, and visionary enough to say that we are going to reform health care delivery. and many people thought that was a far stretch, that it was

a far reach, because people had been trying to do it, had been talking about it, but had not been able to accomplish it. and i guess the boys on the street would say, and then along came barack. along came president obama. i know there are thousands and thousands of people who have been engaged in the struggle to push health care forward and donna, i can imagine that you have been in thousands of hours of discussions over the years with the national medical association, with the american public health association, with the black nurses association, with the national donal association, with the national

association of social workers. all of these groups, i was thinking of my own experiences in terms of having worked in health care prior to running for public office. having sat on the boards of hospitals, having worked in neighborhood clinics, having been president, as a matter of fact, of the national association of community health centers. so that goes back at least 30 years. individuals have been open and all of -- and although the one hour we're doing tonight was -- tonight was taken out under the us a pises of the congressional black caucus and of your leadership, the last person who called my office just before i came over was not black, was

not an african-american. as a matter of fact, he was a nonafrican-american gentleman who called the office, and i happened to answer the phone, and he says is this the office of congressman danny davis? and i said, yes it is. he says, well i just want to leave a message for the congressman. i want you to tell him that i actually cried when this bill was passed, when that vote was taken. and i just want him to know that people in my community and my family and my neighborhood have been waiting for this day. i said, i want to thank you for calling. he said are you the congressman? i said, well, yes, i am. i represent a district, i call it the most interesting piece of geography in north america.

there's nothing quite like it. it includes the gold coast in chicago, all of downtown chicago, the magnificent mile, downtown, chinatown, greek town, old town, new town, brownsville but it also includes pockets of poverty. it includes suburban -- suburban districts, it has 21 hospitals in it, four medical schools, 92 community health center sites. of course, research institutes. so you can imagine what a deal like this means to the people of my district. for example, it will improve coverage for 334,000 of my

residents. not 3,000. not 4,000. but 334,000. it will provide tax credits for up to 158,000 families. 14,000 small businesses. the doughnut hole, it will remove the doughnut hole ultimately for 76,000 beneficiaries who right now have those experiences. it's going to extend coverage to 52,000 -- to 52,500 uninsured individuals who currently go to the county hospital when they have to get

health care. who experience episodic care. and living in a county where the taxpayers are always crying of course about the heavy burden of having paid for health care for these individuals and so the coverage is so impactable, my congressional district also trained an awful lot of medical personnel. as a matter of fact, the university of illinois in chicago, we train more african-american physicians than anybody else in the country other than maharry and howard. we train nurses we train hainlation therapists, we train medical personnel that go all over the world because we have

the largest medical center district in the country. and so health care is a big piece, a big part, not only of this the service but a big part of the economy. and people who have never, ever before in their lifetime had any health insurance at all now can feel safe, comfortable, and secure in having the coverage that they need. this legislation, in my mind, is the most impactful health legislation that we have seen since medicare and medicaid. someone was asking me the other day, they said, well, you know,

medicare, money we spend, and i said, well, you know there's no point talking to me about medicare. i am confident that both my mother and my father would have died sooner had there not been medicare. as a matter of fact, my mother went 150 miles sometimes to get to the hospital so that she could receive dialysis for an ailment that she had. there are people who live all over rural america who have had no access to health care at all. there are people in inster -- inster -- inner city america who live close to the medical city district where we have all these resources, we have

resources, but they have no money. therefore they cannot access the resources. and they have to pass by all of these hospitals. they have to pass by all of these resources and know that they cannot access them. i agree with my colleagues who have suggested that this has been a magical piece of work. african-americans often wonder where are people placed? it just happened that there were african-americans on all of the committees of jurisdiction, three members on energy and commerce. of course, you, don narks representative butterfield, congressman bobby rush. all on energy and commerce.

five members of the congressional black caucus on ways and means. and of course much of the time that we were discussing and debating this bill, charles rangel was in fact the chair -- the chairman and had a great deal to do. i'll mention that in addition to the health care departments -- components of this legislation are the tremendous increases in education for minority-serving institutions like historically black colleges and universities, hispanic-serving institutions, native american institutions, institutions for pacific islanders, so comprehensively it does education, it does health, and it is just great and i'm so delighted. >> would the gentleman yields?

mr. davis: i'd be pleased to yield. mr. butterfield: i want to thank you for the way you represent the people in your district. all of us a have unique congressional districts no two members of this house are identical. you have your district, and i have my district and each one is unique. as i travel through the my district in north carolina, many people tell me that they have health insurance. but it's not worth the paper it's written on. they are counted as insured, but in reality, they are uninsured. for example, a gentleman in my district told me he's had insurance for more than 10 years on the job and he pays $200 a month out of his paycheck but never used it. when i asked him why he hadn't used it, he said the deductible is $5,000 per year and as far as he's concerned, he's

uninsure. i went into another part of my district and went to a dialysis center and a young man there told me he had been insured by a very reputable insurance company and that he needed a kidney transplant and his sister donated a kidney to him. and he -- it was a successful transplant, it worked very well, but after two years, his insurance company stopped paying for the anti-rejection medication that is needed for kidneys and he lost the kidney. now he's back on dialysis and the government is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to sustain him. those are the types of stories i hear in my district and they are so sad. there's a minister in my district who was -- he's a married man, he and his wife had a family policy, they were paying $400 a month for insurance. the minister was diagnosed with prostate cancer and his wife was diagnosed with a neurological condition and because of those two

conditions, the insurance company raised the premiums from $400 a month to $3,500 a month, more than his income. those are the type of stories i'm hearing in my district. i want to find out if the same thing exists in urban america. i'm in rural america. do you hear those type of stories in urban chicago? i yield back. mr. davis: you wouldn't think it but yes, as a matter of fact, g.k., i would hate to be in a situation, especially at my age, and not have health insurance. and pre-existing conditions be a factor in whether or not i could get a policy. it would probably be sky-high, off the roof, you could never get it, and this is just such a great development, it's enough for us to be talking about for the next five years, again, i

want to just thank you, donna. i really do. because much of what we do is process. content is certainly a part, but it takes hours and hours, it takes negotiations, interactions, you've been there, all the way, you've been our leader on health care, and it's such a pleasure to serve with you and know of your tremendous dedication to this aws and i yield back. . crasmcrasm i thank you for those -- mrs. christensen: i thank you for those kind words and each one of our capacities and the committees we served have put in a lot of hours and have really helped to shape the final product that we are so proud of having voted on last night. and the congressional black

caucus has played a major role in shaping that. and i would like to ask unanimous consent to insert into the record the remarks of our chair, who has been such a strong leader for us throughout this process and in many other areas as well as jobs, education, congresswoman barbara lee. i would like to insert her statement into the record. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mrs. christensen: and congressman butterfield mentioned medicaid and the expansion of medicaid, we talk about food, but in many of the communities, we have provided. the low reimbursement rates that have traditionally been paid for medicaid providers, has caused hospitals and many hement care providers not to be able to

sustain practices or keep their doors open in poor communities. this bill will change that. we will be increasing the reimbursement to medicaid providers at the same level as medicare. and hopefully that will encourage more physicians and providers to come into the poor neighborhoods where many of the patients are medicaid beneficiaries and provide the care that they need. at the turn of the 19th century, dubois spoke to the poor health of african americans in this country. and i'm so grateful to be a part of a group of 42 individuals in the congressional black caucus who have worked over the years, over the 40 years of our existence, but particularly in this last year as we have shaped this bill, to begin to end that peculiar indifference to the

state of our health. some of the other areas besides the medicaid expansion and the improved reimbursements to providers, to encourage them to come back into poor communities, other areas, the expansion of the workforce. we know that as the 32 million people come into the health care system, we are going to need more providers, but we are an increasingly diverse society here in the united states. so there is great emphasis on diversifying that workforce and i'm talking about some of the disparity provisions, the provisions in the health care reform bill that are targeted at reducing those health disparities that african americans and other people of color have suffered from for so long and part of that, making sure we have a diverse workforce

to work within those communities. so in addition to encouraging through programs like the health care opportunities program and increasing funding for that, increasing funding for the national health service corps, which pays individuals, four years of their medical school tuition. in addition to increasing loan repayments, especially for individuals who practice in poor areas, we also have included provisions that provide additional support to institutions, minorities-serving institutions as well as the hispanic-serving institutions and tribal colleges and any institutions that have training underrepresented minorities. and those professions would be for physicians, for nurses, for

nurse educators. and there is a specific section that deals with increasing the public health workforce. the emphasis that we are now going to be involved in. and mental health workers for our communities. we also have grants through community-based organizations to train community health workers, who i think will be the backbone of the new health infrastructure, especially in communities that are poor, that have not had good health over the years, where people from within those same communities will be trained to be able to do outreach and support to people in their communities. there is a provision that increases -- that expands and strengths thens the office of minority health in the department of health and human services and adds two new offices, one in the food and

drug administration and the other one in substance abuse and mental health administration, two important agencies that do not have a specific office focused on minority health. and at the national institutes of health where we have had a center for minority health and disparity research, we now will elevate that with the signing of the reconciliation package -- i'm sorry, with the signing of the senate bill tomorrow, to an institute, where that institute will have more -- more funding to begin with, but also more influence over the research that's done at n.i.h. in every year to ensure that the concerns and the interests and the impacts on minority populations or any population that is experiencing health disparities will be considered. data collection is another area

that we have been able to insert provisions on. and not only to collect data on disease but also collect data on racial and ethnic minorities and gender and follow the disparities in medicare and medicaid, to monitor those disparities and report on those disparities so they can be corrected. i want to speak lastly about the issue of the territories. this was something that, of course, the delegates from the offshore areas of the united states worked very hard on. and we were very lucky, blessed, to have the full support of the congressional black caucus, hispanic caucus and asian caucus and our leadership. we would not have had the inclusion in this monumental, landmark legislation were it not

for the support of our colleagues in those caucuses and the support of our leadership. so i want to especially thank our speaker again. she has been thanked many times this evening, but for her strong support and leadership. our majority leader, steny hoyer. our majority whip, the chairs of the relevant committees in the house, chairman rangel, chairman levin, chairman waxman, chairman dingell and chairman miller and the leadership team for giving us the support and the entire democratic caucus for encouraging us and supporting and ensuring that we don't have full state treatment as the 50 states, but we do have a significant increase in medicaid and the ability to be included into the exchange. and i want to thank our leadership for that.

we're coming close to the end of our time, and if there's no other issue that my colleagues want to raise, i want to thank them for joining me this evening and helping to explain to the american people what is actually in the bill, clearing up some of the misconceptions and some of the misunderstandings that are out in the public. and we are proud that we were part of this process and have passed the bill we did last evening. and we look forward to the president's signing tomorrow. i yield back the balance of my time. i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the congressional black caucus on health care reform this evening. the speaker pro tempore: without

objection. mrs. christensen: i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back her time. under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the gentleman from texas, mr. burgess, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader. mr. burgess: i thank the speaker for the recognition. you know, mr. speaker, i am coming to the floor tonight to try to clarify for the american people some of the things that have happened here over the weekend. we passed a very big bill last night and hasn't been quite 24 hours, it was 11:00 p.m. eastern time when most of the country was watching basketball tournaments and otherwise engaged in weekend activities. this house was in full session.

the place was packed. democrats and republicans. and we passed a bill that had been passed by the senate on christmas eve. now, i remember when i first got here, republicans were in the majority and when we would pass major pieces of legislation, if there was an all-day fight, we would be recused of trying to sneak this legislation through. i never have been one who would pass on the chance to attribute to conspiracies -- attribute to could insid sense dens -- could insid dens, but how is it we passed this difficult legislation the day before christmas when america was engaged in other activities and here on the floor of the house last night on a sunday, when most every other honest american was doing something other than watching their congress. i do have to address some of the

things that i just heard mentioned from the other side. remember that there were two pieces of legislation passed here last night. one was the previously passed senate bill, which the house passed. that is on its way down to the white house. that will be signed by the president and that is going to be the law. and we also passed a sham bill, a bill that might be called a fig leaf, because no one really likes the senate bill. the speaker of the house said that herself. no one wants to vote for the senate bill. and i agree. no one wanted to vote for the senate bill. how did they get their side to vote for the senate bill? well, they said don't worry. we're going to fix the problems that you don't like in the senate bill and we'll do that under reconciliation and it's only going to require 51 votes in the other body. don't worry. we will get that taken care of. the only problem is, the senate bill that we passed here last

night had already passed the house before last summer. might not recognize it, because it was a housing bill. went to the senate and got changed into a health care bill and then brought back to the house and the question before the house, will the house now accept the senate amendment to h.r. 3590. the answer was affirmative. and the bill is on its way down to the white house for a big bill signing ceremony tomorrow. what is going to happen to the reconciliation bill? it passed and went back to the senate. and is there anything that compels the senate to take up that bill and work on it? well, no, there's not. in fact, the senate might rationalely argue -- the other body might rationally argue that we already passed our health

care bill, we passed it on christmas eve. you guys liked it, baugh ratified the amendments and last we saw it is down pennsylvania avenue to the white house. why would we pick up this contentious package of fixes in the bill? the oxygen may have gone out of the room for health care legislation in this congress, 14 months is a long time to have fought this thing. and the senators may just not have the stomach to pick this thing up and fight through it again. some of the things we need to be careful in talking about the bill. many of us in the house are not that familiar with the senate bill that we just passed, because it was the senate bill. we had a health care bill that was marked up in my committee a passed out of committee over my objection on july 31, but i didn't like the bill, but i knew it. i submitted amendments and some of those were accepted. so i had a lot of familiarity

with that bill. that bill went to the speaker's office. sat there for a couple of months. got changed all around, while my amendments got pulled out, as well as other republicans' amendments got pulled out. became a 2,000-page bill and brought back to the house and the house passed the house bill. we knew the house bill. many of us -- although we didn't like the house bill, we were fairly comfortable with what it contained and what it didn't contain. the senate bill is completely different. most of us did not ever see the senate bill before the senate brought it up on thanksgiving and then passed it right before christmas. . many of us felt like -- we already read a lot of health care bill this is year, do we need to read this? no, because the normal way is,

the senate passes it, then we have a conference, and we'll read the conference report. we won't have to worry about the senate bill because it's going to be changed anyway. except that didn't happen because for whatever reason, the democrats did not want to do a conference report. they say it's because republicans were going to block the appointment of conferees but i would point out to you that in december and early january, there were 60 democratic votes in the senate, 256 votes here in the house, there wasn't much we would have blocked if we wanted to so how we would have blocked the appointment of conferees is a good question. let me just set that point straight. they thought they could just put things together on their own outside of a conference. and they were doing a darn good

job of it. last week of december, first week of january, on into the second weekend of january, people were meeting in this capitol, meeting in this building, and in the new capitol's visitors center, putting together the pieces, cutting secret deals with unions and with this group and that group, we were going to have a bill blessed by both sides, no conference report, not necessary because we'll just bring a new bill to the floor that will be the amalgamated bill, the senate will vote for it, they've got 60 votes, the house will vote for it, they've got 256 if they don't lose too many, they can pass whatever they want. then we'll have a health care bill. what happened was the second tuesday in january, they had an election in the state of massachusetts. as a consequence of the election, the democrats' 60-vote supermajority in the senate was no more. the snunart was not seated for

several weeks -- the new senator was not seated for several weeks and there was time to come together with a conference committee and get it done or push through that amalgamated bill, but for whatever reason they didn't do that. it looked for a while like things might languish indefinitely. we all know the story, the last 10 days, the president engaged, the white house engaged, the speaker's office engaged, they were going to get this bill through the house. that was the quickest way. you toe noah, a line is the shortest distance between two point, the shortest distance to getting health care reform pass was to pass the bill through the house. it was something no one wanted to do. no one wanted to vote for that bill. it had awful things in it. most of us don't know the awful things in it, because it was the senate bill. we passed house bills. we knew the house bill. but -- we heard the minority

leader say it last night from this floor, most on the democratic side do not know what's in that bill. i dare say you've learned a lot because you've gotten the phone calls from the press, suddenly thes pregot curious about what's in the senate bill and they're asking all kinds of questions. tonight, perhaps we can deal with some of those. but one thing i wanted to point out at the very beginning be careful when you hear us talk about what's in the bills because both sides of the aisle, both democrats and republican, may not be sure what's in the bill. we heard testimony or we heard the speeches on the other side about how medicaid rates now were going to be plumped up for primary care doctors, medicaid rates will become medicare rates. that's actually, in fact, it's only for primary care doctors, it is only for two years, but it is also only in the reconciliation bill. did we pass the reconciliation bill? we did in the house, they haven't in the senate.

what did we pass that's passed in the senate ? the senate bill, that doesn't have that plus up in medicaid rates. in fact, the expansions of medicaid we put forward that were in the senate bill, those expansions of medicaid will be reimbursed, at standard medicaid rates which vary from state to state, i will tell you as a medical provider those put a lot of medical providers back on their heels because those rates do not pay the cost of delivering care. there is only so much of that kind of business you can do in an average day and keep your doors open. so there is a problem with exup and downing medicaid to larger and larger populations the provider community is going to be -- find it -- they're going to find it difficult to be able to absorb that many more medicaid patients into their practices because the reimbursement rates will remain low. in fairness, it was fixed in the reconciliation bill but if

the senate doesn't take that up, it never happens. it was the skinniest of fig leafs because it's not there when you need it. what is there is the senate bill which is on its way down to the white house, that'll be the law of the land chsm will expand medicaid, to be sure, but does it have the enhanced federal matching in there for medicaid? in one state it does. in one state it does. the reconciliation bill bill was going to fix it so all states would have what that one state now has in the senate bill. but it is the senate bill. only one state has that enhanced federal match for medicaid. the state of nebraska. the same -- the famous cornhusker kickback. what happened here last night, what transpired on the -- -- on the floor of the house last night was a dramatic and fitting end to the 14 months of

chaotic process that brought us to this point. we've heard over and over and over again, and i don't want to belabor the point and this may be the last time i discuss the process that brought us here but it is worth mentioning because over and over and other again, we heard you republicans obstructed every step of the way. remember, there's 177 of us. there's 256 of you. we can't obstruct anything, particularly in the house of representatives, where majority rules on almost everything. and oh, by the way, the rule committees really rules and the rule committees has a 9-4 advantage for the speaker. there's not much you can do with 177 republicans in the house of representatives if you want to obstruct. you can all hang together and make a prince preponderance -- principled vote that we're all against this and that's what happened but the real debate was an internal debate within the democratic caucus. because had they had the votes,

they could have done this. in february. had they had the votes they could have done this in january. they could have done it in december, the day after christmas as opposed to the day before christmas. if they knew this was what they were going to end up with, maybe they should have done that and saved everybody three months of additional anxiety. the fact of the matter remains, republicans did not obstruct this bill. democrats obstructed this bill. democrats and oh, yeah, one other thing. they never had the popular support of the american people. now think about that for a minute. we passed a bill that's going to affect in a profound and personal way the next three generations of americans. that's a pretty big bill. 1/6 or 1/7 of the nation's economy. that's a pretty big bill. we've heard over and other again if you're going to do something like that, it needs to be bipartisan so republicans should have signed onto the

bill, republicans should have backed the bill, republicans should have been there. but wait a minute. the people did not want this bill. poll after poll after poll has shown, fill in the blanks, 52%, 55%, 60% of people did not want this house-passed bill. did not want the senate-passed bill. did not want what the united states congress was going to do to health care. now if you don't have popular support, then even if you've got 256 democrats and now 59 senators and the white house, it's very difficult to get your members to, the term is, the very technical term we use here in the house of representatives, it's called walking the plank for your leadership. very difficult to get your members to walk the plank for leadership when everybody back at home is howling mad because of what you're doing. i'm sure many people felt the,

you know, the old saying that henry dirkson used to have, when i feel the heat, i see the light. a lot of people saw the light when they went back home. they came back to washington and got their arms twisted and things promised and things promised to be withheld and goodness knows what and they lined up and walked the plank last night. that's what we saw. people voting against things they said -- or voting in favor of things they said they would never et do. they misled their constituents back home. people turning 90 degree intersections to principles they held for a long time. it was painful to watch. i felt some sorrow for people i saw on the democratic side having to make these very tough, gut-wrenching decisions. these are good people that are well-intentioned, but they got pushed into a corner from which there was no escape.

that corner was the speaker of the house and the president of the united states. as a consequence, this bill passed, pretty slim majority, not a single republican, in fact the only thing bipartisan about this bill last night was the opposition because you had 30 democrats standing with 177 or 178, now, republicans, that was the bipartisan bloc on this bill. but they were in opposition this bill presents a real problem for the american people. the american don't like it. the american people don't want it. but now the american people have it. now, ideal lie, people have asked me all day long, what are you and the republicans going to do about this now. and the answer is, you fix what you can, and you work toward repeal of the bill. now, working toward repeal of

the bill, you've got to ask yourself, there's been plenty of bills -- there likely will be bills introduced today and tomorrow that will call for the repeal of the bill. i may very well sign on to one or more of the bills. but with the same vote total we had last night, do you think any of those bills are even going to be brought up for debate, is the speaker of the house or the majority leader going to bring those up and say, let's go through the argument again? they could. there is history there. there is precedent there. in the 1980's, late 1980's, this house passed a seriously flawed, catastrophic coverage bill for medicare. they charged medicare recipients the premium for that catastrophic insurance and all across the country people said, wait a minute we didn't want that. we didn't ask for that you're

charging us for something we didn't ask for or want and the country, the seniors of this country, rose up and the very famous pictures of the then-chairman of the ways and means committee being chased out of his own town hall by senior citizens who objected to what they had done. and congress did come back in short order and repeal that bill. will that happen now? i don't know. i don't know. that's a painful thing for people to have to go through. we'll see. we've got an easter recess coming up. people to town halls and get that kind of reaction, maybe we'll be back here talking about one of those repeal bills. honestly, mr. speaker, i think that's a pretty heavy lift to repeal this bill that we passed last night. this bill that's now on its way down to the white house to become public law. pretty difficult to do that in this congress because it's not likely there would be the votes and of course on the senate side, it's really in the likely there would be the votes.

and if it happened, the president likely would feel differently about it and would exercise his authority to veto that repeal bill and it is unlikely to get to the threshold of a -- of a veto override, 2/3 of the house and 2/3 of the senate to override a presidential veto. in fact, if america has the reaction to this bill that i think they're going to, there may be many more republicans and many fewer democrat here's in the house of representatives next year. i don't know if that number will be enough to change the majority control of the house. it sure could be. certainly looks increasingly likely from the degree of anger and how upset people are that talk about this bill out in the middle part of america. but i don't know. i don't know if there is the political will to change the

majority makeup of the house. again, even if there is, sure, we'll bring that repeal bill up, we'll bring it up pretty quickly and send it down to the white house and the white house will veto it and i doubt there will be a new congress seated that will also have the ability to override -- overrule -- override a president's veto. again that's a tall order. 2/3 of the house, 2/3 of the senate. so i don't know within the time frame between now and january of 2013 if the numbers work out for the ability of this congress to repeal the bill. it's worth trying, it's worth testing but i don't know if that's a realistic trajectory. well, then, what can we do? i think it is extremely important to at least begin to work on some of the more egregious portions of this bill and i will just tell you one of the things that really bothers me this about bill that we did

is the institution of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance. now, surely it is the responsible things for every american -- thing for every american, every family to have health insurance against the unlikely but frightening occurrence of some of the diseases that can happen to us as human beings. it's the responsible thing to do. but just because it's the responsible thing to do does not mean that your federal government has the responsibility to require you to buy it. we've never done that in this country. simply as a consequence of being born or living in this country your federal government now says you're going to buy this product. in fact, when the bill was passed people say, under the commerce clause we have the authority to do that. but that kind of turns the commerce clause on its head. the commerce clause is there to protect commerce but coercing

someone to buy a good or service or product and then invoking the commerce clause to protect that transaction really seems to be going at things the wrong way. now, if an individual state wants to say as, as a condition of living in our state, there is a mandate that you will buy health insurance, and there are states that have done that, and if their state legislature passes that legislation and their governor signs it and the citizens of that state are ok with that, then good on them. that's fine. that is their prerogative. theaps one of the things that a state government is there for. if they pass that individual mandate and the people turn out the state legislature, well, then they learned their lesson. but that's a different -- that's a different set of circumstances than having the federal government make that decision that we're going to require everyone to purchase insurance. in my opinion mandates have no

place in a free society. and in my opinion mandates are not going to get us the kind of coverage numbers that people expect it to. you stop and think for just a minute, for a mandate to work you've really got to have -- either has to be general knowledge that this mandate is there, there has to be general knowledge of the penalties that won -- one would possibly incur for not complying with the mandate and there must be general knowledge that those penalties will be swiftly and surely administered. now, we do have a model for that in this country and that is called the internal revenue service. the internal revenue service says that everyone who earns income has to pay a percentage of that income in income tax, it's with held from our paychecks every month, but that income tax must be paid and we all know that and we all know that if we don't pay our taxes we may not know exactly what's

around the corner, but most of us know it's something we really don't want to find out about. now, with such a draconian mandate for income taxes, for federal income taxes, administered by the internal revenue service with such a mandate, you'd expect the compliance rate to be pretty high. well, it is, but it might be lower than what you might think. the compliance rate is around the order of 85%, 86%. that's with a pretty severe mandate. what about health insurance? right now the voluntary. as i said it's the responsible thing to do, people should have coverage, people want to have coverage. this country most people are covered by employer-sponsored insurance, there's another eight to 15 covered in the individual market. but insurance is the responsible thing to do. and the voluntary program of insurance that we have in this country, what is the problem we hear about over and over again? we've got 15% of our population

without health insurance. well, that does mean conversely you have 85% with insurance and what is the compliance rate with the i.r.s.? it's pretty close to the same number. so are you going to get, are you going to get more of that 15% to sign up for health insurance if you put this very dra coinian liberty-stealing man -- draconian liberty-stealing mandate from the federal government out there? i don't think so. i think mandates have no place in a free society. and as a consequence i don't think they belong in this bill. and further, what did the stock market doed to? it jumped up a bunch -- do today? it jumped up a bunch, didn't it? you might say, that proves the point. america so wanted this health care bill to pass the house of representatives that they rejoiced by going out and running up the stock market. or, perhaps because insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are going to profit so much by the fact that you now

have to buy health insurance that their prices went up, their stock went up. because people looked at futures and forecasting and said, wow, wait a minute, that insurance might be a good stock to buy because just a short period of time everyone in the country is going to have to buy insurance. well, wouldn't it have been a better approach that instead of mandating that people buy insurance, and, again, i don't believe you're going to get a reduction in insurance rates by demanding that everyone buy health insurance because what incentive is there for the insurance company now to hold the price down? there is none. there is none. in fact, if anything there's an incentive to raise the rate because you have to buy it. or the scissor coming to visit all kinds of -- or the i.r.s. is coming to visit all kinds of grief upon your household. so the insurance companies may be feeling bood about -- good about this bill we passed last

night because they're going to sell a ton of product. you're going to have to buy it or you get in all kinds of trouble. the i.r.s. is going to come and raise billy cane on your head if you don't buy this insurance so the insurance companies are feeling ok with this. and the pharmaceutical companies, yeah, they came to the table with the big bunch of money, yeah, they gave up something to get this health care bill passed. but at the end of the day the closure of the doughnut hole, yeah, but it's for brand name products that you get that discount, so they're going to sell a lot more of their branded products which are the most expensive products. and people are going to blow through that -- blow through that area where they have to match some of the expenses and the catastrophic coverage will kick in pretty darn quick. that pharmaceutical company, excuse me, may stand to gain a great deal from the passage of this bill. so, the really no surprise the stock market went up today. drug companies, insurance

companies, they may look to be doing ok in this new, brave new world order that we gave to the american people last night. you know, very famous quote from the speaker, earlier in the debate on all of this was, we need to go ahead and pass this bill so that people can find out what's in it and then they'll really like it after the fog of the discussion is removed. in fact, i've heard essentially that same statement here on the floor today. one of my friends on the democrat side said, you know, finally all the rhetoric can be put aside, people will really see what's in this bill and they'll really like it. , so let's talk about the things that are really in this bill and i'll leave it up to the american people how much they like it. we've already talked about the individual mandate. absolutely unprecedented. the government has never required people to buy a gad or service as a condition of the lawful residence of the united states. that's a quote from the congressional budget office.

it will be invoked under the commerce clause. the power to regulate commerce among the states is not unlimited. and here's a thought, what if we -- what if the courts allow this to stand? what if this power was in fact unlimited? the imagination just is almost not -- your nadge nation almost cannot handle -- your imagination almost cannot handle all the things your federal government might decide to do if we removed that power or removed that condition on exercising that power. now some of the other thanges are going to be found in this bill are -- things that are going to be found in this bill are tax increases. i heard it over and over again in the debate that the republicans shouldn't mislead people about the tax increases in the bill but they are there. they are there for all to see. go to the library of commerce website, download the c.b.o.

letter on 3590, the senate-passed bill and look at some of the tax increases that are there. medicare cuts, are they there? yesterday the democrats kept saying, there are no cuts to medicare in this bill. well there darn sure are. and, again, looking at the tables, the back of the c.b.o. report, some of them look to be pretty darn significant. reductions in annual updates to medicare fee for service payment rates over the period of 2010 to 2019, that's a 10-year budget cycle, a cut of $186 billion. medicare advantage rates based on plans, that's cut $118 billion. medicare and medicaid disproportionate share payments, that's cut $43 billion over that 10 years. community living assistance

services and supports, that's cut $70 billion over 10 years. one of the things that's really disingenuous about these cuts is when you look at this, they do have it laid out, year over year on the congressional budget office report, and the next four or five years those cuts are actually pretty modest and then they really kick in the last five or six years and we all know that there is a big presidential election coming up in 2012 so, again, perhaps it is no accident that those cuts are diminished in the early years and then expanded in the out years. payment adjustments for home health care, that's almost $40 billion in reduction. again, medicare disproportionate share hospital payments down significantly. and that's one of the significant things. it's hard for people to understand, well, what is a disproportionate share hospital

payment? some hospitals see, remember i told you that medicaid doesn't really reimburse providers the cost of providing their care. now, no one really cares so much about the doctor because who needs doctors in the health care system anyway? but we do care about hospitals. and hospitals historically have been protected if they see what is called a disproportionate share of uninsured patients and underinsured parents -- patients, medicaid, where the reimbursement rate is low, they get a plus up from the federal government and it's called a disproportionate share payment. now, one of the things they did in the state of massachusetts was they said, you know, we're giving all this money to hospitals for disproportionate share payment, what if we just took that money and helped people buy insurance and everyone's insured, then you don't need -- you don't need to provide the disproportionate share of payments any longer. but, you take a state like mine, the state of texas, where a great number of the uninsured happen to be in the country without a valid social security

number for whatever reason. then we heard the president of the united states stand here in this house in september and said very clearly that no one who's in this country illegally will be able to participate in any of these benefits. if that is correct, and texas has a problem with people who are in the country without the benefit of a social security number who also happen to be uninsured, well, they won't be eligible for any of these benefits, they won't be he will eligible for the subsidies and exchanges, they won't be able to access the insurance that congress is passing. that's not necessarily a bad thing. you don't want to provide an incentive for someone to come into the country without going through the proper chapels. so what are we going to do in a state like texas where we have vast numbers of uninsured who are there without benefit of social security numbers, they're still going to access care

through the emergency rooms of our safety net hospitals, but we're also at the same cutting those disproportionate share payments to those hospitals. so the hospitals are actually catching the grief from both sides. their uninsured and underinsured population is going to go up and their reimbursement rates are likely to stay low and their disproportionate share payments are going to go down. and that is a business plan that may make sense to the federal government but i'll bet it doesn't make accepts to most hospital administrators who run our safety net hospitals around the country. so anyway, when people tell you that, you know, the republicans are misleading you or trying to scare you on the medicare cuts, they're outlined in the congressional budget office report and they're as plain as day for all to see. the negative $430 billion over 10 years, add the other

community living reductions and you get $70 billion and that's $500 billion. that's what you've heard republicans saying for the last several months. you're going to cut medicare by $500 billion, at the same time you've got more people coming into the medicare system, you're really doing nothing to hold down the cost of delivering medical care, you're creating a situation where you're actually going to increase the stress on the system, not decrease the stress on the system. $500 billion in new taxes coupled with that $$500 billion in medicare cut the president stands in front of us and says this bill will be paid for and will reduce the deficit. well, it'll even out a big part of one of the -- you're leaving out a big part of one of the things that didn't get fixed in

the senate bill. you've heard me talk about the sustainable growth rate formula, the formula under which doctors are reimbursed in medicare. back in 1988, the institution of what's called the relative value payment scale, rvrbs, whatever that acronym stands for, every year, we tended to try to ratchet down reimbursements to physicians because we felt if we didn't, they'd spend too much money. what's happened over time, of course is doctors -- as doctors reimbursement rates have gone down, they tried to see more and more patients so their bottom line didn't suffer and the spending has gone up and this has had the opposite effect of what was intended. we're in a real problem with this form la right now. -- formula right now. this year, there were pro-- projected to be cuts of 21% of doctors who provide service to

medicare patients. the payment rates for part b in medicare were going down by 1/5. for some specialties, it was going to go down more than that. in general, it was going down about 21%. we put a stay on that just about a week ago with the bill passed by voice vote in this congress, so it wasn't a recorded vote and put a stay on that cut until november. what happens then is anyone's guess because we didn't fix the problem in the house-passed bill, we didn't fix the problem in the senate-passed bill that bill is going down to the president for his signature. what's going happen to the doctors in medicare? congress needs to fix that. why hadn't congress fixed that by the way? it started with the democrats, got worse under the republican, got a whole lot worse now that the democrats have retaken the majority.

why hasn't anybody fixed that? the reason they don't want to fix it is because it scores by the congressional budget office as a cost a cost that is -- no one really agrees upon the price but it's somewhere between $250 billion to $350 billion. it could even be more than that if you tried to protect some part b premium payers from the rapid expansion of medicare costs, medicare part d costs -- part b costs caused by the rapid increase in repealing the s.g.r. part b premiums are based on a formula, 25% of the actual cost of administering the program. we add a big cost to the part b program in the repeal of the sustainable growth rate program and medicare participants in the medicare program may see their premiums go up even faster than they have in the

past several years. that's a problem. if we are honest about addressing the problem, it is likely to be $350 billion to $400 billion, but it could be scored as low as $250 billion if you use smoke and mirrors which we try to do when we do budget things. nevertheless, it's still a big amount of money to be added to this bill. and we didn't do it wem simply didn't do it. the congressional democrats told the congressional budget office, don't score the s.g.r. repeal in this bill. now, the house will tell you that, hey, we passed an s.g.r. repeal last november. didn't get any republican support. oh, wait they got one. ok, it was me. but that bill was going nowhere and everybody in this house knew it was going nowhere. in fact, the senate had previously rejected the same bill 10 days before. so that was another fig leaf.

oh, we're going to take care of the doctors, let's pass s.g.r. repeal and the rascals in the senate or the rascals on the republican side wouldn't let this thing stand. the fact of the matter is, it hadn't been fixed. the democrats are in charge. the fact of the matter is they need to tell us how they propose to deal with that. this kicking the can down the road, and we did it too when we were in power, but this kicking the can down the road is making the problem a lot worse and really putting our seniors -- seniors at risk. at risk of not being able to access physicians. look at the statistics out there. a company that's a doctor search firm did a a survey in december. kind of depending on how you asked the question, they said if the democrats' health care bill passes, will that affect your decision to retire or continue practicing medicine? if the public option was contained within the bill,

almost 45% of physicians said they would consider retirement that doesn't mean 45% of doctors will retire. but it meant nearly half the doctors in this country would seriously look at it. doctors who are near retirement age, about 1/4 of them, said seriously consider retiring early. doctors who were nowhere near retirement age, about 1/5 of those, said yeah, i could see myself having to get out of this. if you remove the public option from the equation if you remove the public option, the number goes down, it's about 31%, 32% of doctors who would consider retiring early. a significant number of those who are already near retirement age, about 20% of doctors who are near retirement age, would consider retiring early, even with the public option out of the democrats' health care plan and about 7% or 8% would, if they were nowhere near retirement age but still that's

a lot of doctors considering retiring if we pass these bills. let's leave the public option question alone for just a minute. we need to come back to that later that is a significant part of this. but amongst the things in the bill that people may want to know about are these tax increases, are the medicare cuts. one of the big fight here's last night was, would the bill contain what's called the hyde amendment language that would prevent federal funding for abortion, a lot of controversy ensued. the bottom line is, the senate-passed bill did not contain the hyde amendment language. the stupak language that passed in the house bill in november did. but that wasn't in the bill we were debating that wasn't the bill we were passing. again, another fig leaf trotted out in the form of an executive order. but how many executive orders did president obama repeal on his first day of office? executive orders president bush

had in place? it was a ton of them. the president, his credit, did say he would not tear up the executive order the first day after the bill was passed. but i don't recall if he made a promise about the second day or third day or fourth day. the fact of the matter remains that protection against using federal funds for abortion, for paying for abortion is pretty tenuous right now and that thread could be snapped at any time and the fact is, the american people just don't know at this point and it's a shame because we could have had that argument, we could have had a more solid amendment, but the fact of the matter is, we didn't do that. other things in the senate-passed bill, the special deal for nebraska, the cornhusker kickback, it is in the senate bill. it did pass. it's on its way down to the president for signature. does that violate any constitutional principle like equal protection under the law? it might. it night. if the good, long suffering,

tax paying citizens of texas now have to subsidize medicaid to nebraska that might get some suspicion. from the supreme court. of violating the 14th amendment. but we'll have to see. the special deal for florida where their medicare advantage would not be cut in certain counties in soren florida. medicare advantage cuts, as i pointed out to you are deep and significant in this bill. but the three counties in florida will not sustain those. equal protection under the law that might be a violation of the equal protection clause of the constitution my attorney general back home in texas said the federal health care legislation passed tonight violates the united states constitution and unconstitutionally impinges on texas individual liberties. to protect all texans' constitutional rights and

preserve the constitutional framework intended by our nation's founders and protect our state from further infringement, the state of texas and other states will legally challenge the federal health care legislation. so what looked like a federal health care bill may in fact have represented a bill for full employment for lawyers in this country. there's some other bad provisions. there's a tax on the so-called cadillac health insurance plans, remember that was supposed to be fixed in the reconciliation bill but the reconciliation bill is not the law of the land. the senate bill is the law of the land and that cadillac tax is in there. so for individuals with incomes under $250,000, they're going to get a significant tax if they have one of the high-end insurance policies. clearly that's a broken promise by the administration. construction firms who did they irritate in the senate? construction firms were singled

out for higher taxes. in the senate language, the employer mandate only exists or is fine if your employees have to access care under the exchange with subsidy the fines don't kick in until you have more than 50 employees. but, construction firms, there's a much smaller number. single digits. if they're employeed by a construction firm will have to pay the employer mandate or the employer fine. here's one of the provisions that's really, i don't think people know about it. i'm not sure if they do know about it that they understand it. but this new board that has been created in the senate bill, one of the ways that they attempted to deal with medicare spending was to assemble this board this board of some czars and commissioners who are going to set medicare spending targets and they will do that

and they will set those targets, yes, they have to come back and be voted on by congress but we just got to vote them up or down we can't amend them ordinary care we can't say, going to plus this one up or reduce this one down, we've got to take the whole board recommendation as a slate and it's an up or down vote on the floor of the house. generally congress, when congress has to be the enforcer on these things, look what we've done with doctor payments. we're supposed to reduce them but rewe really didn't because we didn't want to face the wrath of doctors or seniors so we took the easy way out and gave them a one-year stay on that and the consequence of that is the clock continued to run or the till continued to run, the tab continued to run on doctor payments, now it's as high as $20 billion -- i'm sorry 20% cut that will have to come out of doctor payments. we might do the same thing with this independent board or we just would lack the courage to

vote for the cuts anyway if we didn't like the way they came down to us. congress does have a history of doing that. some other provisions of the bill, social security payroll tax revenues, double counts the premiums collected from what was called the class act. that was one of the great bait and switch things included in this bill. they said we're going to proid view long-term care insurance you pay for that, $50 a month, then you can get a benefit of $50 a day if you need to access long-term care insurance. well this actually scores as a savings because for the first sever several -- several years it's in play, more premiums are collected than money is paid out. but guess what happens in the second half of -- or the second 10 years of these expenditures? those payouts are going to exceed the premiums paid and that is going to be an unit --

unmitigated disaster afpbled the real pernicious part of the class act, people my age if they can afford it, they should by long-term care insurance. don't wait for the government to get it for you, don't believe you'll get it under medicare, you can get it under medicaid but you've got to spend yourself to near bankruptcy before you get it. the sensible thing to do if you can afford the premium is to buy a long-term care policy. class act is going to tell people, hey, -- hey you don't have to worry about that, pay $50 a month, you're cover the coverage is thin. it will not be there after a period of time because program is going to spend way too much money after a few years and the problem with long-term care insurance is, the longer you wait to buy it, the higher the premiums are going to be for people in their early 50's, it is something worthwhile to look into, but we're going to send a

message to the next 10 years of americans turning 50, don't worry about it, we've got you covered with the class act. there's no coverage there. it's going to be an unmitigated disaster when people start trying to act cisse that. besides that, anyone who has paid for long-term care or anyone who had a family member in a long-term care facility, does 50 bucks a day take care of what you need? it's nowhere even close. the bill does double count some of the medicare cuts so we get to count them once and get to count them a second time. texas is really going to suffer under the reduction and disproportionate share funding. drugmakers will face an annual fee of $2.5 billion but you know what? that $2.5 billion is not going to come out of the c.o.e. -- c.e.o.'s salary, it's coming out of product sales. that will be passed to the consumer. though they look like they're

helping out the president and putting up $2.5 billion, this goes back to the americans who pie their product. in 2011 this bill will limit flexible health -- flexible spending accounts to $2,500 per year. yeah, you'll still be able to have your f.s.a. but you will be limited on the amount that you can put into it. here's one that's -- really most people are not aware of. there's a medical device manufacturers' fee which is again going to be passed onto the end user, the consumer, the patient, which is you. continuing on the timeline, in 2011 there's a health insurance provider fee, $2 billion in 2011, $4 billion for 2012, and then it goes up from there rather dramatically. again, a tax on health insurance providers, who do you think's going to pay that? the c.e.o. of the big insurance company? probably not.

the guy that's buying the insurance? probably. again, i talked about this before. in 2013 the excise tax of 40% will be imposed on the cadillac plans. in 2013 new medicare taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000 a year, taxes -- medicare tax on your with holding is going to rise to $2.-- 2.35% there. will be a new 3.8% starting in 2013rks a new 3.8% tax on unearned income. dividends, interests, capital gains. 2013, an excise tax of 2.9% imposed on the sale of medical devices. now, not all medical devices, and we all heard the stories about the band-aids this winter when the senate was talking about this, there will not be a band-aid tax. this will be for so-called class two and class three medical devices. class two devices, examples would be vings, sue stur, some

testing that a doctor might do in their office, some of the little testing kits will be taxed at that 2.9% rate. now let me just tell you something here. as a doctor you don't get to pass that tax onto your patient. because most of your patients that come in that are insured, you actually see them in a contractual rate. so if there is -- whatever the code is, there's a rate for that code, and it doesn't include that 2.9% tax. and employers with more than 50 employees must pay a fine of up to $3,000 if employees receive tax credits to purchase insurance. so billions of dollars are going to be spent to hire thousands of new i.r.s. employees needed to collect the taxes, yet three out of 10 doctors have said that if congress goes against their will and the will of the american people and passes this bill they may retire from practicing medicine. so that's what the people are going to get. more i.r.s. agents, less doctors. simple equation, how does that equal health care reform?

ideally we would repeal the entire bill and start over with real reforms. it seems unlikely that that's going to be able to happen. so, really members on both sides of the aisle that were concerned about this bill last night need to work together to repeal the more egregious portions of this bill and ultimately work toward the repeal of the entire bill when the makeup of the congress and the white house has sufficiently changed to allow that to happen. mr. speaker, may i inquire as to how much time remains? madam speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman has six minutes remaining. mr. burgess: great. let me just talk a little bit more about the -- we're talking about the senate-passed bill. would err not talking about the reconciliation bail. we're not talking about the house-passed bill. remember the senate-passed bill in december, there was a senator from connecticut who said, i cannot vote for a bill that's got a public option in it. maybe it's because there's a lot of insurance companies in connecticut, i don't know what the reasoning was, but that

senator was very firm that they would not have his vote and they needed every vote they could to get to 60 so the public option very reluctantly stripped out of the senate bill. but is it really gone? and the answer is, it might not be. now, you have heard that several states around the country are looking at, i believe it's up to 37 was the last count, are looking at either filing a constitutional challenge or somehow exempting their state from participating in this new federal legislation and that also means that they may not set up the state-based exchange that the bill -- the senate bill calls for. well, what happens in a state that doesn't set up an exchange? is there not going to be any exchange so there won't be any insurance in exchange available to citizens of those states? you'd think so. because states should ultimately have sovereignty.

except that there's a little known federal agency called the office of personnel management that is going to be charged with setting up a state-based exchange or a national exchange, every state that doesn't have a state-based exchange, their citizens can buy through this national ex change. and the office of personnel management in the language of the bill is required to set up one insurance company, one for-profit insurance company and one not for profit d. -- not for profit. does this federally administered national exchange not for profit insurance company begin to look a lot like the public option that was discussed in the democrats' bill in the house? the answer is, of course it does. of course it does. the office of personnel management currently administers the federal employee health benefit -- federal health employee benefits plan here for all federal employees, not just in congress but all employees. so they are a relatively small agency.

that's a big insurance plan. but still as federal agencies go, that's a relatively small agency. it is going to have to rapidly ramp up with a great number of new employees, perhaps that's one of the ways we're going to deal one employment is to hire more people in the federal government. but the office of personnel management will have to get considerably larger and this office of personnel management will mao -- now be the at the he de facto public option as it administers the not for profit that's in the national exchange that is available for to people who are in states that don't set up a state-based exchange. it is a public option by another name. unfortunately the senator that sought to prevent that from happening did not see the way this was going work out in their own senate bill, so when i say the doctors who look at retiring from practice, if there's a public option in the bill, perhaps the more they get to understand this public option is

really in the bill, maybe they will think, maybe they will rethink their willingness to continue to work within the system. are there are other ways to change this bill that we passed last night? certainly everyone ought to be treated equally under this bill. and they haven't been. maybe that's one of the technical fixes we can work on. so that there's no geographicities paret, there's no racial disparity, people -- equals ought to be treated equally and that is one of the things that really we should work on. i think we should work on getting rid of the individual mandates and the employer mandates. certainly we could encourage comprehensive coverage for seniors. right now, you know, look what we're doing to medicare advantage, look what we're doing in putting the tax on the sum meble mental insurance. we really -- supplemental insurance. we really should, rather than discouraging seniors from having a medicare advantage plan or

supplemental plan, maybe we ought to encourage that. the medicare advantage plans are doing what we asked them to do. we asked them for care coordinations of these management, expanded health i.t., expanded use of physicians and nurse practitioners, paired professionals. medicare advantage plans are performing those functions. they are just now getting to the point where they're really starting to see the cost savings that we all said would be there if they would do those things and now we're going to take them away, ok, never mindworks he shouldn't have done it anyway -- never mind, we shouldn't have done it anyway. so sorry about that. allow health insurance to be sold across state lines. we talked about this a lot. if you want competition don't have the office of personnel management create a nonprofit that everyone's going to compete with, that's only one other bit of competition. let the 1,300 insurance companies that exist in this country, let them compete. let them compete up on the internet, let them compete across state lines. the portability of insurance, congress attempted to address that back in 1996, arguably made

kind of a mess of things, but if we would do things that would establish and create and enhance portability of insurance we would go a long way toward establishing a longitudinal relationship of patients with their insurance company. if you go from job to job you don't change insurance companies, you have your insurance company and you can take it with you. allow private insurance and alternatives to medicaid and schip. special health savings accounts for the chronically ill. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. burgess: all of these things are out there and within our purrview. these are things we should junds take to fix the egregious problems that are the in the senate-passed bill. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. 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. i very much appreciate being recognized here to address you on the floor of the united states house of representatives in what has been referred to the in the past as the world's greatest deliberative body and what has to struggle to reach that standard these days i would say, madam speaker. you know, we're not done the yet. this legislation passed the house sometime this morning. i'll just say, first of all i'm grateful that this usurpation of american liberty technically in its final phase didn't take place on the is a bath during lent although -- sabbath during lent although some of the votes did take place on the sabbath during lent. our founding fathers would have considered it a -- they would have considered it a serious violation of the standards of decency to assault liberty on

the is a bath, especially during lent and i consider it the same sackry lidges may have been something that would is come to mind. what we've seen is, the senate version of the bill, which came over here to the house and was voted on and it's in the identical form as the senate, was the legislation that most of us heard president obama refer to and i believe it was in the conference february 25 at the blair house as obamacare. obamacare. 30-some more people, 30 -some-million more people put on the rolls and many on medicaid rolls, many of them don't fit the standards that seem to be the higher ideals of the initiation of this legislation. the arguement is there's $1 to billion that will be reducing the deficit over a 10-year period of time. $130 billion over 10 years. the american people can move a

decimal point one place to the left and figure out what that is annually. $13 billion a year by their calculations. madam speaker, i can take you down through the list of the spending that has been out of control by this congress, promoted by the president of the united states, trillions, trillions of dollars added up, $700 billion in tarp, $787 billion which rolled into over $800 billion in the economic stimulus plan of which $9 -- 94% of americans don't believe did any good. and the trillions that have been added that have been advanced by the u.s. treasury. and the debt and the deficit that's created by the obama budget and we're being told that we should give up 100% of our personal control of our own health insurance and health care

in america and completely transform the entire health insurance industry, the entire health care delivery system, when we have 85% of the people in america that today are insured and 85% of them are happy about it. now, we would transform the entire health care delivery system and the health insurance system in america for what? and the argument is we'll reduce the dedeficit by $13 billion a year. mr. speaker, i'd point out that if we were interested in reducing the debt by $13 billion a year it would be a piece of kick to take $13 billion out of the abusive lawsuit that's being drive bin the trial lawyers in america. these numbers come to us in stark relief. they help -- the health insurance underwriters give us an 8% costs in america are driven by the abusive lawsuits and at 8.5%, when you do the calculation comes out to be $207

billion a year. that's the cost of defensive medicine, the litigation, the unnecessary settlements that come, not those that make people whole, and the part that goes directly into the pockets of the trial lawyers in america who are bringing lawsuits and driving physicians to do defensive medicine to the point where the been going on so long that it's taught in our med schools how you protect yourself from litigation, you spend the money on unnecessary tests instead. . these numbers and these estimates go from $207 billion to $210 billion which is a number produced, on up to $650 billion a year. if we were serious about trying to reduce the deficit, we can do this to $13 billion a year for

the entire massive obamacare legislation that was rammed through this congress at a tremendous amount of bone twisting. $113 billion a year, $130 billion over 10 years. think of abottle issuing lawsuits and -- abottle issuing and take that waste out of our health care system. you got to be a piker to brag about $113 billion when you are the president of the united states. and the money they spent to get down to that. and then to add to the reality of this, $130 billion in deficit reduction by the c.b.o., which was under a tremendous amount of pressure. but their credibility may fall into question.

i don't question it tonight, but here are the things to calculate part of that calculation when people hear $130 billion deficit reduction, half a trillion dollars reimbursement rate that are cut out of the reimbursement process today. $500 billion cut out of medicare. nobody believes they will cut out that spending. nobody believes that. the people who voted for this bill don't believe that. and the people who voted for that bill. that's an accounting gym milk that's designed to -- like a red herring. another one of those components of this calculation is $569.2 billion in tax increases, tax increases on medical equipment, equipment, tax increases that

add up $569.2 billion. and another calculation and we'll get the precise number, $200-plus billion for the doctors' fix. $500 billion for medicare to cut the slash of the underreimbursed medicare, according to the c.m.s., the federal government calculation, only reimbursed 80% of the medicare costs and still they would cut half a trillion. add the half a trillion to the $569 billion in tax increases and now you have $1.69,209 ,000,000, those two things change the revenue of this and you add the $200 billion that is

the doctor fix and now you're up to that area of about $1.25 trillion of funding that are distorted in the calculations of the congressional budget office on what? they do the calculation on what's presented to them. we are supposed to be elated over a c.b.o. score of a deficit reduction that i guarantee you, madam speaker, and i would guarantee to the american people as well, we will never realize such a thing. we will see a complete transformation of our health care system except, except that we have launched an effort to repeal this abysmal piece of legislation. i would be very happy to yield so much time as he may consume to the relntless doctor and congressman from texas, who lives this and has made a pledge

of his life effort to come here and get this health care policy in america, dr. burgess. mr. burgess: i thank the gentleman for yielding. lots of things i could say. let me say this on the physician fix on medicare, because that has been something that has been left out of the equation. the democrats do say that they passed the bill last fall, but that the republicans tried to block and senate won't take up. but the fact of the matter is they haven't got it done. what has it cost to repeal the sustainable growth rate formula? i have some familiarity with that because this is something i have worked on ever since i got here. and three years ago, the congressional budget office score to repeal the sustainable growth rate formula was in the neighborhood of $290 billion over 10 years, but what happens as we all know, every year we don't fix the s.g.r., that dollar figure that should have been saved gets added onto the

cost of the fix. there is no way that the cost of fixing the sustainable growth rate formula is $1 less than $300 billion. it is likely $350 billion or more. and what many of us conveniently choose to ignore there will have to be something done to protect seniors who are part b participants, because the premium paid by the seniors in part b is, by law, fixed at 25% of the cost of the part b program the previous year. well, if you add that much money to the cost of the part b program, guess what's going to happen to that senior's 25% of their premium? it's going to go up significantly. in congress, sometimes we don't like to do that because the makes people mad at us and get grouchy and won't vote for us. we are likely to do something to

hold seniors harmless from that rate increase and as a consequence that makes the repealing of the s.g.r. that even higher. some people say it could cost as high as $400 billion, they are talking about the true cost of repealing the s.g.r. and protection for low-income seniors in the part b program. all of that is going to cost money. and that's the reason that that number gets inflated so high. yeah, there were some tricks and gimmicks when the democrats had their bill in the fall to hold that cost down to $240 billion. the fact of the matter remains, it is a huge expenditure that is completely left off the congressional budget office tally sheet. and as a consequence, you aren't being honest with the american people if you said this is going

to be the greatest revenue safer of all time. nonsense. start that story with once upon a time and finish it with happily every after. it is scary when you think what your children is going to face with the amount of debt we are laying at their feet. this is both through democratic and republican-controlled house. they are culpable in this regard and not attesting and not accounting to it in this formula or tally sheet they have and they are going around the country talking about how this is going to be saving the gaitest amount of revenue that anyone has ever seen in peace time. the president is going to sign the bill tomorrow. we is embarking on a tour to sell the american people on the

concept we have passed. that is backwards. shouldn't we have engaged the american people and gathered the popular support from around the country for this bill before we passed it through the house and the senate and signed it down at the white house? this has been their problem all along and i said it before, but it bears repeating. if you do not have popular support for a measure this large, then it's no great surprise that the people push back. and because the people pushed back, yeah the republicans didn't want this and didn't vote for it, but it was the democrats within their own caucus and this was a fight within the democratic caucus because how you could say when you say to your constituents when they have told you in town halls, telephone town halls, emails, cards, faxes, they have said, we don't want you to do this. we don't trust you.

congressional approval rating now is 17% and dropping. we don't trust you to do this. you won't read the bill. you won't take the insurance yourself. why should we believe you that you can do something this large? now, had we taken an alternative approach, which was rejected by the president and rejected by the speaker of the house, had we taken an alternative approach, let's take three things and try to fix them and maybe if we can do that, maybe they'll give us the permission to work on a few more things. instead of 1,000-page bill that became a 2,000-page bill and this was a 3,000-page bill. 2,700 pages -- 4,000 pages and another thousand on reconciliation. that's a great amount to go through in a weekend. rather than doing a $4,000-page

bill, let's do a 50-page bill and try to take care of the problems. here's the sad part, because all of the benefits are shifted out so far, because it's going to take a long time to build the infrastructure and bureaucracy to administer these things, they are going to do some of the things that john mccain suggested during the campaign. they are going to create risk pools and get people some help right away. that's a good thing. i would support that. i would have supported that a year ago, had we said look, we not only want to work on a big health care, but let's get help to the people who need it right now. there is a way we can help them. $20 billion cost over 10 years' time. i think it will be higher. but that is far less than a $20 trillion bill.

why didn't we call in experts and say, how do you get this done? we're still going to pass a bill big at some point, but we want to help these poor folks who have pre-existing conditions today? what do we need to do to help people who are facing retirement. way to buy into medicare or some other type of insurance product that is out there. do something in the marketplace to allow a product to be sold. we didn't have hearing. we just said no. we are going to do mandates, public option. we would love to do single payer if we could pull the wool over the people's eyes. reality, people said no. you can't do that to us. mandates are unconstitution. what about equal protection under the law. the deem and pass they flirted with, really got people in a snip until they backed off on that. why be so fancy about passing

these things? make it a straightforward bill and make it reasonable pages that people can read in one sitting. tell people what you are going to propose. go out amongst the people and find out what they want. this is what i did with the principles i developed for health care reform. i listened to the people at my town halls and listened to the people on telephone town halls. and they said sell across state lines, fairness in the tax code, blah, blah, blah and that's what we want. why didn't we do it that way? instead we have this huge bill that we shove down the throat of the american people. we are up here. our phones have been shut down all weekend. our faxes have been overloaded. so we don't know what people are thinking up here, but i have a hunch they aren't happy what we

have done last night. i yield back to the the gentleman from iowa. mr. king: i thank the gentleman from texas and i know he had trouble sleeping last night. he may be able to get caught up tonight and rest a little. i do not believe that we are going to be forgetting this. i'm not the only one that the first order of business this issued a bill draft request to repeal this legislation that passed the house last night, the senate version of the bill. and it's tapped more than one of us have stepped forward to do that. i'll continue to work on that cause and working to have legislation that can repeal the senate version of the bill. and that can be converted into a discharge petition, that can then bring a repeal to the floor of the house. there are 212 house members that voted against it. that means -- if they'll stick to their conviction and there

was one resignation last night. so that means we have seven more. if all of those would sign on to that and seven would have a conversion, we would be able to bring a repeal to the house. that is one of my efforts and am committed to that. going back to dr. burgess' comments with regard to cost and he said the doctors' fix has to be in the area of $360 billion. and i spoke of the half a trillion cut in medicare reimbursement rates as part of that bill. that's $500 billion. and tax increases in their aggregate, $569.2 billion. that total, things that aren't in this bill that changed the overall cost of the bill are $1 ,429,229,000,0000 that if they

were designed to inform the american people would have shifted the balance of that scoring from a deficit reduction of $130 billion to deficit increase to $1.4 trillion. so we would be in that area, 1,300 billion is what the additional cost of that is massed by the cuts in medicare, tax increases, and by the necessity to pass the doctors' fix. and the net, that would be the net deficit that was created by this bill when you subtract those numbers works out to be $1 .3 trillion. all of this, all of this to solve the problem that the president has identified as us

spending too much money on health care. we spend too much money on health care and the economy is in a downward spiral. and we can't fix the economy unless we first fix health care. the problem with health care is we spend too much money and the president's solution is spending a lot more. speaker pelosi's solution is spend a lot more. so that's what got done last night. the american people end up with a huge liability that goes on to our children, grandchildren and babies yet born will be paying interest on the debt that shows no sign to be reduced any time within the calculations of the people that are in control of this control, that being the white house, the gavel here in the house and the gavel in the united states senate. . when mr. burgess: talks about happily ever hand after, i don't any if there is a happily ever after -- ever after had in america,

bureau we're living with a once upon a time, mr. speaker. i want to roll us back to the stupak amendment and what happened here in the house last night. the stupak amendment was brought forward in the weeks before the november 7 first passage of the house version of the bill. it was driven, i think, by the best merits of seeking to prohibit american taxpayers from having to fund abortions, i'd like to prohibit abortions but if we can prohibit to have taxpayers fund abortions, at least we're maintaining -- main stain -- maintaining the current status quo. that changed last night, mr. speaker. the stupak amendment was motivated and designed to prevent americans from having to pay for the elimination of innocent unborn human life. that was properly motivated and it was very hard work here in this congress. every republican supported constitute pack amendment, 64

democrats voted for the stupak amendment, every one got at least some cover to be able to say, i am pro-life. and that went on from november 7 this cover of being pro-life democrats, on until last night, madam speaker. and now it's a legitimate question to ask, is there such a thing as a pro-life democrat? or was it always a political position that was con drived to posture, to -- con drived to pasture, to -- contrived to posture. i'm having trouble at this point finding a real pro-life democrat . i'm sure some of them in their most private world do care a lot about ending the destruction of innocent unborn human life. but after the stupak amendment, after the long negotiations that took place, after the events that took place yesterday of

congressman stupak in one room, the pro-choice people in another room, shuttle diplomacy going back and forth and finally about 4:00 yesterday congressman stupak held a press conference and revealed that the stupak 12, the dozen, that had pledged that they would hold out to defend innocent unborn human lives and oppose federal funding of abortion decided that they had found a solution that would take them off of the pressure hook and out of the pressure cooker that was being put there by the speaker. and we have to believe that the stupak 12 would have stuck together, this anti-life, anti-liberty bill would have failed last night. but it didn't. now what was the rationale that came before the stupak conference yesterday? and the stupak dozen, i point out that we still don't know who they all are.

we probably know who some of them are. we don't know who they all are. and you can't count votes and you can't count on votes in this united states congress or any legislative body unless the people that are on the list are public. if they say, i will be a no on the senate version of the bill unless there is a fix that will put real pro-life language in it, if they'll step up at the press conference and take their position and make that pledge before god and man, you can generally count on them. a lot of them were pledged by congressman stupak but they were none, madam speaker. and i never -- unanimous, madam speaker. and i never believe that an unanimous oath stuck for anything because they could always flip and vote the other way and when pinned down later on say, i was never won of the stupak dozen. so you -- one of the stupak dozen. so you had the option. those whose names didn't leak out into the press, they had the option to vote yes or no. if they vopetted no on the bill

because it didn't have pro-life protections in it, then after the final vote they could always say, well, i stood up for innocent unborn human life. i was one of the stupak dozen. but if they voted yes, madam speaker, and when they were accused later on of flipping their position and not sticking with their publicly announced convictions on pro-life, perhaps, they could always say, well, i was thever part of the stupak dozen. i really didn't make that pledge or that oath. i didn't tend to keep that, i didn't -- wasn't part of that deal. so don't write me into this presuming that i flipped positions and didn't stick to my convictions because i never announced my convictions. that's what goes on when people who are supposedly part of a coalition remain unanimous and are not -- their names do not become public, their public statements are not part of the record and so therefore they can vote any old way they want to vote. and always hide from the accountability. they don't have to give their

word, they don't have to keep their word. and for months the stupak dozen remained unanimous and now we have to wonder, was there a single member of congress, all democrats on that dozen, by the way, was there a single one that had the courage of their convictions that put up a vote to defend innocent unborn human life or did they all find a way to slip into the excuse of the president of the united states is going to sign an executive order that will take the stupak language and make it law of the land? that's the summary of the stupak conference yesterday as i heard it. the president's executive order makes protection of innocent unborn human life from the assault of american taxpayer dollars, pro-life american taxpayer dollars, protected by an executive order of the president of the united states. now, i have to believe that a duping has taken place here.

we're the people that have to take an oath and we're glad to do it, an oath to up hold the constitution of the united states. we take that oath right down here on the floor together. and i carry the family bible to take my oath on that bible, to uphold this constitution of the united states. and we're upholding a constitution of what we understand the text of the constitution to mean. and what it was understood to mean at the time of its ratification. it cannot be anything else, it cannot be a living, breathing, growing, moving, changing, morphing organism. the constitution has to mean what it says. if it doesn't mean what it says, it's no guarantee whatsoever. it's simply a document that allows the judge or manipulating attorney to manipulate society however they choose to do so. or the constitution could just become instead a shield that an activist judge could hold up and say, hold it, don't criticize

me, that's the constitution, it was my job to interpret it as a growing, breathing, moving, changing, morphing document and because society has changed, the constitution has to adapt to it. that is nuts. it is nuts to think the constitution has any value. if we're going to put it into the hands of an activist judge and have him turn it into something that's malable, that they can shape it in hair thats -- hands however they would want to, there wouldn't be any reason for a constitution if it was growing, moving, changing, morphing. it's got to mean, the text of it has got to mean what it was understood to mean at the time of the ratification of the basic document, the bill of rights or each of the amendments in their time as they came through. and the founding fathers put provisions in place so if they weren't satisfied with this constitution, its text and its orange understanding then we could amend it. fair amount of wisdom. it's a high bar. but still it needs to be a high

bar to amend the constitution because this is our guarantee. and to think that we would have members of this united states congress at this very high and presumably well educated, well informed and sfift cadded -- sophisticated level, it would take an oath to uphold this constitution, each two years as they are seated in this congress , and believe somehow this congress, this constitution doesn't mean what it says, that there really isn't what you'd call a separation of powers, that the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government somehow are not defined specifically in here with our individual duties, all legislative powers are vested in the congress. they're vested -- not vested in the president of the united states. article 1, section 1, all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a congress of the united states which shall consist of a senate and a house of representatives.

all legislative powers, madam speaker. and yet, congressman stupak and the other 11 of the stupak dozen found it convenient to believe that this doesn't mean what it says, that a president of the united states can amend the legislation of the land, the law of the land by executive order? who could dream of such a thing? what kind of a country could we have if the president could amend our legislation, the federal code, by executive order? any president could come in then on a whim and amend the very reason deliberations of the house and the senate, that we've come together and concurred and sent the document to the president of the united states to be signed into law, and the president could then just simply sign an executive order to change it, if the president can could to do that why didn't he

just -- can do that why didn't he just write the entire obamacare package? if he can run this country by executive order, you don't need a legislative branch, unless we come together to appropriate money. this is the kind of thinking that subverts our constitution. this initiated and promised from the president of the united states who used to teach constitutional law at the university of chicago as aned a junction professor. i'll just read this again in case we forget what article 1, section 1 says. you start off simply rife after the preamble. all legislative powers here in granted shall be vested in a congress of the united states which shall consist of a senate and house of representatives. the gentleman from michigan, the 11 other gentlemen and gentleladies that are part of the stupak 12 found something

that was the best deal they could find, to let them do what they were probably willing to do for a long time before they find little -- finally capitulate and that's vote for this -- capitulated and that's vote for this socialized medicine -- socialized bill. so they'll migrate what political power is instead of standing on their convictions. how could this be? the president of the united states will sign an executive order that alters the legislative language of the united states congress. what utter arrogance on the part of the white house, what utter naivety at best on the part of the members of this congress to buy into such a thing. madam speaker, i'm not without experience in this category. i didn't just open up the constitution and read article 1, section 1. i have a deep and long history

with defending the constitution and the separation of powers and in fact as a state senator i exercised that at some expense to myself and my family. as a state senator i took an oath to uphold the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of iowa. . sometime in 1999, i received a fax and i don't know where it came from, but it was a photo copy of an article written in "the washington blade" and it said, the governor had signed an executive order that granted special protective status for gender identity and it was -- it

took get credit for that executive order advancing the special rights of those who read "the washington blade" newspaper. it seemed that someone had expected that would be sent out here and posted in the newspaper and nobody in iowa would have picked up on it. but someone cut it out and faxed it to me. i read the article and checked the iowa administrative bulletin and there on page 632, i found the executive order. now the governor had had a press conference that day and talked about several other actions on his part, but didn't talk about the executive order, granting special status. and i went to our attorneys and i said this is a violation of the sprigs of powers. i believe he is legislating by

executive order and i believe that is a constitutional violation. and the attorneys on our side of this analyzed it and said no, you're wrong. this is very carefully written and artfully drafted in such a way that it isn't a violation of the constitution and this executive order will stand. it didn't make sense to me and they couldn't explain it to me. it isn't because i can't understand it, it might be they don't either. i sat down at the word processer and put the language in the iowa code. i typed it in so i had the words to work with and took executive order number 7 on page 632 and i patched that into the code of the civil rights code, iowa law, just like our federal code here, federal law, and what struck out words in the iowa code, put strike throughs in them and

underlines in them and i had a document that showed me what the code of iowa would read like if that executive order were allowed to stand. and it was clear to me that the governor had legislated by executive order and added two more categories to the special protected status and was patterned after the civil rights act and the code. it was clear to me that the governor had legislated by executive order. i didn't have anybody who agreed with me, but i agreed with it. but i wrote up an analysis and i sent it out to about a dozen of people out there whose judgment i trusted and asked them to give me an opinion. and that was on a thursday night. before i got an opinion back, i was driving down the road at 15:15 listening to one of our

radio talk show hosts in iowa, who happens to be one of the people that is talking on who radio and that is the original station where ronald reagan had a microphone. so anyone who has access to that microphone has a legacy to uphold and as our talk show host was talking, he brought up this executive order which i didn't think anybody knew about it, but me and he began going down through a list of items he objected to it and as i listened, it occurred to me this sounds like the points i had set out the night before to my friends. and i pulled my pickup truck -- where i come from, just a pickup -- off the gravel road and i dialed on my cell phone into that radio program and he asked me what i thought and i told

him. i said i believe the governor is legislating by executive order. i believe it's a violation of the separation of powers. and he said what he is going to do, senator? and i said, i'm going to sue the governor. and he asked me, do you have the support of the legislature? i said there are 150 of us between the house and the senate. and if 149 of them think it's a bad idea, i'm suing him anyway because he has violated the constitution of the state of iowa by legislating by executive order. now, to move this longer story into a shorter vrgs, it comes down to this, i through on this. there were a number of people who joined me as plaintiffs. i'm glad they did and they were stalwart. but the case of king versus vilsack went to the court and

the courts found in favor of me and the people who stood up to defend the constitution and vacated the executive order, because it was unconstitutional. it was an attempt by an executive officer to legislate by executive order rather than allow the constitutional authority of the legislative branch to make those decisions. that was vacated by the courts. and i believe it was the help to the administration, the vilsack administration so they didn't follow down that path and continue to try to run the state of iowa without regard to respect for the legitimate authority of the legislative branch. well, now, governor vilsack is the secretary of agriculture. we have had our times together. but i'm appreciatetive of that time, because that gave me the background and it gave me the responsibility to analyze these

issues and come to a fundamental conclusion. the governor can't legislate by executive order. neither can a president. it's the height of arrogance to think you can do so especially when the president has so much on the record that would say otherwise. and i would point out that president obama vast very, very critical of president bush for his signing statements, not executive orders that would amend a statute, that hasn't even gotten to the president's desk but a signing statement that points out reservations about constitutionality about certain segments of a bill. here is what president obama said about signing statements. march 9, 2009, been inaugurated for a couple of months, and the title of this memo is, from the white house, memorandum for the

heads of executive departments and agencies, subject, presidential signing statements. remember, this is the president who as a candidate was critical of president bush for his signing statements. and he says this. in recent years, there has been considerable public discussion and criticism of the use of signing statements to raise constitutional objections to statutory provision. this is a president who has objections to the out lization of signing statements, which i have some of those same reservations to be objective in this. and he goes on, there is no doubt that the issuing of such statements can be abused. continuing, constitutional signing statements should not be used to suggest that the president will disregard statutory requirements on the basis of policy disagreements. hm. let me read that again.

constitutional signing statements. constitutional signing statements should not be used to suggest that the president will disregard statutory requirements on the basis of policy disagreements. that's president obama as recently as march 9, 2009, and here he is, well, march 21, now the 22, 2010, so let's just call this a year and a couple of weeks later, the president of the united states apparently believes that he can go beyond the signing statements, even though he is critical of signing statements and the constitutional signing statements should not be used to suggest that the president will zrarled statutory requirmentse -- disregard statutory requirements. apparently it is a policy disagreement between bart stupak and the other 11, however ano, ma'am mouse they might be and

those who were willing to vote for this bill regardless, but we know the president of the united states doesn't disagree with the policy in the bill that he's about to sign tomorrow. he and bart stupak disagree, as do the 11, as do every 11 that voted for the stupak amendment and those part of the 64 democrats. but the president has taken a position that signing statements are to be used carefully and with great restraint even though he said as a candidate, he didn't support signing statements as -- at all. the president is saying he can amend a piece of legislation that has been fought over since last july by everybody in america and finally passes the house of representatives and goes to the president's desk and going to amend it by executive order to keep bart stupak.

and i sued a governor to make the point that the chef executive officer of the state or the united states has no authority to amend legislation by executive order. the decision is in the books. this executive order doesn't have any weight or substance. it will either be thrown out in court or be disregarded. mr. stupak has to know that. another thing that the president went on and said with signing statements, i quote, with these considerations in mind and based upon advice of the department of justice, president speaking through his memo, i will issue signing statements to address constitutional concerns only when it is appropriate to do so as a means of discharging my constitutional responsibilities. in issuing statements i shall

adhere to the principles. only when it is appropriate to do so as a means of discharging my constitutional responsibilities. the president doesn't have the constitutional responsibility to sign an executive order. it would alter the language of the legislation. that's the responsibility of this congress. and to think that there would be a piece of legislation that was passed here that could not have passed, if the convictions of the people that were required to vote for it would have been reflected in their vote. but, no, the false promise of an executive order brings about the flip of a dozen votes and a bill that couldn't pass. in fact the bill that couldn't pass the united states senate today passed the floor of the house last night and on its way to the president because the president promised an executive order that would, in effect, amend the legislation that will soon be signed into law. it is a constitutional violation

. i have been to court to prove it. and i will go further and say, why would anybody believe that it's the intent of the president to follow through on such a thing if in the hypothetical situation he had the authority to sign an executive order that would bring about this effect. why would anybody believe this. i went back today and looked through the transcripts of the illinois state senate and here's what i find, state of illinois, 92nd general assembly, senate transcript, 20th legislative day, march 30, 2001, not so old in our time. where is the president on the issue of protecting innocent unborn human lives? well, before the illinois legislature, several times the illinois born-alive infants' protection act was introduced to

provide legal protection to all born babies wanted or not, and it gave them them the right to medical care. then senator barack obama voted multiple times against such legislation. the president has not stood up to defend innocent human life. when he was asked back in august of 2008 when life begins. his answer was, that's above my pay scale. well, he seemed to think it was not above his pay scale when he spoke on the floor of the senate that day and the sum total of the dialogue of the president would tell any careful reader with a somewhat critical eye that the president of the united states must believe that a woman who is seeking an abortion even though the baby survived the attempted abortion has the right

to a dead baby anyway. here's what i read from that transcript on that day, which is march 30, 2001. the floor of the illinois senate. and the question came from senator obama, thank you, madam president. will the sponsor yield for questions? the responder indicates, he will. then state senator obama followed with this. this bill was extensively debated in the judiciary committee and so i won't belabor the issue. i do want to make sure that everybody in the senate makes sure they know what this bill is about as i understand it. senator o'malley, the testimony during the committee indicated that one of the concerns was, is, there was a method of abortion, induced abortion where the -- the fetus or child, as some might describe it, is still

temporarily alive outside the womb. and one of the concerns that came out in the testimony was the fact that they were not being properly cared for during that brief period of time that they were still lifing. is that correct? is that -- lisk. is that one of the key concerns in the bill? senator o'malley apparently responded and, the sponsor of the bill said, senator obama, it is a key concern the way children are treated following the birth has been reported to be in my opinion, less than humane. this bill suggests that it be treated as a citizen of the united states and afforded all the rights and protections under the constitution of the united

states. senator obama responded, well, it turned out that during the testimony, a number of members who are typically in favor of a woman's right to choose, woms's right to choose an abortion were actually sympathetic to some of the concerns that your -- you raised and were raised by witnesses in the testimony. and there was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster with carrying forth fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. senator obama continued, this bill goes a little bit further so i want to suggest that i think it will make -- excuse me, i just want to suggest not that i think it will make too much difference with respect to how we vote, that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. number one, whenever we

determine a previable fetus that is protected by the equal protection clause and other elements in the constitution, what we're saying is that they are persons that are entitled to this consideration. in any case, watching the clock tick down, madam speaker, i'm going to follow with this -- let's see -- they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a child, a nine-month-old, a child that was delivered to term. in other words, he draws a distinction between the unborn child that is struggling for life after the attempted abortion and the child that's nine months old and goes on, quote, that determination, if it was accepted by a court would forbid abortions to take place, it would essentially bar abortions because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child. so he admits that. and closing the quote there, he

admits then abortion is killing a child, if you allow that child to be named as a citizen of the united states by law. . and if this is a child and this would be an antiabortion statute for that purpose, i think it would be found unconstitutional. the second reason that it would be found unconstitutional is for this, it see lentionsy says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a pre-viable child or fetus. however way you may want to describe it, viability is the line that has been drawn by the supreme court to determine whether or not an abortion can or cannot take place. closed quote. not true, actually, madam speaker. they didn't draw that line, they made exceptions for life or health of the mother and that includes now, according to dole versus bolton, as the economic or familiar al health of the perspective mother whom i consider as a mother of the that day. it goes on. i bring this down to a

conclusion. the president of the united states continues all this dialogue on the floor of the illinois senate, standing up in opposition to the life of a child survived an abortion from being starved to death and the door closed to no one can hear that child scream itself to death. the president argues in the substance of this that a woman has a right to a dead baby and particulars this way, as a consequence, and this is a quote, as a consequence i think that we will probably end up in court once again as we often do on this issue. and as a consequence, i will be voting present, closed quote. this president said wie vote present on the issue of the born alive act which is the most outrageous position and it finds itself in direct contradiction to the born alive act that is

almost identical to the illinois act that was passed unanimously in this united states congress in the house and by a voice vote in the senate, or vice vera, i don't remember which way, with opposition in each chamber but opposition in the chamber of the illinois senate by the president of the united states who now we're going to trust to write an executive order that's not going to be constitutionally upheld? that doesn't have the convictions of the president but it gives just the smallest of fig leaves for the stupak dozen. that's what the american people have seen, madam speaker. it's what brings some of their outrage. but shifting subjects and bringing this into the congressional record and towards the conclusion, i'll point out a press release that does give me some hope. it's a press relief that also comes from chicago a.p., headline is this, "acorn

disbanding because of money woes and scandal." it's an article by michael tarm. and it was filed at 8:57 p.m. fairly fresh news for us. it says the once mighty community activist group acorn announced monday it is folding amid falling revenues. six months after a video footage emerged showing its workers giving tax tips to conservative activists, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, hm. in six months, according to this article, brought about the destruction of acorn. acorn. the criminal enterprise, acorn that's been involved in advocating for a community reinvestment act and then deciding they're the brokers of who's riding the most bad -- writing the most bad loans in bad neighborhoods, 400,000 fraudulent voter registration forms, acorn that's been under prosecution in multiple states,

at least 14, i believe, it's 16 states in the country, for voter fraud, voter registration fraud, a number of other activities, acorn, the organization that was raided -- rated in new orleans -- raided in new orleans, louisiana, at their headquarters and the attorney general of the state of louisiana brought ute a massive amount of records, copied those records for acorn and they're being sorted through to this day. acorn, the organization that seemed to want to change its single but it couldn't change the forces -- faces of the organization. and the pressure from this congress shut off funding to acorn. the united states senate shut off funding to acorn. thanks to senator johanns who offered the amendment to get that done. and then there was the judge in the eastern district of new york who decided that congress didn't have a constitutional authority to end funding to a multiple

criminal enterprise entity because we failed, our government failed, our solicitor general apparently failed to make the argument before the eastern district of new york that congress had some motive other than punitive. and so there was an unprecedented decision made by a judge and she ruled that it was a bill retaineder and we shouldn't have punished acorn because acorn had funding to grants and contracts, not only what's going on in the past but in the future because they've been successful in the past and congress failed to prove. well, there isn't going to be that center of acorn to appropriate funds to as long as we keep the pressure up, madam speaker. america's a better place because of this good news tonight. i am not convinced that this is the end of acorn. i think people like that reform again and shape new organizations and come back in an insidious way but we've got to follow and track all of the money all the way down. we've got to stand up for the

principle of life, we've got to stand up for the constitution, we've got to respect article 1, section 1, where all legislative authority is vested in the constitution of the united states, follow through on acorn, the sun did come up this morning even though it was behind the cloud and there was some free air left in america. madam speaker, i thank you for your indulgence and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. is there a motion to adjourn? mr. king: madam speaker, i move the house do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is agreed to. accordingly the house stands adjourned until 10:30 a.m.

>> extended coverage to 32 million uninsured americans. no republicans voted for the bill and 34 democrats voted against it. a companion package of changes sought by house democrats is headed to the senate tomorrow. for more in permission, visit c- span.org -- for more information, visit c-span.org. the senate panel approved changes to banking regulations. the next mark up is next on c- span. after that, hillary clinton addresses the apac conference.

later, the israeli prime minister at that same conference. >> our public affairs content is available on television, radio, and on line. you can also connect with us through twitter, facebook and youtube. sign up for our schedule alert e-mails @ c-span.org. >> now to the senate banking committee for a markup session on financial regulations. chris dodd is the chairman. this is 25 minutes. we will we have had planes coming in late because of the weather. they will be here momentarily. we will begin the process. we cannot do any business until we have a quorum but we can do

other things like make opening statements. let me share with my colleagues how we would like to proceed. today, we're going to consider the original committee bill. there is a lot: on this evening. my members and colleagues know that the leadership has scheduled some votes occurring some time around 5:30 or thereafter. my intention is to be a least able to get -- to have senator shelby and me to make our opening statements. i would like to proceed as expeditiously as we can on these matters. and what i will do right now is begin by making opening comments. if they are very brief despite

the magnitude of this particularly -- particular undertaking. a lot of this has been said already in many different places. let me share some opening comments and i will turn to my colleague and friend dick shelby to make any opening comments he might have. by then, hopefully we will have a working corymb to proceed with motions. with that in mind, for three years, as we are aware, to win back to the first meetings in this. broom, home foreclosures. -- the facts are obvious.