SAC Act

Mr. Speaker, it's the first day of a new work week here, and we're going to talk about restoring the rule of law.

You know, we've talked about this now for about 14 weeks. It's so important that we talk about the rule of law because, quite frankly, it's what keeps our society together. It's what makes us different from anybody else and what makes America different from everybody else. And, you know, it's so simple that we take it for granted.

Every American that--I'll bet you can stop anybody on the street and ask them about their rights and they all know what their rights are because they're Americans and they know they have rights. But what does it mean to have rights? Well, what it means is you have a place, you have a set of rules that establishes your rights.

Now, our Constitution says certain rights are inalienable and given by your Creator. That means that all men are born with those rights. These are rights of liberty and freedom. When we had the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, that's what we were talking about. You're born with these rights. These are the rights of free men everywhere. They are inalienable. They are given by the great Creator of the universe.

But everybody also knows I've got a right to free speech, I've got a right to assembly, I've got a right to a lawyer. And at all ages you can say, That's my right. That's my right. It is your right, but it becomes your right because it is enforceable, and that means that we have established a set of rules that our society operates under. And under those rules, there's a set of rules that's usually in the courts that enforce your rights, protect your rights.

You know, for 20 years I tried criminal cases and other cases, and we spend most of our time, at least the judges that sit in these court cases, we spend our time making sure people's rights are protected. And we have a whole series of cases that establish rights of criminal cases. Enough of you have watched television to know a lot about--we're some of the most educated, nonlawyers in the country, the folks who watch television in the United States, because we know about Miranda rights. So we know about other rights. In other countries maybe they don't know about them. Now, why wouldn't they know about them? Because they don't have them, okay. That's it. They don't have them.

And there are places on this Earth, and most of them are in Third World countries, where the rule of law does not prevail, where the average citizen doesn't have a place to go get recourse, recourse for injury that's happened to them in some form or fashion, a way to enforce a contract.

There are countries full of good people, but they haven't established the rule of law to the extent that the average citizen can protect their little plot of land or protect their little business or make a deal with somebody, a contract, and then when the other side doesn't do it, enforce that contract against them because the rule of law does not prevail. For whatever reason, whether it be history or culture, whatever it is, it doesn't prevail.

And so if a rich person or a wealthy group of people who wanted to go invest in that place or maybe they have a dictatorial system or they have a socialist, communist system that hasn't established a rule of law, so you can't go enforce it.

You know, when Russia first opened up and started working on capitalism, I had a friend who went over there and opened a clothing store. And if he's listening, he knows who I am talking about. And he said the problem was the clothing store was as popular as it could be and everybody wanted to buy American-cut suits, they wanted to look like Americans, prosperous Americans, and he had a booming business; but unfortunately he had to pay cash for everything.

He couldn't make a contract with somebody based on a bill of lading or anything like that at the time because he wasn't sure he'd be able to enforce it if he had to take it to court. He was afraid he would be out on a limb. And, quite honestly, he pointed out the Russians were doing the very best to correct that, and maybe they have. I haven't kept up with it. But it was putting a real strain on his national clothing chain that he tried to take to Russia.

I hope he fixed it. I don't know. I haven't talked to him in years

But the point is at the beginning of the establishment of capitalism in the former Soviet Union, in Russia, the rule of law had not come down to where you could feel comfortable with making contracts with people and believe they could be enforced. And hopefully that's been fixed. I would assume

it has because I had the good pleasure to go to Russia with the Homeland Security Department and, quite frankly, they're doing pretty well over there. Looked like to me, anyway. Lots of stores and lots of prosperous-looking people.

But the glue that holds society together that allows you to trade both inside and outside your country is the rule of law; there are rules and regulations that everybody is a part of, everybody is protected by and required to abide by. That's a basic premise in American society.

Now, we went through a time when there was sort of a 60s rebellion against the establishment, and people would say things like, It's okay to rob from ``the man,'' but you can't rob from the little guy. And ``the man'' was the big guy. Now, nobody really defined who the big guy was. Of course, everybody knew that Coca-Cola was the big guy and Exxon was the big guy and U.S. Steel was the big guy. But was it the neighborhood grocery? Was he the big guy? Well, yeah, maybe if he was big enough, if he had more than two grocery stores.

In other words, somebody was saying it was okay to break the law if somebody was really a lot better off than you were. That was insanity. That was when I was in law school. And we debated all of this in law school. And it was insanity. Because if you've got rules, you've got to abide by the rules; and if you're going to decide you don't like a rule, you're not going to abide by the rule, then you don't get the rule of law. You get anarchy.

Well, the United States Congress has rules. We write those rules down. The first set of rules was written by Thomas Jefferson; and to a great extent, we still follow those rules of decorum and procedure in this House of Representatives by using Thomas Jefferson's manual on this place. Now some of it's been changed and altered. I think most of them are basic fairness, basic honesty, fair treatment for all concerned; and you're supposed to abide by those rules.

We have rules that we run our government by, and those rules, they bind all of us. We have certain forms that we have to file; we have to tell people what our income is. You know, it's a funny world we live in because the American people are generally private about what they make, and it's kind of ``none of your business'' in most families to ask somebody what's your daddy--what kind of salary does your daddy make? What's your husband make? It's kind of a none-of-your-business question.

Unless you're in the public eye. If you're in public life, it's everybody's business what you make. And you're required to report what you make. And if you don't report it, there are penalties for that.

All of these things are some of the stuff we've been talking about.

But I would argue that we have some certain subjects that are really of concern to the American people today, and we've been talking about one pretty consistently, talking about Chairman Rangel's issues. I am going to move past those for today. They may get mentioned a bit. We're going to talk about some things we talked about in the past, but I think there's a passion for these issues among the American people.

Part of that passion is the man we elected President because he told us, ``I am campaigning on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. I don't want to send the message to the American people that there are two sets of standards: one for the powerful people and one for the ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.''

So the President set the standard back in February, on February 3 on CNN, 2009. That standard is going to be out there right now. And that's just right. I don't think there's any American that's going to argue with that. That's right, nobody is above the law. Nobody gets to not abide by the rule of law, because the rule of law governs our society; and that's basically what the President is saying. Nobody because of who they are, what office they hold, how much money they've got in the bank should get any other privileges above and beyond what ordinary people get.

Now, we've got some issues tonight. Let me say we're going to talk about a lot of stuff. But several people last week thought we were going to talk about some of that stuff, and one of the things that they wanted to talk about was the czars. Let me be real clear up front. We're going to get to the czars in just a minute. So if anybody's listening that wanted to talk about the czars but thought we weren't talking about it, come on down. We're looking for you.

Just briefly, I'm going to tell you in my opinion one of the things that most people are most upset about is this outfit called ACORN. This outfit was supposed to be a do-good public service, the group that was out there organizing communities and organizing groups so that we could have a better country.

So they got really involved in working on elections last time, and here's some of the results: in Colorado they were charged with voter fraud, multiple counts, with convictions; in Florida, vote fraud, cases are pending; in Michigan, voter fraud, multiple counts with convictions; Minnesota vote fraud, multiple counts with convictions; Missouri, vote and mail fraud, identity theft, multiple counts with convictions; Nevada, vote fraud, multiple counts pending; Ohio, vote fraud, multiple counts with convictions; Pennsylvania, vote fraud, multiple counts with convictions; and the same thing in Washington State.

So this good group has not been doing good things, nor have they been abiding by the rule of law.

Now, we have a bill that's been introduced by Minority Leader John Boehner to defund ACORN. And what he's basically saying in this is the American people have looked at this, they've listened to this stuff that's going on, they've watched these videos of these people advising folks about child prostitution and prostitution and so forth, and they've said we've had enough of these people and we darn sure don't want to pay for them. We don't want to pay them to go out and break the law.

And so the fact that they received millions of dollars in Federal funding offends people because they're not following the law.

So John Boehner has proposed that no Federal contract, grant, cooperative agreement or any other form of agreement will be awarded or entered into with the organization known as ACORN. No Federal funds will be given to ACORN; no Federal employees may promote ACORN; and that ACORN includes State chapters, organizations with financial stakes in ACORN, and organizations that share directors and employees with

Reclaiming some of my time, I'm glad you brought up the smelt in the San Joaquin Valley, because it's kind of interesting. Until this came up, most people in America probably didn't even know that the San Joaquin Valley is considered the breadbasket of this country. Now here is something interesting. It rained cats and dogs in Texas this week. We were real happy for that rain. But it meant my wife and I stayed indoors one Sunday afternoon because there wasn't anything else to do. And the movie ``Treasure of the Sierra Madre'' with Humphrey Bogart was on television. That movie was made in 1948.

One of the characters in the movie was reminiscing about what they were going to do with their share of the gold. And he said, and it struck me because I have been talking to Devin Nunes so much about this tragedy that is going on in the San Joaquin Valley and that whole valley region of California, and this character says, ``I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural region in California, growing fruit. And the happiest days I ever had was right after the harvest, when all the workers got together and celebrated the harvest. And if I get out of here, what I want to do is get me an orchard with my money.''

It struck me, because he was talking about the fact that in 1948 that was a major production region. Now the only way that region could produce anything is with water. It is the desert. I live in the desert. If you look at an 1845 map of the United States, starting just west of Kansas, you will see a sign that says ``Great American Desert.'' It goes all the way across the Rocky Mountains to California. And Texas is within the Great American Desert. We used to joke about it when I was in school, let's drive across the Great American Desert to Dallas. But the truth is, those of us who live in a water shortage State, and Wyoming has to have underground water or it wouldn't be able to exist, we know the value of water. That's why a vast majority of our laws have something to do as far as our land with water.

Taking away the water in the San Joaquin Valley is taking away a growing region, which I have evidence from the movie, that was prospering in 1948. Now how long ago was that? Sixty years ago. Now it's a shame that like you say, some laws that ought to have some exceptions don't. And we have unemployed people in literally entire counties.

It's a great thing to talk about when you talk about the rule of law. That's the responsibility of legislators. That's the responsibility of Congress people. When you have a rule of law that has to be changed, you shouldn't take to the streets with guns unless you have got a tyrannical society, which is what we had when we had our revolution. You should take it to the legislature with votes and change the laws that need to be changed. Make the exceptions to make things work. And this body would decide what is best for everyone involved. That's what ought to be happening.

Certainly.

That's right. Reclaiming a portion of my time, Greg Walden, Culberson and Brian Baird have H. Res. 554, the 3-day reading rule, which just basically they want to put in writing and have this body adopt as a--agreed by both sides voting on, legislation must be available to Members and the public for 72 business hours before taking action, requires the full text of the legislation and each committee report to be posted continuously on the Internet. And by the way, this is what one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, thought was a good idea, and we're just basically redefining his rules and modernizing it a little bit with the Internet.

But an interesting thing you said--we keep talking about this health care plan and I want to get on to other things, but it's an important thing, but there will be another health care debate later--and that is, it's important, but you need to look at history. I just saw on television the oldest health care plan in the world was created by Otto Von Bismarck in Germany when he united Germany, so it's the oldest one they've got. They tried all ways of funding it, but it comes down to coming out of your paycheck. And today, in Germany, 42 cents out of every dollar is taken out by the government to pay for the health care program, and they're having real problems with it in the modern world.

So, there's lots to be talked about, and what you said is right; let's talk. And by the way, something else. The Senate supposedly passed something today, but they haven't got it in writing. In fact, they passed something which is a concept. I think this is a new thing. I have never quite heard anything like this. They passed a concept, which none of it has been reduced to writing the way I understand it. So it's just we've got a bunch of ideas and here's what they are, and we're not going to write them down because somebody might hold us to them. So we're just going to say we've got some great ideas and we pass it. What is that?

Yes, I will yield.

I see my friend Louis Gohmert from Texas is here, and I'm going to yield to him in just a moment. But that kind of reminds me of ``Animal Farm,'' you know. They would say the rule is this, and the next day they would say, Oh, that's not what the rule is. The rule is this. Finally, they said, We're going to write them on the wall of the barn. So every night they wrote the rules on the wall, and then when they woke up the next morning, somebody had gone and erased the rules and added new rules. See, there is a reason why this body has the rules that it has, so that we and the American people can be educated about what we're doing. And concepts, that just doesn't get it done.

I yield whatever time Mr. Gohmert would like to have.

I thank my friend for yielding.

My good friend from Iowa is here, which brings up another rule of law issue that we've been discussing. I know he wants to talk about it, so I'm going to shift gears here.

I am first going to talk about Marsha Blackburn's H. Con. Res. 185, reining in the czars. And she is proposing that the President will report on the responsibilities, qualifications, and authorities of his special assistants, known as czars. She is saying the President will certify that czars will not assert powers beyond those granted by law to a commissioned officer on the President's staff, and that Congress will hold hearings on the President's report and certification within 30 days, I assume, after the receipt of those reports. All of this is a part of multiple pieces of legislation that are out there now talking about czars.

I'm going to yield to my friend, Congressman King from Iowa, as much time as he needs to consume. And I've got some kind of interesting stuff he might want to use here.

I yield to the gentlelady from Wyoming again.

I, too, and I think Brother King also supports the auditing of the Federal Reserve. It's our money. We want to know what's going on. We want to make sure we know that things are right. We are not questioning anybody's honesty; we just want to know what's going on. We are at a point in our society right now where it's pretty desperately needed to know.

I want to say one more thing: Mr. King's comment on the safe schools czar, what he is proposing is against the law, this man boy sex thing. Aggravated sexual assault of a child is the number one sexual offense in America today, at least by my experience. In 20, almost 21, years on bench, I tried--that used to be called rape. I tried lots of aggravated sexual assault cases. One out of probably a thousand was two adults and all the rest were children.

Now that will tell you, at least in my experience, in an active trial court, where I was--in fact, the one adult I was sitting as a visiting judge in Travis County, it wasn't even my county. As far as I know, over all my side, where I was trying my cases, we had three courts. I only saw aggravated sexual assault of the child cases and that means it's just rampant because the victim is unable to be a very good witness sometimes because they are so young.

It is a very tragic situation. It just shocks me that somebody that would be advocating those things would be put by a responsible administration in charge of safety in our schools. It is shocking.

I yield to Mr. King from Iowa.

That is right.

I thank my friend for coming down here and talking about a new subject, but a subject that is important. These czars, when we have got individual issues on the rule of law, we ought to talk about them. And I encourage all my colleagues, if they have issues about laws that they don't think are being enforced right or that they are concerned about the enforcement of, that is what this hour is about. It is about the rule of law.

I thank you for bringing up that issue. I hope everyone will be very concerned about the issues that you raised today.

Mr. Speaker, we thank you for the hour, and we will yield back the balance of our time.

I thank the gentleman from Texas and the general from Georgia for their leadership on these issues. And once a week, at least, we see the judge from Texas down here laying out the conscience of the Congress. And this ACORN issue is something that has burned within me for several years.

I looked back through some of the Records, and I introduced an amendment to unfund ACORN in 2007. Back then, we couldn't get any traction. And as much as has been filled out on the case of ACORN, as much as we learned about ACORN during the last Presidential election-- and I think it was very useful because that was a time that America started to pay attention, Mr. Speaker. And we remember that ACORN announced that they had filed 1.3 million new voter registrations during the Presidential election cycle in 2008. And now they're advertising that people should send them a check and help fund their operation to go down there and demonstrate against Sheriff Judge Arpaio, the tent city, pink underwear Sheriff Arpaio. I think that that is a persecution that's going on. But they're trying to raise money to do that.

And the mailing that they have--and it's an Internet document. They still claim that they registered 1.3 million new voters. Well, the numbers are closer to 450,000 legitimate voter registrations. And ACORN has admitted to over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registrations. Now, one is too many for me. And we've seen the hue and cry of somebody who was in 2000 driving to vote in Florida, and perhaps they were going to vote for Al Gore, and a mile and a half away they went through a checkpoint to see if they were sober and had a driver's license, and they claimed that to be voter intimidation.

If one person lost their nerve and didn't want to go through the police checkpoint because they were drunk or didn't have a license, that was a voter intimidation on the part of the folks that were on Al Gore's side back in the year 2000.

ACORN can produce over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registrations, and America can't get up in arms until we see child prostitution promoted in five ACORN offices across this city, in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., in Brooklyn, in San Bernardino, and in San Diego, California, and more to come.

And now they're under a lawsuit. ACORN decides they're going to go out and punish people that have brought out the truth if they can and use the court to intimidate.

Now, when ACORN makes a statement that, well, we only produced over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registration forms, never fear, it was all in the exercise of trying to get somebody's good vote in there, but no bad votes came out of that, no fraud came from that. Oh, really.

They're being investigated. You say 12 States, then 14 States. Today it came out 20 States.

Today the trial of ACORN started in the State of Nevada. ACORN, as an entity, has been indicted by the prosecution in Nevada, and they have their chief organizer in Nevada is testifying against ACORN saying, Here's our pamphlet, our policy. We were paying commissions and paying a bounty for voter registrations. And, additionally, it came out in the news that in Troy, New York, they have dozens of fraudulent votes that were cast on absentee ballot that were promoted by ACORN.

Now, if there's anything that chisels away and cuts off the underpinnings of our Constitution it is fraudulent election process. And when the American people lose their faith that we have a legitimate process, the result of that will be, then, nothing holds together. You can't expect the President, the United States Senate, the United States House, or any system of government to be consented to by the people if the people don't believe they've consented in a national, legitimate ballot. That is the Banana Republic measure. And there is no entity in America that has been more active or aggressive in the history of this country and undermining the underpinnings of our Constitution than ACORN, a criminal enterprise and an entity in and of itself in many other enterprises than the fraudulent votes.

But I think at that component of this, I would yield back to the gentleman from Texas. I have a little bit more to say about ACORN hopefully a little bit later.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

I was thinking about the description of what is big money and what is $1 trillion and how do you put that into a concept now. Some of us from the part of the country I come from, we think in terms of corn. So to put that into perspective, the State of Iowa, the lead State in corn production, is going to have a good crop this year. It's going to have the best average yields that we have ever had, probably a few less bushels than we have produced though in the past, and we are going to raise about $10 billion worth of corn, maybe a little less than that, but about $10 billion.

Now all the corn that Iowa raises, just the value of that $10 billion, if we do that for 10 years, that's $100 billion. We do that for an entire century, that's $1,000 billion, $1 trillion. So 100 years of all the corn we can raise in Iowa is $1 trillion. A full century of all the corn that we can raise in what it's worth today, or what it was worth when I figured this, the markets have gone down a little bit, that is $1 trillion.

Now to take care of Obama's deficit created by his budget this year, that is $9.7 trillion. You can just think, 970 years of all the corn that Iowa could raise committed just to taking care of the deficit created by his budget would be just about right. And if you want to look at the deficit that exists today, and you add that to Obama's budget, that's over $20 trillion between the existing national debt and the debt created by President Obama's budget. So that would be all the corn that Iowa could raise at today's production in market values from the birth of Christ until today, and you would fall a little bit short. That's how much money the United States Government owes as a result of this profligate spending that is going on.

And the Federal Reserve component of this, I am very happy to see there are 290 cosponsors of Ron Paul's bill, H.R. 1207. I am among them, and I'm confident that my colleagues on the floor are as well. There is a hearing coming up on Friday to dig into this. That is a step along the way. From my standpoint, I would be very happy to sign a discharge petition. I don't think that things move very quickly through this Congress. When you have the most ethical Congress in history, I don't know how that could be defined that way, but there's a lot that doesn't happen around here. There's a lot of deliberation that doesn't take place around here, a lot of debate that doesn't take place.

The rules are written in the Rules Committee up there in that tiny little old room that doesn't leave room even for our staff to come in. We have to go up there and genuflect before the Chair of the Rules Committee and ask if we can bring an amendment down here to debate it on the floor of the House. They will say ``yes'' if they think it embarrasses Republicans. That's the only way they will say ``yes.''

The deliberate destruction of the greatest debating body in the history of the world here in the United States Congress has taken place because of the rules that have been ripped asunder by the Speaker of the House after 221 years. And the gentleman from Georgia has a sign: ``This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history, Nancy Pelosi, November 16, 2006.'' I don't know how you say that in Georgia, say what? This is the least deliberative body it has ever been.

An open rules process that we had for 221 years that allowed every Members of Congress to force a debate and a vote on a subject matter of their choice within the appropriations process has been utterly suspended since 2007.

The American people deserve better. We deserve, yes, a hearing on H.R. 1207, on the Federal Reserve. But we deserve also to have open debate and force votes so Members have to go on record, because the wisdom of America is processed through 435 congressional districts. And we all have our networks out there. If that debate is stifled here, if amendments are shut off by order of the Speaker, then the wisdom of America is shut off by order of the Speaker.

This country cannot reach the next level of its destiny if it denies the wisdom of its people, and that is the wisdom of its people as processed through this Congress is how it was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. I yield back to gentleman from Texas.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

I would submit this idea, I would rather call it the Geithner corollary than the Rangel rule because it gets deeper, and when you think about how much deeper it gets, it doesn't quite show on this poster. And I'm reaching back and dusting off my memory

But it strikes me that the employment that Tim Geithner was involved in reimbursed him for the taxes that he was going to have to pay from income tax liability, for the payroll tax, the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid taxes, for the several years that are listed there. The reports that I have read--I believe it will also include The Wall Street Journal report--that Tim Geithner was written a check by his employer to be reimbursed in advance for the tax liability he would incur and signed an agreement multiple years in a row that he understood that he had this tax liability.

So not only did he not pay the taxes until the pressure was on--and they waived the penalty which, apparently, they pre-applied the Rangel rule with Tim Geithner, but he had actually profited by not paying his taxes because he had been reimbursed by his employer in advance for the liabilities that you see on the poster that Judge Carter has put up.

So this is a bridge too far from my standpoint. If you have a tax liability and your employer's writing you a check to pay those taxes, you cash the check, put it in your kids' retirement fund--I'm going to presume that's what happened. That's any equity that we don't spend when we die goes into our kids' retirement fund. And so you profit from this and avoid the taxes; that's a double operation there.

So I will label that Geithner corollary to the Rangel rule, and that would be if you're nominated for a high position of, let me say, confirmation position before the United States Senate, and you find yourself, you have a tax problem, if you are able to settle this issue out of court and do so without interest or penalty--he owed $17,230 in taxes but they waived the penalty, so apparently he paid the interest, not the penalty, from that language. I want to make sure that is clear.

If you get that all done, and if America's patience and appetite will believe the idea that Tim Geithner is so smart that we can't get along without him regardless of whether he could remember to pay his taxes and regardless of whether it was an ethical decision or not, if we remember America's appetite for that was completely satiated by the time Tom Daschle was appointed and his tax problem emerged, then America said, Enough, I can't tolerate anymore of these appointments by the President that will be confirmed by the Senate that have people that have been avoiding taxes.

So now we have the lead tax writer in the United States Congress, Chairman Rangel, that has stimulated a bill that's been introduced by Congressman Carter, the Rangel rule, precedent that if any taxpayer admits their mistake and pays their back taxes, no penalty or interest should be assessed, especially if you're up for an appointed position to be confirmed by the United States Senate, especially if America can be convinced that your skills are so valuable that out of 306 million people there isn't a single soul that can match up to the job that you might do, regardless of the problem you might have of being paid in advance to pay your taxes, cashing the check, putting into the equity account for your kids' inheritance, and then along comes the old ``uh- oh'' from Georgia, that is, the ``I guess I better pay my taxes'' Geithner corollary.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

If this is going to be the most open and ethical Congress in history, this Congress has got to have an opportunity to read the bills. This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history: Nancy Pelosi, November 16, 2006.

I will say this: Yes, there were bills that were hustled through this Chamber when Republicans were in the majority, but I have never seen anything quite as egregious as the cap-and-trade bill that came through this House of Representatives. That bill was presented to the floor of the House, scheduled for debate the following day, and at 3:09 a.m., a 316-page amendment--

Did I say a.m.?

I'm sorry, I meant to say 3:09 a.m. I appreciate that correction. I must have had some kind of chronological dyslexia in order to come up with such a thing.

However, 3:09 a.m., 316-page amendment, and I can say with great confidence that no one read the bill. I don't have to ask anybody in this Chamber if they read the bill. I know no one read the bill. I was here on the floor engaging in the debate when Congressman Gohmert from Texas asked a parliamentary inquiry and he said, Madam Speaker, is there a copy of the enrolled bill in the Well? The answer was kind of, maybe, sort of. And we looked at the kind of, maybe, sort of stack of paper that was there, and there was a basic bill of around 1,100 pages, but the kind of, maybe, sort of didn't include the 316-page amendment.

And so after a few more inquiries, they pointed to another stack of paperwork, and Congressman Gohmert went down to look at that paperwork, and he came back and said, Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry, that is not even the amendment. It was a different stack of paper.

And so after 35 minutes of turning this thing around, the most significant question was again asked by Louie Gohmert of Texas, and there was a lot of dialogue going on. Joe Barton of Texas was engaged in this thing; I give him that. And anyway Louie Gohmert asked the question, after about 35 minutes of suspension of the debate on the cap-and-trade bill, he said, Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry: If the House of Representatives passes a bill that doesn't exist, is it possible to message a bill that doesn't exist to the United States Senate?

Well, today we know it must be possible because we passed cap-and- trade, a bill that didn't exist, and it got messaged to the Senate, and I think it probably began to exist sometime after it was messaged to the Senate. It was an appalling thing that the American people would have to watch, and Thomas Jefferson has to be rolling over two or three times. He spoke about a lot of things, 72 hours, 3 days to read the bill.

I also put out a great big pat on the back for Congressman Brian Baird for leading on this, as well as Greg Walden and John Culberson, and I have signed the discharge petition and the bill, and I'm looking for the rest of the signatures on the discharge petition so it can come to this floor. That is a piece of bipartisanship that this Congress can pass that will leave a legacy for a long time to come.

And if we're so afraid of the legislation that might get passed that we can't give anybody an opportunity to read it and we wonder why people go to TEA parties in America, that's why. They're really uneasy about what they've seen: $700 billion in TARP; eight large private- sector corporations nationalized; along with then a $787 billion stimulus package rushed through Congress--it had to happen right now-- and sat on the President's desk for 5 days before he signed it, and still most of it is not spent.

And with that, they watched cap-and-trade move through here in a hurry-up, rush job, when not one soul in this Congress or across this country read the bill before it passed. And then they see a hurry-up rush for a national health care act that takes away our freedom.

No wonder we have TEA parties. No wonder the American people come out. It's just a wonder that they could be so peaceful, and we've ended up with almost no, let me say, almost no violence of any kind in all the TEA parties that we had. Respectful people that exercised their right to freedom of speech and assembly and a right for redress of their grievances, and they did so in the traditional fashion envisioned by Thomas Jefferson himself.

So many generations have taken place since Thomas Jefferson, but his wisdom remains, and I certainly support H. Res. 554. Encourage everyone, including the Speaker, to sign that discharge petition. Let's get that thing out here on the floor, do the right thing for Democrats and Republicans.

Mr. Speaker, to my hall mate, Mr. Kennedy, that was a moving tribute and well deserved. I am glad we could yield the time.

The subject of this hour that we have been talking about now for, I believe, about 14 or 15 weeks is we are talking about the rule of law and how the rule of law must prevail. It is the glue that holds our society together. And when we start to ignore rules or ignore others' laws, then we are ignoring what our Founding Fathers intended to rule us.

When we established this Nation, the people who established it came from a monarchy. Yet they felt that a much greater society would be a society which would pledge itself to the rules, not to the authority. So they didn't want a king. They didn't want some powerful dictator. They wanted the rules to prevail in the Nation. And that's one of the secret parts of the society that was created that nobody can see, that over time has developed the most important and most powerful Nation on the face of the Earth that has ever existed.

We cannot ignore that rule of law today. We cannot let personalities or concepts or attitudes change the fact that there are rules that you follow, and you must follow those rules. And there are laws, both civil and criminal laws, that have to be upheld. We as a society have created those laws. They have governed us in some instances since the beginning of the Republic. And to waive or to ignore those laws, we do it at our peril.

So tonight we're going to talk about some legislation that addresses the issue of ignoring or not following certain laws or bending laws.

We are going to start off with my good friend Roscoe Bartlett. I'm going to yield to him, and he's going to talk to us about a bill that he has, H.R. 2743, the Car Dealer Equity Act, in which he talks about the fact that he feels some laws, some contract laws, were either bent or ignored.

I yield to my colleague.

Reclaiming my time, I thank you, Roscoe. You have hit on something that when that all happened to me, I just wondered what happened to the law of contract. Where did it go? When did our executive branch think it had the authority to just negate contracts in order for people to, through some threats that were made to settle a bankruptcy, to lose dealerships that--I talked to people in my district. It was not only did you lose your dealership, but your work product got handed to the people you'd been competing with. Just kind of free gratis. You get the win, and I get nothing. And of course, hopefully this will be resolved in the courts or something. I don't know what's going to happen.

But Roscoe is on the right road. We can do something about it here because if you can't contract, you don't have freedom, and especially freedom of commerce. If you can't make an honest contract with somebody and depend upon that and have it be enforceable in the courts of our country--because the rule of contract is sacred. If you don't have that, which we'd had for the history of our Nation, then the rules of commerce come tumbling down.

And we keep hearing people say, Do we want to be a Banana Republic? And nothing against our poor Banana Republic neighbors, but that's what happens when you don't have the rule of law. You can't make a deal that can be enforced and people become--go more and more to the dark side in their trading habits. And this is one of the issues that when we've got the world economy we've got to deal with.

We've got multiple subject matters, and we are going to start with one that's all over the front page. Roscoe is going to fix the auto dealers, and I am on that bill and proud to be there.

We've got a bill by Leader Boehner and Darrell Issa, Defunding ACORN Act, and my friend, Lynn Westmoreland from Georgia, is here to join me, and my friend Mr. King from Iowa is here to join me. And we've got a bunch of things to talk about here today.

Let's talk about ACORN.

I think those videos that the American public have now seen were a shocking wake-up when they had already heard about all of the ACORN violations. We'd already heard about this, and it didn't seem to be bothering anybody that there were all kinds of election law frauds, convictions, and so forth across the country. But then we saw advice being given to two people pretending to be into criminal activity, and you saw people that seemed to be encouraging child prostitution calling it a business, how to do your taxes, just like they weren't talking about criminal activity. And I think that shocked America into realizing that all of this was real, and that cheating on elections and cheating on voter registration and so forth was just as criminal and just led to further, more criminal activities. And now, all of a sudden, the folks at ACORN are all over the front page.

So I will yield to my friend, Mr. Westmoreland from Georgia, to let him make a few comments on this. And you've got a sign there. What have you got, Lynn?

I'll yield time to my friend from Iowa (Mr. King). And I guess we'll talk about ACORN and then we'll shift gears to something else.

We've got a lot of things to talk about, but ACORN is now all over the front page. The trial started in Nevada, and quite frankly, I see a very aggressive prosecutor that was talking on television today, and it's going to be an interesting case. We should all watch it very closely because wrongdoing is being put before the American public, and it's going to be interesting to see how that comes out.

I want to shift gears now because our friend Dr. Ron Paul has introduced a bill which has been talked about now for years, and I think now the American public is starting to say we'd kind of like to know something about this.

We have had, as we talked about before, more money spent since last summer supposedly saving the economy than just about has been spent in the history of the Republic, certainly before 1930. It clearly surpasses what we spent then. It is in the trillions of dollars now.

The Federal Reserve, this mysterious thing that I would bet there is not one American in a hundred who can tell you even close to what the Federal Reserve system even does, where they come from, who sets them up. There is just very limited knowledge. Unless you get to graduate school, you don't even get taught it in universities as to what the Federal Reserve does. And yet the Federal Reserve, as Congressman Paul points out, is in charge of administering and keeping track of these billions and now trillions of dollars of money that we are going to have to pay back and our children, our grandchildren have to pay back.

What Congressman Paul, Ron Paul, wants basically is that he would like to see an audit of the Federal Reserve so that we can know just what these guys do. And so I want to throw that out for discussion here, and I recognize my friend from Georgia.

We will.

I will yield now to my friend from Iowa (Mr. King.)

To finish up this particular subject, let me just point out that I think most people know that the Fed has, as one of its things it does, it uses interest rates to micromanage our economy. It prints money. And the more money that it puts out there, the less value our dollar has. It has an affect on every part of our lives.

Now if you have never contracted with the Federal Government, back in the 1970s, I did a lot of work for people who built section 8 housing projects. And let me tell you, because you're dealing with large numbers, this is what you would hear, you had to be looked at and relooked at and relooked at, which is the right thing, to make sure nobody is doing something wrong. When you're dealing with $8 million or $10 million, the government wants to look closely at how that money is being spent, are the subcontractors being paid, and so forth. Now, why do they do that? Because they know the nature of certain people is such that there can be wrongdoing.

We are talking about trillions of dollars. And we ought to at least know a little bit that an audit would tell us about what's going on at the Fed. So that's Ron Paul's bill.

I'm going to go to another bill. It's not really a bill, but just a comment. We've been talking about the Rangel rule. I've got a new one today. We are going to talk about Mr. Geithner again because he is back in the news because he says he has got this bank, UBS, over in Switzerland, to open their secret vaults and let him know what's over there. And he is being very magnanimous to the people he thinks have been hiding funds overseas. He is telling them that, I know you. I've made a successful raid. I know who you are. Now if you step up and pay your taxes, we're only going to give a maximum of a 20 percent penalty for your failing to pay taxes.

Wait a minute. What about the Geithner gesture here? When he talks to these people, he owed $17,230, no penalty. He owed another $25,960, no penalty. He used bad child credits. He filed additional taxes with interested infrastructure, he had a faulty retirement plan, an improper small business deduction, and he was expensing utility costs that went for personal use. All these things he was doing to no penalty. We call this the fox watching the hen house; he says they've cheated the government. And maybe they have.

Where I come from, if they cheated the government and there's penalties to be assessed, fine. Everybody ought to get the penalty. When I've been late on paying my taxes, and I have, I filed not on April 15 before, I filed on August 15 before, I filed on October 15 before. I paid my penalties, and I paid my interest because that's what you're supposed to do. I think it is curious that

this is the subject of Mr. Geithner's conversation when he has not. He, the boss of the IRS, has not been assessed any penalties.

So I throw that out for quick discussion. I think it's interesting. The Geithner rule ought to be zero penalties on taxes paid back on unreported income until Mr. Geithner pays his.

I do.

We're working on it.

Do you wish to be heard on this, Mr. King?

Reclaiming my time, it's kind of interesting that, back to our other subject, talking about holding the Federal Reserve accountable, one of the suggestions was that the Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner be able to review the books of the Fed. Probably the smartest thing the Fed said was, No, I don't think that's a good idea, and maybe there's something to that. That may be the smartest thing the Fed has done in a long time.

We have got another issue that's been an issue for many of us, and Greg Walden and John Culberson and Brian Baird have introduced a bill, House Res. 554, and they're asking that each bill have 72 hours before you take action. And this is not hard for us. We know what they're talking about because we have seen in this Congress bill after bill after bill spending billions and billions and billions of dollars that we get in the middle of the night to vote on the next day. And all they're saying is, let's do what, when Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules of this body, still follows. He said they need 3 days before voting. That's in Thomas Jefferson's rules, which he wrote for this House, and they're basically the same rules we follow now, with some changes that have been made.

All they're asking to do is let's do what Jefferson said we ought to do in

this House, and what they did in this House for a century, well, let's do it.

I yield to Mr. Westmoreland.

I yield to my friend from Iowa.

Reclaiming my time, the previous discussion that took a little over an hour before we came to the floor commending Senator Kennedy and his legacy, it seems to me that when we're talking about civility, which is one of the things they talk about, if we can get back to civility, I think the 72-hour rule would have something to do with that.

Very quickly, I want to go to one more thing and then I want to come back and talk about ACORN.

We're the czar champions of the world. We have got more czars than the Romanovs had in the entire history of their dynasty, and our friend Steve Scalise, who was going to be here tonight but he got tied up and couldn't come, he's got a bill to sunset these czars.

A czar is someone who heads a task force, a council, is appointed by the President without the consent of the Senate, is excepted from the competitive service and does not have an existing removal date. Appropriated funds

can't be used to pay for salaries and expenses of task forces or councils established by the President and headed by a czar.

This is what he's trying to do. He's trying to put a sunset on the czar policy, because it seems to an awful lot of people in this country, the term ``czar'' means absolute power, and they've created these positions of absolute power without any oversight.

I will start with my friend from Georgia.

We're just about to run out of time. We had a surprise guest come from the back of the room. Would you like to tell us about the czars? Did we stimulate you?

Reclaiming my time, thank you. We feel real good when we can call a colleague out of the dark. We're glad you're here. We are just about to wrap up our time.

Before we stop, I'm doing something different today. We've been talking about an awful lot. This is probably the most we've talked about in a single hour. As soon as this is over with, as soon as I walk across the street to my office, if you go to www.house.gov/carter, we're going to have a live Webcast for the next hour-and-a-half where you can ask questions and make comments about what we've talked about here, or anything else that's bothering you or that you're concerned about, I want to have it, so that you can tell Congress what you think. I've already started doing this. I enjoy it. I've already got 300 questions waiting right now. I'm going to advertise a little bit and welcome people to come to this Webcast.

Mr. Speaker, how much time have I got left?

Thank you, everybody, for participating. It's most important you remember the subject of this conversation, and that is the rule of law that holds this society together. Never forget. We're all talking about rules and laws and how they seem to be stretched and violated. We've got to get back to the rule of law governing this Nation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you for yielding.

I did want to bring the substance. We were talking about the rule of law.

Speaker Pelosi, after the 2006 election, made a comment. She said, This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.

To my friend from Texas, we know we've been here many times talking about the Rangel rule where Chairman Rangel was found to not have paid his taxes and then had his accountant figure out what he felt like he did owe and sent it in without penalties and interest and other things.

Then we had Secretary Geithner who did not pay his self-employment taxes and some other taxes on more than one occasion. And this is something that the American people are wanting to know where this most honest, most ethical Congress, most open Congress is at.

I just wanted to kind of bring that up to remind the people that we are not special in this body right here. We need to be operating under the rule of law and be under the same consequences that every American is under.

Let's talk about ACORN and what the bill is that Leader Boehner and Ranking Member Issa have introduced.

We might want to remember that last week the House voted about 345-79 for an amendment to bar the Federal funding of ACORN, but we need to go

further than that. We need to pass a stand-alone bill. And that's what this H.R. 3571 does, the Defund ACORN Act.

No Federal contract, grant, cooperative, or agreement or any other form of agreement may be awarded to or entered into with ACORN. No Federal funds may be given to ACORN. No Federal employee may promote ACORN, including some ACORN State chapters, organizations with financial stakes in ACORN, and organizations that shared directors or employees with ACORN.

And Judge, my friend from Texas, I am glad to announce the great Governor of the great State of Georgia has canceled the contract that the State had with ACORN.

So people are starting to understand that when you have an organization that not only these videos exposed, but even the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found ACORN had committed a list of offenses: voter fraud, tax evasion, obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting embezzlement, investment fraud, use of taxpayer funding for partisan political activity, Department of Labor violations.

You know, ACORN should not be allowed to get off with just an internal audit. They need to be looked at much deeper than that. An internal audit for ACORN is the same as asking Secretary Geithner to investigate Chairman Rangel. So we need to go further with that.

ACORN has received hundreds of millions of dollars. We should be more responsible to the people of this country, the hardworking people of this country that pay their taxes that we would want to give it away to organizations such as this.

Right now, I'll be glad to yield to our friend from--I'll yield back the time to you, Judge, and then you can yield. But thank you for giving me this time.

Well, thank you for yielding the time, and I don't know if we're going to get back to ACORN.

Then I will save this for later. Let me just say that the Federal Reserve, think about this for a minute. Under the TARP program, the Federal Reserve got $700 billion. We gave them $787 billion in the

Obama stimulus package. As you mentioned, that's over $1 trillion. Judge, a lot of people don't realize how much $1 trillion is. If you took $1 trillion and converted it into seconds, 1 million seconds is 11 days, 1 billion seconds is 32 years, 1 trillion seconds is 32,000 years, 32,000 years is 1 trillion seconds. And so we've given them over $1 trillion, and they don't want to be audited. I think that this is something that I hope that Chairman Frank, I'm assuming this is going through Financial Services on a hearing that they're going to have Friday, 290 cosponsors, that is enough to pass a piece of legislation here under suspension.

So I certainly hope that the Speaker and the Democratic leadership will once again kind of honor her statement here: ``We will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history'' by letting us have a vote on auditing the Federal Reserve.

The American public deserves the same independent audit accountability from the Fed that they expect from their local bank. The Feds are going out and auditing our local banks every day, Judge, putting a lot of them out of business, putting them on notice that they need to change the way that they're doing business. If they're going to go out and audit our local banks, we certainly need to audit them to make sure that they're doing things by the rule of law and in a commonsense way and in the way that the American people expect them to do with their hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

With that, I yield back to the gentleman.

So if the gentleman would yield for just a second.

Are we going to introduce a new legislation called the Geithner rule?

We've got the Rangel rule, and I wonder how many people have, when they returned their money to the IRS and said, I'm claiming the Rangel rule, the Geithner rule is one that definitely people should be concerned about.

Today in my office I had two of my dear friends, I had Coach Mike Pickett who came in and coached me in high school and another guy that I went to school with, Mike Sorrow that Coach Pickett coached, and they came in to talk to me just about some of the issues that we were facing up here.

One of the things that Coach Pickett said was he said, I'm mad as heck. He said, they're cutting my Social Security, and they've got a plan to cut $500 billion out of the Medicare, he said, and we've got people in Congress that is not even paying their taxes. And of course he was talking about Chairman Rangel. We didn't bring up Secretary Geithner, but I'm sure that would have made him double mad. That would have made his blood pressure even worse to think that the Secretary of the Treasury has got this kind of tax concerns.

I go back to this, what Speaker Pelosi said, you got to remember that the U.S. Senate approved this gentleman, confirmed him to be a member of the Cabinet.

This is the thing, Judge, that the American people are tired of. And I had one lady tell me the other day at a town hall meeting, she said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I think the American people as a whole are sick and tired of being sick and tired of seeing how people in politics, in elected office feel that they're better than the average hardworking American person out there that is paying his taxes.

Now, I've had penalties assessed on me before. I think that probably most Americans have had penalties and interest assessed to them for some reason or another. This is unbelievable. In fact, we should be above even the least bit of doubt of what we're doing. He should have paid the penalties anyway. If he had been late, he should have paid the penalties and the interest.

Many people may not know this, that when they hear this name on TV, they don't understand that he is the Secretary of the Treasury. He is somebody that is over IRS. And with these findings and the fact that he has not been able to have to pay some of the penalties and the interests that most Americans would have to pay if they were delinquent on their taxes, and especially using your child's time at an overnight camp in three different years, surely he was made aware of that in 2001, but he did it again in 2004 and again in 2005. Surely somebody from the IRS must have told him in that 4-year period that that was not a legal deduction or either he didn't file his taxes.

So, Judge, I appreciate you bringing this back up, and I look forward to being a cosponsor, as I was with the Rangel rule, on the Geithner rule.

Well, I thank you and my congratulations go to Mr. Baird and to the Chair, Mr. Minnick, for pushing this, along with Greg Walden, the gentleman from Oregon, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson).

In full disclosure, my friend from Texas and Iowa, in full disclosure, when the Republicans were in charge, we did the same thing. We rushed things through, and Mr. Baird, the gentleman from Washington, I think has had this 72-hour resolution in before when we were in charge, and so my hat's off to him for continuing to do this. I think he now has about 178 signatures. Mr. Walden who has a discharge petition has got signatures. We need 218.

So if anyone were watching this, if anyone were watching this and if we could speak to them from this floor, I would say make sure your Congressperson has signed this, because I think this is very important that not only the people voting on this have 72 hours to look at it but the people that it's going to affect.

I think sometimes we lose sight in this body that when we pass a law, it doesn't just affect the Members in this Chamber. It affects all 300 million people in this country, and so we need to make sure that the people that are going to be affected by the legislation that we're passing has an opportunity to read it.

Is everybody going to read it? I doubt it very seriously. Are all the Members of this body going to read it? I doubt it very seriously, but at least they can be held accountable and we can be held accountable for our votes, and people saying, Well, you had 3 days to read it, don't tell me it was something you would rush through. They've got 3 days to read it, and so I commend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson).

I commend Mr. Walden for trying to do the discharge petition, and I think we have about five people from the minority party that has signed that discharge petition, and I want to commend them because that's a courageous act on their part because, as we know from being in the majority at one time, leadership does not like you signing those

discharge petitions.

But this is something that needs to be brought to the floor. This is something that I think the American people are entitled to have some accountability for from their Members of Congress, and so this goes back to that I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

And so we need to do this, and again, I hope that this is something that we can get the discharge petition through or, if not, that Speaker Pelosi would just bring this bill to the floor and let us vote on it.

A.m., a.m.

No, you said p.m.

I thank my friend from Texas for yielding.

A czar is something that I've been getting a lot of questions about lately. Everywhere I've been in Georgia's Third Congressional District, I'm starting to get questions about the czars. People are wondering who these 34 or 35 czars are. We have already had one exposed to the extent that he eventually resigned.

People are starting to understand more and more that these czars are being appointed by the President with no confirmation by the Senate. And they're beginning to say, hey, how is this happening? What's going on here? How long are they going to serve? Do they work directly for the President? Who are they accountable to? What if they have some type of job that's under Mrs. Napolitano or under Geithner, or whatever? Who do they report to? What's the deal? They would report directly to the President.

And so we need, really, sunshine on all the appointments, but especially, as the gentleman from Louisiana, H.R. 3569, at least a sunset on all these czars. This is something that the American people are very inquisitive about.

I think that because of the number of these czars and because of some of the really Communist views and really ultra left-wing views that some of these czars have that are being exposed is just bringing more and more attention to it. And I think the American people want some accountability. I'll go back to the statement, they're sick and tired of being sick and tired of more government being stacked on.

We've got 10 percent unemployment nationwide. We've got some areas with 15, 16, 17, 20 percent unemployment. The only jobs that are growing right now are in the Federal Government. That's the only thing that's growing.

With that, Judge, I hope that anybody who could be watching might encourage their Representative to look at H.R. 3569.

I thank the gentleman from Texas for a few moments in this discussion.

We have a great country in that even when the law is absurd, we still obey

the rule of law and spend our time working to change the law. A perfect example of that is a law, the Endangered Species Act, and its current application to a water situation in California where a small fish that is a nongame fish is preventing water from being used to irrigate and grow crops.

Consequently, unemployment in the area where these crops are usually grown is dramatically higher than the rest of the Nation, dramatically higher. And people who normally are working there are in bread lines, the very same people who grow food in California for the rest of this Nation. Consequently, this winter, a lot of fruits and vegetables will be more expensive for those of us all over the United States because we have instead deferred to the rule of law in allowing this water to flow by these fields that are laying fallow and not producing food and not allowing workers to work.

This situation gives us an opportunity to point out the absurd applications of certain laws and the need for there to be exceptions for certain laws. At the same time, we obey those laws regardless of the absurdity. So I compliment the gentleman for pointing out the importance and the history in this country of obeying the rule of law.

When Russia became post-Soviet Russia and was trying to establish institutions, as Iraq is trying to do today--among the most important institutions that they are trying to establish are courts with honest judges, which is something that is very rare around the world, especially in Second and Third World countries. How blessed we are in America to have an honest judiciary and the rule of law. That is to the compliment of many fine Members of this body, but also to the gentleman who is leading this conversation tonight, also a former judge. And I am grateful for the time you have given me to discuss this.

Will the gentleman yield? I wonder if you might indulge a departure into health care for just one moment.

Thank you. I want to compliment my fellow freshman members of the Democratic party who had an hour preceding this hour to discuss health care from a freshman perspective. A couple of issues came up. I was watching them from my office so I came over here to the floor to comment on some of the things that they had raised and to compliment them on their statements about health care.

I want my Democratic colleagues to know that Republicans support health reform. We recognize that there are problems in our health care system, and that it needs reform. What we disagree about, and what we are here to debate and discuss, is how those changes should be implemented. It seems that my Democratic colleagues are more comfortable with government solutions and that my Republican colleagues are more comfortable with, by and large, private-sector solutions.

I might comment specifically, if I could, on a couple of things that were brought up tonight. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko) said that he wanted stability for Medicare. And I want to say that I too want stability for Medicare. But we have not seen any bills yet that provide that stability. The only bills we've seen are bills that would create a new health care system run by the government on the backs of health care that would cost health care through Medicare dollars that are supposedly being wasted or abused.

Well I can tell you that one of my hospitals in Wyoming has told me they are only reimbursed 37 cents on the dollar of their actual costs for all of their Medicare-provided health care. So in other words, government is being subsidized right now for the health care it provides to seniors. And it is not meeting its obligations to provide the actual costs of Medicare and reimbursing them to doctors and hospitals, especially in rural areas around this country. And I would love to work with the gentleman from New York to solve that.

I want my colleague from Colorado (Mr. Polis) to know that I, too, want lower costs. But all of the bills we've seen carry costs. And they range from $800 billion and more, which is what we are hearing is the cost of the Senate Finance Committee bill, to the $1 trillion-plus range for earlier bills that were introduced in this House. So these bills that would lower costs come at a cost. It's just that those costs are going to come through surcharges, penalties and taxes that do not exist now. So those costs are just being shifted to someone else.

To the Member from Ohio, Representative Kilroy, who brought up a very powerful personal story, and to Mr. Kagen of Wisconsin, the physician, who both addressed preexisting conditions, Members of the Republican Party also know that preexisting conditions are a huge problem in this country. That is why we supported high-risk pools. And the creation of a high-risk pool passed this Congress before I was here. It was while you were here. The proposal that I am cosponsoring, House bill 3400, would add additional moneys to those high-risk pools that come from cutting off the stimulus funds that have not yet been spent and using them to create additional funding for these high-risk pools to support funding for those with preexisting conditions.

A wonderful idea was discussed during their debate. It was raised by Representative Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania. It was something new that I heard for the first time today. After 4 months of constant debate, this was something absolutely brand new, the notion of young people, through age 26,

being able to stay on their parents' coverage, which is a particularly great idea during this economy where young people are leaving college and taking jobs if they can find them in this tough economy, that frequently don't have health insurance or do not have as good a health insurance as the policies that their parents had them on when they were minors. What a great idea. New things come up here every day.

In other words, Republicans are willing to work with Democrats. We want health care reform. We would love to work with Democrats on these ideas. The problem is the leadership of the Republican Party has been asking since April for a meeting with the President and has not received a response. The problem is that we want commitments. When the President says, If you like your current health care plan you can keep it, we try amendments that say exactly that, and those amendments are killed. We want 72 hours to read the bills. And when those amendments are killed, we have no assurance that we will have 72 hours to read the bill.

I want to compliment a television program called ``On the Record'' with Greta Van Susteren. She has been a tireless advocate for Members of Congress reading the bills. And among the things she asked the President is, would you sit down with Members of Congress and go line by line through the bill? And the President said yes. So, members of the Republican Party in Congress have written to the President and said, please, we would love to take you up on this. Let's go through this line by line so if you really believe we Republicans are misrepresenting the ideas that are embodied in House bill 3200, we can see where we disagree, and maybe we can find an agreement. And yet, those requests to go through the bill with the President line by line have not been responded to by the White House.

So, in other words, I want to share the frustrations that we in the minority party have, and particularly that I, as a freshman member of the minority party, have. And I want to communicate with my majority party colleagues, my Democratic colleagues, that we want to reach out and have been reaching out to the Democratic Party, the majority party, trying to find a bipartisan bill, and yet I believe our overtures have not been reciprocated. And I want to once again extend my desire to do so. I would particularly like to work with my freshman colleagues who I respect and admire very much and rely on the expertise that we have come to gather as fledgling Members of this Congress.

I note that the gentleman from Texas has now a chart on the board.

And will the gentleman yield?

And even those concepts should be at least posted for a 3-day reading now that they've been actually voted on. But as the gentleman has pointed out, who now is going to take those concepts and draft them into a bill? And will the bill be the exact embodiment of what the Senate passed in concept or will additional concepts be added? We won't know unless the 3-day reading rule and the posting rule on the Internet is implemented. Only if 72 hours are given to those people who can compare those concepts that were voted on to the actual legislative language that comes out of a drafting group will we know that the legislation reads the way that the concepts were designed to implement.

And I yield back. Thank you.

Because of the conversation we have just had, I want to further remind people that there is a bill entitled Sunset All Czars, H.R. 3569, the primary sponsor, Representative Scalise, in addition to the Blackburn bill, which I also support.

Before we adjourn this evening, I would like to bring up one more bill, and that is the audit of the Federal Reserve. It is the subject that also, I think, is consistent with our desire as a Congress to fulfill our obligations under the Constitution.

The reason that this bill is so important to the people in the United States--and I preface my remarks by saying I supported Mr. Greenspan and I support Mr. Bernanke. I applaud them for all the efforts that they make on behalf of the Federal Reserve.

I, nevertheless, support a bill to audit the Federal Reserve. It is based on personal experience. I was my State's treasurer. I was audited annually. The auditors came into my office in August, and they didn't leave until after Christmas. One-third of the year, every year, for the 8 years that I was State treasurer, I was being audited. It was for good reason; it was because I managed all of the money in the State of Wyoming.

The auditor and the treasurer were the two people with whom the auditors who are contracted to audit the State spent the most time. It was appropriate. It was a pain in the neck to have the auditors in my office for 4 months every year taking time away from our regular duties.

But, in fact, it protected me, as the State treasurer. Had any of the employees in the office been able to misdirect monies, it protected me. It protected their coworkers. It protected the taxpayers of the State knowing that their money was being appropriately audited, that there was someone looking over my shoulder, our shoulder, in the office of the State treasurer. It was good for me, it was good for my office, it was good for the State. It was good for the taxpayers whose money I was managing.

The same is true with the Federal Reserve. This is not an attack on Ben Bernanke or his predecessors. This is good, sound money management.