Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I very much appreciate the privilege to address you here on the floor of the House in this leadership hour designated by the majority leader.

There are a number of subjects I wanted to take up this afternoon, but I am first inspired by the statement made by the gentleman from Texas, Judge, Congressman, Mr. Poe, about Marine Mike Merola.

This is one of these recurring stories that we hear across the country. Somebody that is an ACLU individual, somebody that thinks somehow they get indignant because there is something somewhere that would allow them to vent some of their prepackaged hyperventilation against patriotism or the truth or life or the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence or American values or the values of Western Civilization or Judeo-Christianity, all those people out there are full of indignities.

So an American flag and a marine flag offends somebody? I say tough. I am glad you are there. Fly that flag. Fly it proud and fly it long.

I especially appreciate the statement made by Mr. Poe about the sound of that flag. My flag is on a flagpole about that same height, 20 foot. I step out my door in the morning, I check the wind and the weather and I look at that flag, and I listen to that sound. And there is times I am sitting there in the dark at night on my deck and I am hearing that flag from the light that shines on it around the corner just a little bit, and I hear that ripple of Old Glory. It gives me comfort and it gives me pride, and it reminds me of the privilege of serving here, anywhere you can serve Americans anywhere on this globe.

I think of a time also on March 18, 2003, where I went out here to Pershing Park, this side of the White House, when there was an antiwar demonstration that took place. I actually walked around through the Mall, around the Washington Monument as they prepared their demonstration. I remember former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, standing on a little stage there with great big speakers calling for the impeachment of President Bush because it looked like there was an impending liberation of Iraq. And I saw a man there.

Every kind of discontented, counter-cultural, anti-American group was represented in those thousands of people that came here that day. I saw the Japanese communist flag. I saw Vegetarians for Peace. I saw every counter-culturalist group you can imagine. And I saw a man there, an aging hippie. He had on a jacket. He was a photographer, you could tell, and he was taking pictures with great pride of this anti- Americanism.

He reached in his pocket of his jacket, a worn leather jacket, and pulled out of his pocket a flag, an American flag, a silk American flag, a small flag, and he used it to wipe the lens of his camera. That is an image I will never forget.

But no one stepped up to say he couldn't do that. Where were they then? Where were the critics of Mr. Merola then? When flags are used as grease rags to scrub the lens of a camera that is taking pictures of anti-Americans joined together to protest the saving of our freedom that Marine Merola has stepped up to defend.

Those actions against him are offensive to me, and I say guard the flag, defend the flag, and I will stand with you, and I know Judge Poe will too. Thanks

for bringing this up. I appreciate it, Judge.

I came here to talk about a number of things tonight. One of them is the repeal of ObamaCare. Freedom-loving Americans fought this for a long time. It began to roll out at us in the summer of--I've got to roll my years back now--in the summer of 2008, when President Obama was elected. I should actually take you back through a little bit of this history, Mr. Speaker, because there's some of these components that the American people forget about.

There was a relatively unknown State senator from Illinois named Barack Obama, and he gave a speech before a national convention of the Democratic Party. That elevated him into some level of national prominence. There were those that decided they wanted to move him forward to become President of the United States. Hillary Clinton also decided she wanted to be President of the United States. And these two found themselves--actually, after John Edwards, anyway--locking horns, the two of them, for the nomination of the Presidency of the United States under the Democrat Party. I know a little bit about this. Barack Obama's movement began in Iowa. He brought his people over from Chicago and they started a movement and they did battle with Hillary Clinton in Iowa. John Edwards was there, of course. That went on for 4 years.

But we have to remember that here, in 1993 and 1994, when Bill Clinton was elected President, remember, he said you get at twofer--you get Hillary and you get Bill. Well, I wasn't all that happy getting Bill, let alone Hillary. But he assigned Hillary the job of writing a national health care act. And this was a complete takeover of our health care in the United States. Socialized medicine in an even purer form than ObamaCare is today.

We watched as this unfolded and she set up closed-door meetings and they cooked up this bill. And I recall the flow chart of the HillaryCare bill. I had a laminated copy of it in my office, my construction office in Odebolt, Iowa. And it gives me chills to think yet about the expansion of government that emerged from the HillaryCare proposal.

But we need to remember, Mr. Speaker, the relevant component of that is yes, a government takeover of health care that had been advanced and advocated in this country for quite a few years. But America's rejection of HillaryCare was resounding. And if Bill Clinton were going to maintain his capital as a President, they had to pull that bill down. The American people were against HillaryCare. I was against it. It actually animated me into getting engaged in politics. I do not think I would be here today if it weren't for Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton deciding they were going to step in and take our liberty.

But, in any case, Hillary Clinton's credentials, now Secretary of State--and with all due respect, and I mean that honestly--her credentials on health care were greater than those of Barack Obama. He had to build himself foreign policy credentials and he had to build himself health care credentials. And so they turned the Presidential nomination debate into a health care debate, a health insurance debate. And as they battled their ideas out, they had to find ways that they could separate themselves from each other and still remain Democrats.

And so we heard all kind of statements out of Barack Obama as he competed for credibility on the policy of health care. And in the process of doing that, they convinced the American people that they were in a health care crisis in America. They intentionally and willfully, and I'm talking about Democrats in general, conflated two terms. They ended up duping the American people. They conflated the term health care and the term health insurance, to the point now where, when we hear someone say health care, we don't know whether they're saying health insurance or whether it's actually taking care of someone's health.

I recall then the newly elected Governor of Iowa, Chet Culver, now just voted out of office, came out here to the Capitol to sit down with the congressional delegation meeting, the Iowa congressional delegation. We sat in a conference room over in the Senate. And he said, There are 40,000 kids in Iowa that don't have health care. We've got to get them health care. And I looked at him and I said, Governor, I don't think that's true. I don't think there are any kids in Iowa that don't have health care. Could you give me an example of a child in Iowa that doesn't have health care. Well, no, he couldn't do that. Neither could he actually even tell me that he really meant health insurance. I had to feed that line to him so he could understand the difference. It was so embedded in his head that health care and health insurance, the conflated terms, could be used interchangeably.

Mr. Speaker, if people are having trouble understanding this, I'd use another example of conflated terms--the difference between immigrant and illegal immigrant. I was asked earlier today what do I have to say about people that accuse me of being anti-immigrant. I said, That's offensive. There isn't anybody in this entire Congress that's anti- immigrant. And the reporter stopped. Well, what kind of a statement is that? Surely there are. I said, No, there isn't anybody in this entire United States Congress that's anti-legal immigrant. Everybody I know in here--and there's a new class I don't know that, but I suspect they'd fit the same mold--everybody I know in here is supportive of legal immigrants. We cheer them. We're proud of them. When they take the oath of naturalization, I often go and give a little speech and welcome them to being citizens of the United States of America. It is a proud time. I present them Constitution, and I sign. I want them to revere it the way I do, the way many of us do.

But they have conflated the term ``immigrant'' with ``illegal immigrant'' and then they have the audacity to accuse people of being anti-immigrant, when everybody I know is pro-immigrant--pro-legal immigrant. And everybody in here ought to be anti-illegal immigrant. But that's how they use the language to distort the argument and get people confused on where they stand on the issue.

So they did that with health care and health insurance. And when Barack Obama was establishing his credentials on health care, they began to convince the American people that we had 47 million people in this country that are uninsured. Well, that actually may be true. It may have been true. And you can start down through the list of 47 million and start to subtract from that the numbers that are here that are here illegally. That's at least 12 million, 12.1 million. I believe it's more than 20 million, but I'll take the 12 million. And I have to guess at the totals here because it's been a little while since I've run through these.

But, generally speaking, you take 47 million that are listed as uninsured by the Democrats and you subtract from that those that are here illegally, those that qualify for Medicaid but don't bother to sign up, those that make over $75,000 a year and presumably could provide their own health insurance, those that qualify under their employer but have turned down that opportunity for that health insurance. And when you get done subtracting those that do have options, including affordable options, and you narrow the 47 million down to those who do not have their own health insurance policy and do not have affordable options, that's 12 million. That's actually the 12.1 million number I reached to remember.

That's less than 4 percent of the United States population without their own health insurance policy and without an affordable option. Less than 4 percent. What percent of the health care industry did they want to take over in order to address that less than 4 percent, those 12.1 million? A hundred percent. Barack Obama proposed to take over 100 percent of our health care industry in America in order to get at those less than 4 percent that are uninsured, without an affordable option.

He told us--remember these things--We're in an economic crisis. We're in an economic crisis, and we can't fix this economic crisis--Barack Obama--unless we first fix health care. And how do we do that? Well, the argument against it by him, and Hillary Clinton as well: We spend too much money on health care. What's their solution? Spend a lot more. Throw a trillion dollars at health care. He also argued that if you like your policy, you can keep it.

If you like your doctor, can you keep him. And when he said it, he knew that that commitment could not be kept. You can't keep your health insurance policy if the policy doesn't exist any longer. You can't keep your health insurance policy if the company doesn't exist any longer.

The President said we needed to have more competition in the health insurance industry. The demagoguery's been going on here for the last couple of days about not turning over this country to the health insurance companies, again who get accused of being vipers. Well, they're in a free market system. They need to be able to compete against each other. The President wants to have--and was not successful in this component--wants to have a Federal health insurance policy, a program, to compete against the health insurance companies. He argued that there needed to be more competition in the health insurance industry.

And so, what does he do? He wants to have the Federal Government do that. Does the President even know how many health insurance companies we have or had at the passage of ObamaCare? Probably not. He's probably not watching C-SPAN right now, Mr. Speaker, but if any of his staff are out there, I can tell you what that number was: 1,300 health insurance companies in America. 1,300 companies competing against each other. Not all of them against each other, not one competing against all the other 1,299, because there's a McCarran-Ferguson Act that allows the States to protect the insurance companies within their States and set up monopolies or quasi-monopolies within the States.

I think we should repeal that.

If we repeal that, we will allow then people to buy insurance across State lines, and we would instantly put those 1,300 health insurance companies in competition with each other. That would achieve the goal to lower the costs and increase the options and provide for people to have more choices themselves, and it would help sustain the doctor- patient relationship at the same time.

Mr. Speaker, of the 1,300 health insurance companies, how many policy varieties existed a year ago? 100,000 health insurance policy varieties existed a year ago. That's not enough competition--1,300 companies and 100,000 policies? The President wanted a new Federal company to compete against them. Now, that's because he understands this pattern.

We've seen this pattern happen several times in the past. It happened most recently with the Student Loan Program. The Federal Government took it all over. They started out with the argument that they needed to have another option--a public option--for school loans, student loans, so that they could provide a little more honest competition with the free market.

What do we get out of George Miller, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid?

We get the complete takeover of the Student Loan Program over a little period of time. A great, giant leap came down this hallway in a reconciliation package from the Senate, actually threaded right into this ObamaCare bill.

What's another pattern?

There was a time--let's just say, oh, at about the time of the Bay of Pigs--when the Federal Government wasn't engaged in flood insurance. All of the property and casualty flood insurance in America was privately provided in the marketplace. We know what free enterprise does. If there is a demand, somebody will come up with a business idea to supply that demand. That was going on in the early part of the 1960s until the Federal Government decided that, really, they needed to get in and compete with that a little bit, so they set up the Federal Flood Insurance Program.

So what did they do? They drove out all of the private sector competition.

Today, if you're worried about your house being flooded or your factory being flooded, you have to buy flood insurance from the Federal Government. In order for them to compete with the private market, they passed legislation that, if there were a real estate loan from a Federal bank, they were compelled to buy flood insurance. So they wired in a customer base; they set the premium rates, and they drove everybody out of the flood insurance industry.

While all that's going on, what do we get out of that? We get a Federal Flood Insurance Program that's $19.2 billion in the red and no private sector competition whatsoever and no way to judge, actually, the risk because the industry hasn't developed.

You know what government does: it atrophies. Anybody who doesn't have competition atrophies. They don't develop the technology. They don't develop the new approaches and the innovative ways to market, and they don't streamline. They don't have to find savings. They just raise fees or borrow money from a general fund. That's where the $19.2 billion came from. Then, of course, that's the American people going into debt for $19.2 billion.

Why? Because the Federal Government decided they wanted to go in and provide a little competition so that they could keep the private sector flood insurance industry honest because the people who passed that are not free market personnel. They are anti-capitalists. They are not capitalists. They are not free enterprise people.

So we have some of the pattern that's there. We've got the flood insurance pattern. We've got the pattern of the student loan program. Then we have the pattern of the President wanting to step in and drive out the competition in the health insurance industry.

The American people have watched that component. They've watched the statements about: you can keep your health insurance policy. If you like your policy, you can keep it. Yet the Federal Government under ObamaCare regulates every single health insurance policy, and they will decide which policies you can keep and which policies are banned by regulations to be written later by a gentleman by the name of Berwick, who believes that we should ration health care and not spend money on the lives of people who may be at the end of their lives.

Now, Sarah Palin called that ``death panels.'' If you have to put something down in a Twitter that explains it all, I think she did that.

We've seen the manifestation of that out of the Obama administration--with his appointments, with the actions, with their taking the initiative to want to pay doctors to counsel people to accept death when there is medicine there that may save them or extend their lives. I don't think that's the business of the Federal Government to pay people to counsel others to die quicker. That's what turns out of that policy, and I'm glad that they rescinded it. I am hopeful that it isn't something that creeps back again, but if you've got a Dr. Donald Berwick there, it is going to creep back on us. That's his philosophy. He is there for a reason.

ObamaCare cannot be allowed to stay in this code. It must go. It has got to be repealed, and we are about to do that.

The first legislative steps on this took place yesterday with the rules debate upstairs--hours of debate on the rule, on how this debate would go on. We debated the rule here on the floor today, and it passed. The chairman of the Rules Committee, Mr. Dreier, did an outstanding job of ushering this all through; and he has been useful, I think, in also negotiating the types of language that allow for a legitimate debate on the floor of the House--far more legitimate than the debate that actually crammed ObamaCare down the throats of the American people.

So, Mr. Speaker, I come here to celebrate the opportunity to begin taking back a significant measure of American liberty, that is, the repeal of ObamaCare--pulling it out by the roots lock, stock and barrel. We must pull it all out, and we can't leave one visage of it in.

This ObamaCare the American people understand. They diagnosed it. They looked at it. They felt it and they ran the tests on it. They began to find out what was in it. Remember Speaker Pelosi saying we have to pass this bill in order to find out what's in it? Well, there is actually some truth in that because no matter how brilliant people are, no matter what their experience, there is not one person alive who could have shut themselves up in a room for I don't care how long they would want--a week, a month, a day, or a

year--and read through those 2,500 pages of ObamaCare and actually understand each component of it and do an analysis and be able to comprehend the implications of that monstrosity that has now become the albatross around the neck of the President and the Democrat Party in the United States of America.

No, no one could understand it. It is that complicated; but over time, we began to see the implications. Republicans predicted many of the implications that were in the bill. We pointed to a lot of the parts of it that were bad; but there wasn't time, and there weren't enough people and enough voices to raise all of the issues that are bad about something of this nature.

When you take away people's liberty, that is a big deal, Mr. Speaker--when you take away the right of people to buy a health insurance policy of their choice. No matter what money they have, no matter what their health, you have to buy a health insurance policy that is approved by Uncle Sam.

Now, I kind of like Uncle Sam. I like his image. I like his colors-- red, white and blue--but I don't like the tarnished image that he was given by ObamaCare. I don't like the idea of besmirching the memory of Madison and Washington and Franklin and Jefferson. I don't like the idea that these God-given rights that we have, that clearly our Founding Fathers defined with precision that do come from God, can be besmirched and can take away the freedom of a freedom-loving people.

But the American people don't like it either. The American people rose up, Mr. Speaker.

Those who argued that they wanted to offer a whole series of amendments on the repeal of ObamaCare said it's not an open rule; it's not an open process, that they want to come down here and be able to offer amendment after amendment under an open rule. Then they think that somehow, by doing so, they can perfect a bad piece of legislation. Well, in their piece of legislation, even they can only name four things that they are willing to defend in 2,500 pages. Of course, they'll demagogue us on every single one of those.

The four things that they defend are:

Preexisting conditions language. Republicans will address preexisting conditions, not with socialized medicine, but with a practical, constitutional, free market approach. That's fine. We need to have that debate and advance that kind of policy, and that has been part of our agenda all along, for several years now. That's the first one.

The second one is they claim they closed the doughnut hole. Well, I thought the doughnut hole was a bad idea in 2003. It was there because of the constraint in the funding that was available; but they closed the doughnut hole by increasing fees and taxing others, and low-income people are already exempt from it.

So it isn't of significance from a policy standpoint. It is philosophically and politically, and so they make their second argument, doughnut hole.

Third one is they think that something that we just couldn't do without, that should take us all down because we're willing to repeal the idea that insurance policies must all have a Federal mandate in them that your children shall stay on there until they're 26 years old. Now, I'm astonished by this. I'm astonished that Republicans would think that's a good idea. I can actually name you two Republicans that were elected to Congress at age 25. Now, I don't know what kind of pride they would have in their newfound adulthood to walk down the aisle, like they did here a couple of days ago to swear into the new 112th Congress, and up until the moment they take the oath of office, they're still on Mommy and Daddy's health insurance.

Now, that's how bad this idea is that we would raise kids up and give them the keys to the car at age 16, and give them the right to vote and choose the next leader in the free world at age 18, and give them the right to drink at age 21, and keep them on Mom and Daddy's insurance until they're 26. Why?

I wanted my kids to grow up. I announced to them when they were 18 that I'm now legally off the hook, guys. We nurtured you as long as we can. We're still doing that. We don't have to anymore. I'm so proud of what they've accomplished and what they've promised to accomplish, but I wanted my kids to grow up, and that should be our goal when we're raising them, not to keep them children forever, keep them on our insurance until age 26. To what purpose? Can't they defend themselves and find a way?

And by the way, insurance companies, if there's a market for this, isn't there going to be a policy out there that you can buy, at your own choice, that will allow you to keep insurance on until your kids are 26? If there's a market for it, keep them on there until they're eligible for Medicare. It's all right if it's driven by the free market. It's actually constitutional if the States want to impose such a ridiculous mandate, but it's not constitutional and it's not all right if the Federal Government imposes such a thing because it raises the cost of everybody's premium, and it limits our choices and it taxes people that don't have any kids, people that are on individual policies.

So there's three things in ObamaCare that they are proud of, and I'm not particularly proud of any of those three. Actually, the fourth one may come to me and I'll bring it up in a moment, Mr. Speaker, but here's another rub.

ObamaCare wipes out more than half of the health savings accounts opportunity that's there. We established health savings accounts in part D in 2003. A young couple could start in today with $5,150 in their health savings account, and let's just say they got married--fell in love, got married, age 20. I can do the math, which is why I use the age 20, Mr. Speaker. And they maxed out on their health savings account at $5,150 that first year. It's adjusted for COLA, and so we go up, that amount would go up each year as they went through their happy married bliss for the next 45 years until they qualified for Medicare.

Now, I'd like to see that expanded, but here's how this works. If you look historically back over the last 30 or 40 years, you will see that that type of an investment like an HSA would accrue at a 4 percent compounded interest rate, not over the last 2 or 3 but over the last 30 or 40. That's a reasonable number to predict. And so your couple that started with an HSA with $5,150 and deposited the max in it every year and spent $2,000 a year out for normal medical expenses would arrive at Medicare eligibility age with about $950,000 in their health savings account. Boy, what a glorious opportunity that is.

The Federal Government's interested in that $950,000 because they want to tax it. They want to tax it as ordinary income when it's taken out of the health savings account if it's not used for health along the way.

I suggest this. Why wouldn't we say to that couple, take the money that's in your health savings account, buy a Medicare replacement policy, a paid-up-for-life Medicare replacement policy--be worth about $72,000 per person at this point, so $144,000 out of this $950,000, and so you get what, $806,000 left over. That's the change.

I would say to Americans who had that kind of responsibility and prudence, Keep the change. Take yourself off the Medicare entitlement rolls when you're eligible by buying a paid-up replacement policy, annuitized policy. Keep the change tax free. Travel the world. Will it to your kids. Do what you want to do.

And if we do that, we turn health savings accounts into life management accounts, Mr. Speaker, these kind of accounts that young people would savor the day that they could start their account in their health savings account, and they would nurture it and protect it and want it built up to the point where it's 20, 30, 40, $50,000, $100,000. They would be there in this private market of insurance that we must preserve and protect--actually got to go back and restore it by repealing ObamaCare.

They would be in that marketplace saying, I want a $10,000 deductible policy. I want a major medical deductible policy. I can have a higher copayment policy. I need lower premiums. I have the prospect of good health. I exercise. I watch my diet. I watch my weight. I get regular checkups, and so I'm willing to--and, in fact, it'd be prudent to have catastrophic policies with high deductibles and potentially a higher copayment for people who have the funds in their health savings accounts so that they are protected by insurance for its proper form.

Insurance should not be for hangnails. It should not be for the little

things. Insurance should be for the things that we can't fund ourselves. That's why it's there. It's protection so that you don't go broke when something catastrophic happens.

We would have people not only managing their health; they'd be managing their health insurance premiums. They'd be advocating for lower premiums. They'd be saving more money in their health savings account, managing their health for a lifetime while their health savings account transitions into a pension plan.

This is a full lifetime management account, and why can't we do that in the United States of America? These free people that we are, why can't we do that in the United States of America?

Well, ObamaCare goes in and cuts out more than half of the amount that they can contribute into their health savings account because ObamaCare is about, yes, a Federal takeover of our health care, and a health insurance industry eventually, but it's about also expanding the dependency class in America. It's about causing people to give up on trying and taking care of themselves and just finally sighing and get in the herd with the rest of the sheep and go submit to the government- run health care plan. And when they tell you you can't have a test, then you don't go for a second opinion; you've already been trained to accept the rule of the State. So they either test you or they don't; they give you treatment or they don't.

You can look up to Canada to see the waiting list times for hip replacements, knee replacements. One of those, I believe it's the knee replacement, is 194 days that you wait. The hip replacement then is three-hundred-and-some days. It's possible it's the other way around, but we're dealing with half a year or more, almost a year in waiting time.

I remember a presentation that was given downstairs in HC-9 a year or so ago. A doctor from northern Michigan, Dr. Jansma as I recall, has written a book on this, but he went up across the border to work within the emergency room in a hospital in Canada, and he had done a lot of orthopaedic surgery. And there was an individual that tore up a leg playing ball, came in. He looked at it, diagnosed it. He needed to have surgery. He said, I can schedule you for surgery in the morning. We should move on this quickly.

Well, the surgery couldn't be scheduled. He didn't know it at the time, but he didn't meet the government regulations. They had to go through and get another bureaucrat to approve it, and they had to wait to get it approved, and then they had to wait to schedule the surgery. This young man, in the prime of health, had a job, couldn't do it with his leg torn up. It took 6 months to schedule this young man to go before the specialist to do the secondary diagnosis to approve the need for the surgery so that they could rationalize spending taxpayer dollars to fix his leg. So it's going to be free health care up there, but you don't get it unless the right doctor, the one who's appointed by the State, approves the surgery.

So from the day of the time his knee was torn up and they took him into the emergency room, they had to patch him up, put him on crutches, and he had to gimp around for 6 months with a torn-up knee to go in and have the government doctor look at his knee and approve that he needed surgery.

Well, then you would think that that surgery might happen, oh, the next day like it would in America. But it didn't happen until another 6 months. Mr. Speaker, 6 months to wait for government approval for surgery that would have happened the next day in the United States of America with this doctor, another 6 months just to approve, then another 6 months to get the schedule to work through to get the knee surgery. And how much rehab does it take to put somebody back in shape after their leg is atrophied for a year and they have drug it around on crutches?

So he's out of work for a year and a half. His productivity has been stopped. And additionally, his development professionally has been diminished substantially. This is the kind of thing that happens when government gets involved setting up formulas. It's what the people on that side of the aisle want to do. And that's why the roof caved in, and there was a cataclysmic electoral change that took place on November 2, the election when the American people said, Enough, enough to the ruling troika, the Obama, Pelosi, and Reid ruling troika. Enough to the liberty-stealing legislation that was coming out of this Congress one after another after another, with cap-and-trade and government takeover of businesses, and the government takeover of the health care industry, including their massive regulation of the health insurance industry.

The American people rejected ObamaCare. The American people came to this city by the tens of thousands to protest against ObamaCare. The American people, for the first time, I believe, in the history of this country, came to this Capitol in such massive numbers that they not only crowded out here on the west lawn by the tens of thousands, there were so many people, they surrounded the Capitol. They formed a human chain to surround the Capitol and say, Keep your hands off of our health care. And it wasn't just a stretched human chain where people were barely hanging onto each other by their fingertips. They were six- and eight-deep all the way around the Capitol building saying, Keep your hands off our health care. They were shoulder-to-shoulder, and they were six and eight deep, a full doughnut.

Talk about the doughnut hole. The Capitol of the United States of America was in the doughnut hole of the freedom-loving, constitutional, and conservative people who came here to reject ObamaCare, to petition the government peacefully for redress of grievances. That's what happened. And still, their hearts were hardened. Still, the regal Speaker Pelosi marched through the throngs with her magnum gavel in her ``let them eat cake'' moment, and still they don't get the message.

We swore in 87 new freshmen Republicans here, nine freshman Democrats. The majority changes, every gavel changes hands in the entire Capitol. It's amazing. It's amazing that it's so hard for them to hear the message from the American people. Do they still have the level of arrogance? Is it still an intellectual elitism of liberalism, the leftists that think that they have apparently some kind of gift of intelligence that supersedes the common sense and the wisdom of the American people? I reject that. The American people rejected that. And we have 87 new faces over here that I believe are God's gift to America, Mr. Speaker.

And I so look forward to the impact. We have already seen the impact. We have seen the impact in the rules package vote. We have seen the impact in the rules vote here today. And we'll see the impact on the repeal of ObamaCare on Wednesday after this rule that provides for--I guess I didn't keep it with me--but this rule that provides for I believe 7 hours of debate, 7 hours. Nancy Pelosi would give us an hour split, 30 minutes on each side, no amendments. Seven hours of debate, a debate on the rule, full debate up in the Rules Committee. And we are going to start this process of repealing ObamaCare. It began with the rules votes here yesterday in the Rules Committee and here on the floor today. We have begun the long, hard slog of the repeal of ObamaCare, Mr. Speaker.

It is, I believe, a new precedent to see the American people rise up this instantaneously to reject a piece of legislation that was passed. I recall when it was passed here November 7 out of the House, it went back to be worked through the--let me say worked through the procedures. I withdrew that ``shenanigan'' word and replaced it with the ``procedures'' in the United States Senate.

But in an unprecedented fashion, they put that legislation together in the Senate. And on Christmas Eve morning, they circumvented the filibuster, and they pushed through on a reconciliation package, they called it, a piece of legislation that had to come through to marry up with the House legislation in order to, some say in the press, ``buy the votes'' to get barely enough to pass ObamaCare here in the House. Well, that legislation, their version of ObamaCare, passed in the Senate on Christmas Eve morning. Around 9 o'clock was when they opened the vote. They had a chance procedurally--the Republicans did--to delay

that vote until 9 o'clock Christmas Eve. I argued vociferously that they should use every procedural tool at their disposal to delay that vote to the maximum amount, and perhaps something would happen. Like what if a blizzard would have come along and shut this Capitol down, and they wouldn't have been able to put the votes together? Look how close that came, if you look back upon it.

But in any case, when ObamaCare passed the Senate, I asked a question to one of the senior Senators over there who opposed ObamaCare, and did so well: What do we do now? What's our next step? We had 9 more hours we could have fought, or 12 more hours we could have fought. We didn't fight all 12 of those hours. What do we do next? His answer was, Well, we pray, and we pray for a victory in the special election in the Senate race in Massachusetts.

Well, at that time, a lot of people in America didn't know the name Scott Brown, and I thought that that was a pretty big reach, to think we were going to put our stakes in saving America's liberty in a special election U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts. Massachusetts had a full, at the time, 100 percent congressional delegation of all Democrats, the strongest Democrat State in the Nation that I know of. So I thought it was a bit of a presumptuous thing to talk about asking the Lord to intervene in Massachusetts, which was the message that I got. But I took a look and I decided, that's our best chance. I ended up going to Massachusetts, and I spent 3 days there.

On January 19, Scott Brown was elected to fill what's commonly known as ``the Kennedy seat'' in the United States Senate, from Massachusetts. He had pledged to vote ``no'' and kill ObamaCare. That made it the veto-proof Republican minority in the Senate. Most people thought on that night that ObamaCare was dead, and that was January 19 last year.

Well, subsequent to that, the President held a health care summit at the Blair House February 25. That's where he identified his health care plan as ``ObamaCare.'' And in that health care summit, there were certain selected Republicans who were invited to sit with the Democrats around this big table. And there were rules. Of course the rules applied to people differently. The President interrupted Republicans 72 times. Somehow he got his mojo back. Somehow they put together this legal maneuvering to be able to bring legislation here and say they got it--and actually, they got it passed. I'm not taking that issue.

The then-chair of the Rules Committee wanted to just deem ObamaCare passed because they didn't want to take a vote on it. They couldn't get the votes out of their own conference because there were 12 anonymous individuals in a list called the Stupak Dozen that would not vote for a bill that would use Federal funding for abortion. So they sat with their coalition. The President of the United States promised to sign an Executive order that they seemed to think would amend legislation after it passed the House. And even that wasn't enough. They had to have their reconciliation package out of the Senate that would be married up with and effectively amend some of the ObamaCare legislation itself.

So, Mr. Speaker, the convolution of all of this, it was a legislative circus of every legislative shenanigan that I can think of to put this together in such a way that they finally got stuff to the President's desk signed in the proper sequence and order so that the attorneys and the constitutional scholars could look at that and say, Well, actually there is a piece of legislation that somebody's going to have to follow the direction of.

So we had a Presidential Executive order that was designed to amend legislation passed by the people's House and the United States Senate that was promised before the legislation was presented to the floor as a condition of its passage here so they could get the votes from the Stupak Dozen and others. And there was a reconciliation package from the Senate that amended the legislation. They passed it out of the Senate before the legislation was brought before the House. When do you ever bring legislation that is designed to amend legislation that's not yet passed? You only do that if you don't have the support of the majority of the people in either body.

And I will tell you this, Mr. Speaker: On the day ObamaCare passed, as stand-alone legislation, that big 2,500-page package, if there are no extraneous issues, like promises of Executive orders from the President or a reconciliation package in the Senate that amends it, if it was ObamaCare stand-alone, 2,500 pages dropped here in the House of Representatives for an up-or-down vote, anybody that was here, any student of what was here knows, Mr. Speaker, they did not have the majority votes to pass ObamaCare.

It was done on the condition that the President would sign an executive order and the Senate reconciliation package would be brought in the form that they demanded it.

So, we watch all this process and we think it's making sausage. You don't want to eat the sausage when you watch them make it. I'm happy to eat the sausage when they make it. I really don't want to eat this one. The American people didn't want to eat this one either. The American people rejected it. The American people brought their voice and their effort.

And I went home that night, the last one to leave this Capitol. And I told myself I will lay down, and I'm going to sleep until I'm completely rested up, and I'll wake up fresh in the morning, and I'll retool, and I'll start a new plan and see what I can do to save America, see what I can do to save what's left of America, because our liberty had been ripped out. Our Constitution had been violated. And I knew the bill was going to be signed eagerly by President Obama, which he did on March 30.

So I laid down and slept for about 2\1/2\ hours, and it was the sleep of the exhausted. And I woke up. I sat down at my computer and I wrote up a request for a bill to repeal ObamaCare. That bill draft request went in at the opening of business that following morning. It was waiting for them to unlock the doors, my staff was. And that request turned into a draft within a couple of hours, and got back into my hand, 40 words, 40 words. And those 40 words are included in this repeal that is coming, that is now before this House that will be debated on Wednesday of next week.

I introduced those 40 words into the legislation and ironically, coincidentally and perhaps providentially, Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota was doing the same thing at perhaps the same time and put in a bill draft request almost simultaneously, and our bills came down within 3 minutes of each other, exactly the same 40 words that said the same thing: pull ObamaCare out by its roots. That's not the quote; that's the summary, Mr. Speaker. And, actually, I'm not going to summarize the bill this time. We don't have 2,500 pages in this repeal, but I would just say a few more words about that.

We started then the repeal process within hours of the passage of ObamaCare and it being messaged to the President within hours. And people said, well, that's just throwing a tantrum. You're just frustrated. You've lost. Why can't you just pack up your things and move on? We've got to move on. Put that behind us. That debate's over with.

Well, the debate's not over with when a Congress defies the will of the American people. And this Congress, the 111th Congress, the one just passed, defied the will of the American people. And the result was 87 new freshmen Republicans courageous, bold, principled, constitutional conservatives, young, vigorous, with ideology, driven people, statesmen and women in the group that will emerge as national leaders.

I believe there's a Speaker in that class. I know there are committee chairs in that class. I believe there's a reasonable chance that there's a President of the United States in this class that was elected in 2010. There may be more than one. We have leaders there. They came to this Congress to repeal ObamaCare. And the filing of the repeal of ObamaCare on that late March day, that early morning of the late March day, started the process. The start of that process began within hours of the passage of ObamaCare and well before its actual signing into law, it was introduced before the President actually signed it into law to repeal it.

And Michelle Bachmann and I and Connie Mack and, let me see, Parker

Griffith, they come to mind as people that have introduced legislation to repeal, and we worked that together with many others. There wasn't hesitation. Republicans wanted to sign on to the repeal, and they did so quickly. And over a period of time, the numbers of signatures accumulated to about 86, and 86 were ready to sign for repeal.

Then we decided, let's turn this into a discharge petition. Nancy Pelosi won't let this come forward until it does. So we did that. And I filed a discharge petition here on the floor, Mr. Speaker, and Members began to go down and sign the discharge petition. And the numbers of signatures went up on the discharge petition, when they said it was impossible to repeal ObamaCare, all the way up to 173; and it became bipartisan with the signature of Gene Taylor, whom, I believe, would have been re-elected to this Congress had he not voted for Nancy Pelosi. He did lose his election. And he served well here in this Congress.

But the result of this is that the existence of the bill to repeal ObamaCare in the last Congress was inspiring to new candidates that ran for office. It was inspiring to their supporters. It was inspiring to their constituents and their voters. And the discharge petition, with 173 signatures said, Republicans have the resolve to repeal ObamaCare. Republicans have the resolve.

And so the inspiration and the resolve, along with a fairly long list of anti-free market, anti-freedom things that took place out of the Pelosi Congress and the Obama administration, all contributed to give us the inertia to get to this point to where we are today.

But the legislation that I introduced then, actually amended at the end of the last Congress because it needed to consider the reconciliation package that came from the Senate after the bill was passed. It wasn't possible for me to introduce legislation to repeal that because it hadn't passed. So packaged it up together and put that in as a squared away, on point, full 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare legislation that I introduced, again with Michelle Bachmann on the last day of the last Congress, and on the first day of this Congress. And that's the legislation, that's the language that is considered before this Congress and will be voted on Wednesday of next week and will result in the House repealing ObamaCare, Mr. Speaker.

And so it's a 2,500-page bill. I wouldn't presume to come to the floor and read a 2,500-page bill, Mr. Speaker. But I would do this: I think it's a delightful experience to read a bill that's short and to the point. And this is H.R. 2; H.R. 2, the repeal of ObamaCare. And I'm going to just read this into the Record, Mr. Speaker, aside from the titles, just down to the meat of the bill. And it won't take very long. It's actually, altogether now, 131 words.

But it reads this way: ``Effective as of the enactment of Public Law 111-148, such act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such act are restored or revived as if such act had not been enacted.''

Boy, that sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Now, that's just the first part.

And it repealed, effective as of the enactment of the law, ObamaCare, such act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended are repealed by such act are restored or revived as if such act had not been enacted. It doesn't take a lot of complicated language to say pull it all out by the roots as if it had never been there. That's what we get with the repeal that's before us now that will be debated on and voted on Wednesday of next week.

This is the language that I introduced long back when people said it's just a frustrating, political exercise. You will never repeal ObamaCare. You can't get a vote on ObamaCare, so why are you going through the motions? It's just a legislative tantrum. No, it's not. It's tangible. It's not a tantrum. It's tangible. It's here. It's here before us now.

Here's the second component of it. This is the reconciliation package that couldn't be addressed on the day it passed but can now. It says this: ``Effective as of the enactment of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010,'' the Senate Reconciliation Act, ``Public Law 111-152, title I and subtitle B of title II of such act are repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such title or subtitle, respectively, are restored or revived as if such title and subtitle had not been enacted.''

Once again, the repetition of that language, for the two major components of ObamaCare now, they are repealed, and the provisions of law amended or restored by such title or subtitle, respectively, are restored or revived as if such title or subtitle had not been enacted.

Well, isn't that refreshing, Mr. Speaker, that we have a piece of legislation here that's not 2,500 pages. It's not so long and complicated that we can't read it here on the floor. It's not so complicated that anybody that might be sitting in the gallery or watching on C-SPAN or might be reading through the Congressional Record can understand what is going on here. This is in the full light of day with the support of the American people.

Sixty percent of the American people, according to a Rasmussen poll here sometime back, support the repeal of ObamaCare, as do I. And, Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the debate on Wednesday. I look forward to the vote going up on the board on Wednesday. I look forward to the beginning of the repeal of ObamaCare.

The press asked me a question on that earlier today: If you pass the repeal of ObamaCare--we will pass the repeal of ObamaCare--is that the end? No. To reflect back on Winston Churchill, it's not the end. It's not even the beginning of the end of ObamaCare, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning of the end of ObamaCare. That's what I believe is coming.

I heard the gentleman from Texas bring up Churchill when he said, ``sweat, blood, and tears.'' There are some people out there that bring some quotes to mind that stand out for me, and one of them is the Congressman from Indiana, Mike Pence. His statement on our persistence and due diligence in bringing about ObamaCare is this--and I wrote it down because it impressed me, not the words but the manner in which he says it. It is always superior to my delivery. But it is this, Mr. Speaker. Congressman Pence of Indiana said, if House Republicans got the message from the American people last November, ``we won't just vote once to repeal ObamaCare; we will vote to repeal ObamaCare again and again until we consign their government takeover of health care to the ash heap of history--where it belongs.''

Nice quote, Mike Pence. It sounds like Ronald Reagan to me. ``We will vote . . . again and again until we consign their government takeover of health care to the ash heap of history--where it belongs.''

I intend to stay with this with an even heightened level of persistence, Mr. Speaker, to bring about the final and complete repeal of ObamaCare, Mr. Speaker, to be able to one day watch as the President of the United States, the next President probably, puts an end to ObamaCare. It will take persistence on our part. It will take determination. We will pass this out of the House. We can pass it again and again, send it over to the Senate where Harry Reid gets a hot potato on his lap that gets hotter and bigger each time.

We have appropriations bills coming through here. We have a CR that ends March 4th, and everything that funds our government, we should put into that language that prohibits any of the dollars from being used to implement or enforce ObamaCare. We can shut off all of the implementation of ObamaCare. If this House stands resolute and determined, there is not a dime that can be spent by the Federal Government without our approval. So we can shut off the funding that implements or enforces ObamaCare, and we must. And we must stick with it.

We must stick with it with the determination that comes from people like Mike Pence, with the tone that comes from Ronald Reagan that comes from his mouth, and I think the determination that comes from Winston Churchill. We will fight on this. We will fight until the end. We have the majority to start with now in the House. We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength, whatever the cost may be. We shall never surrender. We will carry on this struggle until, in God's good time, with all His

power and might, He steps forth to the rescue and liberation of our God-given American liberty. That's what will happen in this Congress.

The day will come, Mr. Speaker, that the next President of the United States, I pray, stands on the west portico of the Capitol here in this building down that hallway and off to the left to take the oath of office. And when the Chief Justice steps forward and he takes his oath on the Bible, I want to see that next President of the United States take that oath with pen in hand, Mr. Speaker, and I want him to take the oath, ``preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.'' And before he even shakes the hand of the Chief Justice to be congratulated as the next President of the United States, I want that pen in that hand to come down on the podium and sign into law the final repeal of ObamaCare as the first act of office of the next President of the United States, and I will support the man or woman that's willing to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your attention and the honor to address you.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can tell you that I am pleased to address you, Mr. Speaker, here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and welcome you to this great deliberative body which becomes instantly far more deliberative than it has been over the last 4 years. This is part of it.

As I deliberate and I listened to the gentleman from Tennessee, I have to make the point that when you challenge the mendacity of the leader, or another Member, there is an opportunity to rise to a point of order, there is an opportunity to make a motion to take the gentleman's words down. However, many of the Members are off in other endeavors. I would make the point that the leader and the Speaker have established their integrity and their mendacity for years in this Congress, and I don't believe it can be effectively challenged, and those who do so actually cast aspersions on themselves for making wild accusations.

I came to this floor, though, Mr. Speaker, to talk about the weather, and as I listened to the speeches that have gone on before in this previous half-hour or hour, it actually changed the subject for me. I think there are many things that need to be brought out and clarified, given this, that we have debated this health care bill. We debated this health care bill for, oh, close to a year. It was announced in Rules Committee earlier today that there were, I believe they said, 100 hours of markup in committee. Well, it wasn't the bill that passed. It was 100 hours of debate and markup on a different bill. They switched bills at the end. That's a matter of public record and fact, also.

But the American public understands what happened. They understand that the Speaker of the House said, We have to pass the bill--meaning ObamaCare, Mr. Speaker--in order to find out what's in it. When that bill was passed, to set the record also straight, I don't think there is another time in the history of this Congress that there was a bill of this magnitude--in fact I'm certain there is not--that passed the House of Representatives without the majority support of the House of Representatives for the bill that was before us.

It is a fact of record, it's a fact of judgment, it's a fact of history, that there had to be conditions that were attached in order to achieve the votes necessary to squeak that bill by and pass ObamaCare here in the House on that day last March. If people forget, Mr. Speaker, what I'm talking about, it's this: Remember, there was a switch on the bill. The bill that was marked up in committee is not the bill that came to the floor, not the bill that had hearings on it and had markup. But there were also conditions. We should remember there were the Stupak Dozen, the Stupak Dozen who said we insist that there be an amendment brought forward that will protect so that the language that's in the bill doesn't fund abortion through a Federal mandate. They held out on that to get that vote. Little did I know up

until that Saturday afternoon that the gentleman who was doing the negotiating had already committed to vote for the bill, and the Stupak Dozen were anonymous people. Furthermore, they had negotiated with the President of the United States who made a commitment and followed through on it to sign an executive order that would pacify or mollify the anonymous Stupak Dozen under the presumption, unconstitutionally and completely outside the bounds of the separation of powers, that the President of the United States could effectively amend legislation by executive order and promise he's going to do so before the bill was even brought to the floor for a vote. That happened in this Congress.

Another condition of that was, this is a condition that came after the then-chair of the Rules Committee, the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), had offered the idea that they should just deem that the bill passed so they didn't have to go on record of voting for this bill; because they knew how bad it was. They knew how politically vulnerable they were. They knew that Speaker Pelosi was making many of them walk the plank. A lot of those people are not here in this 112th Congress because of that action. But as I talked about why this bill didn't have the support of the Congress and in the form that was before us, why the majority did not support it, the majority votes that day in its form, because there also had to be another deal on top of this. This was the deal that the Senate had to pass a reconciliation package which was designed to amend the bill that had not yet been brought to floor of the House for a vote. I don't know that it's the first time in history that there's been a shenanigan like that played, but it's the first time in my knowledge that there has been a bill certainly of that magnitude that came before this Congress that was not the bill that came through committee, that was pledged to be, I put it in quotes, amended by a Presidential executive order, and further amended by a reconciliation bill that would later pass the United States Senate.

That's what we have before us with ObamaCare. And it became the law of the land on that date of March 30, 2010; passed over here in the House, if I remember correctly, on the late evening of March 21 or the early morning of March 22, Sunday night. I remember my long walk home that night. I remember telling myself, I'm going to sleep until I'm all rested up and then I'm going to wake up and figure out what to do.

I didn't sleep very long. I couldn't sleep with that policy imposed upon the American people with the realization that it would become the law of the land. And about 2\1/2\ hours later, I got up and went to my word processor and typed up a request for a bill to repeal ObamaCare. I filed that request at the opening of business that day, the first opportunity in the first minutes of that day.

I want to thank and congratulate Michele Bachmann. I didn't know it, she was awake in the middle of the night doing the same thing, and her bill draft came down within 3 minutes of mine, exactly the same words. That bill draft was turned into a discharge petition with this huge Pelosi majority in the 111th Congress, and the discharge petition gathered 173 signatures, bipartisan by the Pelosi definition at least, Mr. Speaker. And that was part of the foundation that I think actually did shake this country.

There was a statement made in the Rules Committee when they were deliberating on the rule for H.R. 2 that we had said that the sky would fall if ObamaCare became the law of the land, and they said the sky didn't fall. Well, Chairman Upton, now chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said, yes, it did. The sky did fall.

When you look at the 87 freshmen new Republicans that are seated over on this side, the nine freshmen Democrats on this side, I think that any political pundit would tell you there was a political earthquake in America that was brought about in large part by the imposition of this liberty-stealing unconstitutional ObamaCare bill that is before this Congress now.

This Congress was elected to come here and repeal ObamaCare, get a handle on the debt and the deficit and lay the foundation so that private enterprise can start to have faith in the future of this country again and they can create the jobs under the framework that we are hopeful we will be able to bring through.

But we are truthfully not in a position yet where the House of Representatives can lay all of the economic foundation that is necessary for free enterprise to have enough faith and confidence to invest our capital in a robust fashion.

What we are in a position to do now with a new Congress and a new Speaker is to be able to play an effective defense against the existing majority in the United States Senate and the President of the United States, who has frantically been digging holes through his Keynesian economics-on-steroids theory and dug such a deep hole that we have watched Nancy Pelosi preside over an additional $5.2 trillion in debt, and we have watched the Obama administration run that up under their term of only a couple of years of about $3 trillion.

And it has got to stop. The American people did this. They were looking at President Gulliver Obama, and they were the Lilliputians that came to the polls on November 2 and tied him up with all their little electoral ropes and said to the new freshmen class, join those incumbent Republicans that are there and any discerning Democrats that are willing to join, and there will be some join on this vote tomorrow and on Wednesday to repeal ObamaCare, and take the shovel out of the hands of the President and certainly take the gavel out of the hand of Nancy Pelosi. That is what happened.

Now, I take you back through this history, because it is being rewritten again. How can they go before the Rules Committee, stand here on the floor of the House before the American people, Mr. Speaker, and take the position that somehow if they just explain it one more time and one more way, that the American people will now have some left-wing light bulb come on in their head? It is not going to happen.

The American people have seen clearly. They washed the lenses off and they have looked down through the lens of the Constitution and fiscal responsibility and common sense and they were appalled at that liberty- stealing bill of ObamaCare, and they said repeal that monstrosity, because the destiny of America will be forever diminished unless we do.

This is the charge that this new Congress has. It is the voice of the American people, and it is the respect that we must have, and my gratitude for God's gift to America, the freshman class that was elected in 2010 and sworn in here right here on this floor yesterday afternoon, and they will affect the agenda of this country for many Congresses to come; and it will be a responsible agenda that brings us to a balanced budget and begins to reduce the deficit that this country has, not just the deficit spending, but reduce the national debt.

We must get to the point where we can begin to pay down the national debt, and we start with this Congress. We start by rolling back the spending to 2008 levels. We started here today with a vote that cut our own budgets by 5 percent. It is not a lot of money; and, yes, it is symbolic, but it is the symbolism that compels us to follow through. If it is good enough now for those of us in this Congress that voted on that, it is also good enough to bring that policy back through the United States of America.

Well, so what I have heard is the Members on the other side of the aisle that still stand here and defend ObamaCare, the ones that are left, they have four talking points about the bill that they think are compelling, and they must believe that it offsets all of the horrible things about ObamaCare.

First they say that, well, remember, the President had all of these promises about what he was going to do with ObamaCare. And he is the first one that I know of that attached the word ``ObamaCare'' to it in a public way. It was at the Blair House during the health care summit, February 25, 2010, when the President of the United States referred to his own bill as ObamaCare. So that is the shorthand version for all this long thing. They don't want to say ObamaCare. I don't know why. That is how everybody knows it, and that is how everybody understands it.

So under ObamaCare, they say there are four--they don't list only four, they just give you the four--four redeeming components to ObamaCare that apparently offset all the horrible things about it, and these four redeeming conditions are these:

That it requires insurance companies all across America with a Federal mandate to provide for policies that must keep your children on there up until age 26. They think that is something that America has fallen in love with as a really good brainy solution.

Now, I know there are Republicans that support the idea of insurance policies being extended to age 26; but, Mr. Speaker, what a lot of people don't know in this country is there are at least two Members in this Congress that were elected before age 26, and had ObamaCare been implemented before they were elected to office, they would have, could have, been on their parents' health insurance plan.

Now, isn't that a nice thing, when you wean them off of their parents' health insurance plan and you transition them over and put a pin on their lapel and say, now, run the country. They haven't had a single minute of their own health insurance policy until we get here, and actually we have a responsibility for it here. We pay our chunk of the premiums, like any other Federal employee.

But I just think it is ironic that there would be such a strong argument that people elected to Congress could come here, walk in that door, come down here before the Speaker's rostrum, raise their hand and take the oath of office, and at that moment still be on their mommy and daddy's health insurance policy.

I wanted my kids to grow up. When they turned 18, I told them my responsibilities are now done. I am going to nurture you and give you advice and counsel you, and I will help you where I can. But I am not obligated, guys. We did our best for the first 18 years. We will do our best for every year. We will love you all our lives, but you got to start pulling your own load. Now I look at three grown sons in their thirties, all married, five grandkids, each an entrepreneur in their own right, pulling their own load, and I am glad that they didn't have to stay unweaned until age 26.

But if the insurance companies want to do that, you should be able to buy the policy. If States want to mandate, I think it is not a good policy, but they can do so constitutionally, and then if a person is tired of paying those kind of premiums, you can move to another State and vote with your feet. There are some States in the Union here that I would move out of because I can't afford the health insurance in them. There are other States one could think about moving to because of the opposite.

Here is the second point: preexisting conditions. They always tie this preexisting conditions in with the word ``discrimination'' because it is like a civil rights code word. So if an insurance company says I don't want to provide insurance policies to people who have preexisting conditions who wait until they get sick before they buy a policy, the health insurance purchasing equivalent of waiting for your house to be on fire before you go buy property and casualty insurance, how many rational people, Mr. Speaker, in this country, would make the case that we ought to have a guaranteed issue for our fire insurance on our house? Couldn't we then just, you know, set up our little BlackBerry with an automatic send and wait for the fire alarm to go off, and on the way down the steps to bail out of the burning house, you just click ``send,'' and automatically they have to give you a policy so that your house could be rebuilt if it is on fire.

We wouldn't do that. It is ridiculous because it defeats the logic of insurance. The logic of insurance is you want to be insured against a catastrophe, and you want to share that risk with other people who want to be insured against a catastrophe. It is true for fire insurance, it was true for flood insurance until the Federal Government took it over, and it needs to be true with health insurance.

But we will address preexisting conditions; and we will have a legitimate debate on preexisting conditions here in this Congress, in committee hearings, before committees, amendments offered, amendments allowed and amendments offered and debated and voted up and down.

My position is that if the States want to prohibit the consideration of preexisting conditions, they may do so. Our State has a high-risk pool, and we fund part of those premiums with the high-risk pool out of the State treasury.

I think that's a good idea. I have worked to develop that and expand that in my time in the State legislature. I think it's worthy of consideration that the Federal Government could take a look at those State high-risk pools and find ways to help those States provide those kind of backstops because there will always be people that are unfortunate. It won't always just be those that are irresponsible. There are also those that are unfortunate. And so we need to take that into consideration. But to have the whole debate about just those that are unfortunate and not take into consideration those that are responsible, those that are taxpayers, those that are funding, those that are the engine of our economy that are being discouraged by these kind of Big Government, socialized medicine, unconstitutional policies like ObamaCare.

Here's the third one. A 26-year-old with insurance, preexisting conditions. Oh, yes, the discriminatory preexisting conditions policy. It's not discriminatory. It's logical and rational. Would you say that it's a discriminatory policy to not allow people to buy property and casualty insurance if their house is on fire? It's not discrimination. It defies common sense. So I'm not going to let them get by with that word.

Here's a another thing, though. Doughnut hole. They say they fixed the doughnut hole and we would unfix the doughnut hole. The truth is that low-income people have that fix. There is a backstop for that doughnut hole. It's not the hole that they say it is. Furthermore, they raise fees elsewhere to fill the doughnut hole. So it's not fixed. It's just another transfer. So some people are beneficiaries and other people pay the extra money. I am not particularly animated about that, although I thought we should not have had that doughnut hole created here in 2003.

In any case, their next argument is against lifetime caps. If States want to provide lifetime caps, let them do that. But if individuals want to buy policies that have lifetime caps because the premiums are lower, let them make that decision as well, Mr. Speaker. But I envision the day that we have free markets that are engaged in this. We want to preserve the doctor-patient relationship. We want to preserve the free market effect of this so that when people make decisions about their health and their lives, they have some tools to work with.

I want to be able to in this Congress, this 112th Congress, advance the idea and seek to pass legislation that's pretty consistent with Chairman Dreier's. I would expand it a little more. He's advanced the medical savings accounts. I would add we need to advance health savings accounts, HSAs. In 2003, with the expansion of part D, we put language in that established HSAs, health savings accounts. It allowed in the first year for a couple to establish a health savings account with a maximum amount in it of $5,150, indexed for inflation so it could grow. I don't remember what those numbers are today, but that's the calculus, from $5,150 on up.

Well, that's a good deal. ObamaCare slashed that in less than half and capped the HSA maximum amount at $2,500. Why? Because they don't want people to be independent, and they don't want them to be able to make their own decisions. If they do that, then they might undermine this effort of expanding the dependency class in America, which is what ObamaCare is designed to do, because expanding the dependency class expands the Democrat Party, and that increases the political base. And it seems illogical to the people. Well, there's the logic I've just applied to it, and now, Mr. Speaker, they do understand that this is about politics. It's about expanding the dependency class. And it's about diminishing the independence and the spirit of Americans.

And so the lifetime caps piece is the fourth one. Twenty-six year olds, preexisting conditions, doughnut hole,

lifetime caps. That's the things they talk about. Four things. That's it? Do they redeem those 2,500 pages of disaster? Do they then overrule and trump the Constitution of the United States of America? I say no, Mr. Speaker. They cannot, they must not, they should not. And I hear this debate also about an increase in our deficit of the number, I think it was $232 billion, if--not if anymore, it's when--we repeal ObamaCare.

Well, that deficit, and they want to know, Will you offset that deficit with spending cuts? Yes, sir. We will be happy to offset a deficit with spending cuts. But I would make this argument instead. When you have an unconstitutional bill in front of you, and if you're weighing $232 billion and you want to debate whether or not that's a reason or not to repeal an unconstitutional bill. You can set no price on the Constitution of the United States of America. If it's a trillion dollars, you repeal the bill anyway because it's unconstitutional. And you don't sit back and twiddle your thumbs and wait for the court to resolve this for you. I'm glad that there's litigation going on in the judicial branch. I'm glad that Judge Hudson found with Virginia on the constitutional component of the Interstate Commerce Clause. I'm glad there are efforts out there in the States to deny the implementation of ObamaCare. All of these things going on.

But we took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States here yesterday. We took it all in good faith. We said so. And when we have an unconstitutional bill before us, Mr. Speaker, it is our obligation to repeal that bill. Our judgment of the Constitution is not a judgment that defers across and down the line of Independence Avenue. We don't go to the Supreme Court and genuflect and say, If you change the meaning of the Constitution, my oath applies. Our oath applies to our understanding and conviction of the text in the original understanding of the Constitution and the various amendments as they were adopted. That's what the Constitution has to mean or it is no guarantee whatsoever to the people in this country.

They rose up and they changed this majority in this House, and they did so because they're a whole group of millions of constitutional conservatives, including the Tea Party groups, and they said, Enough unconstitutional activity, enough of this theft of our liberty. We are not going to pass the debt and deficit on to the succeeding generations. And it was $230 billion was the point, not $232 billion, to make it accurate.

But I noticed today in the Republican Study Committee that chairman Jim Jordan read from an article written by Tony Blankley in The Washington Times, December 20, 2010. And it caught my ear. And so I looked it up. And I'd like to just close with this concept that was delivered by Tony Blankley shortly before Christmas this year. He wrote about an experience in China and how they were worried that if they don't keep the growth going in China that they will create expectations and the peasants in China will be unruleable. If you give them expectations, then you have to meet those expectations. Well, we in America, we trust in our expectations.

And so he writes this. He said what happened on November 2, was that the American people went to the polls and said, I want more liberty and less government. I want more liberty and less security about my future. And he puts it in these words. And I think they're excellent words. No other people in the world would have responded to economic danger by seeking more liberty and less government protection. No other people would have thought to themselves, if I have to suffer economically in order to not steal from my grandchildren, so be it.

I pray we would have come to that decision a generation ago instead of a couple of months ago, Mr. Speaker. But this Congress has come to that decision at the direction and the effectiveness of the American people. And we will follow through on that pledge, and we'll ask them, Keep sending us more people like this freshman class to help get this job done so that in our time we can hand the keys of this Chamber and this government over to the next generation in sound fiscal fashion, sound constitutional fashion, not with diminished liberty, but with expanded liberty, and the pillars of American exceptionalism refurbished by our generation, thanks to the will of the American people.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 26 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, it is a great honor for me, for the first time in 4 years, to say, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my very good friend and Rules Committee colleague, the gentlewoman from Rochester, New York (Ms. Slaughter). During consideration of the resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, House Resolution 26 provides for a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 2 and self-executes an amendment by the majority leader, which is required under the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010. This is routinely required and is similar to many provisions that have been self-executed since the enactment of statutory PAYGO.

The resolution provides for 7 hours of debate on H.R. 2, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of six committees and the majority leader and minority leader.

It also provides the minority a motion to recommit H.R. 2 with or without instructions.

House Resolution 26 provides for consideration of H. Res. 9 under a structured rule that provides an hour of debate and makes in order an amendment, if offered by Representative Matheson of Utah. It also provides for one motion to recommit H. Res. 9 without instructions.

Lastly, the rule provides for the consideration of a resolution if offered by the majority leader or his designee relating to the status of certain actions taken by Members-elect under a closed rule.

Madam Speaker, it was just before midnight that my great new colleague

Mr. Webster and I were here in this Chamber, and we filed this rule following a lengthy 12-hour hearing upstairs in the Rules Committee, and I have to say that there were many, many discussions that took place on a wide range of issues, but I think it's very important for us to note that there are those who argue that we should not be taking up this issue because of the fact that we should be focusing on job creation and economic growth.

Well, Madam Speaker, we know that the overwhelming message that came from the American people is that we have to get our economy back on track, we have to create jobs, we have to make sure that those people who are struggling to get onto the first rung of the economic ladder are able to do just that. And that's why, when we look at a $2.7 trillion expansion of the Federal Government, $2.7 trillion in new spending, we recognize something that is common sense, and that is, if you're going to expand the size and scope and reach of the Federal Government by that magnitude, it clearly is going to kill the effort to create jobs and get our economy back on track.

And so that's why today, Madam Speaker, we are taking the first step in fulfilling a key promise that we have made to the American people. With this rule, we are setting in motion an effort to repeal President Obama's job-killing health care bill and replace it with real solutions, and I underscore that again because all the attention is focused on the fact that we are going to be trying to kill good provisions that are out there. Madam Speaker, we want to start with a clean slate. We are going to repeal President Obama's job-killing health care bill and replace it with real solutions.

This rule takes two important steps. The first is to allow for consideration of a bill to hit the reset button, so to speak, on the very damaging legislation that was passed last year under the guise of health care reform. The second is a resolution directing each of the committees of jurisdiction to craft responsible, effective, and economically viable health care solutions.

Madam Speaker, the resolution lays out very clearly what real reform looks like. Real reform will help, not hinder, in our goal towards creating jobs. Real reform will lower health care premiums by enhancing competition and patient choice. It will preserve the right of patients to keep their existing coverage if they so choose. It will ensure access to quality care for those suffering from preexisting conditions. It will implement meaningful lawsuit abuse reform so that resources can go to patients and doctors and not to trial lawyers. In short, it will increase access to health care for all Americans without compromising quality or hurting the very important small business sector of our Nation's economy.

Madam Speaker, the underlying replace resolution which I've offered will begin a robust committee process to tackle the difficult but essential work of achieving these goals and crafting true reform for the American people. This will be a process in which each and every Member, Democrat and Republican alike, will have an opportunity to participate.

Madam Speaker, as Speaker Boehner said the day before yesterday when he accepted the gavel, we are returning to regular order. Once again, our committees will be the laboratories, the centers of expertise that they were intended to be. Rank-and-file Members of both parties will play an active role in crafting legislation, scrutinizing proposals, offering amendments, participating in real debate. Critical legislation is not going to be written behind closed doors by a select few.

Today's rule sets in motion a process that will be both transparent and collaborative, but we cannot get to that very important step without clearing the first hurdle, which is to undo the damage that has already been done.

Now, we will hear people say why is it you're considering this under a closed rule. Madam Speaker, this was a clear promise that was made throughout last year leading up to the very important November 2 election. Everyone acknowledges that elections have consequences. The commitment was made that we would have an up-or-down vote on repeal, and that's exactly what we are doing. We must repeal last year's bill before we proceed with replacement.

Just as predicted, the so-called reform bill is having very real negative consequences for our economy and our job market. It is putting enormous burdens on job creators, particularly small businesses, at a time that is already one of the most difficult that we have faced, imposing significant new burdens and penalties while the unemployment rate remains above 9 percent. We got the news just a few minutes ago that it's at 9.3 percent. We're encouraged by that positive drop, but only 105,000 jobs were created, not the 150,000 jobs necessary to be created just to sustain the position that we are in right now. So we still are dealing with very, very serious economic challenges, and that's why we need to take a commonsense approach to, first, repeal this measure and then deal with solutions.

Above all, I will say that the onerous, unworkable mandates that have been imposed are adding greater uncertainty, which is job creation's biggest enemy. Anyone who has spent any time talking with small business owners knows this to be the case. While the economic impact is already quite apparent, the fiscal consequences are looming down the road.

While the bill's authors used a host of accounting gimmicks--and I'm going to get into those further, as I'm sure I'm going to be challenged on this, and I look forward to talking about the accounting gimmicks that have been utilized--while the authors used a host of accounting gimmicks, as I said, to mask the true costs of this measure, an honest and realistic assessment of the impact on the deficit shows a much clearer and, tragically, a far worse picture.

The Budget Committee has demonstrated the real cost of the health care bill, as I said when I opened, is a staggering $2.7 trillion once it is fully implemented. It will add over $700 billion to our deficit in the first 10 years. The words ``reckless'' and ``unsustainable'' hardly begin to cover it. This bill is an economic and fiscal disaster of unprecedented proportions. The time to undo it before any more damage is done is quickly running out. Republicans promised the American people we would act swiftly and decisively, and that's exactly what we're doing.

So my friends on the other side of the aisle have asked why there will be no amendments to the repeal bill. Frankly, there is nothing to amend. There is nothing to amend, Madam Speaker, to the repeal bill. Either we're going to wipe the slate clean and start fresh or we're not. Now, that's not to say there aren't some good provisions in this measure, but it is so onerous, nearly 3,000 pages, that we believe that the best way to do this is to wipe the slate clean, have an open and transparent process, and do everything we can to ensure that every single American has access to quality health care and health care insurance.

Now, once that slate is completely wiped clean, we will be ready for this open and collaborative process to develop the real solutions that we have talked about. That's what we promised the American people as we led up to last November 2, and that's exactly what we will deliver here today.

Madam Speaker, first, we undo the damage; then we work together to implement real reform and real solutions. I urge my colleagues to support this rule and then, after we've gone through the 3-day layover requirement next week, which is in compliance with another promise that we made to the American people, I urge my colleagues to support the underlying legislation, H.R. 2, which our colleague, the new majority leader, Mr. Cantor, has offered, and H. Res. 9, which I have introduced, that calls for our committees to work in a bipartisan way to develop solutions to the challenges that we have out there in ensuring that every American has access to quality health care.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds to say that Thomas Jefferson said that two thinking people can be given the exact same set of facts and draw different conclusions. Well, I've just heard what my friend from Rochester has said. I will say that this is a great day for the people's House because we are going to, in fact, be implementing the commitment that was made to focus on getting our economy back on track.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to our new colleague from North Charleston, South Carolina (Mr. Scott), a very hardworking and thoughtful member of the Rules Committee who was with us for 12 hours up until late last night.

Madam Speaker, I yield my friend an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, we have 87 new Republicans in the House of Representatives. There's no more impressive group than the four who are serving with us on the House Rules Committee, among them former Sheriff Nugent. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Brooksville, Florida.

Madam Speaker, at this time I am very privileged to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished former chairman of the Republican conference, my friend from Columbus, Indiana (Mr. Pence).

(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank my friend for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I wonder if he might repeat that line. I think he said that only in Washington, D.C., can there be an interpretation that cutting $2.7 trillion in spending is actually going to end up costing the American people.

Is that what the gentleman was saying? I thank my friend for yielding.

Madam Speaker, at this time I am happy to yield 1 minute to a hard-working member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which will be one of those committees, when we pass H. Res. 9, that will be dealing with ensuring that every single American has access to quality health insurance, our friend from Brentwood, Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).

Madam Speaker, at this time I yield 2 minutes to another hardworking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, our friend from Marietta, Georgia, Dr. Gingrey.

Madam Speaker, at this point I am happy to yield 1 minute to another hardworking member of this freshman class, my new friend from San Antonio, Texas (Mr. Canseco).

Madam Speaker, I am happy to yield my friend an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire of my friend on the other side of the aisle how many speakers she has remaining?

I am told there are 11 minutes remaining on your side.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining on each side?

Madam Speaker, then, in light of that, I am very happy to yield 1 minute to a physician, another hardworking member of this freshman class, the gentlewoman from Mount Kisco, New York (Ms. Hayworth).

Madam Speaker, at this time I am happy to yield 1 minute to another hardworking physician, a member of this new freshman class, the gentleman from south Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Dr. DesJarlais.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, at this time I am happy to yield 1 minute to another great new Member, the gentlewoman from Archie, Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler), my home State.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, this is the first act of the 112th Congress, and I have to say that I am particularly gratified that we have had six new Members of this 87-Member Republican class participate in this debate because, Madam Speaker, they have come here with a very, very strong, powerful message from the American people.

That message is that we have to make sure that we create jobs and get our economy back on track.

Even though we have gotten this positive news of the reduction of the unemployment rate from 9.8 to 9.3 percent this morning, tragically last month only 105,000 new jobs were created. That is not enough to sustain our economy. You have to create at least 150,000 jobs just to be treading water.

We know that the American people are continuing to suffer, and the message that has come from the American people through these 87 new Members is that we have to have a laser-like focus on creating jobs, getting our economy back on track, and reducing the size and scope and reach of the Federal Government.

My friend Mr. Pence and I had an exchange in which we said only in Washington, D.C., can saying that cutting a $2.7 trillion increase-- eliminating that, scrapping that--will, in fact, cost money. It's absolutely crazy, but that is what they are arguing; and through their sleight of hand, with the Congressional Budget Office, they are going to continue to claim that it will somehow save money.

Madam Speaker, we are doing what we told the American people we would do. It is very simple. Beginning last year, we said we would have a very clean up-or-down vote:

Should we maintain this $2.7 trillion expansion with government mandates and increased taxes, or should we repeal it? That's what we are going to be voting on after the 3-day layover next week; and, Madam Speaker, are we, in fact, committing ourselves to doing everything that we possibly can to ensure that every single American has access to quality, affordable health care and health insurance?

That's what the resolution that I have introduced, H. Res. 9, will do. It will direct the six committees of jurisdiction to begin immediately working on ways in which we can drive the cost of health insurance down.

I personally believe that we need to allow for the purchase of insurance across State lines, which is now forbidden under the McCarran-Ferguson Act. I believe that it is very important for us to have associated health plans so that small businesses can come together and get lower rates. We need to have pooling to deal with preexisting conditions. We need to expand medical savings accounts. And yes, Madam Speaker, the fifth thing we need to do is we need to have meaningful lawsuit abuse reform so that resources can go towards doctors and not trial lawyers.

These are the kinds of things that these new Members are telling us need to be done, and that is exactly what passage of this rule will make happen.

Now, Madam Speaker, let me say I urge support of this rule, and I urge support of the underlying legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my gentleman friend, Mr. Dreier, yielding me time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

What a week it's been. Since being sworn in on Tuesday, the speed in which the Republican Party is working their promises has been dizzying. Speaking of the Republicans' first days

in office, tea party spokesman Mark Meckler summed the week up nicely when he said, ``I actually don't think it would be possible to fall from grace any faster than this.''

In November, the Republican leadership, led by Speaker Boehner, traveled to suburban Virginia and made a Pledge to America. Their constituents, including tea party patriots like Mr. Meckler, listened intently as the Republican Party pledged to be fiscally responsible and serve the will of the American people. On page 6 of the Republicans' Pledge to America, the party states: ``With commonsense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone and putting us on a path to balance the budget and pay down the debt.''

The pledge was solemnly made by the Republican leadership despite being largely panned as a political stunt. Despite their promise to follow through on their pledge, on Tuesday, aides to the Republican majority said that the pledge to cut $100 billion was ``hypothetical.''

Now today they are moving forward to do the exact opposite of the actions they pledged, as they introduce legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act. If successful, the Republican legislation will add $230 billion to the deficit by 2021. This extra $230 billion won't be spent rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, teaching our children, or providing for the millions without jobs. Instead, the $230 billion will be added to our deficit in order to take health care benefits and protections from those who need them the most.

For example, starting this year, the Affordable Health Care Act will begin to close the doughnut hole for seniors. Under the law, Medicare beneficiaries who fall in the doughnut hole will be eligible for 50 percent discounts on covered brand-name prescription drugs. Repeal this law, and seniors receive no help and will be forced to pay their rising drug costs alone. Those are the types of protections that I fight for today.

Fiscally, Members of Congress face a $300 billion choice. According to the Congressional Budget Office, we have two options: one, do we keep the Affordable Health Care Act and save $130 billion by 2021? Or, two, do we repeal the Affordable Health Care Act and add $230 billion to our deficit by 2021? That may be trouble for some; but for most of us, it is easy. For me, the answer is clear; and I assume to most Americans, it's clear as well.

Because they can't win by simply judging apples to apples, the Republican leadership has taken to discrediting the Congressional Budget Office. Yet a quick bit of research will reveal that Republicans have long valued the nonpartisan and reliable work of the Congressional Budget Office and have publicly supported the agency before. In fact, in 2009 Speaker Boehner repeatedly referred to the CBO as a nonpartisan institution and relied on their estimates to argue against the Affordable Care Act at the time. But now that the CBO's estimates are detrimental to their political goals, they have taken to questioning the work.

Republican Senator John Cornyn warned against dismissing the work of CBO just because it's inconvenient. Two years ago he said, ``I believe the professionals at the Congressional Budget Office are doing a difficult but unpopular work. They are speaking the truth to power here in Washington and making the folks who would pass these enormous unfunded bills that impose this huge debt on generations hereafter somewhat unhappy.

``But I think they are doing an important service by telling us the facts. Last week, I commended the director of the CBO, Dr. Doug Elmendorf, for saying that the CBO will 'never adjust our views to make people happy.' God bless Dr. Elmendorf for his integrity and commitment to telling the truth. We need to learn how to deal with the truth, not try to remake it or cover it up.''

Now, I couldn't agree more with that. The deficit estimates provided by the CBO are the singular authoritative figures upon which we make all of our decisions and have for decades. Even if some don't like what the numbers tell us, we know that numbers don't lie.

I will remind my colleagues that today's actions are not ``hypothetical.'' We truly face a $300 billion choice. We can choose to provide invaluable benefits to millions of Americans while paying down our national deficit--remember that it will save $143 billion over 10 years--or we can choose to end valuable health care protections for millions of Americans and add $230 billion to the Nation's deficit.

Madam Speaker, today we are considering the first measure from the Rules Committee of this new Congress, and my Republican friends have already produced one for the record books. Let me give you some of the highlights. First of all, the resolution includes a completely closed process for two separate pieces of legislation. That means we get two closed rules in one. Maybe my Republican friends think they can save taxpayers money by rolling all the closed rules into a single resolution. I think that's what they meant by bringing efficiency to government.

The first closed rule on the health care repeal bill does most of the heavy lifting. It blocks every single germane amendment submitted to the Rules Committee. Well, that's not exactly right, though. It actually slips in one change without allowing the House to vote on it. This special amendment, slipped in with the famous deem-and-pass maneuver, is very interesting. It allows the House to pretend that the repeal bill is free, even though the Budget Office says it will raise the deficit by over $1 trillion. That's a neat trick; and now we know the secret weapon for reducing the deficit: a blindfold.

This closed process is especially troubling on the health care repeal because this Republican bill has had no public hearings, no committee consideration, and is not paid for. The second closed rule in this two- for-one package blocks all amendments to another resolution to correct a flaw in the swearing-in process. Apparently the vice chairman of the Rules Committee was conducting legislative business before he was actually a Member of Congress. Maybe amendments are not important here because no Member in the House has seen this resolution, since the rule allows the majority leader to make changes until the moment it is introduced.

But if any of my colleagues are concerned about not having enough time to read this surprise resolution, don't worry: the rule allows the House to debate it for 4 full minutes, 4 minutes. Have you ever heard of a bill debated for 4 minutes? Fortunately, the rule generously gives the minority 2 of those 4 minutes, and I guess that qualifies as both efficiency and bipartisanship.

Finally, the rule allows the House to consider a sweeping press release from the Republican leadership, a resolution to replace real patient protections with vague rhetoric.

Madam Speaker, this is a very disappointing day for the House Rules Committee. Our first action of the new Congress violates the promises that we heard from our Republican friends: no public hearings, no committee consideration, a completely closed process, legislative text no Member has read, 4 minutes of debate on an important constitutional issue, and so on.

For all those Members who were sent to Washington, like I was, to repair our Nation's finances, create jobs for millions of the unemployed, help the millions of Americans in need, the decision should be simple. I encourage my colleagues to reject the efforts of Republican leadership, keep our promises to our constituents, and vote to keep the affordable health care law.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), a member of the Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, this is not a dispute between Republicans and Democrats about the $1.3 trillion. CBO, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, is saying that.

I now yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan, our ranking member of Ways and Means, Mr. Levin.

(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

Madam Speaker, we have got every minute taken. I am not sure everybody is going to show up.

I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the dean of the House and our leader on health care.

(Mr. DINGELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Vermont, former member of the Rules Committee, Mr. Welch.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).

Madam Speaker, I would like to insert into the Record the figures from today's jobs report showing that since the enactment of health reform in March 2010, the economy has created 1.1 million private sector jobs.

Update on Job Growth Under Health Reform

Today's jobs report exposes the fatal flaw in the

Republicans' argument that health reform is ``job killing.''

Since the enactment of health reform in March 2010, the

economy has created more than 1.1 million private-sector

jobs.

That's an average of 123,000 jobs created per month in the

private sector since the enactment of health reform, compared

to an average of 7,000 jobs lost per month in the private

sector during the Bush Administration, when our health care

system was in a downward spiral and insurers had free rein to

raise premiums on families and small businesses by double

digits and deny or limit coverage with no accountability or

recourse.

12 Straight Months of Job Growth in the Private Sector More

Than 1.3 Million Private-Sector Jobs Created in 2010

Unemployment Rate Drops From 9.8% to 9.4%

113,000 private-sector jobs were created in December, the

12th straight month of private-sector job growth.

In all, more than 1.3 million private-sector jobs were

created in 2010. That's a dramatic

turnaround from the situation President Obama inherited in

early 2009, when we were losing 750,000 jobs a month.

The November private-sector jobs number was revised up

29,000 to 79,000 private-sector jobs created, and the October

number was revised up 33,000 to 193,000 private-sector jobs

created.

Government employment declined slightly in November; as a

result, net payroll growth for the public and private sector

combined was 103,000 in December.

The unemployment rate fell to 9.4% in December.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green).

I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the ranking member of Government Oversight and Reform.

I would like to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Sutton).

Madam Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from New York, Mr. Eliot Engel.

(Mr. ENGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, if we are able to defeat the previous question, I will move to amend the rule to make in order a bill (H.R. 2378) from the last Congress, the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act, which invokes our anti-dumping laws and provides relief for American workers and companies injured by unfair exchange rate policies.

I yield to the gentleman from New York for a parliamentary inquiry.

Parliamentary Inquiry

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, I congratulate the gentleman from Virginia on his election as majority leader of his party. He and I have had the opportunity to work together over the recent years. It's been a positive relationship, and I look forward to continuing that positive relationship, albeit in my diminished status.

I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman for outlining the schedule. There was an interesting article in The Washington Post today about your job- killing comments always being attached to the health care bill. There are obviously some of us who know full well that was not part of the title, as I'm sure the gentleman would admit, and that in fact it does not do that at all. In fact, we think it creates jobs. But, in any event, I thank the gentleman for announcing the schedule.

I want to say we're disappointed, however, as he was when he was in my position, that we don't have a committee process for this very important piece of legislation. I think it's important from your perspective and it's important from our perspective, although we may have different perspectives on whether it should pass or fail. But it is an important piece of legislation. There was no committee process and no hearings; no opportunity for the public to be heard on the bill; no opportunity for the Members to testify with respect to that bill; no witnesses were heard. Furthermore, under the rule, of course we have been given no opportunity to amend.

The gentleman, when he was in my position, repeatedly indicated how disappointed he was that there were no amendments allowed on certain bills. I want to reiterate that concern. And given the lack of amendments, I want to clarify when he believes will be the finishing of votes on Wednesday. I understand debate will begin on Tuesday and it will conclude on Wednesday.

What time do you expect to conclude business on Wednesday?

I thank the gentleman for that response.

In light of the fact that your side has made a pledge to allow ample time for Members to read and consider it, and notwithstanding that they have already not pursued that as vigorously as I think you would have hoped and perhaps we would have hoped as well in the 112th Congress, I was wondering if the gentleman can enlighten us on what he expects to consider the rest of January, after next week, so that

Members might have opportunities to anticipate issues that you're going to be bringing forward.

I thank the gentleman for his comments.

Obviously, the health care bill that he and his party seek to repeal had probably more consideration, more open debate, more transparency, more amendments, and more hearings than almost any bill that I have considered as a Member of this Congress over the last three decades-- full and open consideration, amendments offered from both sides in committee on a very ample basis; but I am glad to hear that you agree that there has been ample debate time for that. There has not been any debate time in committees--or amendments--on the repeal of that law.

I am certainly hopeful that the gentleman does not mean to say that if the majority party concludes that the American people have already decided on the issue that that will be the exception to the rule that you have put forth in terms of full and ample notice, debate, the amendment process, and transparency. I would certainly hope that that would not be the case. I don't expect it will be the case, and I hope it won't be.

Let me say in addition that I am very pleased that the majority party allowed in order the amendment by Mr. Matheson. As you know, we tried to have a permanent fix to the reimbursement of doctors who took Medicare patients. Unfortunately, the minority party in the Senate, which had the opportunity to do that, precluded us from accomplishing that objective. So I am pleased. That needs to be done. We need to have a stable funding expectation by doctors when they provide services to Medicare patients--to seniors--as we want them to do and as we want them to continue to do. So I am pleased that you allowed that amendment, and I would hope Members on your side will be supporting that amendment as we will on this side.

Let me ask you now, Mr. Majority Leader, as I am very concerned, and I expressed this on the floor. Your rules, in my view, provide for some $5 trillion to be incurred in additional deficits. They allow that because you have exempted almost all of the possible reductions in revenues--tax cuts, reductions in revenues--notwithstanding no reduction in spending. Well, if you reduce revenues and you don't reduce spending commensurately, inevitably, you will create large deficits, which inevitably will be paid by future generations.

That has been the experience that, again, I have had when we had significant tax cuts in the 1980s and in the last decade of 2000--2001 to 2003--when we created very large deficits.

My presumption is that you will be finding commensurate reductions in spending to your tax cuts that you will want to continue. If you don't do that, deficits will inevitably follow. The majority party has not done that in years past. Is it your expectation that that will occur in the future?

The question I want to ask you as well is that you have provided in your rules for essentially ignoring CBO scores--the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which has issued a preliminary score for the Republican Patients' Bill of Rights. They believe it will increase the deficit by $230 billion in the first 10 years by repeal and $1.2 trillion in the second 10 years.

My question is: Having deemed in the rule today a provision allowing the chair of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan, to ignore the CBO score, will the majority continue to ignore CBO scores on legislation for the rest of Congress or will we be fiscally responsible, in my view, and adhere to the advice and counsel we receive from CBO?

I yield to my friend.

I want to say to my friend, the continuing rhetoric is Washington doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. Americans in every family that I know understand that their revenues directly impact on their spending and vice versa, and if they don't, they have a real problem. If they don't have enough revenue to meet their expenditures, they've got a problem, and if their spending exceeds their revenue, they have a problem.

I tell my friend, I understand what you're saying, and I've heard this rhetoric all of my career here in the Congress. When President Reagan was President, we never overrode a Presidential veto of an appropriation bill because it spent too much. If he vetoed it, it spent too much, he never had a veto overridden. Nevertheless, we incurred an additional $1.5 trillion in deficits. Under President George H.W. Bush, we didn't override any veto of his, and we incurred an additional $1 trillion. That was $2.5 trillion plus.

Under the Clinton administration, of course, in the economic program as you and I both know that your party universally opposed, we had a surplus, the only President in your lifetime and I think in mine, which is substantially longer, that's had 4 years of surplus. Now, I know you say, the response that Mr. Dreier gave to me, is that, well, yes, we took over the Congress in 1995. That's correct. And of course not only did you take over the Congress in 1995, but in 2000, you took over the Presidency as well and controlled the House and the Senate and the Presidency.

And during that period of time, we didn't pass any appropriation bills on our side. You were in full charge during the Bush administration's first six years, and $3.5 trillion of deficit spending was incurred, making a total of over $5 trillion of deficit spending during the time that your party took the position that we didn't have a revenue problem, we had a spending problem.

Well, it ended up being a $5 trillion deficit problem, adding to the deficit for our children and for my grandchildren and for my great- granddaughter, and I'm concerned about that. And that is why I'm so concerned about statutory PAYGO, sticking with CBO scores, and accommodating our spending and revenue. They are both related, obviously, and to ignore that eliminating revenue without eliminating spending does cause deficits I think is to ignore reality.

So I would hope my friend would talk to Mr. Ryan of the Budget Committee and bring us legislation which would, in fact, do what you and I want to do; that is, eliminate the deficit. If we've got two messages during this past election, in my view, it was, A, focus on creating jobs. We've got to get to work. Americans are hurting. We had some good job numbers this month. We've created over 1.3 million jobs this past year as opposed to losing almost 4 million jobs in the last year of the Bush administration. That's progress. But as I've said so often, it's not success. Success will be when every American who wants a job, willing to work, can find a job, and they can support him or her and their families.

But we need to not pretend that revenues and spending are not inextricably related, and that if we give up revenues before we do the difficult thing, the tough thing, the adult thing, as Mr. Boehner said, and cut the spending, then cut the revenues if Americans are buying it, then we ought to be paying for it and not passing along the bill to our grandchildren, and I would hope the gentleman would pursue that.

If the gentleman wants to respond to that, I want to say something about health care briefly.

I appreciate the gentleman's comment, and briefly in closing, Madam Speaker, let me say this. I hope we can cooperate, but we do have a divergence, as my friend pointed out, and that's of course the nature of what the House of Representatives does, debates different points of view. Frankly, my experience, as I have said, is that when we diverged in a point of view in 1993, when my Republican friends took the position that accommodating revenues to spending would, in fact, from their perspective, be a job killer--they talk a lot about job- killing legislation. They all voted against that legislation in 1993, and in fact, some of my colleagues on my side of the aisle lost their election because of voting for that piece of legislation. In fact, however, it helped create the most robust economy anybody in this Chamber has experienced in their lifetime. It created over 22 million jobs, as opposed to losing 8 million jobs in the last administration under President Bush, so that there was a substantial difference which you can see, touch, and feel and read about and know about.

So I tell my friend, yes, there's a difference of opinion, but there's no difference of opinion on what happened, and when Winston Churchill, who you quoted before and of whom I'm a great fan, one of the things that Winston Churchill was most known for was trying to remind his British friends: don't forget what dictators and despots do--and I make no aspersions, I want to make that clear. I'm simply saying he believed strongly in learning from the past and not continuing to make mistakes and not continue to do what failed in years before.

So I agree with the gentleman in looking at the past for instruction on how to make the future better and to create those jobs that both he and I want to create and that America certainly is looking for us to create.

I thank the gentleman for this colloquy.