Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the majority leader, Mr. Cantor of Virginia, for the purpose of inquiring as to the schedule for the week to come.

I thank the gentleman for his information.

I don't see on the schedule, Mr. Speaker, that we are going to a budget conference. At least there's no notice from the majority leader of that fact. Mr. Speaker, as you know, we are facing a number of critical deadlines. It has now been 125 days since the House passed a budget and 123 days since the Senate passed a budget. On issue after issue, our Republican colleagues, Mr. Speaker, have passed bills and then refused to negotiate. Mr. Speaker, it's past time for action. We should go to conference and reach an agreement. I would urge my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, to go to conference.

One of his colleagues, Mr. Speaker, from Virginia said this: ``I am proudly on record about this. I believe we need to go to conference,'' speaking of the budget. This Member went on to say, ``I have listened carefully to the argument that we should not go to conference, and frankly I do not find it compelling.''

Mr. Speaker, that was Representative Scott Rigell of Virginia.

I would ask my friend, the majority leader, does the gentleman expect that we will go to conference at all on the budget?

I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman for his comment.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman's premise is absolutely incorrect, and the American people ought to know that. The Senate hasn't voted to go to conference because the Republican Members of the United States Senate won't vote to go to conference. There was nothing in that motion, however, that said there was a prerequisite that the House agreed to anything, Mr. Speaker. Nothing.

Now, my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, has said repeatedly that we have a prerequisite. We have a difference of opinion. That's what democracy is about. There's no prerequisite. There's no precondition. There's no condition precedent, as we lawyers say, for going to conference. Number one, the Senate couldn't make us agree. That's what conferences are about, Mr. Speaker. They're about coming together and understanding there are differences. There would be no need for a conference if there weren't differences. There are differences.

We're $91 billion apart, Mr. Speaker, on our budgets. We are 14 days away from the end of this fiscal year, Mr. Speaker, in terms of legislative days available to us to get to a compromise, to get to a number, to get to some understanding of how we are going to ensure that government operations continue. There's no prerequisite. There's no precondition. I don't know where that comes from, Mr. Speaker. I've heard it a lot. I have no idea where it comes from.

Nothing the Senate does can force this body, Republicans or Democrats, to do something. What they have asked is come to the table and talk. There has been a refusal to do that, Mr. Speaker, and it's bad for the country.

A $91 billion difference between us on budgets has to be resolved somehow, some way. And the way democracies do it and the way the legislature does it, Mr. Speaker is to meet and try to resolve those differences. Now, you can divide the differences in half. The Senate comes down 46, we go up 45. My own view is Mr. Ryan believes there's nothing he will agree to. I'll get to that a little later, Mr. Speaker. That's why we're not going to conference, and he said so in the paper. He didn't say it about the conference, but I'll get to his quote in just a second.

Mr. Speaker, the majority leader mentioned that the T-HUD appropriation bill is on the floor next week. So far, Mr. Speaker, we are now essentially going to be at the end of the session before the August break coming next week on Friday, and we've done four appropriation bills. The House T-HUD bill of which the majority leader speaks, Mr. Speaker, is 17 percent below the Budget Control Act that we agreed on. Not only that, Mr. Speaker, it's 9 percent below the sequester level.

Now, we're not going to vote for it, Mr. Speaker. We believe it badly underfunds, transportation, housing, and infrastructure in this country, but this performance makes some sense considering the lack of regular order. We talk about regular order, but we don't follow it. Going to conference is regular order. It doesn't change the fact, however, that we just have 14 days left to go and that we need to reach agreement.

I will tell my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, that we are willing to work together. We have been willing to compromise. We have compromised. In every one of these agreements we've reached, we've compromised. My friend, the majority leader, would say, yes, and they have, as well. But you cannot compromise if you don't sit down.

I will tell you nobody has called me to ask me how I believe we can get to the end of this year with a continuing resolution. Nobody's asked me that. I talked to Mr. Ryan and Mr. Van Hollen. Mr. Ryan has not talked to Mr. Van Hollen. With all due respect to this discussion about their talking, they're not talking. I talked to Senator Murray. No discussion of how we resolve the differences. I talked to the chair of the Appropriations Committee, both the ranking member here, Mrs. Lowey, and the chair on the Senate side, Senator Mikulski. Nobody is talking to them about how we resolve the question at the end of next month. And we won't be here at the end of next month. We're in session 2 weeks in September.

I want to use a quote:

But we should not pass a continuing resolution, and I will

not vote for a continuing resolution unless we talk about

preconditions for going to conference.

Talk about preconditions. Talk about demands and ultimatums:

I will not vote for a continuing resolution unless it

defunds ObamaCare for the period of time of the continuing

resolution.

Nobody in America believes that's going to be done. A lot of people, I know the majority leader would tell me, want it done. But we had an election. The President won. He won't sign the defunding of ObamaCare because he believes it's in the best interest of the health of our people and the welfare of our country, and, yes, even job creation and economic growth. But Marco Rubio says he won't vote for a continuing resolution unless it does something that's not going to happen. The majority leader, Mr. Speaker, said they weren't going to go to conference--another ultimatum--unless the Senate abandoned its point of view. The Senate has a right to its point of view. We have a right to our point of view. We need to discuss it. That's the way you get things done in a democracy, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the majority leader, Does the gentleman expect that we will go to conference at all, at any time on the budget?

I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's recitation of history. Let me remind him, the first year I was majority leader, all 12 appropriations bills passed the House prior to the August break--all 12. That also happened the third year. It didn't happen the second year when we had a lot of political delays. And the reason we went to structured rules, as the gentleman I'm sure recalls, because we had filibuster by amendment. We had delay and obstruction in 2007, just as we have delay and obstruction today, just as there is a refusal today to go to conference. Over 120 days after both Houses have passed their budgets, we still have refusal to go to conference. That is why you can't get agreement.

The gentleman characterizes, I think Mr. Ryan has talked to Senator Murray, and I will tell you that Senator Murray does not believe it was a very long discussion or a very substantive discussion because--and you talk about Mr. Ryan. I've got a quote of his I know you'll like that I want to get to because it makes the point I'm making. I was going to make it a little later.

Paul Ryan, when asked about Senate Republicans' plan to work with Democrats to address the debt ceiling, said:

It doesn't matter. We're not going to do what they want to

do. It doesn't really matter what they do. It doesn't matter

what John McCain and others do on the taxes and the rest. If

they want to give up taxes for the sequester, we're not going

to do that. So that doesn't really affect us.

But, oh, it does affect us because, Mr. Speaker, if we can't get agreement, those American folks of which the majority leader just spoke who are looking for jobs, who want to see this economy grow, who are suffering because of gridlock, who have a lack of confidence because this Congress does not work--the most dysfunctional Congress in which I have served, and I've been here 33 years, the least productive Congress in which I've served. Mr. Speaker, that's what we need to be doing.

Mike Lee, another Republican in the Senate talking about trying to get to agreement: ``If Republicans in both Houses simply refuse''--and this is their strategy, Mr. Speaker. ``If Republicans in both Houses simply refuse to vote for any continuing resolution that contains further funding for further enforcement of ObamaCare''--and I understand the gentleman is opposed to it. He was opposed to it before the election. Mr. Romney was opposed to it. We had an election, and you didn't win that argument at the national level. I say that Mr. Obama won that argument. But Senator Lee says he will not vote for a CR if it includes ``further funding for further enforcement of ObamaCare. We can stop it. We can stop the individual mandate from going into effect.'' How? By shutting down government.

That's their strategy. We don't think that's a good strategy, Mr. Speaker. We think that's a bad strategy. We don't want to see that. We're prepared to work together to compromise. Nobody believes, just as the gentleman has said he's not going to agree to tax increases--I understand what he's saying, so we'll have to compromise on that somewhere along the road when we sit down. But nobody believes that either we on this side are going to compromise or the President's going to compromise after an election, after being reelected on a health care program that is benefiting millions and millions of people right now, nobody believes we're going to compromise on that. Thirty-nine times they've tried to repeal it in one form or another. It's failed. We've got to come to grips on that.

Now, one of the House Members, Mick Mulvaney from South Carolina, said:

It is completely appropriate to use the debt ceiling or the

CR to ask for some changes that reduce the burdens of this

law on Americans.

Now, they've offered that 38, 39 times. It's not going to happen. But apparently their strategy is: We're prepared to shut down government unless they will be bludgeoned into agreeing by doing it our way; if we don't do it our way, apparently we're not going to do it any way.

That's what the budget conference is about, and that's what this debate is about.

Now, Pat Toomey, Senator Toomey, on the other hand, said this, Mr. Speaker:

This has been the way we've been operating for a couple of

years now.

This is Senator Pat Toomey, former chair of the Club for Growth, said:

It's a disaster. It's a terrible way to run government.

Senator Toomey and I don't always agree, but we agree very emphatically on that.

Congressman Tom Cole, former chairman of the Republican Committee, described the latest shutdown threat, which is what the previous three speakers had indicated--not Pat Toomey, but the three before that. Tom Cole described the latest shutdown threat as:

The political equivalent of throwing a temper tantrum.

That's Tom Cole, chairman of the Republican Campaign Committee, Mr. Speaker, not me.

We need to get past this ``you won't do this; I won't do that'' and figure out what we will do, I say to my friend, the majority leader, and we have 14 days to do it. We haven't gotten it done yet; and, frankly, we have nothing on the calendar for next week that shows that we're moving toward that end.

I would hope very sincerely that we could come to an agreement. And we're not going to come to an agreement on something that was so hard fought for the last 5 years, and we know that. We know you're probably not going to raise taxes, I tell my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Speaker. But the fact of the matter is that we need to come to an agreement. Americans expect us to come to an agreement.

With so few legislative days remaining before the fiscal year ends and the fact that we must address it in mind, I hope the gentleman can give us some clarity as to what Members can expect on the floor in September for the 9 days we're here in September since we're so far off course from regular order on the budget and the appropriations schedule.

Can Members expect to see a CR? And if so, does the gentleman have any idea what the CR will look like, what it will encompass, and what we can expect?

I want to say to my friend that we Democrats are prepared to cooperate in that effort. We're not going to--and the gentleman clearly knows that we're not going to--repeal the health care act. The election, we think, decided it. As a matter of, Speaker Boehner said that it decided it after the election. He said, well, the health care law has been confirmed. But I want to make it clear that we are willing to do some things.

We are not willing, however, to see the sequester cripple policies that this Congress has adopted. We're not willing to defund the Affordable Care Act. We're not willing to sacrifice our economic recovery to push the cost of deficit reduction onto those who can least afford it. We are not willing to shift more of the tax burden onto the backs of the middle class. We're not willing to target Medicare or Medicaid and education, or the deep cuts that were in the Labor, Health bill which has now been pulled. Apparently, we're not going to consider the Labor, Health bill. It's not on the schedule. It was supposed to be marked up today. It was pulled.

So I say to the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, that he and his colleagues should be willing to compromise on the few legislative days we have remaining; and if he is, he will have a willing partner in me and in Democrats because we believe we need to come to an agreement.

Now, lastly, let me speak on the debt ceiling. The majority leader, Mr. Speaker, has made it very clear he thinks not resolving the debt ceiling would be a bad policy for our country. In fact, I believe it would be disastrous for our country, for the economy, for every American, and for people around the world. We all know what happened last time; we were downgraded. It's the majority party's responsibility in each House to make sure that America's creditworthiness is not put at risk, that we pay our bills.

I'm hopeful, and I want to tell me friend that I'm prepared to work in tandem with the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, to pass a debt limit extension, and we will do so in an equal way so that whatever political consequences there are, we will take them together to do what the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, and the Speaker, and Mr. McConnell, the leader in the Senate, have said is the responsible thing to do. We're prepared to take half of that responsibility with them. We would hope that they would join us in that effort.

Senator McCain has said that some of my Republican colleagues are already saying we won't raise the debt limit again unless there is repeal of ObamaCare. Senator McCain said, ``I'd love to repeal ObamaCare.'' He agrees with the majority leader. He goes on to say, ``But I promised you, that's not going to happen.'' That's on the debt limit.

The President has made it very clear it's not going to happen. We've made it very clear it's not going to happen.

Going on with Senator McCain's quote:

So some would like to set up another one of these shut down

the government threats, and most Americans are really tired

of those kinds of shenanigans here in Washington.

That's Senator McCain.

I've quoted Senator Toomey, Senator McCain, who both believe we need to come to agreement. I have also, unfortunately, quoted Congressman Ryan, who says he doesn't care what Senator McCain thinks; who, of course, was a candidate for President on the Republican ticket just a few years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the majority leader whether he expects we will take an up-or-down vote on a clean debt limit extension when we return in September.

I yield to my friend.

I have heard that answer, I think, more than the President has given the speeches that Mr. Cantor refers to.

This party has always been, is now, and will be focused on the working people to which the majority leader refers.

The President asked us to pass a jobs bill. No jobs bill has been brought to this floor. I know that there are some bills that the Republican Party leader wants to say, Mr. Speaker, are jobs bills. But there's been no comprehensive jobs bill. There's none scheduled for next week.

But what the American people are really concerned about is their board of directors is not working. This isn't about Washington. This is about people who voted all over America. And the leader and his party made their point, and we had an election, not here in Washington, all over America. And America voted. And it hasn't made any difference on this floor.

Politics as usual. Confrontation as usual. Refusal to compromise as usual. Talk about regular order, but not going to conference, not going to conference on a budget, not going to conference on a farm bill, not going to conference on a Violence Against Women Act. We finally passed that.

So when the majority leader repairs to the fact that we want to focus on working people, he's absolutely right. We do want to focus on that. And the working people of America voted. They didn't all vote for my side. But as I told the majority leader last week, 1,400,000 of them more voted for our side than voted for his side.

But his side's in charge. We understand that. And we know we need to compromise. We know we need to work together. But we haven't been doing so.

And he can talk as much as he wants. That's what the American people believe as well, I tell my friend, the majority leader.

I asked him about the debt limit and he said no.

I want to clarify what he said no on was that a clean debt limit extension was not coming to the floor.

I appreciate the majority leader's comment. Can he tell me whether there might be a possibility of having a clean debt limit extension after September?

Because I tell the gentleman again, I want to repeat so that he knows, his party knows, and America knows, we're prepared to work with the majority party to do, in a bipartisan way, what every leader believes is the responsible action to take.

One of his predecessors, Senator Roy Blunt, in responding to whether we ought to risk default by not passing a debt limit, he said this: ``No, I don't support that. I think holding the debt limit hostage''-- in other words, if you don't do the debt limit, we're not going to do this, that or the other, or, said another way, if you don't repeal ObamaCare, we're going to let the country default. Senator Blunt, again, one of his predecessors: ``I don't support that. I think holding the debt limit hostage to any specific thing is probably not the best negotiating place.''

Now, I thank my friend for his comment, Mr. Speaker, and I would again ask him, could we expect a clean debt limit extension at some point in time between September 30 and November 15?

And I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman for that response, which I took as a no, which didn't indicate that we could expect to see bipartisan work on making sure that the government pays its bills that have already been incurred. No, it was a lot of rhetoric.

And there was a lot of recitation, Mr. Speaker, about bills. All those bills have something in common: do it my way or no way.

Now, we had an election, I tell the gentleman again. He knows that. They thought they were going to take the Senate. They didn't. The majority in the Senate is Democrats. And the President of the United States was reelected. And the House, Republican majority, was returned. But that didn't mean the American people didn't expect us to work together.

I tell the gentleman, I'm not sure what error he thought I made. We did not go to conference on the Violence Against Women Act. We did not go to conference yet on the farm bill.

I will be glad to yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman.

I didn't talk about intentions. I talked about fact. I talked about fact.

Pete Sessions, chairman of the Rules Committee, Republican, said this when we passed the farm bill: ``I believe that this is an honest attempt to

get us to go by passing part of the farm bill, to go to conference.''

I asked the gentleman last week, I asked him again, there's nothing on here about going to conference. The gentleman's told me we're not going to conference until we pass something on the nutrition part. We want to see something on the nutrition part passed.

Pete Sessions said, in addition to that, when talking about why they brought the farm bill to the floor in the condition it was, dropping all reference and provisions for poor people to have nutritional assistance, said this:

We're attempting to then separate, bifurcate, offer today a

rule and the underlying legislation which hopefully will pass

which would go to conference and the Senate, because they've

passed their own farm bill, has included in its provisions

where they discuss the nutrition program.

This is Pete Sessions, Republican chairman of the Rules Committee speaking, Mr. Speaker.

As a result of that, that should be in their bill on a

conference measure. The House simply, at this point, if we

pass this part, could go to conference.

So the gentleman is not accurate when he reflects there's nothing to go to conference on. The Senate has amended their bill into the House bill. We could clearly go to conference on that under the processes.

I think the gentleman must know that. And that was the expectation that Pete Sessions says was the purpose of passing the farm bill.

But let me go back to the point I was making before the gentleman wanted to correct me on what I think were accurate representations on all the pieces of legislation I mentioned. Certainly that's the case on the budget. My opinion, it's the case, certainly on the budget.

I don't know what the intentions are, but the fact is we haven't gone to conference on the farm bill and we didn't go to conference on the Violence Against Women bill.

The fact is, what those bills that he mentioned did have in common, Mr. Speaker, is--and he said, we've got no Democratic votes for it. There was no work to get Democratic votes. There was no work for compromise. That's, I tell my friend, why the polls reflect of working people such concern.

The majority, Mr. Speaker, talked a lot about confidence, talked a lot about building confidence if we were going to grow the economy. I agree with him. We need to have individuals confident.

And the gentleman knows, because he talks to a lot of business leaders, as I do, every one of them says that if they had confidence that we could work together and get things done, not put the debt limit at risk, not put the ongoing operations of government at risk, not continue to have fights--I talked to a major leader of one of the health insurers in this country and said, look, we may not like some of this bill, but we think it's the law, and we're going to work to try to make it work for all Americans.

We're not doing that, Mr. Speaker. We're trying to repeal. We're not conferencing. We're not cooperating. We're not trying to come to compromise.

And we can talk about working people, as is appropriate for us to do, and that's what the President is out doing, not here in Washington, not talking to all of us. He's talking to the people and saying, look, this is my program. This is what I want to do, and I'm not getting cooperation from the Congress of the United States.

I think he's absolutely right. And he's talking to the people, not to us, not here in Washington, but he's criticized for doing that by the majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I think that's what he ought to be doing because the American people ultimately are going to have to make a decision as to who is looking out for their interest and who is just simply confronting and not listening to the people in the last election, just a few months ago, or right now.

When the people are saying, board of directors, work together, stop obstructing, I would hope we could do that, Mr. Speaker.

Unless the majority leader has something further he wants to say, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, a lot of Americans are worried right now about their health insurance. They know what is coming. Seniors have been turned down by their doctors for Medicare treatment because the doctors are not adequately compensated. If they have not been turned down, they know someone who has been turned down.

Medicaid is uncertain and a stigma. On the one hand, advances in medical technology and the capabilities and knowledge of our health care providers mean we are living longer and have more tools at hand than ever before to address diseases and illnesses.

However, on the other hand, this increasing life expectancy, coupled with the aging of our population and the steady increases in health care costs, means our health care system is on the verge of becoming completely unsustainable financially.

All across the country health insurance rates are skyrocketing. Families are struggling to cope with the higher costs and less choice. Employees are losing coverage and they are losing working hours. Businesses are not hiring. At the center of this uncertainty is the President's health care law. A number of provisions have already gone into effect, but we will not experience the full force of the law until 2014; that is, January.

The Democrats' ``go it alone'' health care reform plan in 2009 was the first major piece of legislation to pass Congress without a bipartisan vote. Let me repeat that again. The Democratic ``go it alone'' health care reform plan in 2009 was the first major piece of legislation to pass Congress without a bipartisan vote. When you have a partisan bill you get partisan results.

After 20,000 pages of regulations and still a lot more to come, they are a little behind on those, and after over 150 new bureaucratic boards, agencies, and programs, the Federal Government still cannot figure out how to make the law work and has had to delay it, in part.

What I have seen to date is enough to convince me that we need a different path. I opposed the health care law initially and I support full repeal of the law. Fixing our health care system does not have to be divisive or partisan. There are clear differences in the approach to fixing health care from all across the political ideological spectrum. However, the least we have to do is to dismantle the worst parts of the law and replace them with reforms that actually work, reforms that lower cost and expand choice, reforms that do not bankrupt the country and every taxpayer.

The Federal Government needs to support viable solutions when needed and refrain from handcuffing innovative private designs with the excessive regulations for narrowed political interests. We need more competition, not less.

Unless we take concrete steps now, we will soon be unable to switch off the track toward government-run health care. When I first got here, I was warned that there were people who did not care who ran the train of health as long as it wrecked. Then we could have universal single- pay, government-run health care. I am not sure that is not still the goal.

One clear example of how convoluted this law is comes from the definition of who an employee is. I used to work in the shoe business, so I understand the difference between full-time work, which was 40 hours a week, and part-time work, which was under 40 hours a week.

However, under the health care law, there are now full-time employees and full-time equivalents. What this means is the law requires employers, and particularly small businesses, to determine how many of their part-time employees it takes to equal a full-time employee. They don't come under the full force of the law until they hit 50 employees. There are businesses that understand that, and they are trying to avoid getting to the 50th employee. But there are some catches in this law.

First of all, the health care law sets full time at 30 hours, not 40 hours per week but 30 hours. It was news to me. It always was 40 hours.

Second, the law requires these employers to take everyone working 29 hours a week or less, combine all of their time for a week, and then divide by the number 30 to establish how many full-time equivalents these part-time workers represent. I don't think a lot of people planned on that.

If you are still following along at this point, congratulations. You can see how costly the taxes imposed by this law will be.

What if the rule forces you to add all of your employees' hours and divide by 30 hours to determine your full-time employees? What if you have 10 employees who are working 40 hours? That would be 400 hours. If you divided that by 30 and find out that you are paying 10 people, but you actually have 13\1/3\ employees at the full-time requirement, that could put you over the 50 and put you into a whole different category of costs and penalties.

If you have 10 employees and you watched it so that there are only 29 hours, that comes to 290 hours. If you divided that by 30, you would find out that even though none of these people are full-time employees, you have 9\2/3\ full-time employees. You can see how they could do a little miscalculation, suddenly be at the 50, and be into a whole new series of penalties.

The Obama administration also had to admit recently that the employer mandate, one of the key pieces of the law, isn't ready.

One of the most economically crushing and burdensome regulations will not be implemented until past 2014, past the 2014 election in 2015. I don't think that was a mistake on their part. I think it was intentional--to come after the election.

There is another little complication that gets thrown in here though. If those employers are not providing the health insurance and not being fined for not providing the health insurance, then the people who work for them have to go on the exchange to get their health insurance. If they go on the exchange to get their health insurance, they can't be subsidized by the businesses they worked for. That is going to be a surprise to a lot of employees too.

The delay will force more people to enroll in health care exchanges or face the tax penalty if they don't. A lot of people don't realize if they do go on the exchange, there is also a surcharge on the cost of their health insurance. They are going to be paying a 3.5 percent tax for buying the insurance. Of course, if they don't buy the insurance, then they get a penalty.

The delay was also made for the businesses without congressional approval, done administratively. The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation informed Senator Hatch this week that this delay will increase the cost of the new insurance program established by law by $12 billion. It is not as if we had an extra $12 billion laying around here.

In particular, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the Federal Government will be required to pay an additional $3 billion in subsidies for people on the exchanges. A lot of extra costs were just kicked in there. This delay not only increases the costs on hard-working Americans, but it fails the original intent of health care reform, and that is to provide Americans with high quality, affordable health care.

In addition, the law requires the administration to set up health insurance exchanges in a number of States, including Wyoming. We are sparsely populated, low numbers. The numbers wouldn't work out to do our own exchange.

One problem is the administration has yet to tell anyone exactly how they are going to do those exchanges or what even a basic plan is. If you are going to have a range of plans that insurance companies can bid on, that you can look up on the computer, doesn't it seem, before you can even start, that you would have to know what the basic plan is?

How the President can argue that everyone will love the health care law once it goes into effect is beyond me. This administration can't even tell anyone where they can buy their insurance, what plan options will be available, and, most importantly, what the costs will be.

Remember what Nancy Pelosi said before they passed the law? They will have to pass the bill before we get to know what is in it. The administration is shopping its own version of that statement.

As the Senate Finance Committee chairman put it recently: this law is a train wreck waiting to happen. That is the Democratic Senate Finance Committee chairman.

Of course, on top of all of this, the law relies in part on new taxes and tax subsidies to support the coverage expansion.

This means the IRS will be involved in implementation. I have significant concerns with the ability of the IRS, particularly in the wake of the current scandal. The fact that this organization, the IRS-- tainted by such political behavior--is involved in implementing the new health care law has increased my belief that the health care law is not something the country wants or needs. Of course, the IRS employees don't want to come under this law either. I don't know of anybody who really wants to come under it.

I will take a close look at proposals to remove the IRS from any implementation activities, but I do think they should be subject to the law too. At the same time, I will continue to work to provide folks with relief from the health care law as a whole.

One of the things they have said if you are going on the exchange is, if you are in certain income categories, then you get a subsidy from the government to help you purchase your insurance. We are told now that will be self-reporting and will not be subject to audit. Doesn't that sound like something that could be fraught with a lot of fraud, where you say you just make enough to get into the biggest subsidies? Everybody wouldn't do that, of course, but I think there are some who would.

How is the government doing on some of the things that they already put into effect? I saw a little article on high-risk pools. When the bill went in, a lot of the States already had high-risk pools, and we worked with States to make those viable, but the Federal Government said we could do it for less. They put in a high-risk pool.

To keep people from jumping from the State ones, which, yes, are more expensive, over into the Federal one, which is less expensive, they said you couldn't make the jump unless you were without insurance for 6 months. People who are in the high-risk pool can't afford to be without insurance for 6 months.

There wasn't a big jump to the high-risk pool. But in spite of the fact that there wasn't a jump to the high-risk pool, the Federal high- risk pool went broke. It ran out of money.

Here is the disturbing part of that article. They said, well, they would just shift that cost over to the States. The States are already doing it, and they are doing the right thing. Now they are going to be asked to pick up the additional costs. How many parts of ObamaCare are going to get shifted over to the States? The States have had a lot of promises. Can any of those promises be met? Will they be met? A lot of decisions are being based on what the Federal Government promised.

Of course, in truth, we are out of money. The new law also tried to address the problem of rising health care costs. I believe the Federal fiscal situation is untenable, and we need to implement significant and far-reaching spending cuts to get our fiscal house in order. We cannot continue on our current path.

The President and his administration will argue that the new law will expand access and lower costs. While the law certainly increases access to insurance, it also moved billions of dollars from the Medicare Program to pay for this new insurance program. That is not exactly saving the government money.

The projections for lower costs also don't add up for the average American either. Insurance premiums and rates are increasing. Small businesses are unable to continue to provide health insurance for their workers.

Businesses in general have delayed hiring or are only hiring people part time--although I hope they listen to the part that I gave about the little part-time catch that is built into the law.

All of these decisions are directly driven by the economic impact of the health care law. My Senate Republican colleagues and I are focused on developing proposals that address the worst aspects of the health care law. The law increases premiums and health care costs, forces employers to stop offering insurance to their employees, and slashes benefits for millions of Medicare beneficiaries.

I support repealing both the cap on health savings accounts, flexible spending accounts, and the prohibition on over-the-counter purchases included in the health care law.

Flexible spending accounts help make consumers more aware and engage in their health care spending.

Health savings accounts are something that young, healthy staffers of the Senate like to do. They can do the math real easy. They can look at the regular program and see how much that would cost or they could take a look at health savings accounts. The difference in the price, in only 3 years they could cover the whole deductible part as long as they were healthy for 3 years. They would be covered for that part until something major happened--and they were covered for catastrophic--so they found that to be a real bargain. But not anymore.

Additionally, a number of other Senators and I have put forward bills to repeal the taxes imposed by the President's health care law. That would be

relief from new taxes on prescription drugs, relief from new taxes on medical devices, and relief from new taxes on health insurance plans. I wish to provide relief to employers from new regulations imposed on them by the law.

These ideas preserve competition in a private market for health care coverage and lower the cost of care for the consumer. All of these steps are commonsense reforms to the health care law that take us off the path toward a national, Federal health care system.

One of the most effective ways Congress can address the rising costs of health care is to focus on the way it is delivered as part of the Nation's current cost-driven and ineffective patient care system. America's broken fee-for-service structure is driving our Nation's health care system further downward.

Today's method of payment encourages providers to see as many patients and prescribe as many treatments as possible, but it does nothing to reward providers who keep patients healthy. Maligned incentives created by the fee-for-service system drive up costs and hurt patient care.

Tackling this issue is a good start to reining in rising health care costs. The health care law championed by President Obama and the majority party in the Senate did little to address these problems because the vast majority of the legislation involved a massive expansion of the government price controls found in the fee-for-service Medicare and Medicaid Programs.

If we wish to address the threat posed by out-of-control entitlement spending, we need to restructure Medicare to better align incentives for providers and beneficiaries. This will not only lower health care costs, it will also improve the quality of care for millions of Americans. It is very important that we protect access to rural health care services too.

There is more that can be done to better align Federal programs to meet the needs of rural and frontier States. The criteria that determine eligibility for Federal funds to support rural health care programs are based on factors that make it difficult to prove the needs of the underserved, rural, and frontier areas.

For example, one provider for 3,500 people in New York City is entirely different than the 3,500 people living in Fremont, Campbell County or, perhaps more so, Niobrara County. I use Niobrara County quite a bit, for example, because Niobrara County is the size of Delaware and has 2,500 people living in it. It is 90 miles tall, 75 miles wide, and near the bottom of the center is a town called Lusk. This is where almost all of the people live. They do have a hospital there.

When they have a doctor or a physician's assistant, the hospital is open. When they do not, they are 104 miles from a trauma center.

You can't apply the same rules to that hospital that you apply to New York City hospitals. In addition, we need to think more creatively about how to use technology services, to improve telemedicine capabilities, particularly for the rural areas so that where a person lives has less impact on the level of care they are able to receive.

The advancement of more powerful, wireless technologies has substantial potential to remotely link individuals across the country to deliver health care in more accessible settings. Our Nation has made great strides in improving the quality of life for all Americans. We need to remember that every major legislative initiative that has helped transform our country has been forged in the spirit of cooperation. These qualities are essential to the success and longevity of crucial programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

When it comes to health care decisions being made in Washington lately, the only thing the government is doing well is increasing partisanship and legislative gridlock. The President and Democrats need to listen. It is time to admit that this partisan experiment in government-run health care is failing. In order for this to get better, they must acknowledge the problem. Some of the law's authors and biggest supporters admit this law is a mess, and it will only get worse.

However, those in the Democratic leadership continue to support flawed health care laws out of pride, politics, or a belief that the government knows best. It makes no sense to stubbornly cling to a law that is so massive, burdensome, bureaucratic, and confusing that it is collapsing under its own weight.

By focusing on positive changes, Congress can give the failed law's proponents a way out. The key is finding common ground. More often than not, the country hears about what divides Congress instead of what unifies us. We could come together and focus on commonsense solutions with the kinds of step-by-step reforms that would protect Americans. I believe Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle can agree on 80 percent of an issue 100 percent of the time.

I want to be clear that this isn't compromise. When you compromise, each side gives up something they believe in, and in the end they get something no one believes in. I am about agreeing on common ground without compromise, without sacrificing each party's principles, by leaving out parts of the issue to look for a solution later.

Congress also needs to stop deal-making and start legislating. We need to stop developing comprehensive bills and then marketing them as the only option. To me, comprehensive means incomprehensible. The larger a bill is, the harder it is to agree. And, of course, you can tuck some things in there that people never see. This is especially true when we pass a bill that no one has fully read and then afterwards we find out what is in it.

No party has all the good ideas. By working together, the end result should be something that not only works but moves the country forward in a responsible way.

We still need health care reform, but it has to be the right way, with strong bipartisan support on individual health care issues. What happened to individual choice on a policy? What happened to liability reform? What about the sale of insurance across State lines or pooling through an association so they have leverage against the insurance companies? What happened to adequate compensation for providers? All of these have been left out. Providing Americans with access to affordable health care at a high quality is something Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree upon.

The challenges of the American health care system are not going away. If we improve health care in a practical instead of a political way, we can make its better. Good policy is good politics. Why do I have some hope this is going to happen? Congress is more interested now than they have ever been, and the reason is there was a Republican--yes, there was one Republican provision in the bill that forced Congress to go into the exchanges too. We and our staffs have to live under the law we passed. That is how it should be. But the result is hitting everyone in their offices right now. Every Senator and every Representative is looking at what may happen to their staff on January 1, and their staffs are concerned. It has changed the tenor of some of the hearings we are having. It is pretty hard-hitting on both sides. So with that, I do have hope.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 322 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my good friend, the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for consideration of H.R. 367, the REINS Act; H.R. 2009, the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act; and H.R. 2879, the Stop Government Abuse Act.

The rule provides a structured rule for consideration of the REINS Act, allowing debate time for 12 of 23 amendments submitted. In addition, the rule incorporates a technical correction to the bill from Chairman Sessions. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

Additionally, the rule provides a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 2009, the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act, and provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Furthermore, the rule provides a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 2879, the Stop Government Abuse Act, and provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, the rule provides floor management tools to be used during the August recess.

Mr. Speaker, America's job creators have struggled against strong headwinds to recover. In fact, since President Obama took office, 131 new major regulations, costing at least $70 billion, have been added to America's regulatory system.

Under current law, Congress only has the power to disapprove regulations put forward by the executive branch. H.R. 367 flips that presumption on its head. Any major regulation estimated to cost over $100 million would need to be approved by Congress and must be given an ``up-or-down'' vote within 70 legislative days.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama said:

To reduce barriers to growth and investment, when we find

rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will

fix them.

H.R. 367 does just that. It allows Congress to decide whether major rules place unnecessary burdens on job creators.

The second bill covered by this rule, Mr. Speaker, would prohibit the Treasury Department, including the IRS, from implementing or enforcing any provision of ObamaCare. In the last few months, the American people have learned that the IRS has targeted and intimidated Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. Given the recent scandal and the massive amount of sensitive information the IRS is required to collect under ObamaCare, it's completely inappropriate for the IRS to be given this responsibility.

A recent poll showed that 53 percent of Americans want ObamaCare repealed entirely. Mr. Speaker, health care decisions should be made by a patient and his or her doctor, not Washington bureaucrats.

The final bill covered by this rule, H.R. 2879, was extensively debated on the floor yesterday. In fact, it combined three bills, all aimed at limiting government and returning that power back to the people. This bill accomplishes three major objectives:

First, it caps bonuses for Federal employees at a maximum 5 percent of their salary through the end of fiscal year 2015. With Federal officials furloughing employees due to sequestration, the government should not, at the same time, be handing out millions of dollars in bonuses to other employees;

Second, this bill allows for senior Federal officials under investigation for serious misconduct to be put on unpaid leave. Under current law, agencies have little recourse but to put officials on paid leave, where they can collect a paycheck for months or even years while the investigation occurs;

Finally, this bill allows for citizens to record their meetings and telephone exchanges with Federal regulatory officials. In my home State of Oklahoma, along with 37 other States, this is already the case. However, 12 States require all parties involved in the conversation to consent to recording. This bill would allow individuals in all 50 States to record their conversations when meeting with Federal officials acting in their official capacity.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 367, H.R. 2009, and H.R. 2879 all express the views of my constituents. They're increasingly concerned and opposed to an intrusive and expansive government that seeks to tell them what they can and cannot do. These bills seek to stem the tide of crushing regulation and rein in an overbearing Federal bureaucracy.

I urge support for the rule and the underlying bills, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to quickly respond, if I may, to a couple of points my good friend made.

First, I want to begin by agreeing with her because, quite frankly, as I've stated publicly on many occasions, I don't believe a government shutdown is a good idea either. I think that's not a responsible political tactic. And while my good friend has been concerned that some people in my party have advocated that, I would also express a similar concern, quoting press reports that some advisors to the President have recommended that, should we send a so-called ``continuing resolution'' that funded the government that did not repeal sequester, he should veto it and that would shut down the government.

So I think there's been a little bit of irresponsible discussion about shutting down the government--which, with my friend, I agree, is never a good idea--that's come from both sides of the aisle.

In terms of her observations about sequestration, as an appropriator, again, we probably find some common ground here. I would like to see us also get rid of sequestration, but I'd like to do it by redistributing the cuts to the nondiscretionary side of the budget where I think they belong. We need to keep the savings--that's why the deficit is coming down--but there are certainly smarter and better ways to do that. And if the President is willing to do that, I suspect he would find a willing negotiating partner on our side of the aisle.

In fact, though, many of my friends advocate what is effectively a third tax increase this year. We had a tax increase with the so-called ``fiscal cliff.'' When all the Bush tax cuts ended, the President used that to raise taxes. We have a tax increase this year associated with his health care plan kicking in that's major. And now my friends on the other side of the aisle want a third tax increase to keep the government open and operating. We think we can spend money better and smarter, and that we ought to continue to reduce spending, not increase the burdens on the American people.

Finally, I want to talk to my friend, who discussed ObamaCare, and she's absolutely right; we certainly would like to repeal it, and we certainly have tried to make that point repeatedly. Frankly, her disagreement is not with us so much as it is with the American people. This is an extraordinarily unpopular law. No poll has ever shown that more people like it than dislike it; quite the opposite. People would like to see it repealed. It's simply not a very good idea. Frankly, we're seeing signs of that right now. The President himself, in a signature piece of legislation, had to ask that the business mandates actually be pushed back by a

year. We would like to help him in that, and we'd like to do it for individuals as well, but that suggests this was certainly a bill not ready for prime time.

A former Presidential candidate--I very seldom quote Howard Dean in agreement, but he had an interesting piece in The Wall Street Journal this week on why the central cost-control mechanism of ObamaCare--the Independent Payment Advisory Board--simply wouldn't work. Now, that's not us; that's criticism from somebody that probably supports a national health care plan of some kind.

Finally--and I think this does get overlooked in a debate, and I want to end my comments on a point of agreement, because while we have voted repeatedly to repeal, there have actually been times that we have, on both sides of the aisle, agreed--and agreed with the President--about changing this bill.

In the last couple of years, we have actually passed seven pieces of legislation when we were in the majority--they obviously had to go through a Democratic Senate and to the President's desk--that changed or modified ObamaCare--and saved, by the way, about $62 billion. My friends, after ramming that legislation through, looked at the so- called 1040s that were going to be attached to every $600 purchase and said, you know, you guys are right, that's a really bad idea. The President thought so too. And we got rid of it.

We also got rid of the assisted living portion of it, the so-called ``CLASS Act'' that was just financially unsustainable. Why? Secretary Sebelius looked at it and said, you know, this really isn't going to work. And I'll bet you sooner or later we'll get a medical device tax elimination down here on this floor--people on both sides know it's nuts to be taxing people's wheelchairs and oxygen cans because they're sick and use that to fund health care, and I'll bet you we can probably find common agreement on that.

So, while we would like to repeal, we certainly are willing to work when we find common areas and continue to try and improve a very flawed product.

With that, I'd like to yield such time as he may consume to my good friend and fellow Rules Committee member from Florida (Mr. Nugent).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

My friend--and he is my friend--I think is really one of the great speakers of this Chamber. I mean that with all sincerity.

But this isn't the Senate. We don't have unlimited debate over here, so he's kind of stretching it a little bit, but it's always worth listening to.

I will certainly yield to my friend.

And I want to say, my friend, the gentleman, exercised it to the extreme, but he's always worth listening to.

I want to underscore a point my good friend made, because I do agree with you very much about government shutdown. I don't think that's a responsible tactic. I've seen it advocated from time to time from people on both sides of the aisle. We've had reports of it from advisors to the President. I certainly wouldn't suggest the President would agree with that. But I hope we don't get there, and I will pledge to work with my friend to make sure that we do not.

I also think, though, that we ought to recognize that we have worked together on some occasions. My friend and I worked together on the fiscal cliff, we worked together on violence against women, we worked together on Sandy, we worked together, actually, on the CR in March. So there are times when we can come together.

We are working together now. I suspect the President will soon sign the Student Loan Act, an act that was originated on our side--problems were on the Senate side--and passed. Eventually, they came around and saw the same thing the way the President and we saw it on this side of the aisle.

We did. I appreciate that, and we found common ground. I hope we can again.

But also when we're lectured a little bit on rules--and, look, we both wear

these hats occasionally--I will remind my friends, when they were in the majority, the rules under which they brought a massive health care bill to this floor with almost no debate, a massive stimulus, billions of dollars, with essentially no debate and no consideration, the Dodd- Frank rule.

So whatever sins have been committed on our side of the aisle, I would suggest this is one where you need to look at the log in your own eye in terms of the size and scope of that legislation and the rules that accompany them.

I will yield to the gentleman on that.

Reclaiming my time, I seriously doubt that you have never said we wouldn't do this. I've heard the same thing when we talk about debt ceiling where we know the rules get reversed from time to time.

So I think this legislation--and I think it's very significant legislation--but I don't think it ranks with either of the three examples that I gave in which this body was not given the opportunity. Frankly, I think the Republican majority is here today largely because that's the way the House was operated the way the last time my friends had an opportunity to do that.

But regardless of that, I appreciate my friend's remarks as always. I always enjoy the exchange, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we did have a referendum on ObamaCare. Do you know what we got? We got a split decision because, while the American people certainly reelected the President, they also reelected a Republican House. That's a hard thing to achieve in what my friends would regard as a great Presidential victory. We had 435 different referendums about this. So the American people, for whatever reason, either wanted the debate to continue or certainly didn't want to leave the President, as they did in 2009 and 2010, with essentially total control over the legislative branch. They didn't like what they saw then, and I don't think they would like what they would see if that were to happen.

As for our friends in the Senate, letting them decide what the agenda is going to be in the House, I think, is, quite frankly, a mistake. They don't get a lot done over there. Every now and then, though, they'll surprise you.

I remember hearing these same arguments about the Student Loan Act in that, gosh, what we were planning and proposing, even though it was relatively close to what the President proposed, was never going to happen. In fact, if you'll remember at one point and if I recall correctly, I think the President, himself, issued a veto threat against the legislation. So, had we followed our friend's advice, everybody's student loans in America would be skyrocketing right now.

Every now and then, you just have to go out and fight for the things that you believe in; and, amazingly, sometimes the United States Senate will come around, and, occasionally, the President of the United States will change his mind or at least will decide this was close enough to be good enough.

So I would suggest we just continue to get up every day as we all do, to work as best we can for the things that we believe in, and at the end of the day--believe me--the American people will make a judgment, and we'll see what happens.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to a number of points my friends have made about the issue of sequester. I simply want to remind them whose idea it was. If they have any doubt, they should read the Bob Woodward book, ``The Price of Politics,'' or follow the lively correspondence that came after the book was published.

The reality is that the idea of sequester was the President's proposal. He proposed it; he advocated for it; he signed it into law. Now we hear from our friends, gosh, the Republicans won't undo it or we didn't really mean that it would actually ever happen.

We've had this discussion before. The simple truth is that we are willing to renegotiate where the cuts come from. We actually agree with our friends on that. What they're not willing to do is to actually reduce spending. That's essentially what the debate is about.

This is the method that the President recommended, signed and advocated for. If he wants to undo it--something, by the way, this House twice in the last term did, but our friends in the Senate never picked it up, and the President never came up with a counteroffer, so we're sort of still waiting over here--and if the President would like to redistribute the cuts, I have no doubt the Speaker would like to talk to him. But the idea that we're just going to simply undo it and lose all the savings, I think, is also unlikely to occur.

So let's sit down. We all know there are better ways to do this. We're willing to do that on our side, but we are not willing to raise taxes, and we are not willing to lose savings.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I do not have any more speakers, and I'm prepared to close whenever my friend is.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In closing, I want to begin by reminding my friends whose idea sequester was. It was the President of the United States.

The President likes to take some credit--and in some ways he deserves some--for our budget deficit coming down. Frankly, after four trillion- dollar deficits in a row, a Republican Congress came into office and that deficit is now moving down. It's about half of what it was. We've worked with the President to actually achieve something he said he wanted to, which is lower the deficit. He likes to take credit for it.

Second, I'd like to also remind my friends, Mr. Speaker, in closing, that I think these bills really are good bills. They provide important checks on the expanding power of the executive branch. How many times have all of us gone home and been regaled with tales of bureaucrats that are simply out of control or rules that make no sense or have an enormous economic impact? It happens all the time. That needs to change.

Senator Daniel Webster described the Federal Government as ``made by the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.'' I would suggest we've forgotten the last of these three phases, ``answerable to the people.'' That's what these bills are about, trying to make the Federal Government more responsive and more answerable to the people. The underlying bills recognize just that and restore the power of governance to elected officials, not to unaccountable Washington bureaucrats.

I would urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, when the Committee on Rules filed its report (H. Rept. 113-187) to accompany House Resolution 322 the Committee was unaware that the waiver of all points of order against consideration of H.R. 2879 included:

A waiver of clause 9(a)(2) of rule XXI , prohibiting consideration of a bill or joint resolution not reported by a committee, unless the chair of each committee of initial referral has caused a list of congressional earmarks, limited tax benefits, and limited tariff benefits in the bill or a statement that the proposition contains no congressional earmarks, limited tax benefits, or limited tariff benefits to be printed in the Congressional Record prior to its consideration. The required statement from the chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the primary committee of jurisdiction, was printed in the Congressional Record dated July 31, 2013. However, the required statement from the chair of the Committee on the Judiciary, which also received an additional referral, was submitted for printing on August 1, 2013. Both statements provide that H.R. 2879 does not contain any congressional earmarks, limited tax benefits, or limited tariff benefits.

A waiver of clause 11 of rule XXI, prohibiting the consideration of a bill or joint resolution which has not been reported by a committee until the third calendar day (excluding Saturdays, Sundays, or legal holidays except when the House is in session on such a day) on which such measure has been available to Members, Delegates, and the Resident Commissioner. While the text of the bill is substantially identical to the three bills previously debated in the House on July 31, 2013, H.R. 2879 was not introduced until later that day.

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

I want to commend the chairman for his work on this and in so many vital areas of the issue of health care on our committee, and I want to thank him for the time and the opportunity to bring this bill forward.

Mr. Speaker, the Republicans' goal in health care is to make certain that we have the highest quality health care in the world. That's our desire. We simply want it to be patient-centered health care, not government-centered health care. We believe that patients and families and doctors ought to be making medical decisions, not Washington, D.C. So this bill, H.R. 2009, grows out of the IRS's activities that have come to light in this country over the past number of months. As the chairman mentioned, we've been doing a lot of oversight hearings in our committee.

The American people have drawn a conclusion about the IRS at this point, and that conclusion is that it cannot be trusted now. The chairman mentioned that the IRS has targeted groups that have come to the IRS asking for a tax-exempt status. It has targeted groups for their political ideology. The IRS has leaked donor information to those groups, and many of us believe--and I think it will come out--that the IRS has, in fact, targeted donors to those groups for audits to those individual Americans.

Mr. Speaker, this is chilling activity from the Internal Revenue Service, so the American people have lost their faith and trust in the Internal Revenue Service. That's why this bill is so important.

This is a very simple piece of legislation--two pages, in fact. All it says, simply, is what the American people believe, and that is that the IRS should not be charged and have the authority to either implement or enforce the Affordable Care Act. I want to commend over 140 Members from this House of Representatives for being cosponsors, and we have hundreds of citizen cosponsors from across the country.

Some say that this isn't necessary, that it is not going to accomplish anything, that there is no reason the IRS would want that information anyway. The fact of the matter is that that's exactly what they said about what they did for the tax-exempt groups. They said, Well, it wasn't necessary for them to get that information about political ideology or beliefs or prayers that prayer groups were offering. That wasn't necessary either.

So, if that were not necessary, Mr. Speaker, how can the American people have faith and confidence that the IRS won't do something that also is unnecessary, and that is to engage in implementing themselves into that trusted relationship between patients and physicians?

Then another piece of evidence, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest is the individual who's running the IRS division that is charged with the enforcement of the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Speaker, that individual is Sarah Hall Ingram. You don't have to look too far back in her biography to recognize that she was the individual who was, in fact, in charge of the tax exempt group in the IRS at the time when the challenges to the IRS had been focused.

Mr. Speaker, the overwhelming percent of the American people understand and appreciate that the IRS should not be involved in the health care of this Nation. We believe patients and families and doctors ought to be making medical decisions, not Washington, D.C., and certainly not the Internal Revenue Service.

I reserve the balance of my time

Mr. Speaker, I insert into the Record a letter from The Seniors Coalition in support of H.R. 2009.

The Seniors Coalition,

Washington, DC, July 30, 2013.

Hon. Dr. Tom Price,

Cannon House Office Building,

Washington, DC.

Dear Congressman Price: I am writing to you today on behalf

of the over four million members and supporters of The

Seniors Coalition in support of your bill H.R. 2009, ``The

Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act.'' The Seniors

Coalition was originally founded as a public advocacy group

fighting to repeal the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act.

Since 1990, TSC has grown rapidly and expanded its advocacy

to include any issue that concerns America's senior citizens.

Today the Coalition is one of the largest grassroots advocacy

organizations in Washington, D.C. in terms of number of

supporters nationwide. TSC currently has over four million

supporters representing every state in the union.

The Obama Administration, including the IRS, has betrayed

the trust of the American people. Allowing the IRS to enforce

ObamaCare is opening up the door to more abuse, more

targeting and more harassment of American citizens. The vast

majority of the American people do not support ObamaCare, and

President Obama is ignoring the will of the people.

That is why The Seniors Coalition is writing today to fully

support H.R. 2009. Clearly, the IRS has proven itself either

unwilling or unable to prudently and impartially enforce the

law, and we certainly cannot trust them with our health care.

Thank you for all your hard work Dr. Price, and please

don't hesitate to contact me directly if there is anything

that The Seniors Coalition and its over four million members

and supporters in all 50 states can do to assist you in your

effort to de-fund/repeal ObamaCare.

Sincerely,

Sean Ferritor,

Executive Director.

I'm now pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter).

Mr. Speaker, I now insert into the Record a letter from the group Let Freedom Ring that endorses H.R. 2009.

Let Freedom Ring,

July, 2013.

Dear Friend: You have no doubt heard by now that senior

members of the United States Internal Revenue Service were

involved in a politically-motivated effort to blunt the

impact of the tea party movement and other organizations not

in sync with President Barack Obama's agenda for America.

We don't yet know all the facts but we do know that some

groups had their applications for non-profit status ``slow

walked'' through the process, existing groups were subjected

to comprehensive audits, many were loaded down with intrusive

and inappropriate questions about the prayers of their

members and other activities, and that tax returns of major

donors and conservative operatives were audited.

Things are so bad that one senior IRS official who appears

to have been involved ``took the fifth'' before a

congressional investigating committee.

If that were not enough, some of the same people that look

to have been involved in the effort to politically harass

potential opponents of the president's agenda have now been

put in charge of expansion of the IRS's role in monitoring

individual and corporate compliance with Obamacare.

Our good friend Dr. Tom Price, who represents Georgia's 6th

Congressional District, is taking the bull by the horns--but

he needs our help. He has introduced a bill--H.R. 2009--that

would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from implementing

or enforcing any provisions of the president's health care

law.

Congress needs to act--now--and they need pressure from you

to do so. They need to get behind Dr. Price's bill before the

IRS can do even more damage. Will you please take a moment to

write to your member of Congress and your two Senators and

urge them to support Dr. Price's legislation? Tell them to

cut off funding for the expansion of the IRS for Obamacare

unless and until the American people have all the answers

about how President Obama and his subordinates politicized

the IRS to harass their political opponents.

The whole business is suspicious, especially since the IRS

has for the last three years been denying to Congress that

any such activity or any activity like it was occurring.

Congress is now asking questions and the Obama Administration

has become evasive--despite a report by the IRS's own

inspector general that the agency had committed wrongdoing.

The IRS can no longer be trusted to behave in a non-

partisan manner. It should not be given extra authority until

it can prove once again that it will not abuse the public

trust.

Thank you for all you do on behalf of freedom.

Sincerely,

Colin Hanna,

President.

I'm pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to a Member from the great State of Michigan, Dr. Benishek, and a fellow physician.

Mr. Speaker, I now insert into the Record a letter from the group Americans for Prosperity which endorses H.R. 2009.

Americans for Prosperity,

Arlington, VA, July 15, 2013.

Dear Representative Price: On behalf of more than two

million Americans for Prosperity activists in all 50 states,

I applaud you for introducing the Keep the IRS Off Your

Health Care Act (H.R. 2009), which would prohibit the

Internal Revenue Service from implementing the President's

health care law.

The health care law grants the IRS an alarming expansion of

new power, essentially granting the agency the authority to

oversee every American's health insurance decisions. The IRS

will be responsible for enforcing the health insurance

mandates on individuals and employers, collecting the 21 new

taxes created in the law, and cross-referencing individuals'

health insurance exchange applications with IRS records.

AFP is deeply concerned that all Americans will now be

asked to turn over the private health insurance information

about their children and families to a disgraced organization

that has admitted to abusing its power and processing

applications in a biased, political manner. How can the

American people trust that the IRS won't also target American

citizens who disagree with the President when enforcing the

health care law?

Your legislation also affirms the common-sense principle

that control over health care decisions should remain between

American families and their doctors, not Washington

bureaucrats like the IRS. Americans for Prosperity is proud

to support H.R. 2009, your legislation to prohibit the IRS

from enforcing provisions of the health care law. I urge your

colleagues to support its passage, and I look forward to

working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

Christine Harbin Hanson,

Policy Analyst, Americans for Prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson), a gentleman who's a member of the Appropriations Committee, a fellow who has led on this issue for his entire career.

Mr. Speaker, I insert into the Record a letter of support for H.R. 2009 from the organization Restore America's Voice.

Restore America's Voice

Foundation,

Houston, TX, July 12, 2013.

Dear Representative Price: Our more than two million

supporters are grateful for your efforts to strip the IRS of

any authority over the Affordable Care Act as embodied in

H.R. 2009 which you have introduced. Our organization fully

endorses this legislation.

We note with discomfort that this agency seems not only

beyond the control of those tasked with oversight but

willfully resists full disclosure of questionable practices

and abusive methods in Congressional testimony. We have

concluded, based on the evidence at hand, that this agency is

being cynically used for political purposes to frustrate and

intimidate law-abiding citizens who disagree with

Administration policies.

This distortion of the proper role and functioning of the

IRS makes turning over responsibility for the Affordable Care

Act subsidies, penalties and, significantly, access to

private insurance and medical records, a frightening

prospect. We are therefore in complete agreement with the

purpose of H.R. 2009 and fully support passage as the only

responsible and prudent course of action.

Thank you for leadership and hard work in developing this

legislation and for representing the best interests of not

only your constituents but the American people.

Respectfully and gratefully yours,

Ken Hoagland,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), the majority leader of the House of Representatives.

I include for the Record a letter endorsing and supporting H.R. 2009 from the group FreedomWorks.

FreedomWorks,

Washington, DC,

Dear FreedomWorks Member: As one of our millions of

FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your

representative and urge him or her to co-sponsor H.R. 2009,

the ``Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act''. Introduced by

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), this bill would stop the Internal

Revenue Service or any other Treasury department from

enforcing any part of ObamaCare.

Currently, the IRS will be the most crucial department for

actually enacting and enforcing ObamaCare. The premium

subsidies that are supposed to help individuals purchase

health insurance through the exchanges are actually tax

credits, distributed by the IRS. And most significantly, the

IRS is responsible for administering the ``tax'' upon

individuals who refuse to purchase a government-approved

insurance plan--the individual mandate.

More ominously, ObamaCare requires the IRS to collect a

vast amount of sensitive information about the kind of

insurance coverage you have, and will store this information

in a massive new database.

ObamaCare's supporters, of course, claim that the IRS would

never share the medical information they collect, and that

the agency would only collect the exact data necessary to

determine eligibility for premium subsidies. And yet, a

lawsuit filed in California alleges that the IRS illegally

seized the medical records of 10 million individuals in that

state.

Having the same organization that is both targeting

political opponents and stealing people's medical records in

charge of people's health care seems like a recipe for

disaster. Rep. Price's bill would stop the IRS in its tracks,

completely erasing their role in ObamaCare.

I urge you to contact your representative and urge him or

her to co-sponsor H.R. 2009, the Keep the IRS Off Your Health

Care Act today.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe,

President and CEO,

FreedomWorks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen), a fellow member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining on each side?

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Bridenstine), a freshman Member.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my friend from Wisconsin. His chastising us for voting to repeal or change portions of the Affordable Care Act is curious, in light of the fact that the gentleman, himself, I believe, supported one of our efforts just 2 weeks ago on delaying the employer mandate. But hope springs eternal that he'll be able to support our efforts in this endeavor on

Mr. Speaker, I will insert a letter in support of H.R. 2009 from the Americans for Tax Reform into the Record.

I reserve the balance of my time.

[From Americans for Tax Reform, June 20, 2013]

ATR Supports H.R. 2009, the ``Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of

2013''

(By Ryan Ellis)

ATR supports H.R. 2009, the ``Keep the IRS Off Your Health

Care Act of 2013,'' sponsored by Cong. Tom Price (R-Ga.)

ATR is pleased to announce its support for H.R.. 2009, the

``Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013.'' The bill

is sponsored by medical doctor and Congressman Tom Price (R-

Ga.) We would urge all Congressmen to co-sponsor and support

the bill.

GAO has reported that there are 47 new powers the IRS has

acquired under the Obamacare law. We here at ATR have pointed

out time and again the 20 new or higher taxes that are

contained in Obamacare. With a new scandal coming out of the

IRS seemingly every day, the last thing that agency should be

doing is snooping into the personal health care lives of over

300 million Americans.

Yet that's just what the IRS is about to do. They will be

the agency tasked with implementing the individual mandate

and the employer mandate. They will force all of us to

disclose our personal health identification information to

them when we file our 1040s every April. They will be talking

to our insurance companies and the Department of Health and

Human Services about our health insurance packages.

This is outrageous. The IRS should have nothing to do with

our health care. Passage of H.R.. 2009 would ensure that the

agency which gave us Star Trek videos and Tea Party

harassment keeps its hands off our health care.

Mr. Speaker, I will include into the Record a letter endorsing H.R. 2009 from a group of six taxpayer advocate organizations.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

August 2, 2013.

Hon. Tom Price,

Cannon House Office Building,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative Price, We the undersigned groups,

representing millions of Americans, strongly support your

legislation, H.R. 2009, the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care

Act of 2013. This bill would prohibit the U.S. Treasury

Department from enforcing any provision of the Affordable

Care Act (aka Obamacare), ensuring that the Internal Revenue

Service (IRS) would be removed from implementing or enforcing

any component of Obamacare.

The last several months have proven to be an eye opening

experience for those who are concerned with the growing power

of the federal government, especially the IRS. Repeated and

systemic encroachment into the lives of American citizens by

targeting the very thing they cherish the most, the freedom

of speech, is a cause of great concern among many people from

all sides of the political spectrum. It is imperative to take

steps to ensure we rein in the power of an organization that

has proven to be incapable of handling the authority they

have right now with the responsibility and dignity the

American people expect. New developments on the unnerving

offenses have been uncovered on a regular basis for the last

few months and it is time to make certain that the IRS is

unable to extend these offenses into the lives of citizens

when it comes to their health care.

This legislation makes explicitly clear that the neither

the Treasury Department, nor ``any delegate'' shall have the

power to enforce any provision or amendment from Obamacare at

anytime going forward as the Administration moves to

implement the law. It is paramount that this legislation

passes, with overwhelming support, as it is clear that the

American people have no desire to have the IRS involved in

the decisions they and their families are making when it

comes to their health care. We have already seen the

consequences of the President's health care law on premiums

and job creation and it would be catastrophic to allow the

IRS to contribute to the chaos, considering their recent

record of abuses and mismanagement.

The American people deserve to be trusted with their own

decision making when it comes to their lives, including their

health care choices. The last thing anyone wants is to have

an agency they are already afraid of to be granted more.

We thank you for offering this commonsense language and we

urge all members of Congress to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 2009.

Sincerely,

David Williams,

President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

Grover Norquist,

President, Americans for Tax Reform.

Jeff Mazzella,

President, Center for Individual Freedom.

Carrie Lukas,

Managing Director, Independent Women's Forum.

Seton Motley,

President, Less Government.

Pete Sepp,

Executive Vice President, National Taxpayers Union.

Mr. Speaker, I would tell the gentleman that I have other speakers that may be coming, but at this point, I have no other speakers on the floor. I am prepared to close at any point.

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

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. President, I wish to talk about the status of the ongoing Finance Committee investigation into the targeting scandal at the Internal Revenue Service.

As you can tell, my voice is a bit hoarse this afternoon. I am feeling a little bit under the weather. With the Senate about to go into recess, I thought it was important that I say a few words about this investigation, particularly with some of the statements we have heard coming from the administration this week.

In May, when the news broke that the IRS had been targeting conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status with additional scrutiny, President Obama promised his administration would fully cooperate with Congress in its investigations. He also stated he directed Treasury Secretary Lew to follow up on the IRS inspector general audit to get more information as to how this happened, who was responsible, to make sure the public understood all of the facts.

I was encouraged by this initial response. As you recall, I worked to clear the way for Secretary Lew's confirmation in this Senate, even though many of my colleagues had expressed legitimate concerns about his nomination. I did so, in large part, because I believed him when he promised to be fully transparent and cooperative with Congress. When the President said he had ordered the Secretary to get to the bottom of this, I expected him to live up to his promises to do so and to work with us as we tried to do the same.

Imagine my surprise then to hear both the President and Secretary Lew state over the past week, with our investigations into the IRS targeting, Congress was creating a ``phony scandal.''

It started with the President who said:

With this endless parade of distractions and political

posturing and phony scandals, Washington is taking its eye

off the ball. And I'm here to say, this needs to stop.

That is what the President said.

That was followed by Secretary Lew stating on last Sunday's shows this past weekend that ``there is no evidence that this went to any political official'' and that congressional investigators' efforts to find evidence is ``creating the kind of sense of a phony scandal.''

In essence, they are saying our efforts to look into this mess are illegitimate and that the American people should simply ignore them. That is a far cry from the position the President and his administration took when this scandal was made public. As I said at that time, they were contrite. Officials were even apologizing for what went on at the IRS.

Today, however, it is a ``phony scandal.'' It is not worthy of the public's attention, they say. I have to wonder what they are basing their dismissal on, certainly not a thorough review of all the relevant documents, that is for sure.

In a letter to congressional leaders on June 4, Danny Werfel, the Acting IRS Commissioner, stated that the IRS had collected some 646 gigabytes of raw, electronically stored information, which is equal to 65 million pages' worth of documents relevant to this investigation.

Let me repeat that. The man in charge, Danny Werfel, stated that the IRS had collected some 646 gigabytes of raw, electronically stored information, which is equal to 65 million pages' worth of documents relevant to this administration. However, to date, only about 21,500 pages have been given to us--21,500 pages of documents. Those are the only documents produced to the Finance Committee to fulfill our comprehensive document request from May 20 of this year. The pace at which documents have been provided to our committee has been slow and often with long delays in between document productions.

Despite their initial pledges to be cooperative and responsive, the Obama administration has been slow-walking the Senate Finance Committee. We aren't the only ones being slow-walked.

Only last week, my colleagues on the Ways and Means Committee, chairman Dave Camp and ranking member Sander Levin, wrote to Danny Werfel, who is currently the principal Deputy IRS Commissioner, that at the rate the IRS is producing documents, a full and responsive production will take months. It is actually much worse than that.

Let me refer to this pie chart. Look at the documents we received from the IRS, 6,000 pages of, guess what, training materials. Come on, give me a break. There were 500 pages of Steven Miller, Douglas Shulman, and William Wilkins, and 15,000 pages of nonpriority custodians. That is what we have gotten from them since May. It is pathetic.

As that chart illustrates, given the intermittent document production and the very small number of priority documents we have received thus far, it could be 2016 before we ever would be able to draw any conclusions about what happened at the IRS. That is pathetic. I have a feeling that is exactly what this administration wants, and that is what I call slow-walking.

Since the initial report confirming the inappropriate targeting released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, or TIGTA, on May 14, this ``phony scandal'' has evolved from what the IRS first claimed was a couple of rogue employees in Cincinnati to direct IRS involvement from high-level officials in Washington, DC, including, at the very least, individuals in the IRS's Office of Chief Counsel.

I should note that the IRS Chief Counsel is also an Assistant General Counsel in the Treasury Department, and he reports to the Treasury's General Counsel. Clearly, much more needs to be learned about who was involved, why decisions were made, and what motivated these decisions.

This is why the Senate Finance Committee has been conducting a thorough, balanced, and fact-based bipartisan investigation that carefully examines every aspect of this in order to get to the truth.

We are not interested----

Yes.

That is right.

It may be beyond that. It may actually go beyond that.

You got that right.

I thank my colleague from Kansas. All I can say is: Look, we were promised full cooperation, and we are not getting it.

I don't blame Mr. Werfel for this, although he is a very close friend of Mr. Lew's. I think he has wanted to be more cooperative. When I chatted with him today again, he indicated the attorneys are going over everything. Let me just say, are we going to get the right papers? Are we going to get the truth?

We are not interested in some perceptions of the truth based on limited documents and limited facts. We wish to know precisely what happened, and we are going to find out.

Today, in addition to the small number of documents we have been able to review, the Finance Committee investigators have interviewed 14 individuals from IRS offices in both Cincinnati and Washington, DC. So far those interviews have yielded more questions than answers. In fact, the list of additional questions keeps growing as the investigation wears on.

After more than 2 months of investigation, here are just a few of the questions I have. I will not take too much of the Senate's time tonight, but I have a lot more questions than this, and I am going to ask these in a bipartisan manner.

Why did IRS Commissioner Shulman visit the White House 157 times? That is the number we have been given. That is unheard of. It has never happened before.

I admit ObamaCare has taken some time, but you can't justify 157 times. It sounds to me as if there is something fishy going on.

Why is it that the unions get tax-exempt status under 501(c)(5)? There was a surge in the 501(c)(5) applications in recent years. Why weren't they subject to some of the scrutiny?

Did the IRS give extra scrutiny to union applications for tax-exempt status? The answer to that is, no, they didn't.

I am not suggesting they should, but they certainly shouldn't have traded preelection of so-called conservative groups the way they treated them.

Everybody knows that is a scandal. Yet they call this not a scandal?

Once Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin learned from Inspector General Russell George of the TIGTA audit regarding IRS targeting of conservative groups on June 4, 2012, did he tell anyone else at the Treasury Department or the White House about his findings, including then-Treasury Secretary Geithner? Not that I can understand, because we don't know. They are not answering these questions.

When did Assistant General Counsel for Treasury William Wilkins, who also holds the title of IRS Chief Counsel, first find out that the IRS was targeting conservative groups? When did he find that out? Why can't we get a simple answer on that?

Whom did Mr. Wilkins inform about this targeting when he found out about it? What was the extent of the Treasury Department's role regarding Lois Lerner revealing, in response to a planted question, that the IRS had targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status at an American Bar Association conference? When did any employee of the Treasury Department first have involvement regarding the IRS targeting of conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status?

What was first date that any White House official was informed about the IRS targeting of conservative applicants for tax-exempt status?

It has been reported that ProPublica obtained private information from the IRS about conservative groups that had applied for tax-exempt status. In addition, it has been reported that the National Organization for Marriage alleges that the IRS illegally leaked information about its donors.

What action, if any, has been taken by the IRS and the Department of Justice with respect to any IRS employee who may have illegally disclosed private taxpayer information in either of these cases? These are important questions.

Are there other cases where a conservative group or its members have had their private taxpayer information unlawfully disclosed?

It has been reported that the IRS attempted to impose gift taxes on donors to the conservative group Freedom's Watch. Did the IRS attempt to impose gift taxes on the donors of other tax-exempt groups? Has the IRS targeted individuals for an audit of their personal tax returns based on their membership in or donations to a conservative tax-exempt group?

It has been reported that Lois Lerner communicated with an attorney at the Federal Election Commission regarding a case before the FEC.

Did Lois Lerner violate section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code dealing with the protection of taxpayer privacy in her communications with the Federal Election Commission? She had a right to take the Fifth Amendment, but was that why she took it if she violated section 6103?

These are questions that have to be answered. Why did Sarah Hall- Ingram, who was in charge of the IRS's efforts in implementing ObamaCare, attend a meeting with then-IRS Commissioner Steve Miller in May 2012 regarding the IRS's targeting of conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status?

It has been reported in the media that Christine O'Donnell had a tax lien put on her property the day she declared her candidacy for the Senate.

There is something wrong here. Anybody who is fair ought to be concerned about what is wrong here--not just this but in all these questions.

As part of the IRS internal investigation the President charged Secretary Lew with conducting, has the IRS examined whether any political candidates were inappropriately targeted?

Much has been made of the employees who have been ``relieved of duty'' and had ``administrative actions'' taken against them, allegedly in direct response to the inappropriate targeting. Once again, the facts do not add up, as the administrative actions discovered thus far were against low-level employees for actions that were not directly tied to the allegations of inappropriate targeting.

So my question is, Who was relieved of duty? Lois Lerner supposedly was after she took the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify. But even she was able to log in to her computer after being allegedly relieved, and she is still being paid her full salary.

Who else has been relieved of duty? What does Lois Lerner know that prompted her to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self- incrimination?

Former IRS Commissioner Steve Miller and Doug Shulman were both aware of the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status and the systematic practice of subjecting those

conservative groups to intrusive and unwarranted scrutiny about their activities. Why did they both deceive the Senate by failing to inform us that these practices were going on? Why? I was disappointed in Commissioner Shulman because he came to my office long before this all came up and I was quite impressed. But I think he had an obligation to come clean.

Why did the tea party cases sit for months at the IRS, through the 2010 election cycle without activity? Why? Why did Lois Lerner direct the IRS Chief Counsel's Office--an office that was purportedly slow in its response to requests for assistance from other IRS components--to get involved in reviewing tea party cases? Why did the IRS demand that tea party organizations seeking tax-exempt status provide a list of their donors to the IRS when that was not required? Why?

These types of inappropriate actions, as I said, are just some of the many questions we have about the IRS targeting scam. These questions will simply not go away, and our investigation will not stop until all of them are answered. And we are doing this in a bipartisan way.

Just today we learned President Obama has selected a new nominee to serve as the next Commissioner of the IRS. I have to say I was a bit surprised, although perhaps I really shouldn't be. Given the dark cloud that currently hangs over the IRS, I would have thought the President would have taken the time to consult Congress before choosing the agency's next leader. Yet I am the ranking member of the appropriate committee with sole jurisdiction over the IRS, and today's announcement is the first I have heard of this decision, and it was only after the decision was made. I like the President. I think we are friends. But that was improper, and it was a slight that should not have happened.

I asked Senator Baucus if he was informed by the President, and he said: About 3 hours ago. And he sounded a little disgusted himself.

I won't go into the merits of John Koskinen's nomination today. I have no intention of prejudging him. He will be fairly considered by the Finance Committee, and I have the reputation that he will be fairly considered. His record and qualifications will be thoroughly examined. But I want to assure my colleagues that I will demand significant answers from Mr. Koskinen when he comes before the committee, and I think other Republicans will as well.

My purpose will be twofold. First, we need to get to the truth about what happened at the IRS and, perhaps just as important, we need to make sure the Obama administration is fully cooperating with our efforts rather than using phony statements about phony scandals.

So today I want to call on President Obama and Secretary Lew to stop closing the door on this investigation that has just started and hasn't even been given a chance. If this is indeed a phony scandal, the burden is on them to prove it is. And just saying that it is isn't good enough. They should have the IRS produce all the requested documents and let the documents speak for themselves. There is no reason to hide these things, nor is there a reason to have a whole bunch of attorneys determining what can be released and what can't be released. Let them show how their partisan targeting began and why it continued for years. Let them show who was or was not involved and to what level within the IRS or elsewhere in government these activities were discussed and directed. Until then, this is certainly not a phony scandal. It is a legitimate bipartisan investigation being conducted in a fair and balanced way that seeks to let the facts dictate the outcome.

I have a reputation around here for being fair and honest, and I resent the way the Finance Committee is being treated. I can't speak for the chairman, but I believe he feels pretty much the same way because we are being mistreated with regard to our requests for information. This isn't some itty-bitty phony scandal. This is big-time stuff that should get into why the IRS was doing this to begin with.

People in this country are scared to death of the IRS, and with good reason. If they can do this to you, can you imagine what else they can do? And I have listed just a few things here today. I have a lot more I could say. This is an important investigation, and Senator Baucus and I intend to do it in a bipartisan way. But when we ask for documents, we want documents, and we don't want some bunch of partisan lawyers in the department stopping us from getting the documents they must provide. It sure looks as though they are deliberately trying to delay this as long as they can so they can say: Well, nobody cares about it. Well, I have to tell you, everybody in this country must care about it. If they can do this to these small, conservative tax-exempt organizations, then they can do it to every other organization when the time comes.

This is an important investigation, and this administration ought to be at the forefront of trying to get to the bottom of it instead of pulling from behind, saying there is nothing here when they know there is a lot here. I would like these questions answered. They are important questions. This is an important investigation. We should not allow the IRS to run rampant like this. That is the beginning of tyranny--except it began before 2010--and we should get to the bottom of it so it never, ever happens again.

I think there are a lot of people at the IRS who would like to see us get to the bottom of it because they are being besmirched by the bad things that have happened. There are a lot of decent, honorable people working at the IRS, and they have to be as concerned as I am about the mistreatment that occurred prior to the last election and after.

Is it going to happen again? Are these agencies of government going to be used by partisan people in the way they has been used up until now? It is enough to scare the daylights out of anybody, and it is enough to think, are we moving toward a totalitarian system where the people in government can get away with anything they want to and especially an agency as powerful and scary as the IRS? I hope we can get the answers to these questions. If we can't, this isn't going to stop until we do. And these are just preliminary questions; I will come back with some more in the coming weeks.

I yield the floor.