Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Richard E. ``Dick'' Hug, who passed away on May 4, 2013. Dick was a friend of mine and was determined to make a difference in the State of Maryland and in the country through his civic involvement. I know he will be greatly missed by his family and those who knew him.

Dick was born January 11, 1935 in Paterson, New Jersey. After graduating from Duke University in 1956, Dick began his business career with Koppers Company, Inc. In 1973, Dick was named Corporate Vice President of Koppers. Dick went on to serve as President, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Environmental Elements Corporation, a company specializing in air pollution control systems for the utility and industrial markets listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1991. In 1995, Dick retired and remained a Director and Chairman Emeritus until the company's sale in 2005.

Dick was very active and well-known in the Maryland community serving as Chairman of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, Maryland Business for Responsive Government, Leadership Maryland, the National Aquarium of Baltimore, the Kennedy Krieger Institute, the United Way of Central Maryland, and Duke University School of the Environment. Dick also served as Regent on the University of Maryland Board. In addition, Dick served on the Boards of the University System of Maryland Foundation, Loyola University of Maryland, AAA Maryland, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Bank of Annapolis. His philanthropy was well- known throughout the State.

Dick is survived by his wife of 56 years, Lois-ann Hug, a son Donald R. Hug and his wife Deborah H. Hug, and daughter Cynthia H. Marino and her husband Mark D. Marino, four grandchildren, David, Scott, and Stephanie Marino, and Leanne Hug. He is also survived by his sister, Barbara H. Overstreet and her husband Ronald N. Overstreet.

Dick's absence will be felt throughout the community, but his service will not be forgotten. I ask those here today to join me in honoring Richard E. ``Dick'' Hug.

This week the House is going to take action on a bill that's going to give the American workers in the private sector the exact same rights that Federal Government workers have, and that is that if you're going to choose to work extra, you get a choice whether to take overtime pay or to get time off to go to your child's school.

In my district we have Patriot Days during the school day at elementary schools where parents would love to have the time to go and spend that time with their child. This bill will get the parent the choice, not a Federal law. This will allow the parent to take that time off as comp time instead of getting overtime. It just gives everyone more choice.

Thank you very much. I want to thank my colleague from Tennessee.

I've practiced for 28 years before coming to the body here 2 years ago. Part of the reason is because of what the gentleman from Georgia mentions, the train wreck, to use the Senator's term, the train wreck that's coming upon us.

Mr. Speaker, the people in Maryland got a little rude awakening last week when BlueCross Blue Shield CareFirst, which is our nonprofit provider in Maryland, announced their new rates in the individual market on these exchanges that the gentleman from Georgia mentioned.

Now, in Maryland we're going to have an exchange October 1. You're just not going to be able to afford to buy the insurance on the exchange because that nonprofit insurer announced that their average increase was 25 percent--25 percent increase in the already high cost of health insurance. And it ranged from a small savings in a small number of people to--and I want you to hear this number--150 percent increase for healthy young people, a 150 percent increase in the premium to the people who are supposed to make that decision to do the right thing and buy insurance.

So this is the decision someone's going to be faced with coming out of high school or college, getting that first job, is: Should I buy health insurance? Maybe my employer no longer offers it because of the penalties that are in this bill and the mandates, so their employer may not offer it. Their choice is going to be: Should I do the right thing and get it?

And now they're faced with a 150 percent increase in that cost. And that was supposed to be--as the gentleman from Georgia said, and the gentleman from Tennessee, we were promised more affordable, and it was, you could keep it if you have it.

Well, let me tell you something. For that employee who's going to lose it because their employer can no longer afford it, they're not going to have it; and in Maryland, they're not going to be able to afford it.

So I want to thank the gentleman from Tennessee for keeping this issue in front of the American people because there are going to be many more surprises like we got in Maryland coming out across the United States in the next few months as this train wreck comes upon us.

Thank you very much for yielding.

And the gentleman has hit the nail on the head on this one. We want to encourage young folks to do the right thing and buy insurance. And in Maryland, our insurance was affordable for the young because we did allow appropriate risk to be priced.

But the Federal Government--and by the way, we also had high-risk pools. Anyone with a preexisting condition in Maryland could not be turned away by the high-risk pool that was actually run by the State of Maryland. So we didn't have a problem with someone not being able to get insurance in the State of Maryland.

But the Federal Government came in and fixed our problem in Maryland. Now, we didn't have one, but the result is going to be that all that risk that used to be in the high-risk pool which everybody paid a little bit for is now all on the backs of the person, the individual now going into that exchange to buy insurance.

Again, Mr. Speaker, a 150 percent increase in the cost of that policy for those young people just entering the workforce. These are the people who have big student loans if they've gone to college. They've got other costs. They've got the costs of raising a young family. And now, thanks to the Federal Government and to the President's Affordable Care Act, a 150 percent increase in the cost of their insurance.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the President on finally sending up a budget, though it was 65 days late with no real explanation for why it was late.

Of course, the House passed its budget on time. The Senate, to their credit, for the first time in 4 years passed a budget on time. And the amazing thing, Mr. Speaker, is that in the face of an almost $1 trillion deficit and a $17 trillion debt, the President sent up a budget that increases spending, increases taxes, increases the deficit, cuts Social Security and Medicare, and still never balances. That's quite a feat.

Mr. Speaker, America knows our debt and our deficit are strangling our economy. Let's roll up our sleeves, work with the Senate, and solve the fiscal mess this Nation is in.

Thank you very much. I would like to thank the gentleman from New Jersey for bringing this subject to the attention of the American people because this is a subject that's not going away.

What we're talking about today, of course, is a trial going on in Pennsylvania, little heard about in the press, but one that's very significant. Because when it's coupled with what the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Louisiana spoke about, the overarching medical ethics question, it's something that we have to come to deal with. Because, Mr. Speaker, it is true that apparently in Dr. Gosnell's mind there was little difference between a late-term abortion and killing a baby after birth. And make no mistake about it, these children were killed. Because the trial

right now is for seven cases of murder on those newborns. Interestingly, it was only discovered because of the death of the mother. And to show how flippantly many States have dealt with the issue of regulating clinics like that, we would never have known unless this mother died.

In my home State of Maryland, two deaths have recently occurred; and only as a result of those deaths has the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene decided that, yes, maybe we actually should regulate clinics where this kind of surgery is done. And, in fact, they have closed four of those clinics until they can bring them up to standards that we would consider modern medical practice.

But let's pay attention--because my specialty is anesthesiology--to what was going on in that clinic in Pennsylvania. Dr. Gosnell hired a surgical technician. This is someone he hired to clean instruments. He had that person administer anesthesia to those poor women going to that clinic thinking they were going to get good medical care. This is someone whose training was in how to clean a metal instrument and now administering life-threatening drugs. And, Mr. Speaker, we know they're life threatening because the misuse of those drugs resulted in that woman's death. In fact, three drugs administered--Demerol, a powerful narcotic; Valium, a powerful sedative; and promethazine, another sedative--administered by someone whose training was to clean medical instruments. And that is what's considered acceptable practice in many States in the country because many States choose not to regulate clinics where these abortion procedures are done.

But let's make no mistake about it. It wasn't just the killing of the mother that's at issue here. It's the grotesque procedure that was done in that clinic by the doctor and the people he trained to end the lives of those babies who were born alive. We might think this is a terrible thing. In fact, that grand jury thought it was a terrible thing. They, in fact, indicted on seven counts of murder. They called it ``murder.''

But the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Louisiana bring up an article published just last year in the Journal of Medical Ethics by professors from Italy and Australia. These are fairly civilized countries. The title of the article is fascinating. If the gentleman doesn't mind, I'm going to go through some of this because America has to understand what this moral discussion going on worldwide is. I will tell you I'm shocked because 10 years ago--I'm shocked now that this article is published, and 10 years ago, it wouldn't even be thinkable. The title is, ``After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?'' And it's about committing what this author calls after-birth abortion, which is currently called euthanasia or murder, or infanticide in our current speech. But these authors propose a new term: after-birth abortion. We're going to make this sound better because we know abortion is legal so we're just going to call this after-birth abortion. What it is is justification for killing a child after birth when no abortion was intended.

Mr. Speaker, this is just the next step to what Dr. Gosnell did. Dr. Gosnell killed a child after an abortion was intended. We think that's bad. A grand jury thought it was bad. There's seven indictments for murder in Pennsylvania. These medical ethicists propose that even if it wasn't an intentional abortion, that mother went and had her baby and decided that her daughter just wasn't going to fit in with the family, literally, and that it was okay to kill that baby. And if you don't believe me, ladies and gentlemen, just go and Google it. Read the article yourself. It's chilling.

Some people say, Well, maybe the child is born disabled or born with some terrible illness or something that's very painful and maybe we're just doing a good thing for the child. But the authors say these include cases where the newborn is not disabled. And I'm going to read from these word-for-word because I want to get this right and, Mr. Speaker, I want America to understand what's at stake here.

They make the argument that the fact that a fetus or a newborn has the potential to become a person who will have an acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting an abortion, or in this case, killing that child after birth. They argue that--and I'm going to quote:

When circumstances occur after birth such that they would

have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion

should be permissible.

Mr. Speaker, let me remind you that in the United States, sex- selection abortion is legal in many States, in China. And if we don't think this is a slippery slope, remember what's happened in China over the past decade. They've decided under their one-child policy that if you have a live birth of a second child, it's legal to kill that child for the sole purpose of it being a second child. And, Mr. Speaker, as we know, occasionally the girls were killed, if they were the first child, knowing that you can only have one child and the family wanted a boy. So in China it's gone past sex-selection abortion to sex-selection infanticide. But that's exactly what this article speaks about.

This article, again, was written by professors from Italy and Australia, published in a prestigious journal that ethically justifies killing a child after birth because, well, Mr. Speaker, for any reason. Because they argue that child has no right to grow up. And if you don't believe me, they go on to say that this is not an actual person. It's a potential person. It's not an actual person.

So they say if a potential person like a fetus or a newborn does not become an actual person because you don't allow it to grow up like you or I, then there is neither an actual nor a future person who can be harmed--I'm not sure I understand that--which means there is no harm at all. So killing the fetus or the child, there's no harm at all.

But they go on to say this, which is amazing and this is why people have to understand how foreign a thought this is to many of us, ``So if you ask one of us if we would have been harmed had our parents decided to kill us when we were fetuses or newborns, our answer is no.''

What, Mr. Speaker? They're suggesting that if someone came up to me and said, would I have been harmed if my parents had decided to kill me when I was a newborn, my answer should be no? How many people do they really think you can go up to and ask, if your parents had killed you as a newborn, would you have been harmed? Do they really think people are ready to say, no, no harm, no foul; I wasn't a person, that's all right, that's totally ethical.

They create an ethical framework completely consistent with abortion policy throughout most of the United States, and that is, that a late- term, third-trimester fetus has no rights as a person, and only merely extend that logic to the period after birth. That's all they're doing.

So although this may sound grotesque and shocking that they suggest that there is no moral problem with killing a newborn, it's merely an ethical, logical extension of the way we have been treating fetuses since 1973.

It gets worse. Because the gentleman from Pennsylvania suggested, well, there are plenty of people who would adopt this child. They go on to say that it's actually better in many cases to kill the child than to put it up for adoption. This is stunning. The reason they say that is that we need to consider the interests of the mother, who might suffer psychological distress for giving her child up for adoption. They suggest there would be no psychological distress for that woman to have carried that child for 9 months, given birth to a normal baby, decided they don't want it, and agree to have someone kill it? It's stunning. It's striking.

Let me tell you, and I'll close on this, because we're shocked by this. But let me tell you something, we can't argue with nature. We can't argue with what nature tells us. It answers the question: Why in the world is the younger generation more pro-life than my generation? It comes up in poll after poll after poll. How in the world can that be? We have an enlightened younger generation? Isn't it enlightened to think about this ethical framework? How can this be?

Mr. Speaker, let me suggest how this can be. This is the first generation where two things hold true: They fully

understand what makes a human a human because they learned genetics and chromosomes, and they know that every single person is unique from every other person ever, based on science.

There's one other thing they know, Mr. Speaker. This is the first generation where they know that they could have been aborted legally. The first generation where they actually answer those ethicist questions: Would harm have been done to me if I would have been killed as a fetus? Their answer, resoundingly--because that's why the polling shows this--is they know the answer is yes. We are harming a human in the decision to take its life. That is true whether it is at 3 months, 6 months, 8 months. Because they know that was them as an embryo and a fetus at 3 months, and that was them at 6 months, and that was them at 9 months. And if they were in Philadelphia, in Dr. Gosnell's clinics, that would have been them 1 minute after birth or 5 minutes after birth. They know that under that construct of ethics by those professors in Italy and Australia, published in Journal of Medical Ethics, they're proposing that could have been them at 1 day, 1 week. Because those professors actually go on to say we can't really set what the deadline is for how long it's ethical. Mr. Speaker, that younger generation is smarter than my generation on this issue.

I want to thank again the gentleman from New Jersey for bringing this issue up. This is something that is so troubling, we have to come to grips with this. We have to understand the slope we are on when we neglect to treat every human being as one worthy of protection.

I thank the organizer of this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, the American people saw today that their House of Representatives is serious in dealing with our crushing debt and deficit.

We took some big steps toward that today. Just minutes ago, we passed a budget that balances within 10 years and yesterday rejected plans that were offered that would never balance a budget. Just minutes ago, we approved a spending plan for the rest of the year that puts us on a path toward balancing that budget.

Mr. Speaker, American families for the past few years had to tighten their belts. Since the beginning of the year, they had to tighten their belts an extra 2 percent with that payroll tax increase in January, and it's about time we did the same belt-tightening in Washington. That's what we did today.

Thank you very much, and I appreciate you yielding some time to me on this important occasion.

As the doctor from Texas has said, Mr. Speaker, we are going to ``celebrate''--and I put that in quotes--the third anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

I will tell you a lot of things haven't changed in the past 3 years unfortunately, even though we were promised that things would. For instance, as many Americans know, we were promised that premiums were going to go down magically. What did we find? Premiums went up. They continued to rise. The Affordable Care Act was the wrong solution if the problem was rising health care premiums.

Now, other things have happened in the past 3 years that really haven't changed much. One is that the American people still don't like the Affordable Care Act. We know that in poll after poll after poll, a clear majority of Americans wish this bill just simply didn't exist, yet it still does.

More seriously than even that, over the past 3 years we've had a jobless recovery, and a large part of the blame has to be on some of the policies that were put in place 3 years ago, the cornerstone of which was the Affordable Care Act.

We know, for instance, that there's a new term in the United States now. We thought the 49ers were a team that played in the Super Bowl. No. Now the 49ers are those small businesses that don't have 50 employees yet, created by people who want to grow businesses, who want to employ people, but they know if they hire that 50th employee, a whole lot of the Affordable Care Act and its mandates and regulations and costs and taxes kick in. So they're going to be stuck at 49 employees.

As some of them say, instead of hiring that 50th or 51st or 60th employee, they'll buy a piece of equipment, they'll find some other way, they'll stop growing that business rather than bring upon themselves the effect of the Affordable Care Act.

Now, we know that it doesn't stop there. America is the land of opportunity. This is why people strive to come to this country. There is a ladder of opportunity. You get on that bottom rung and you keep on climbing in this country, and the sky is the limit.

Mr. Speaker, one problem with the Affordable Care Act is it's knocking people off the bottom rung. They're trying to get on, and they're on that bottom rung and they're getting knocked off. What do I mean by that?

Last year, the President, for instance, bragged on 230,000 new jobs. What the President didn't mention is there were actually over 300,000 part-time jobs created and about 100,000 full-time jobs lost. We created jobs. We created part-time jobs. I don't know about you, Mr. Speaker, but, for me, that's not economic recovery. That's not economic growth. That's not the job creation this country deserves.

We have to ask ourselves: Why would employers stop hiring full time and now hire part time? It's a simple answer. The Affordable Care Act makes it unaffordable for those employers to hire a full-time employee because they know, if they hire a full-time employee, they bring all the rules and regulations and mandates and taxes of the Affordable Care Act into their businesses. So what's their solution? They don't hire the 50th employee, and the employees they hire are part time.

Now, I would offer that's not the way to get out of this economic mess we're in and that we ought to be for job creation. We all know that the problem with the Affordable Care Act is that it has destroyed and it is continuing to destroy jobs. Honestly, the jobs that it destroys the most are the jobs for the people who need them the most-- for the people who are on that bottom rung or who are starting to get on that second rung of the ladder and are getting knocked off.

This isn't the kind of recovery America deserves, but it's a logical conclusion from a bill that was poorly thought-out. We remember what the passage of that bill looked like--the deals that had to be made in order to make it a single-party bill. Remember, this was not a bipartisan effort. This was not getting everybody together--all Americans of all political parties and all ideas--and saying, How do we solve this problem in the best way that can unite us? This was a bill to advance a political agenda; and, unfortunately, it caught up the American economy in that agenda.

As the doctor from Texas, I'm sure, is going to talk about, it didn't have to be this way. There are many other ways to solve the problems that we have.

Mr. Speaker, we have problems with health care in this country. We know that it costs more than other countries. We know, for instance, that someone who has a preexisting condition does have difficulty finding insurance coverage. Yet we also know that the majority of States solve that problem at the State level. They don't need the big hand of Washington reaching into the States and imposing a solution in their States that simply may not work--in this case, imposing a solution on these States and the businessmen

and -women in the States that is strangling job creation in the United States, and we know the figures.

What has been unique about the last 3 years--and I'll put it in quotes--of our ``recovery'' is that, for the first time in my life and for the first time in many Americans' lives, it is a jobless recovery. Sure, the stock market continues to rise, and businesses continue to do well; but that doesn't trickle down to the people who need those jobs, because the Affordable Care Act destroyed jobs and is continuing to destroy jobs in this country.

I am a physician. I won't even get into the effect it's having on our health care delivery system, because I could talk for hours on that and on what physicians tell me and hospitals tell me. Mr. Speaker, most people don't realize that the changes that are going to come with the Medicare cuts in this Affordable Care Act may shut down one in seven hospitals in the United States. Now, think of that. In Maryland, that's five or six hospitals. What neighborhoods are going to be willing to say, Yeah, take my hospital?

This is unaffordable. It's unaffordable to our health care system; it's unaffordable to the way we deliver the best medical care in the world to our citizens; and it's certainly unaffordable to our economy, because jobs ought to be ``job one'' of this legislature. And if we really felt that, we would either stop the Affordable Care Act right now or at least delay its implementation way into the future when we can have a discussion about how to do this right.

Mr. Speaker, in January, the President asked hardworking taxpayers to contribute 2 percent more of their hard-earned paychecks to the Federal Government in the form of a payroll tax increase. They had to cut their household budgets by 2 percent. The President's sequester that went into effect last Friday called for a less-than-2- percent decrease in government spending, but the President now thinks that 2 percent is too much to cut from each Federal dollar. We all know the President's sequester is probably not the right way to control spending because it cuts programs across the board without any prioritization. But we all know this country has a spending problem, and we need to get it under control.

I can't help but think if the American people had to just cut 2 percent from their budgets, why can't the Federal Government? If hardworking taxpayers had to figure out how to manage with 2 percent less, can't the Federal Government figure out how to spend two less pennies out of every Federal dollar?

I want to thank the gentleman from Tennessee and the gentleman from Georgia.

Following up on what the gentleman from Georgia said, Mr. Speaker, the President stood there and told America that health care costs have gone down. Now, I don't know if the President has been in a pharmacy lately or been to the doctor or bought a health care insurance policy lately, but the fact of the matter is the price has gone up--in some cases, dramatically--and it's going to go up more, especially for the young, who actually are the highest percent of the uninsured of any age group.

Look, it's just the facts. Folks, when they're 18, 19, 20, 25, they don't think anything is ever going to happen to them, so they don't buy a policy. And the policies now, I sat down with someone whose daughter was insured, and she had one of the HSA accounts, those health savings accounts, and $2,500 goes into the health savings account. The first $2,500 she would pay, and above that, the insurance would kick in. It was an affordable policy. It used to be less than $100 a month. Imagine that, $100 a month, guaranteeing that young person, God forbid they get into a bad accident, God forbid they develop a tumor at an early age, they have coverage for the really expensive things that you may need. That was affordable. I think most people would say $80 a month is affordable.

That policy went up to $110, and this time the renewal was 22 percent more than that. And it's going to get worse because the President now, in the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare, as he prefers it to be called-- actually reduces the amount that those health savings accounts can hold. It's now limited to $2,500. You can't get your premium lower by saying, Okay, I'll take a little more risk, increase my health savings account. So those costs are going to skyrocket. And when they skyrocket, the gentleman from Georgia is absolutely correct, a young person is going to say, I'll pay the penalty.

So a young person who may have had insurance before because it was only $80 a month--and it protected us from having to pay for those medical costs, God forbid that young person had a catastrophic illness or injury. That person is going to make what looks like a logical choice now and say, You know what; I'll pay the penalty and drop my insurance. It's going to have exactly the opposite effect of what was intended, and predictably so, when you force those premiums up.

Again, the President stood here and said that health care costs went down. I've got to tell you, I still have yet to run into someone at one of my town hall meetings that says, Good job, Andy; my health care costs or my insurance is going down. It's not, it's going up.

Let me address, because the gentleman from Tennessee touched on it, one of the problems that the President didn't consider--tort reform. You have three physicians here, two of whom spent their professional lives in the labor and delivery suite delivering babies, practicing obstetrics. I practiced obstetric anesthesiology, do those epidurals, those spinals, relieve women of their pain in childbirth.

Over my career, my generation--I finished my training in 1984, 28 years ago. At that time, to show you what the effect of not having tort reform is, the cesarean section rate for American women having a baby was 15 to 17 percent. One in six to one in seven women would have to have a cesarean section. Now, 28 years has passed. I don't know if the Speaker is aware, but the cesarean section rate is now 33, 35 percent, in some hospitals 40, up to as high as 70 percent in some hospitals. That's in one generation.

I will tell you, as a physician, not much has changed to patients in one generation. What has changed is that you don't find an obstetrician who's willing to take the risk of doing a delivery in a high-risk patient, a normal delivery, because of the medical malpractice exposure--not that they would commit it, but they would be charged with it, that a baby doesn't come out perfect, because that's the way the world is. Yet they would be charged, brought into a court of law, and lose millions of dollars in a settlement. So what do they do? They choose, when there is any question, to do a cesarean section, and who can blame them to do it.

Mr. Speaker, those women who are watching, they know exactly what I'm talking about, because they know if it was their daughter or granddaughter or a friend of theirs, they all know someone who has had a cesarean section. If the women who are in the audience now think back to one generation ago, it was much more rare. So what's happened? We haven't had tort reform.

But that's not all. By the way, the cost to the system is billions of dollars a year for those extra cesarean sections, billions of dollars direct cost to the health care system.

If that was all, we'd say maybe we can tolerate that, a doubling of the rate of cesarean sections, but that's not all. When those women go to see their obstetrician now, one generation ago when I started, when I had my first child, my wife went to an obstetrician. It was a solo practice. And that obstetrician apologized to my wife and said, You know what, I'm sorry, but every other weekend someone may have to cover my practice, so I may not be able to guarantee you that I'm there with you at your delivery.

Let's fast-forward one generation, 28 years. You can hardly find an obstetrician in solo practice anymore. They simply cannot afford the medical malpractice premium. They may never have been sued in their life, and they may have to pay over $100,000 a year just for the medical malpractice premium, never having been sued in their life. So what happens? They're all forced into large groups.

Now, that same conversation, if my daughter now goes in to see an obstetrician, that conversation would run like, You know, ma'am, you're going to have to see everyone in the group during your pregnancy, and we have seven or eight people in the group. So every time you're going to have to see someone else so that everyone gets to see you because we don't know who's going to be there the day you deliver.

Now, is that good care? Is that a good relationship that woman develops with her obstetrician when she doesn't even know who's going to be there to deliver her? In fact, she doesn't even know who might see her the next time she's in the office, one of the most important times in her life. We have completely changed the doctor-patient relationship because we don't have tort reform in this country.

If it was just the rate of cesarean section doubling or just the fact that you have to see seven or eight people and you don't really know who's going to deliver you on a given day, we might accept that, but it goes beyond that, Mr. Speaker. Because what's happened now, a good, highly trained obstetrician stops delivering babies in their forties or fifties because they have developed their practice, they have seen those patients. They just take care of their gynecology problems and they spend the last 20 years in their career not delivering a baby. Having delivered them for 20 years, gaining all that experience, the most experienced obstetricians don't deliver our babies anymore. And why don't they? Because if they stop delivering babies and promise their insurance company they will not deliver a baby, all of a sudden that $100,000 premium becomes $20,000. If you were in your forties and fifties and could afford to do that in your practice, you might say, You know what; it makes sense for me to stop doing this.

So when you add up all the things that have happened because the President, in his Affordable Care Act, refused to have real tort reform--and it's possible, because it happened in California. I mean, there are areas in the country that have it. But nationally, he refused to have it--and the gentleman from Georgia is very familiar with this because his bill deals with this. Because of that, we have a cesarean section rate that's twice as high as it ought to be, and some people will tell you it might be three or four times as high as it ought to be. We have women who never develop a close doctor-patient relationship with their obstetrician because you really can't. I mean, you're seeing a group of seven or eight purely because the malpractice premiums are now spread out. Frequently, somebody else even pays.

They may be part of a hospital group, for instance.

Finally, our most experienced physicians for women in a time--you know, you talk about taking care of children. You've got to start right at the beginning. You've got to have the most experienced person there. See, I've been at thousands of deliveries.

Ninety-nine percent of the time they go all right. But when they don't go all right, you want the most experienced person there. And, Mr. Speaker, our lack of tort reform means we no longer have it. We have entirely changed the way we deliver obstetric care. So if you even said, look, we're not even going to worry about costs, let's not talk about costs, let's talk about access to experienced, personalized care for our women having babies, it's virtually gone because the President and our counterparts across the Capitol in the Senate refuse to take up the issue of tort reform and restore some commonsense, good medical care to Americans.

Obstetrics is an example. We could go into neurosurgery and many other examples, and I'll leave it with that. We have so many opportunities to reduce the costs and improve the quality and access to medical care, and it was lacking in the State of the Union Address.

I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for yielding. To follow up on his point, Mr. Speaker, I don't know if Americans realize, the gentleman is absolutely right. If you have a case litigated, a birth injury claim, and it goes to a jury and there's an award, let's say, of $6 million--not an unusual award--40 percent of that award, $2.4 million plus expenses, goes just to the attorney. Is that fair? You have an injured baby--and we're not going to decide what the injury is. But is it fair that when the court renders a decision that half the money doesn't go to take care of that baby? It doesn't seem fair.

I want to briefly go back to some of the issues in the Affordable Care Act. One that really struck me is the medical device tax. Now, I know the President likes taxes. There are 21 in the Affordable Care Act. He stood up there 2 days ago and talked about taxes, increasing taxes as a solution to our problems. But let me tell you what the problem with that medical device tax is. And I'm going to hearken back to my experience, again, over 28 years. I remember training in the early eighties. Some of the people watching, Mr. Speaker, might know if they had a kidney stone 30 years ago and had to have an operation for that kidney stone just how serious that was. And I remember, I did anesthesia for many of them. There were big incisions on your back, on your side, a week in the hospital, and you could get infections from it. It was a terrible experience if you needed an operation to remove a kidney stone.

So 2 years ago, I had the opportunity to work in one of the urology operating rooms. It was a kidney stone removal. And here I'm going, wow, I haven't seen one in a while, I'm going to give the anesthesia for it, I'm going to prepare for a big operation. The surgeon said, no, no, no, no. We're doing this with a laser. I said, a laser? That kidney stone is deep inside. It's inside your body. He said, no, you've got to see what we got.

They brought a laser machine in, and I apologize I didn't bring a sample of these catheters. It's a catheter, a wire that's about a yard long, and it's fiber optic. Oh, my gosh, it's thinner than the lead in a pencil, and it's flexible. They thread this up--and I won't go

through the exact anatomy--they thread it up to where that kidney stone is. They fire a laser through this, and they break the kidney stone up into tiny little pieces, or evaporate it, and it just comes out. There's no incision. These patients go home the same day.

Why? Because of medical innovation, because some company took a risk to develop that laser product. I tell you, it's not cheap. I'll also tell you it's a whole lot cheaper than several days in the hospital.

The President stood there and said, We don't want to pay by the hospital day; we want to pay by the quality. Let me tell you something: if I have a kidney stone, my hand is going up for that newest method because it's the quality method. What does the Affordable Care Act do? It taxes it. If that person had the old operation, there's no taxes involved; but if they have that new device, there's a tax on it.

I learned in the legislatures that there's a saying that if you want to discourage something, tax it. We have these arguments over tobacco. You want to discourage tobacco? Let's tax it. Most States have taxed it, the Federal Government taxed it, and sure enough we have less. I don't understand. Is that the same thinking we have about innovative medical devices? Are they all of the sudden not a good idea? That's exactly what this bill does, it taxes them.

One of two things is going to happen: either that tax is going to be passed on--because that's what businesses do: when you tax businesses, they pass them on--or we won't innovate as much. That would be a disaster because the key to improving our health care quality, going into the future, especially with American ingenuity and innovation and expertise, is innovating. We're taxing innovation. It makes no sense, Mr. Speaker.

I hope we move a bill through this Chamber to remove that taxation. It's a very bad idea for the quality of health care in the United States because some of these new products, whether it's for treating diabetes or whether it's for treating kidney stones, are amazing new technology.

I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for yielding.

The gentleman is absolutely correct. We made a promise to our seniors. To the people who've worked all their lives, we made a promise that we're going to take care of you, but we have to be honest with how long we can do that. What are we going to do for my children? for people who are in their twenties or thirties? How are we going to preserve that system and preserve their ability to choose their physicians and allow their physicians to choose what's best for them? Because that's really what's critical, that we preserve that in the system.

The gentleman is right. For the seniors who are watching this afternoon, they know that, in many parts of this country, if their primary care providers, their internists, their family doctors retire or move to other States, it's going to be hard to find someone, not because doctors don't want to take care of Medicare patients. We all do--we've taken care of thousands of them in our lives, in our professional careers--but the fact of the matter is that, every year, the government threatens to cut the reimbursement, the payment for services, by 25 percent, and it hasn't had an increase for inflation in 10 years.

This kind of uncertainty means that we may end up looking like the other program the Federal Government runs, Medicaid, where the statistics are dire and where fewer than one-half of specialists can afford to see a Medicaid patient because the government simply has decided we're just not going to pay. It's where fewer than half of the primary care providers don't see Medicaid patients because the government has said we just can't pay, and we're not going to. It's where hospitals now are wondering how they're going to staff and how they're going to keep up with the best medical equipment and the

best medical delivery because they're afraid the government is not going to pay. Who can blame them? Every year, the government threatens to cut the pay to our seniors' doctors 25 percent, and, every year, the government threatens to cut the pay to our hospitals that are taking care of our seniors. Every year, this goes on. It has to stop.

I hope the Speaker and the gentleman from Tennessee will agree that we have to address this seriously, honestly, with a view to two things: preserving the benefit for people who are in retirement and keeping the system going for every American. An American born today, February 14--a child born today--should have a system that he knows is going to be there, not bankrupt, but a system that's there when he reaches those golden years, and we can do it if we all work together.

I was hoping I'd hear more from the President. I didn't. The President is still not willing to come and talk about preserving Medicare, because, Mr. Speaker, you know that the trustees have said it goes bankrupt in 10 years. The current system will not be there for everyone retiring. The 10,000 people retiring today, February 14, enter Medicare. That system will not be there in 10 years. It will be bankrupt. So the current system doesn't even protect our current seniors, much less a baby born today.

We have to deal with it. Mr. Speaker, I urge the President to step up to the plate, be serious. Our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol, step up to the plate. This program is too important to let go bankrupt within 10 years.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Pennsylvania who spoke just a few minutes ago put his finger right on the problem. We have a $16.4 trillion debt--$50,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country; $50,000 for every baby born today. Before that baby draws his or her first breath, it's greeted with a $50,000 bill, their part of the U.S. debt. Mr. Speaker, that's reckless.

But there's something even more reckless. The only way to solve these problems is with a budget--every house knows it, every business knows it, almost every government knows it, but not the U.S. Senate, which hasn't passed a budget for 4 years.

Tomorrow, the House will take up H.R. 325. This bill will force the U.S. Senate to finally pass a budget in order to increase our debt ceiling.

The time is now. The Senate has to act.

I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey for taking a pause every year to let us review what happened 40 years ago and what's happened since. Because some 40 years ago, obviously the Supreme Court decided that it was no longer the State's prerogative to decide what laws could regulate abortion. We know some of the consequences of that: We know we have third trimester abortions; we have abortions for sex selection; we have abortions without the consent or even the notification of parents when minors are involved. That's the path we've gone down. But as the majority says, much has changed in 40 years and deserves reevaluation.

I'm an obstetric anesthesiologist. I've spent 25 years in the labor and delivery suite always wondering about the hypocrisy of being in a labor and delivery suite doing everything we could to save a 24-week baby, while across the corridor, 24-week babies were dismembered under what Roe v. Wade allowed under the law of the land.

The majority leader is right: science has changed tremendously. Why, 40 years ago, we didn't have the Human Genome Project. We didn't realize the richness and diversity of the human genome, which only strengthened the notion that each and every human being is absolutely unique from the moment of conception. And that's in every embryology textbook you can look into. Every human being is unique from the moment of conception. And now, as the majority leader said, we have 3-D and 4- D ultrasound. We can see these human beings that are not blobs of tissue; they are human beings. So maybe we need to revisit what Roe v. Wade said.

Let me tell you a story that really makes you think about revisiting this because, as you know, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fund organizations whose real sole purpose is to end life through abortion and very little to help the pregnancy centers that the majority leader spoke of. But in a pregnancy center north about 7 years ago--it's a pregnancy center in Baltimore--a woman speaking Spanish called one afternoon. She was on political asylum in the United States from El Salvador. She was single, had two children already, and was pregnant with a third. She called the pregnancy center, actually, to get a referral for an abortion. That day, by coincidence, maybe the grace of God, a counselor was there who spoke Spanish and spoke to that woman. That woman really wanted to keep her child; but as many women facing abortion, she was in a period of crisis. She needed help, not the help that a Planned Parenthood would offer, but the help that this pregnancy center offered, by helping her through her pregnancy, giving her the support she needed, the money she needed, and the things she needed to have that child.

Now, I know that story because that Spanish-speaking counselor was my wife. Seven-year-old Jennifer comes over to our house now. I look into her eyes, and I wonder if anyone is ever going to tell her the real story of what almost happened and how is someone going to look in her eyes and tell Jennifer that she was better off because of Roe v. Wade.

Mr. Speaker, on October 10, 2012, America's very good friends, The Republic of China commonly known as Taiwan), will celebrate their 101st anniversary.

Both the United States and Taiwan share the fact that they are relatively new countries when compared to the rest of the world. Taiwan is 101 years old and the United States just celebrated its 236th birthday; both are much younger than those countries with roots dating back to some of the ancient civilizations.

But in the past 100 years, America has changed so much and, arguably, Taiwan has changed even more. In the last 16 years alone, Taiwan has become a full blown democracy with a President and Legislature being directly elected by its citizens. In 1996, Taiwan had their first Presidential election and during that time they have had three peaceful transfers of power from one party to another.

The people of Southeast Asia are fortunate to have a beacon of democracy like Taiwan to look up to, and we Americans are fortunate to call them friends and allies. Under President Ma's leadership, I am confident that Taiwan will continue to thrive and our relationship will prosper.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, the sad fact is that the Environmental Protection Agency bases its regulations on data and modeling that is often withheld from the public. My amendment simply requires that the Environmental Protection Agency make available to the public the data that regulations are based on and to follow its own guidelines and submit regulatory impact analyses to peer review. It's my hope that transparency, sound science and peer review are principles that everyone can support.

For example, it is frequently claimed that the Clean Water Act generates benefits that outweigh costs by a 30-1 ratio, but almost 90 percent of these claimed benefits are based on two studies whose underlying data has never been made public. I can verify this firsthand because for the last year I've asked the administration at committee hearings and on the record for this information and have been repeatedly rebuffed. This is not an acceptable way to run a regulatory agency that impacts our country's health, economy, unemployment--as we heard from the gentleman from Michigan--and ability to compete internationally.

Both President Obama's senior science adviser and the head of EPA's independent science advisory board agreed with me at recent hearings that the scientific data used by the government to justify its regulatory actions should be made publicly available. EPA also states in its own Peer Review Handbook that ``one important way to ensure decisions are based on defensible science is to have an open and transparent peer review process.'' Unfortunately, when EPA conducts a cost-benefit analysis for these major Clean Air Act rules, they are not subjected to peer review.

Mr. Chairman, we live in a world where people increasingly expect direct access to information. Government regulations should be able to withstand public scrutiny. If the benefits outweigh the costs, then prove it; and if you believe that a government regulation is justified, then you should have nothing to hide.

I respectfully request support for my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, what's there to hide? As I said, if a regulation is justified, why should the government hide data from the public in their justification of a regulation?

Mr. Chairman, I've done scientific studies. I've been the peer reviewer on scientific studies. If I have a question about data, I ask for it and I get it and I review it myself. This is the same access the public should have.

Nobody wants dirty air, nobody wants dirty water; but if we're going to pass job-killing regulations, we better be sure that that is sound science it's based on. That's what this amendment does, and I urge support.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Will the gentleman yield?

On those lists of questions of those $716 billion that's basically going to be transferred from the Medicare program to pay for the President's new health care reform bill, that doesn't even include the over $300 billion to cuts in physician and provider payments over the next 10 years under the payment form; is that correct?

So it's in addition to that $700 billion. There's another $300 billion that's going to get cut from payments to providers. Here's the problem. You know, I think the gentleman from Michigan points it out.

Medicare is going broke, and it's going broke not only because $700 billion was taken out of it to pay for the President's Affordable Care Act, but another $300 billion is going to be taken out in the physician payment formula.

Now, the CMS actuaries, and that's the department that runs Medicare and Medicaid, actually projects that the Medicare program could be bankrupt as soon as 2016. Four years from now, the Medicare program could be bankrupt.

Now, I'm glad that as part of November's elections we're going to discuss the future of health care for our seniors, because it is time to say that the emperor has no clothes. Our seniors know it.

They know that when, God forbid, their physician retires, and they go and try to find another physician, and they're on Medicare, they already know how hard it is to find a physician who can accept them because the reimbursements are already so low.

The payments to physicians are so low already, it's hard to find that primary care doctor. It's hard to find that specialist who needs to take care of you, whether it's for your blood pressure or your diabetes or whatever problem you have; and the problem is only going to get worse.

Now, the President in his budget doesn't deal with it at all. He pretends that Medicare will go on forever and ever just the way it is now. That's just not true.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid say it could go broke in as little as 4 years. The Medicare actuaries give it the longest lifetime, 10 more years.

Well, Mr. Speaker, if you're 55 now, that means by the time you're 65, it's broke. If you're 61, according to the Centers for Medicare, it's broke by the time you reach age 65. And if you're on it now and you're 70, it could be broke by the time you're 74.

So we have to stop pretending that the Medicare program is going to work forever the way it is now. It won't, because the President took $700 billion from it to pay for the Affordable Care Act. There is a scheduled cut to physician payments and to provider payments of over $300 billion over the next 10 years, and our seniors are already having problems finding those physicians.

But in the Medicare costs, if we don't do anything right now, we don't deal with the program and adjust it for people who are younger-- and I have a son who is 27 years old. He is an accountant. He knows numbers, and he knows them backwards and forwards and up and down, better at math than I ever was. He's convinced he will never see a Medicare program because he's seen the books.

Medicare payments are projected to grow substantially from approximately 3.5 percent of our economy to 5.5 percent of our economy by 2035, and the President has no plan to pay for that growth. We know because of the maturing and retiring of the baby boom generation that this is coming.

This is predictable. We can project this. We know that if we don't change the Medicare program to preserve it for future generations and to keep it for the current generation of Medicare recipients, it goes broke. As I mentioned, the physician payment formula in Medicare needs to be fixed or, starting January 1, payments to physicians and providers may go down 30 percent.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if our seniors think it's hard to find someone to take care of them now on Medicare, what do they think it's going to be like when the government says to those physicians, we're going to pay you 30 percent less starting January 1, and this is all scheduled to happen.

The President has no plan. The President suggested no ideas to Congress on how to deal with that. What we need is leadership on health care, and we're not getting it from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Already access is an issue because back in 2008, 12 percent of physicians have said they have to stop seeing Medicare patients. We know now that a much larger number limit the number of Medicare patients they care for.

As the gentleman from Michigan knows, we didn't go to medical school to not take care of patients. We didn't go to medical school to have our staff answer a senior calling to say, I'm sorry, but we can't afford to take care of you. But that's exactly the position that the President's plan for Medicare is putting physicians and patients in right now. That's the sad fact.

This emperor has no clothes. The Medicare program is on a path to bankruptcy, and there is no plan from the White House to solve that problem. It merely kicks the can down the road.

We have heard a lot in the last few days and few weeks about Simpson- Bowles coming to the rescue. That's going to solve our fiscal problems; if we just adopt the Simpson-Bowles Commission, all our fiscal problems go away.

Mr. Speaker, as you probably know, Simpson-Bowles decided not to do anything about Social Security and Medicare.

Now, Social Security, it turns out, is pretty solvent. It's going to be there for at least another 20 years, giving us a fair amount of time to solve the problem for future generations. But, again, the Centers for Medicare says we may only have 4 years to solve the Medicare problem before it goes bankrupt.

If our seniors right now think they have problems now getting their health care and finding those primary care doctors and those specialists to take care of them, imagine when the program goes bankrupt.

Now, we have a choice. We can deal with it, or we can kick the can down the road. I'm proud of the Vice Presidential candidate, one of our colleagues, Mr. Ryan, who has decided that the time to kick the can down the road is over. It's time to tell our seniors and Americans what they suspect.

We've been making promises we have no way of keeping. We have been spending money we don't have. And it has to stop. And as the gentleman from Michigan knows, we have some principles in our plan to deal with the bankruptcy of Medicare because, Mr. Speaker, it's not a question of if, it's only a question of when.

So there are a couple of principles. The first principle is: we don't change it for anyone over age 55. If you're in retirement or you're near retirement, you get to keep the very same program right now. But we deal with the fact that physician and provider pay would

be cut January 1. We solve that problem. We say you can't do that. That will limit access. So we deal with that issue. We say you have to stop taking $700 billion from the program to transfer it to pay for the new President's health care reform; to cover Americans who don't have insurance now by taking it from Medicare patients who do have insurance.

So the first principle, no one over age 55 is affected. The second principle is: for those under age 55, Mr. Speaker, if they're listening now, the program is going to be bankrupt when you reach age 65 if we don't do something. We're going to make some commonsense adjustments. We're going to say that you should have access to the same kind of care Congressmen and -women have--a broad range of health care plans you can choose from with the guarantee that for at least two of those plans you will have 100 percent coverage.

We all turn on the TV. We hear the ads: Mr. Ryan's plan will cost $120,000 for every senior, or $200,000 in more costs. Here's the problem. People who made the ads didn't read the bill. The bill spells it out quite clearly. Our plan is that seniors--again, people age 55, when they reach age 65--will have a choice of plans just like we have here in Congress. The only difference is we have to pay a part of all our plans. They don't pay for the two lowest-priced plans. If they choose a plan with more options, they may pay something. But they will end up paying even less than they do now.

That's our solution. Let market forces come in and control the cost of health care, control that growth in cost, and allow real coverage for our seniors, for our people age 55, when they reach age 65, and preserve it for future generations so that my son, the accountant, can look at that plan and say, You know what? This balances. You don't have to borrow money from the Chinese to pay for this plan. We don't have to raise taxes to pay for this plan. We actually let market forces work, providing the same coverage that people in Congress get. And it will work.

So, Mr. Speaker, I'm very glad that we have the opportunity to talk about this tonight. I'm very glad that this November and in the months leading up to it we'll have an honest, frank discussion with the American people about the future of health care, the future of health care for our seniors, preserving it, and the future of health care for everyone else under the President's affordable care scheme. Because we know there are problems with it. Americans understand that when you put the government in charge of something so vital and personal as health care, real problems can occur. And as the gentleman from Michigan has pointed out, we know those problems. They're predictable problems. A majority of Americans have figured it out. Poll after poll after poll says we should deal with the President's Health Care Reform Act by repealing it and replacing it, keeping elements that are good.

Every American either has a preexisting condition or will have one in their lifetime. Every American. So our plan will have to deal with it. And it does deal with it. And for those people who want to have their children on their policies up until age 25, our plan can deal with it-- and does deal with it. But we certainly don't need the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which the gentleman from Michigan is going to discuss, that is going to run health care for Medicare. We certainly don't need the Secretary of Health and Human Services prescribe what plans are going to cover what for every single American. Whether you want it or not, you're paying for it in your plan. Because we know that's only going to drive up the cost.

I'm glad that we're going to have that discussion with the American people because, Mr. Speaker, every American's health care is so important to them and their family. They deserve this discussion. They deserve the chance to go to the ballot box this November and make a choice about what their health care is going to look like in the future. And we're going to have a clear choice. It's going to be a government-run health care plan run by a bureaucrat where costs and access are controlled and rationed, or it's going to be one where the patient and their physician make the choice about their health care, with the government bureaucrat staying out of it, where they belong.

I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, it is a shame that the Democrat controlled Senate voted today to adjourn for over a month, and they haven't even voted on a budget for 1,191 days.

Mr. Speaker, this is a $3.5 trillion enterprise, and the Democrat- controlled Senate, led by Majority Leader Reid, voted to adjourn for over a month so that when they come back it will be 1,240 days since they haven't voted on a budget.

Mr. Speaker, the House did what it had to do. It voted on a budget. It voted to extend the current tax rates to all citizens, and we are here ready to work. We ask the Senate to reconsider the decision, Mr. Speaker. That's what we ought to do. We ask them to come back in and work with us to finally pass a budget.