Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman from Colorado for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I applaud the sponsors, cosponsors, and everyone in the body who is taking the time to support the heroes that we're discussing today. I would also like to take this opportunity to remind the body, as my colleague just has, that we must keep the TRICARE promised them for life as well. And while we're on the TRICARE/health care subject, I'd like to stress my strong objections to the health care legislation, the unprecedented abuses, and perhaps unconstitutional process through which it's being considered.

The American people are telling us, either in letters or calls, in every poll that they don't want it. Besides the fact of Social Security is unsustainable, Medicare is unsustainable, and only a few doctors even accept Medicaid as it is now. There are other top 10 reasons to reject it.

It raises taxes by over $550 billion. It adds over a trillion more dollars to the national debt, kills over 2 million more jobs, and drives up the cost of medical insurance; gives the IRS unprecedented power over the lives of the American people; replaces your doctor with Federal bureaucrats to make critical decisions about your medical care; cuts Medicare by more than a half a trillion dollars, and of course Congress is exempt; provides for the largest expansion of abortion coverage since Roe v. Wade, including taxpayer-funded abortions. It will bankrupt States through billions in unfunded mandates; force American citizens to foot the bill for health care for illegal aliens, inasmuch as it fails to include strict enforcement; is the result of a flawed process, having been written in secret out of the view of C-SPAN cameras and filled with backroom deals and vote buying.

We're a Nation of laws. Laws are not supposed to be ignored when they are inconvenient or simply pose a hurdle to achieving certain agendas. We teach our children to play by the rules, but this Congress is teaching them something very different.

How can we expect the American people to obey the laws Congress passes when Congress won't obey its own rules? It is respect for the rule of law that has distinguished the United

States from the banana republics and authoritarian regimes.

Indeed, millions of Americans, including those we're honoring today, have fought and even have died for this country; yet this bill, this process grossly compromises that principle. Clearly, Congress isn't listening to the American people and is once again ignoring their voices.

There is an old political axiom that says any time you promise to take from Peter to pay Paul, one thing usually happens--Paul votes for you. And that is where we are right here, right now today in Congress. This is exactly what ultimately leads democracies to fail, and this bill, if enacted into law, will greatly undermine the future of our Republic, the greatest Nation in the history of the world that these men and women fought and died for.

It has been said democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government; it can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority usually votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits. Therefore, the average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been about 200 years.

These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to apathy, from apathy to dependence, and from dependency back into bondage.

It is not difficult to see where we are right now on that scale, but what is true is it's frightening. It's frightening that some people think our government is some kind of cosmic Santa Claus who cannot fail. It isn't--and it can fail if we are not good stewards of the gift our Forefathers gave to us. We must not allow the American experiment at representative self-government to fail on our watch.

If our Founders wanted to live like Europeans, they would not have come here in the first place or they would have turned the ships around and headed home. But they didn't. They wanted a land of opportunity, not a land of government-administered, cradle-to-the-grave entitlements.

Americans don't want to go down this path toward future socialism, increasingly losing power to government. Vice President Biden said it best yesterday when he said, if this bill is passed, government will ``control'' health care in America. His words not mine.

No one believes the status quo in our Nation's health care system is acceptable. There are many areas where we can find agreement, and we must move forward to fix those problems. The American people deserve better. Let them know that we know we don't work for Congress. Congress works for them by defeating this bill.

Madam Speaker, I think that there's unanimous will on both

sides of this Chamber to take care of the uninsurable people because of preexisting conditions right now, but this side is willing to address that on stand-alone legislation, or it would have already have been passed, unfortunately. I am surprised they keep pounding on that over and over and over again.

Yesterday, in Ohio, the President said the Democrats needed courage to pass his national health care plan. Sadly, as we speak, leaders across the aisle are meeting behind closed doors to invent a creative way to approve the President's health care plan without requiring Members of the House to take an up-or-down vote on the actual bill. The legitimacy of something as controversial as the health care bill would be further clouded by such clever parliamentary maneuvers.

That's not courage. That's malfeasance. It's an absolute betrayal of the public trust, and it would represent an unprecedented abuse of power that would take this Nation down a dangerous path.

We're a Nation of laws. When these laws are not convenient, you shouldn't simply ignore them. We should follow them, regardless of the outcome; otherwise, everything about our democratic Republic is at risk.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, where are the jobs?

I am reading verbatim from portions in an article printed in one of our local papers:

``NASA plans more outreach to Muslim countries,'' by Mark Matthews, February 16.

``NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Tuesday that President Barack Obama has asked him to `find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries' as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy now.

``Specifically, he talked about connecting with countries that do not have an established space program and helping them conduct science missions. He mentioned new opportunities with Indonesia, including an educational program that examines global climate change. `We really like Indonesia because the State Department, the Department of Education, and other agencies in the U.S. are reaching out to Indonesia as the largest Muslim nation in the world. We would love to establish partners there,' Bolden said.''

It looks to me like the administration is looking out for everyone except our own space workers. Am I the only one who thinks there's something wrong with this picture?

We need jobs for Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I am a little bit tired of hearing ``we inherited.'' We were on the floor today, and we were trying to have some dialogue about jobs and about the economy, and all I heard from the other side of the aisle all-day long was, You guys are the Party of No. You guys don't have any ideas. You guys yadda, yadda, yadda. You guys put us in debt.

I left the floor after that a little bit dismayed. When I got to committee, what did I hear in committee the whole time? You guys are the Party of No. You guys left us all this debt. You guys ``this'' and you guys ``that.'' It's a little bit hard to take. You turn your cheek the other way seven times, and then it's seven more times.

Sooner or later, somebody ought to set the record straight because, if my colleagues here can be so misinformed--and I'm a freshman. I mean I'm new here, but I know that final budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress. The party that has controlled Congress since January 2007 has been the Democratic Party. I mean it's not rocket science. It's a fact of life.

You know, one more time, just a brief civics lesson for anybody who doesn't understand that. I hope there's nobody in this Chamber who doesn't understand that.

Final budgets, binding budgets, do not come from the White House. They come from Congress. The party that has controlled Congress since January 2007 has been the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for fiscal year 2008, 2009, as well as 2010 and 2011.

In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending when Bush, somewhat belatedly, got tough on spending increases.

For fiscal year 2009, though, the Democratic-controlled House and Senate bypassed the President entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep the government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the fiscal year 2009 budget. Where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of the massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill, as the President, to complete fiscal year 2009.

Let's remember what the deficit looked like during that period. If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was in 2007, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in 5 years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After the Democrats in Congress took control of spending--and that includes then-Senator Obama who voted for the budgets--if the President inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell, what my colleagues across the aisle are saying is that they inherited a deficit that they voted for, and then they voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20.

As Paul Harvey would say, ``That's the rest of the story.'' Now can we get together working to solve the problems instead of trying to rewrite history?

Well, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for recognizing me.

That's only half of it, and what they are spending and wasting is in the wrong direction. We just want to talk a little bit about the wrong direction Congress is going, and I hope they won't go further in the wrong direction as they continue to follow the President in the wrong direction.

Now, I want to just remind you that when the President was in my district campaigning, he made a pledge--it's all over the Internet right now--that he would close the gap between the space shuttle program and the Constellation program. Initially, it was 3 years that we were going to outsource jobs to Russia to launch our astronauts. It was $30 million per astronaut for ours and all the international other astronauts that we promised to launch. The gap was 3 years. The gap grew to 4 years, 5 years, 6 years, looking at 7 years now or maybe more. The cost the Russians are going to charge us now is $50 million per astronaut. And when we have

no more shuttles and no alternative launch vehicle of our own, Lord only knows what they're going to charge us.

But back to the campaign promise. The President promised that he would close this gap, the time period between the shuttle's last flight and the first Constellation flight of the Aries, where we could launch men on the Aries.

Correct. And the new rocket would allow us to go back to the Moon as well as back and forth to the international space station as well as, ultimately, to Mars, our manifest destiny, if you would.

More powerful than the Saturn V back in the Apollo days, actually, carry more people.

So the President promised that he would close this gap because, as the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) mentioned, we will lose, if we don't close that gap, 7,000 of the best and brightest space team members this country has ever seen, and he would ensure that we remained first in space.

Now, space is the only thing the United States of America is universally, unequivocally, undeniably respected for around the globe. A lot of countries respect us for a few things. Some respect us for nothing. Some respect us for a lot of things. But the only thing that we're universally respected for, bar none, is our space program. We are first in space. And it's a matter of national security. And it's a matter of economic security. We know all wars aren't fought with bullets and bombs anymore.

So the President made these two promises. They were witnessed and they're online. He also said, we need to lead in this global marketplace in high technology development, and we need to encourage more children to go into math and science. We know now that we are only training one-tenth the number of engineers that we need, and half of them are foreign students that we expect to go back to their own countries. And we know China is graduating 10 times more of these high- trained, highly specialized engineers than we are. That's not a good end game, by the way.

Well, we'll get there. The first thing that happened is he accepted the resignation of Michael Griffin, the inspirational genius behind the Constellation program and the Aries rocket. And for 6 months, when they were having the meetings, the NASA chair remained empty without an administrator.

Six months later we got General Bolton. He's the new administrator, and he's a first-class guy and he'll do a good job. But as soon as Bolton was named, the President created a commission known as the Augustine Commission to tell us how we continue to explore space under current budget conditions.

The Augustine Commission met a number of times. They reported to the Science and Technology Committee, and they basically said in their report, you can't do that on the cheap. You just can't do what needs to be done to keep America first in space, much less close the gap. You can't do it on the cheap. It's going to take about another $3 billion a year.

Well, we were certainly looking forward to that extra money being put into the program. For as little as 1 percent of the failed stimulus plan spending, we could have flown that shuttle for 5 years and closed that gap.

Well, you know, the stimulus bill was all about supposedly employing people. Now, these are not low-wage jobs in the space industry. I think the average, with benefits, is about 80,000 per, spread out all across this country, and no State is spared the benefit of space technology that's been developed. However, while we are having people train to hold road signs that say ``Stop'' and ``Go'' to regulate traffic, we are getting rid of, literally giving the pink slips to the brightest and greatest scientific minds that we have.

And I want to take you back to Apollo and tell you what's going to happen to those people. We had the best engineers in the world who were laid off in Apollo literally pump gas at gas stations until their homes were foreclosed, and then they were forced to move on, never to return to the space program again. We had to completely rebuild the space program again, as Mr. Bishop very eloquently discussed a little while ago.

Around the country.

Just three quick points.

Not only are they spending too much, obviously, but they're spending it in the wrong direction. They're touting an extra $6 billion that they're going to put into NASA to create 1,500 jobs. But I told you how 7,000 of them are going to be lost. How did that make any sense to anybody? It doesn't pass a straight-face test.

I love commercial launches. I support commercial launches, nongovernmental rockets, and the development of them. But we cannot give up a manned space flight program that works, and it's cost effective for us right now.

So I implore Congress to keep the President's promises honest and fulfill those promises that the President made. The President obviously is not willing to do that. I hope Congress is.

Thank you, sir.

Madam Speaker, I have been sitting here listening to the debate, and it's almost laughable that I have heard my friends across the aisle blame everything except Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami on President Bush and the Republicans. I think everyone with half a brain knows this meltdown created--or began a couple of administrations ago when they came up with the Community Redevelopment Act and Congress decided to get in and start telling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac how to behave, when they said everybody in this country deserved to own a home, doesn't matter if you don't have a job, doesn't matter if it's overpriced, doesn't matter if you can't afford it, this is the better world we are looking for.

I think most of the people back home, at least where I am from, remember the days when no banker wanted to make a bad loan. If you wanted to borrow money from a bank, you had to convince the bank you needed the money before they were going to loan it to you, basically. That all changed after the Community Redevelopment Act, so it's no surprise that we have people buying houses they can't afford and that they can't pay for, and that's the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, we need to make some changes in the way that we deal with derivatives and some of the downstream spending. To blame it all on one side or the other is laughable. There is more than enough blame to go around to both sides of this Chamber, and I think it's unfair to the people that we represent that we spend so much time trying to place blame and not focus on a solution.

This bill is very well intended, but it's not going to solve the problem. If regulation and creating more bureaucracies would have solved the problem, we wouldn't be here today. We have gone through that cycle a couple of times. We know what happened with Bernard Madoff. We know the attorneys at the SEC only file one-half a case every other year. That's one case each lawyer files every other year.

Somebody is not watching out for the citizens of this country, the people that put us here. Our job, I think, is to put those people to work before we hire more bureaucrats and create more bureaucracies that will lead to more of the same.

Madam Chair, unfortunately this well-intentioned legislation misses the mark when it comes to taking steps to prevent future financial sector meltdowns. The well-intentioned authors of this bill have failed to fully acknowledge the reasons behind the current meltdown. They point primarily to Wall Street as the cause of the meltdown and direct most of their efforts in this bill at further regulating the private marketplace.

Certainly, the actions taken by some on Wall Street were responsible, at least in large part, for the financial meltdown. Efforts to address some of these excesses are warranted and should be part of the reform. However, there are many factors that contributed to the meltdown; and by assigning a disproportionate share of the blame to any one party, they leave in place many of the practices that contributed to the meltdown.

If we base our actions upon the mistaken notion that the financial meltdown was principally caused by the private sector and that the regulators lacked the necessary tools to oversee the private sector, then we are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The crafters of this legislation have failed to objectively assign blame. History will bear out that a major culprit of the financial meltdown was the government itself, and the government's policies, including many such policies that were advocated by Members of the Congress.

The government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were key players in the mortgage marketplace, and they were largely responsible for proliferating subprime loans. Freddie and Fannie were heavily regulated by the Federal Government. They carried an implied government guarantee.

Yet, what did they do? They purchased over $1.9 trillion in subprime loans between 2002 and 2007. That, according to a report by the Government Oversight and Reform Committee, represented 54 percent of all such mortgages purchased in those years. In purchasing these subprime loans, they were encouraging lenders to make more of them.

Had Fannie and Freddie not been such ready buyers of subprime loans, many of the loans likely would not have been made. That is not to say that some of the private sector would not have made such loans; but had they done it, it certainly would not have been of the grand magnitude, since Fannie and Freddie would not have been standing there ready to buy the loans from the lenders.

We must also consider the actions of the Federal Reserve. The Fed and other central banks around the world kept

interest rates at very low levels between 2002 and 2006, making credit easy and cheap. Making access to money so easy and so cheap intensified and inflated the boom in the early to mid-2000s as well as the resulting burst in 2008.

Common sense would suggest that we would learn from these mistakes. Unfortunately, H.R. 4173 significantly expands the power of the Federal Reserve, the very entity that was responsible for, but failed to identify, systemic risk in what have become some of the recipients of taxpayer bailouts.

Even worse is that H.R. 4173 creates a permanent TARP-like bailout authority. This is likely to promote systemic risk and undermine systemic financial stability.

Another blatant failure of the Federal regulators is the Securities and Exchange Commission's failure to pursue the investigation of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. In 1999 Charles Markopolos presented the SEC with an extensive report alleging fraud by Bernie Madoff. In 2001 Barrons ran an article outlining the alleged fraud.

While they had the necessary tools to investigate Madoff, the SEC's failure to use these tools at their disposal and launch a full investigation enabled Madoff to perpetuate his $50 billion-plus Ponzi scheme. As further evidence it is wrong to further empower bureaucrats, note that today not one SEC employee has been terminated, disciplined, furloughed or even had their wrist slapped for their colossal failures with regard to the Madoff scandal.

We have also heard concerns of small businesses that this bill will further restrict their access to credit.

Not only is this particular development troubling, but when you consider the cumulative effects of legislation under consideration in the Congress that would adversely affect them, it is very disconcerting.

The taxes that would be imposed by the health care bill, the proposed national energy tax, the resulting carbon regulations coming forward from the Environmental Protection Agency, and the higher taxes that will be imposed by expiring tax reductions point to a perfect storm for killing America's economic engine--our small businesses.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the financial meltdown. The failure of the H.R. 4173 to acknowledge this, will only put us on the path to repeating such costly mistakes in the future.

I urge my colleagues to vote against H.R. 4173. Let's send this bill back to committee and get it right.

Madam Speaker, I am proud to stand in support of this resolution as a cosponsor.

Contaminated drywall mostly manufactured in China and used in new home construction in the last decade, primarily between 2006 and 2007, has had a devastating impact on the housing industry in Florida and more importantly on the lives of thousands of homeowners and their families.

So far the Consumer Product Safety Commission has received more than 2,000 complaints from affected homeowners in at least 32 states and the District of Columbia. More than three-quarters of these complaints come from Florida. While we do not yet know the full extent of this problem, it appears that this concern is likely to grow considerably larger.

Homeowners with contaminated Chinese drywall have experienced a number of household and health problems. The drywall emits sulfuric compounds which cause corrosion in copper fittings commonly used in plumbing and air conditioning as well as electrical components. Many homeowners have had to replace hardware such as air conditioning coils, carbon monoxide detectors, and smoke alarms multiple times in as little as a year. In addition to the corrosive effects of the sulfuric gases, homeowners have experienced a variety of related health issues, which have forced many to move out of their homes. Common symptoms include eye irritation and breathing problems.

As you can imagine, this is financially and emotionally devastating for homeowners. As a result of contaminated drywall, many homes have dropped precipitously in value. Many people have lost their life savings which was invested in a home which they can now neither live in nor sell. Some have become desperate and chosen to walk away from their mortgages in the hope of starting fresh elsewhere. Still others are continuing to pay their mortgages while taking on the added burden of paying for an alternative living arrangement in the hopes that they can hang on long enough for a remediation protocol to be announced.

I recently toured some of these homes in the Antilles community in my district and I met with affected homeowners. Just a few minutes in one of these houses is enough time to start feeling the symptoms that have caused so many homes to become unlivable. Affected homeowners need help and they need help quickly.

I was pleased that the Federal Inter-Agency Drywall Task Force, headed by the CPSC, released the results of their 51-home study this month. I was encouraged to see some signs of progress from the task force. I was particularly encouraged that the task force officially established a scientific link between the contaminated drywall and the resulting corrosion.

More importantly, the task force has established an identification and remediation protocol team made up of scientists and engineers. While additional scientific studies continue, the most important next steps for the CPSC are to release the identification and remediation protocols. This will hopefully help homeowners to begin getting the problems fixed so their homes are once again livable and up to par with market value.

I call on the CPSC and the task force to move quickly to identify and release these protocols in the most expedient manner possible. I urge the task force to work closely with homeowners and private industry to establish the most efficient and effective methods of identifying and fixing problem drywall.

On the finance side, I encourage lenders to work closely with homeowners to modify loans and extend credit for remediation once a protocol is established. The mortgage crisis of the past year would only be made worse by a new wave of people walking away from their mortgages over this issue. Any help lenders can provide in modifying loans, offering a period of forbearance, and extending credit will help more people to stay in their homes and prevent the banks from having to assume possession of homes which they will not be able sell.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks as well as in accordance with Clause 9 of rule XXI, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks for my Congressional District as a part of H.R. 2996, the Interior and Environment Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2010.

Requesting Member: Congressman Bill Posey (along with Senators Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson)

Project Funding Amount $300,000

Bill Number: H.R. 2996

Account: STAG Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Project

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: St. Johns River Water Management District

Address of Requesting Entity: St. Johns River Water Management District, 525 Community College Pkwy, Palm Bay, Florida.

Description of Request: This funding will be provided to the St. Johns River Water Management District for the East-Central Florida Integrated Water Resources Project to increase enhance water quality and increase the overall supply of water available for use as potable water.

Consistent with Republican Leadership's policy on earmarks, I hereby certify that to the best of my knowledge this request (1) is not directed to any entity or program that will be named after a sitting Member of Congress; (2) is not intended to be used by an entity to secure funds for entities unless the use of the funding is consistent with the specified purpose of the earmark; and (3) meets or exceeds all statutory requirements for matching funds where applicable.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of legislation to fix the physician fee cut. This system has been broken for more than six years and rather than fix the problem, previous Congresses have simply kicked the can down the road and now physicians are facing more than a 20 percent reduction in payments come January 1, 2010. This is unacceptable.

Stopping the cut and putting physician payments on a realistic payment formula should have been a higher priority for this Congress. Here we are, less than one month away from the January 1 deadline, and the Speaker finally decides to bring legislation to the floor for a vote. Unfortunately, the bill she has brought to the floor has many of the same shortcomings in it that S. 1776 did when the Senate rejected that bill on October 21, 2009. That bill fell 13 votes short of the number needed for passage, principally, because it was not paid for and simply added hundreds of billions of dollars to the record level national debt.

On November 7, 2009, the House passed comprehensive health care reform legislation (H.R. 3962) on a 220-215 vote. That bill creates a new unsustainable health care program that the federal government has no way to pay for long-term. Rather than making H.R. 3962 a priority, the Congress should have first considered legislation to fix the physician payment problem by replacing the inherently flawed sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. Sadly, the majority chose the opposite path. Congress should, in my view, fix the problems with the current programs--Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)--before creating new programs that we cannot afford.

In states such as Florida, which have large numbers of seniors, the erosion of payments under Medicare has had an adverse impact on the ability of some seniors to have access to good medical providers, and it makes it difficult for Florida to attract new providers.

The only reason that this bill (H.R. 3961) has been separated out from H.R. 3962, which passed the House two weeks ago, is because Congressional leaders want to make the cost of overall comprehensive health care reform (H.R. 3962) appear less expensive.

The American people deserve better. The most appropriate approach is to end the budget games, acknowledge the realistic costs of legislation, and find the appropriate ways to pay the costs of the bill without adding further to our Nation's record debt.

Fixing the payment formula should be the top priority for the Congress at this time, not an afterthought. The good news is that there are appropriate and sufficient ways to fund the cost of averting the 21 percent payment cut. The question before Congress is whether the Leaders in Congress will switch gears and put the SGR fix at the top of the legislative agenda and use these offsets to fix what is broken with Medicare, rather than playing politics and budget games.

I will be voting for the alternative to the Speaker's bill. This alternative will increase physician payments by 2 percent in each of the next four years, enact liability reforms, and implement insurance administrative simplification reforms to cut physicians' administrative costs. Overall, this is a much better and more certain approach for physicians.

Our physicians and seniors deserve a quick fix to this problem. Let's pass a bill that has a chance in the Senate, rather than passing a bill that has the same fatal flaws as a bill they have already voted down.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this job-killing bill that the overwhelming majority of Americans don't want and don't need.

Madam Chair, I rise to express my deep concerns not only about the specific provisions in the bill before us, but over the lack of transparency and openness throughout this process.

In just a few short hours, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on the most sweeping changes ever in our nation's health care system. The final version of this bill, including last minute amendments, was made available to Members of Congress just a few short hours ago. The final text of this bill has not been made available to the public or Members of Congress for at least 72 hours.

I believe that when the Congress considers changes of this magnitude which will affect 17 percent of our entire economy, we should have more transparency and openness. I will be voting against H.R. 3962, not only because of the many provisions I find objectionable, but also because of the lack of transparency about what it is specifically that we are voting on.

The House should not be considering or passing this 2,000-page bill which has not even been subjected to a single committee hearing. Over 200 amendments were filed to this 2,000-page bill. Sadly, out of these 200 amendments, only 1 is allowed to be offered.

Now, let me turn to some specific concerns with the bill.

H.R. 3962 is the wrong prescription for our economy. Yesterday, the Department of Labor reported that the national unemployment rate hit a 26-year record high of 10.2 percent. Florida's unemployment rate is above 11 percent. Furthermore, as reported in this morning's New York Times, the broadest measure of underemployment and unemployment reaches. 17.5 percent, which is higher than the record 17.1 percent reached at the height of the 1982 recession.

This is the wrong time to be considering legislation that will cost us jobs. The hundreds of billions of dollars of higher taxes and the unfunded mandates that H.R. 3962 places on small businesses will result in the elimination of between 4 and 5 million American jobs. That is the estimated job loss as measured using a formula developed by President Obama's own Chief Economic Advisor, Kathleen Romer. This would be in addition to the estimated 2.5 million jobs that would be lost if the Cap and Trade National Energy Tax legislation is enacted into law. (Estimated job loss by the Heritage Foundation.)

Small businesses across America create nearly 65 percent of all new jobs and this bill's 8 percent employer health care tax is only going to make it that much harder for small business to create jobs. H.R. 3962's provision to impose a $500,000 fine for inadvertent errors will only serve to bankrupt many small businesses.

America cannot afford this bill. They cannot afford more legislation that will lead to higher unemployment. The American people need legislation that promotes job creation, not legislation that will stifle the creation of American jobs.

H.R. 3962 is excessively costly and completely unaffordable. Washington just ended the year with a record $1.4 trillion debt. The Congressional Budget Office, CBO, estimates trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. Our Nation's debt is so serious that in May the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury had to fly to China to ensure that the Chinese would continue to purchase our U.S. Treasury notes and to assure them that Washington would get serious about getting its fiscal house in order.

Sadly, this health care bill creates a new unaffordable entitlement program that we cannot afford and will indebt future generations of Americans for decades to come. CBO says of H.R. 3962 that it ``would put into effect (or leave in effect) a number of procedures that might be difficult to maintain over a long period of time.'' In other words, this bill creates serious long-term budget problems for our Nation.

The President said in his September address to Congress and the Nation that health care reform legislation would not exceed more than $900 billion. Unfortunately, when you assemble all of the pieces of this health care agenda together, you come up with a price tag of nearly $1.6 trillion for the first 10 years of this bill--56 percent above the $900 billion cap. This includes CBO's $1.05 trillion cost estimate for H.R. 3962 and the $209 billion for the Medicare doctor fix. Further increasing the cost is the administration's $70 billion Medicare adjustment, more than $200 billion in discretionary spending required in the future as a result of H.R. 3962, and more than $34 billion in unfunded Medicaid mandates on the States ($1 billion for Florida as estimated by the State).

Furthermore, when you consider that the costs of H.R. 3962 begin to significantly increase in 2014, thus a more accurate 10 year cost estimate for the bill (2014-2024) shows a cost of $2.4 trillion. H.R. 3962 sets us up for serious budget challenges for 2020 and will indebt our children for decades to come.

H.R. 3962 will have an adverse impact on Medicare recipients. I am very concerned about the nearly $500 billion in cuts that H.R. 3962 makes to Medicare. This, I believe will have a long-term negative impact on Medicare. Taking the money out of Medicare only makes the challenge of averting Medicare's projected 2017 insolvency more difficult. Furthermore, those hardest hit are likely to be seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage, MA, plans, including over 42,000 seniors in my congressional district who are enrolled in MA plans. Many of these seniors would lose their current Medicare plan and be forced back into the traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan, which will cost them more money and less coordination of their care.

Failure to buy government approved plan can result in fines and jail time. A November 5, 2009, letter from the Joint Committee on Taxation affirmed that if an American citizen fails to purchase a government approved health care plan or pay the mandatory 2.5 percent national health care tax, they will be subject to Federal penalties which may include up to 5 years and a fine of up to $25,000. It is simply unthinkable that Washington would enact legislation carrying such mandates and penalties, but that is what H.R. 3962 would do. Such coercion is wrong and quite frankly runs counter to the freedoms and liberties that have made this Nation what it is today.

The American people should be allowed to choose whatever health care plan they want. They should not be restricted to only buying health insurance that Congress or an unelected group of bureaucrats say you can buy.

The word ``shall'' is included more than 3,400 times throughout H.R. 3962. Shall is a term used in legislative language to mandate what can or cannot be done. With the use of the word ``shall'' more than 3,400 times, the choices and liberties of the American people to choose what they want are clearly undermined. Clearly, these mandates seriously undermine and change the health care that 80 percent of Americans have today and want to keep.

Illegal Immigrants Covered Under H.R. 3962. It is wrong to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize the enrollment of illegal immigrants into this new government plan. While H.R. 3962 includes language stating that funding in the bill cannot be used to enroll illegal immigrants in the national health care plan, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, CBO, and the Social Security Administration all agree that the provisions in H.R. 3962 are insufficient to actually prevent their enrollment in taxpayer subsidized health care. Millions of illegal immigrants will receive taxpayer subsidies for enrollment in subsidized health care plans.

Other Concerns. The American people were told earlier this year that health care reform legislation would lower their average health care costs by about $2,500. H.R. 3962 does just the opposite. Estimates by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the CBO, and six other

studies show that imposing new taxes on insurance policies, as H.R. 3962 does, will drive up the cost of medical coverage.

We were told that health care reform was needed in order to lower the overall amount of spending on health care. However, according to the CBO, ``On balance, during the decade following the 10-year budget window, the bill would increase both federal outlays for health care and the federal budgetary commitment to health care, relative to amounts under current law.'' So, H.R. 3962 will actually result in more spending on health care rather than less.

I oppose the provisions in H.R. 3962, which would use taxpayer dollars to pay for elective abortions and subsidize enrollment in health insurance plans that pay for elective abortions. H.R. 3962 would for the first time use taxpayer dollars to subsidize elective abortions and expand mandate that insurance coverage of elective abortion be expanded to every jurisdiction in the country. I oppose this mandate, but I am supportive of the Stupak/Smith amendment, which will remove from this bill any expansion of taxpayer funding for abortions.

Health Care Solutions. I was greatly disappointed that the debate in the House was so severely restricted as only 1 of more than 200 amendments was allowed. This is truly a sad day for the American people as constructive contributions to health care reform have been silenced.

We should focus on creating more choices for the American people, not less. Rather than move in the direction of more choices and increased competition, H.R. 3962 undermines choice in many ways. By creating a national Health Benefits Advisory Committee, HBAC, H.R. 3962 creates a one-size-fits-all set of benefits with which every health plan in America must conform. Estimates are that millions of Americans will be moved into this new government health care plan, losing the coverage that they currently have and want to keep.

There are steps that can be taken--without reducing these choices--to address the concerns of those who lack coverage or who have difficulties paying for the coverage they want. We should expand the deductibility of health insurance for all Americans. Refundable health care tax credits of $2,500 for an individual or $5,500 for a family will enable working Americans to secure affordable health care coverage and empower them to choose the type of coverage that meets their needs.

Enactment of Association Health Plan, AHP, legislation would make it easier for small businesses to pool together and negotiate with insurance providers for the purchase of more affordable insurance for their employees. Similarly, nonprofit civic groups should be empowered to create health plans and offer them to their members and the public. Sadly, liberals in the Congress have blocked these efforts for the past decade.

Health Savings Accounts, HSAs, should be expanded enabling more individuals to purchase a high deductible health plan while also putting money aside in an HSA to cover medical expenses below the catastrophic coverage cap. For many, this would be a more affordable alternative to traditional insurance and over 8 million Americans have chosen to enroll in HSAs in just the past 5 years. For those with preexisting conditions or who otherwise have difficulty finding affordable coverage, we should expand high-risk insurance pools and other approaches to make sure that those with such challenges are able to find affordable coverage.

Community health centers, like the ones I recently visited throughout my district, can play an important role in serving those in need of affordable medical care. These centers provide cost-effective primary care and preventive care to millions of lower- and lower-middle-income Americans, and we should continue to encourage their development and expansion.

Expanding health care coverage also means taking steps to reduce waste in medical care expenditures. One of the main factors behind greatly increasing costs of health care premiums is the skyrocketing cost associated with medical malpractice. H.R. 3962 does nothing to move us in the direction of adopting medical malpractice solutions that have proven successful in many States.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my serious concerns about the health care bill that's being rushed to the floor. This 2,000-plus- page bill has hundreds of new pages that no one yet has had a chance to read, much less understand.

There are over 110 new Federal programs and bureaucracies, each with its own new costly mandates. This bill taxes you if you have health insurance, it taxes you if you cannot afford to have health insurance, and it taxes you if you are a small business and you cannot afford to give health insurance to all of your employees. It has over $730 billion in new job-killing taxes.

What Americans need today more than anything else is new jobs, but this bill will result in the loss of another 5.5 million jobs. Congress can't even figure out how to make its own workweek, much less change the whole health care system. Let's use a little common sense around here for a change.

Mr. Speaker, 57 percent of Americans believe the majority's health care plan will raise their health care costs. Only 18 percent believe it lowers costs. Fewer than 1 in 4 Americans believe this plan will improve the quality of health care in America. And according to the Rasmussen poll out yesterday, this is a fact.

So what is Washington's response? To press on. The omnipresent defenders of the nonexistent problems of 80 percent of Americans are crafting another plan, in secret, one they haven't even read yet.

The American people have given this plan a vote of no confidence. Given the hundreds of billions of dollars in budget shortfalls for health plans Washington already runs--Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP--is it any wonder the American people don't believe what they are being told about this?

It is time to go back to the drawing board, and we on this side of the aisle stand ready, willing, and able to work with you in a bipartisan fashion for the best interests of the people of this great country.

Madam Speaker, it's a critical time for NASA and our Nation's leadership in space, as you well know.

With the looming retirement of the space shuttle and the risks of a growing space gap, we are losing tens of thousands of additional jobs across the United States. These are jobs in industries that develop the cutting-edge technology that raises our standard of living and helps American businesses compete.

NASA has been at the cutting edge of technology, leading to so many devices and luxuries that we use every single day. Imagine what a day without NASA products would be like.

First, you may not have had a good night's sleep if you normally sleep on one of those temper foam mattresses or pillows, which were originally designed by NASA as a shock absorber. You may have even overslept without NASA's quartz timing in your alarm clock.

Being green won't help you get ready for work in the morning if you have a solar hot water heater installed in your roof, because cosmetics, toothpaste and many perfumes find their roots in NASA.

Before you head out the door, you may have difficulty getting an accurate weather forecast due to the lack of weather satellites coming out of our Nation's space program.

Better use a landline telephone to call work and let them know you are running a little behind, because cell phones and other wireless devices will be out of service on a day without NASA-derived technology.

Getting to work might be a challenge as well, particularly if you drive a hybrid. The lithium-ion battery in your hybrid was developed with NASA engineering expertise and tested at the Kennedy Space Center. Get rid of that temper foam seat on your motorcycle that you might ride to work.

Don't plan on flying to that vacation or important job conference. NASA-developed flight tracking and management software is used by air traffic controllers. It probably won't surprise you that flight safety software was developed by NASA. Just in case you find yourself on an airline, it may be a bumpy ride without NASA software that informs the pilots of turbulent conditions.

Work may be a little difficult too without access to NASA computer technology and their wireless headsets.

These are just some of the reasons we must also support the President's promise to close the space gap between the shuttle and the Constellation Program and keep America first in space.

I will share more about NASA technology with you in our next space moment.

In the meantime, on an unrelated but another important topic, as a member of the Contaminated Drywall Caucus and a representative of an area impacted by contaminated drywall, I wanted to take a few minutes to draw the attention of my colleagues to this also very important issue.

Between 2004 and 2008, many homes were built using what has turned out to be organically contaminated drywall. Homes in 26 States and the District of Columbia are affected. It is particularly problematic in areas like Florida where we have high humidity.

A little over a year ago, it was discovered that the source of a number of corrosion issues and health symptoms were likely due to contaminated drywall originating in China. Since then, we have been working hard to find a solution, and what we have discovered is pretty disturbing.

The contaminated drywall consists of toxic and semi-toxic substances which release harmful gases. Many of these homes are filled with a pungent sulfuric odor which has since been linked to adverse health conditions. Some families have already been forced to move out of their homes for fear of long-term health effects.

These gases are also responsible for devastating corrosion to many standard household materials such as copper and brass fittings, air conditioner coils, electrical systems, and even fire alarms. We don't know if there is a valid remediation protocol short of pulling all of the contaminated boards out and replacing them.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been tasked as the lead Federal agency and is working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency to find solutions. The Consumer Product Safety Commission will soon release a study to answer some of the questions. They are also working on a remediation protocol.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission must work closely with all parties, seriously consider the results of private studies and share the results of their own studies with all stakeholders. We need all parties to be part of a quick and permanent solution.

I ask all of my colleagues to join me in thanking all those who are working so hard on this issue and in calling on the CPSC to bring forward their study results quickly.