Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this job-killing bill at a time when our Nation has 10.2 percent unemployment that cuts Medicare, piles debt on our children, and raises health care costs.

Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today on behalf of the people of Wyoming, where individual freedom and personal responsibility are hallmark values.

This $1 trillion tax-everybody-right-down-to-the-wheelchair debacle will impact every person in Wyoming. This bill will force my constituents to buy insurance, whether it makes sense for them or not. This bill will dump some of my constituents into a government-run health care program to which Members of Congress will not even subject themselves.

I sought an amendment that would allow States to shield their citizens from government-forced insurance, from taxes and possible fines or imprisonment, from government policies that come between themselves and their doctors, from unfunded mandates on States. But my amendment and dozens of others were swept away by the majority, and American freedoms right along with it.

Our Constitution was designed to empower the American people and shackle the Federal Government. This bill will shackle the American people while empowering the Federal Government. It is a sad day for Wyoming, Mr. Speaker.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, while earlier this week the Wall Street Journal called the Pelosi health care plan ``the worst bill ever,'' the Chicago Tribune last week called the GOP plan a good plan and said, We don't agree with everything in these bills but we do agree with ideas such as these:

``Let insurers sell policies across State lines. That would loosen the strangling State-by-State regulations and unleash competition to drive premium prices down.'' And, indeed, that

is what happens under the Republican bill.

``Give people who buy insurance in the private market the same tax breaks as those who get it through employers.'' That only makes sense.

And, finally, ``Expand the ability of small business, trade associations, and other groups to set up insurance pools to offer coverage at more attractive rates.''

These are the advantages of the Republican plan. And to boot, ours cuts the deficit.

Mr. Speaker, I lament hearing that people who attend TEA parties are somehow uninformed or misinformed Americans. They're hardworking Americans who are informed and have taken the time to become informed, and they know what's in this bill.

But if you think that they have been misled into thinking that this bill is an extreme bill by those of us who are in the Republican Party, listen to what the Wall Street Journal says. Go to wsj.com.

They call this ``the worst bill ever.'' ``Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: the Pelosi health bill has it all.''

And it concludes by saying: ``Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.''

This is not TEA Party extremists; this is the Wall Street Journal.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am going to be joined this evening by Republican freshman colleagues of mine, and this session will be cochaired by my fellow freshman from the great State of Minnesota, Erik Paulsen.

Erik, thank you for joining me this evening, and our other freshman colleagues will be joining us shortly.

We're going to be talking about health care from the perspective of freshmen. We're going to be talking about some Republican alternatives to the large bill that the Speaker introduced last week and unveiled and that we're discussing this week. We'll be doing some comparisons between bills that Republicans have to provide better solutions, to take incremental approaches, to address the most important concerns that the American people have about their health care system first, and about the need to take a very deliberate, careful approach to changing an American health care system that needs tweaking rather than throwing out and replacing.

I yield to my colleague from Minnesota, Mr. Paulsen.

I look forward to having our colleagues join us so we can discuss some of those.

We have been maligned as a party for not having a health care solution to counter the Pelosi approach and the Obama approach to health care; but in fact, we have over 53 bills that you can read online which will address health care reform. We offer and challenge the Democrat leadership, who controls this Congress, to pick and choose from among the better ideas that Republicans have and to bring some of those bills through committees and to the floor so we can debate them openly in a transparent manner.

They were not crafted behind closed doors as was the Democratic bill. They were crafted in the traditional manner with the help of legislative draftsmen and -women to address specific components of our health care system in a way that they can be aggregated into a larger reform package or addressed individually if we prefer. So we can have a healthy debate on a variety of subjects.

Even the Chicago Tribune noted recently that Republicans have a number of great ideas. Here is an excerpt from a recent editorial in the Chicago Tribune:

GOP proposals contain smart ideas to increase choice and competition in the health insurance market. These excellent ideas could expand coverage for the uninsured without cratering the Federal budget or curbing the competition and innovation that drive the U.S. health care system.

My colleague Mr. Paulsen is on the Financial Services Committee, and I am on the Budget Committee. Among the things that he and I have seen in our committee work in the last 10 months is that we are aggregating more debt than George Washington through George W. Bush combined and that, while our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle criticize Republicans for spending too much and criticize their inheriting a deficit, in fact, since we arrived in Washington--we freshmen along with the Pelosi Congress--they have increased the deficit, doubling it in 5 years and tripling it in 10. So it is not an excuse that they inherited a deficit.

Indeed, they did, and indeed, Republicans predating Mr. Paulsen and I did overspend, but you don't solve an overspending problem by making it two times worse in 5 years and three times worse in 10 years. Our approaches to the health care bill are to advance solutions that will not add a dime to the deficit.

How many people believe that the $1 trillion-plus Democratic health care bill is not going to add a dime to the deficit? In fact, a poll recently showed that more people believe we'll discover life on other planets than the Democrats' health care bill will not add to the deficit.

The Republican bills, however, do not add a dime to the deficit. Here are three of them that I'd like to highlight this evening. As I said, there are 53 on a Web site that I'll provide to you later in this discussion.

One of them is H.R. 3400, Empowering Patients First Act. The prime sponsor is Representative Tom Price, a physician from Georgia. It is the product of the Republican Study Committee.

The bill uses a mix of new tax credits and deductions to make the purchase of health care feasible for all Americans. The bill expands the individual health insurance market, using association health plans and interstate health insurance shopping to give people more choices. The bill encourages the creation of State-based portals so people can compare plan prices and benefits. For those with preexisting conditions, the bill redirects unspent stimulus funds towards State- based high-risk pools. Importantly, this bill is fully offset through redirecting stimulus funds, stepping up efforts to root out waste, fraud and abuse in our entitlement programs, reducing defensive medicine through medical liability reform, and capping discretionary spending.

This bill scores in the favorable column.

Another bill, sponsored by Representative John Shadegg of Arizona, entitled Improving Health Care for All Americans Act, has many of the taxation provisions incorporated into it that were eventually added into H.R. 3400. Then the Patients' Choice Act, which is a fun one to highlight, because it takes a little bit different tack, is sponsored by Representative Paul Ryan. The bill provisions include some reforms that are badly needed to Medicare and Medicaid without decreasing benefits.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

The gentleman from Minnesota has four really cute little girls, and I carried one of their Scooby-Doo backpacks through the Minnesota airport while we were transferring planes trying to get back to Washington for votes. A lot of us have kids or grandchildren that will be affected by this legislation because they will be paying for it for years to come.

One of the things we all learned from our parents in this baby boom generation is the importance of handing a better America to your children, and that is something that I don't want to be responsible for being the first generation to renege on. That's why I am so much more supportive of these Republican bills than of the Speaker's bill.

Among the things that are in the Republican bills that are so important are meaningful tort reform. I say this with a caveat; I am one of those Republicans who would rather see tort reform done at the State level. I think we see more innovation and creativity. We see some States that want to have caps on noneconomic damages. We see some States that want health care panels, States that want to make sure that expert witnesses, within the certain specialty that is charged with malpractice, are the ones that are designated as witnesses. There are a whole variety of ways to address tort reform.

I prefer that it be handled at the State level, but I have signed on to several of these bills that have State tort reform provisions even at this Federal level because I think they take a much better approach to the overall subject of health care reform. In other words, the Republican plan has meaningful tort reform. Oddly, the Speaker's bill contains a provision that says they will give out grants for innovations in tort reform but not to States that have placed a cap on noneconomic damages.

If you talk to some of the former legislators, now Members of Congress, who are from States that enacted caps on noneconomic damages and medical malpractice cases, you will learn that their medical malpractice premiums

for their physicians dropped, thereby allowing their physicians to either charge their patients less or stay in practice in small communities where they don't have as many patients to spread out the costs of that extremely expensive malpractice insurance premium.

Then we have interstate health insurance shopping. This is really what I think is going to be one of the most exciting keys to reducing the costs of health insurance, because it's going to create more competition. Coming from the smallest population State in the Nation, Wyoming, and not being able to buy insurance across State lines for health care the way I can for automobile insurance, I don't have the options, because of our little small pool of citizens, to spread the costs.

It's going to be very important that we have the ability to shop for health insurance across State lines and that we do it in a transparent way. I see these ads on TV for car insurance. Well, there is a little sign that you look at that compares one company's premium to another, to another. You can go online and shop and compare and put in the kinds of factors that you want in your automobile insurance.

We should be able to do that for health insurance. We should be able to buy our health insurance premiums that way, and the Republicans' bills will allow that to happen.

Then, further, association health plans, the Republican plans have it; the Democrat plan does not have it. Association health plans, once again, would allow groups with some common interest to pool, to create a larger pool, whether it's your church denomination, your Rotary Club, your alumni association or any other group that wanted to form an insurance pool for purposes of providing health insurance to their member participants.

This I call kind of an equivalent to what's available in the banking community. You have commercial Main Street banks, and then you have some credit unions. I kind of associated this kind of association health care plan with the notion of a credit union.

These are things that we have that would increase and stimulate competition in the private sector, and these are in the Republican plans. They are not in our colleagues', who are members of the Democratic Party, plans.

Now I would like to call on one of our colleagues who is from the State of Colorado. Mike Coffman is here this evening from my neighboring State of Colorado.

I yield to you and thank you for attending this evening's discussion.

The gentleman is correct. In fact, we have found that studies determined that 5.5 million more jobs will be lost as a result of the taxes placed on small businesses under the Democrat version of the bill. Furthermore, there is a double whammy for small business. For businesses under 500,000 in payroll, there is not a big hit. But, of course, a lot of businesses in my State of Wyoming, there are 1,400 in my State of Wyoming that will be hit because they pay these taxes at the individual tax return, but they are small businesses that pay payrolls of more than $500,000. That means 1,400 businesses in Wyoming are going to be slapped with that tax.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

That will do wonders in my State of Wyoming where a lot of people are small business people, in fact, mom and pop sole proprietors, ranchers, that are just the mom and the dad in the family, and they have individual insurance policies that they purchased as an individual because they are it, they are the business. Under the Democrats' bill, those are the very people who are going to be completely foreclosed from being able to purchase individual health insurance plans after 2013.

We have been joined by our colleague from the State of Pennsylvania. Glenn Thompson has with him a very large stack of paper. Representative Thompson, what is that?

The rumor I heard was 800.

Reclaiming my time, I would echo some of your concerns in saying that in rural areas Medicare is not reimbursed at the same rates as it is in urban areas. So hospitals and physicians in rural areas receive less compensation for Medicare patients than they do in urban areas; so much less that in Casper, Wyoming, a town in central Wyoming, only about one-third of their actual out-of-pocket expenses are reimbursed from the Federal Government when they treat a Medicare patient.

Well, the hospital, because it is a quasi-public hospital, is going to keep taking those patients. But private physicians don't have to keep taking those patients, and when they are undercompensated, some of them choose to no longer take Medicare patients. And in a State that has a dearth of physicians anyway because we have such a small pool of patients, we are losing more and more access to doctors, even today.

My concern under the Democrats' bill is that we will be worse off as a State in terms of the number of physicians who will take Medicare patients and the hospitals that will take Medicare patients because of the poor reimbursement levels and decisions that are being made by the majority party in Congress to make further cuts in Medicare.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Before I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota, I wanted to remark on something I learned today. The Republicans had a little reading room where we could go and read the bill and share ideas, and especially learn from ranking members of the various committees who have been studying these concepts at least, even though they haven't seen it in bill form, for not only months, but years.

One of the things that I learned today in that session is that the enforcer in the Democratic bill is actually the IRS. One would think that with 111 new government agencies that the enforcement mechanism for providing health care, what is supposed to be a very positive notion, would not be the IRS.

What thinks the gentleman from Minnesota?

And, in fact, we also learned today that the bill runs counter to the President's promise that this was not going to tax people who make less than $250,000 a year. Because of the taxes that the gentleman from Minnesota just described, 90 cents out of every dollar that applies in this bill in additional costs will fall on people that fall in exactly that category, the $250,000 and less income earners.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

One of the math items in this bill that just doesn't add up is the fact that they are going to be paying for 6 years of benefits under this bill with 10 years of revenue collections. And yet when we get, then, to that magical 11th year where we need to be able to pay for it as we go, obviously we won't be able to just stop providing benefits and have the taxes run for 4 years where we don't tap into them before we involve ourselves in the benefit component of the program again.

So that is a one-time in the first 10 years type of financial balancing act or financial gimmick that is being used in this bill to make it sound like it is in some way financially balanced. It is not, and it will suck more out of this economy in the second and ensuing 10 years and in decades when once again our children are going to be paying for it.

So, this bill really does defer to our children and grandchildren huge financial obligations that the people in this room feel is not only unnecessary, but highly inappropriate.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota to introduce our colleague from Tennessee.

We are all freshmen who have been talking here. Many of us served in some capacity either in our State legislature, in your case as a mayor, a couple of State treasurers; so we know how State government works. And what we see, as States could not print money, we had to live within our means. So when the Federal Government places an unfunded mandate, meaning they require States to provide a service and then don't provide the money for the State to provide the service, the State has to come up with the bucks. And this has been called the ``mother of all unfunded mandates'' by the Democrat Governor of your home State of Tennessee.

And those of us who are here--I know that you were leader in your Minnesota legislature--tried to find good legislation that was sitting around and had been introduced by Members of either party. And in honesty, in my legislature, if a Democrat had a great idea, and we were Republican legislators, we'd go steal their ideas and put Republican names on it and sponsor it. It was the best form of flattery. The ideas were coming up.

And you know who did that maybe better than anybody I have ever seen on a national scale was Bill Clinton. He took what was cultivated in the States and nurtured in the States a plan to reform welfare, and he slapped his name on it and he made it his. And he worked with Republican Members of this Congress to reform welfare.

We could do that today. We have 53 bills out there that our Democratic colleagues could say, hey, this is a good idea or I like the idea of letting young people stay on their parents' insurance until they're 26 years old. That helps them out, especially in these tough economic times when it's hard to find a job. There are ideas out there that would solve these problems.

Yet we are faced with a bill that is almost 2,000 pages long that we're expecting a big additional amendment to, that was drafted behind closed doors, that has some nonsensical language in it that people can't understand that we only get 72 hours to read. It all seems like a bad dream. But it's the American Congress. And there are so many better options out there. I just am so frustrated with the majority party that they won't look through our 53 bills that they could read online and say that's a good idea, let's put a Democrat's name on it and make it our idea. We'd be delighted.

I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

We are now down to the speed round, which means we have

2 minutes left for each Member of this discussion to summarize.

And I would like to start with the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

You are well under your time. Thank you for participating.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

I thank the gentleman from Colorado for participating this evening, and I yield now to the gentleman from Tennessee.

We are blessed to have three physicians in our Republican freshman caucus who have been gracious in educating us about the medical practice in their parts of the country. It's a great privilege to serve with them in Congress and also the gentleman from Pennsylvania who spoke earlier, who has managed health care in his State. We are deeply grateful for his participation.

I thank the gentlemen from the Republican freshmen for participating in this evening's effort. I can tell you that the women in the Republican Conference have been discussing health care as it relates to women this week, and we'll be doing so again tomorrow. I will look forward to pursuing that discussion again tomorrow. But to wrap things up this evening for the remainder of our time, I would like to turn it over to my colleague and cohost for this evening's Special Order by the Republican freshmen, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen).

I thank the gentlemen from Minnesota, from Tennessee, from Pennsylvania and from Colorado for joining me this evening. People from all over the United States will be paying a house call on Speaker Pelosi on Thursday at noon this week on the Capitol steps. We will be there to greet them and hopefully discuss with them our concerns about the Democratic approach and to offer better solutions.

I thank the Speaker this evening for his kind attention and tolerance of his fellow freshmen Republicans' efforts this evening.

Well, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee, who has tremendous experience with government-run health care in the State of Tennessee. And after he saw the 1,990-page bill that we received last week and saw how much government intervention is involved through that bill, how many unfunded mandates are being passed onto the States, how many government bureaucracies are created, how many times the word ``shall'' appears in that bill, this is truly transformational.

Some of the Members of our caucus have said that this is the most significant debate that they have ever been involved in. So for those of us who are freshmen and did come here to reduce the size of State government, or to reduce spending, or to, as the gentleman from Louisiana said, reform health care, we are seeing things that we hoped would not be a consequence, and that being more government intervention, more spending, more involvement in our lives.

And so we are here to protect people from more government intervention and to protect the relationships that you have with your doctor, with your local community hospital, with your health care provider so you all can make decisions regarding your own lives and your own quality of treatment and the efforts that you will make to enjoy the type of health care and quality of life that you hope to have in your communities. And that is reflected in this recent survey of women. Sixty-four percent of American women would rather have private health insurance than a government-run health insurance plan. Sixty-six percent describe their health insurance as excellent or good. Seventy- four percent describe their health care as excellent or good. Seventy- five percent want few to no changes made in their own health care.

We all know that there needs to be some reform. The cost is too high, and in some areas access is limited. And certainly with regard to Medicare, in rural areas hospitals and doctors are not reimbursed for the full cost of providing the services they provide. In my home State of Wyoming, in fact, the hospital in Casper, Wyoming, has said they are only reimbursed for about one-third of the actual cost of providing care to a Medicare patient.

Now, some doctors who are reimbursed at these very low levels have decided not to take Medicare patients anymore. So, when things like that happen, we really are denying access to care by having a government-run program.

Not only that--and this is one of my greatest concerns--it's what we are giving up by taking on a government-run program. Let's compare ourselves to countries that have government-run programs. Let's look specifically at cancer.

For men in the U.S., survival rates exceed 60 percent and also for women. In fact, two-thirds of women will survive. Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom are all significantly below the United States in terms of survival rates. One of the reasons for that is, when diagnosis occurs in the United States, treatment follows much more quickly than in some of these countries. So, if you are rationing care, that is a consequence. You don't have the same survival rates that we do in the United States.

Take, for example, my own sister-in-law. She was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer on her annual mammogram. She had no symptoms. She had none of the usual markers or factors which would indicate she had a risk of an aggressive breast cancer. Yet she was diagnosed based on her annual mammogram. She was in surgery in the same month that she was diagnosed, and she then began a regimen of both radiation and chemotherapy. Shortly thereafter, it saved her life.

So she falls into that category of two-thirds of American women who are surviving cancer. In fact, with breast cancer, it's a very significant number--the difference between survivability in the United States versus survivability in European countries--and that's because health care is rationed. This is a quote by the chief justice on the Canadian Supreme Court: access to a waiting list is not access to health care.

In this bill, we have to have assurance that we're not going to be on a waiting list. Quite frankly, we don't have that at all. In fact, based on what I've read in this 1,990-page bill and based on what I've been told by my colleague, the gentleman from Tennessee who is leading this discussion tonight, in fact, we will have rationing. The cost will be tremendous, and the taxes that will be imposed on so many of us as a result will be exorbitant.

So it sounds to me like health care reform, in the style of the bill that was introduced last week, includes higher taxes, penalties, less choice, more government, more costs to States, more costs to individuals, more costs to small business, and no guarantee of an improvement in access, in quality or in the ability to craft a plan of treatment between you and your physician or to seek a second or third opinion in the event you feel it's necessary for you, for your family, for your parents or for your children.

This is not health care reform as was envisioned by my colleagues who are here tonight, the gentleman from Louisiana and the gentleman from Tennessee.

Thank you kindly for allowing me to join you.

I yield back.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to express what is my greatest hope and my greatest concern in 1 minute.

My greatest concern is that, by using Medicare as a means to fund this new program, you will be taking more money away from rural areas that are already inadequately reimbursed by Medicare for their costs. For example, in Casper, Wyoming, the hospital is only reimbursed at 32 cents on the dollar for Medicare actual costs.

We are underreimbursing now and having to subsidize Medicare. The government is not meeting its obligation to Medicare. My greatest hope is that Democrats will read the 40-plus Republican bills to reform health care and choose the best among them and bring those to the floor so we can discuss them and debate them.

We have over 40 bills that you can use for great ideas to reform health care in a way that will make it available to all Americans.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and for holding this discussion about health care costs.

What we do know about the bill, and the gentleman's chart shows some of the problems with it, Medicare cuts are going to be bearing a huge brunt of the expense of this new mandate.

There are $350 billion worth of Federal tax hikes, but those that combined are not enough. The Senate Finance Committee's bill imposes a $33 billion unfunded Medicaid mandate on the States. Now, what that means, an unfunded mandate is when the Federal Government tells the States you will pay for part of this, and it will come out of your pocket.

Indeed. Furthermore, 33 States could see an over-30 percent increase in their Medicaid enrollment. Those kinds of increases, including my State of Wyoming, will hit States whose budgets are suffering now without these additional costs.

In my State of Wyoming, our Governor has asked his State agencies to propose budgets that are 10 percent lower than the last budget, and that includes cutting Medicaid options.

The gentleman from Louisiana is correct. This is not just coming from States like mine in Wyoming. The Governor of Pennsylvania, the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, has said, I think it's an unfunded mandate. We just don't have the wherewithal to absorb that without some new revenue source. Now, that would be a new revenue source in Pennsylvania in addition to the new revenue sources that the Federal Government imposes.

It does indeed. The gentleman from Louisiana is once again correct. The Governor of Tennessee, also a Democrat, has said he fears Congress is about to bestow the mother of all unfunded mandates. Unfunded mandates are orders from Washington that States will spend money that they don't have.

My own Wyoming medical center in Casper, Wyoming, gave me statistics that show that they are reimbursed 37 cents on the dollar for every Medicaid actual dollar that they pay out. That means that two-thirds, roughly, of the dollars that are paid to Medicare-receiving patients are paid by someone other than the Federal Government.

We are already subsidizing the Federal Government. The Federal Government is already not meeting its obligation to serve Medicare patients.

Will the gentleman yield?

You know, one of the most exasperating things about this whole health care debate in the last several months that's been unfolding is that the bills we've seen from the Democratic Party, from the majority party, will make matters worse than the status quo. But we don't have, as a minority party, the opportunity to show people how we can make matters better than the status quo.

And I would yield to our leader this evening to discuss some of those 40 bills that members in the minority party have sponsored that would make matters better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And will the gentleman yield?

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

And I yield back. Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I rise today in support of House Resolution 696 and in recognition of the 50 years of achievement in service by Western Wyoming Community College. I further wish to thank the gentlelady from Hawaii and the gentleman from Pennsylvania for their support of this resolution.

As the gentlelady from Hawaii pointed out, Western began in fall of 1959, serving only 40 students out of Rock Springs High School. Today, they have an award-winning campus on College Drive in Rock Springs as well as an extended campus in Green River, which collectively serve 4,000 credits and 2,000 community education students each semester.

Western serves Sweetwater, Uinta, Carbon, Sublette, and Lincoln Counties, all in southwest Wyoming. It is a valued partner with industry, education and local business in its service area to provide transfer and technical education, workforce training, cultural and athletic activities, and community education courses.

Like many educational institutions across the Nation, Western adheres to a set of altruistic guiding principles: Learning is our Purpose; Students are our Focus; Employees are our Most Important Resource; the Community is our Partner; Adapting to Change Defines our Future; and, Ethical Standards Guide our Actions. And it embodies these principles in its motto: ``A commitment to quality and success.''

Across our Nation, community colleges play a vital role in the higher education system. No State feels their significance more than the State of Wyoming.

Wyoming is almost 100,000 square miles and is served by only one 4- year university. Western is the fifth of seven comprehensive community colleges that bridge this geographic span, making college affordable and accessible across the State of Wyoming.

The seven community colleges across Wyoming allow some students to complete their education with technical training or a 2-year associates degree, while others transfer earned credit to continue and receive their bachelor degrees and beyond.

Making the goals of many students even more accessible is the seamless transfer agreement between the University of Wyoming and the community colleges, allowing students to continue their education in Laramie without loss of credits in the move.

So in recognition of the Western Mustangs, their 50th anniversary, and to community colleges across Wyoming and the Nation, I ask my colleagues to celebrate Western's achievements with me today.

Western will be celebrating as a campus from this Saturday, September 26, through the following Sunday, October 4. Please help me in having the U.S. House of Representatives celebrate this achievement with them by passing House Resolution 696.

I do, and I thank the gentleman from Missouri for allowing me to. I was sitting in my office in the Longworth Building listening to this discussion, and my fellow freshman colleague, the physician from Louisiana, was talking earlier about Medicare and the effects of $350 billion of waste, fraud and abuse coming out of Medicare to magically fund a big portion of the proposed health care bill that Ms. Pelosi and her colleagues have prepared for us.

You know, there certainly isn't. And the most amazing thing to me about listening to that discussion is, when I was home for the August work period, I met with the physicians and administrators at Wyoming Medical Center in Casper, Wyoming. They told me that they are currently reimbursed at 37 cents on the dollar for their actual out-of- pocket costs of treating a Medicare patient.

No.

No.

Thirty-seven cents.

They are losing roughly two-thirds of every dollar that they spend.

It is a stunning departure from rational thinking.

Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States has said that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. But that is simply not the case.

I was in Wyoming over the weekend in my home district, and I talked to small business people who have health insurance, who have calculated what will happen if the Democrats' plan takes effect. And if it takes effect, they will be able to pay the 8 percent penalty in the bill and shift their employees onto the government plan and save money. It will cost them less money to take their private insurance, jettison it, take their employees off it, pay the 8 percent penalty, and put them on the government plan. The government plan will be less comprehensive, and their employees will suffer.

Mr. Speaker, this is not health care reform. I ask you to join the Republicans with a plan that will address affordability, portability, and accessibility in a way that will not cost the taxpayers trillions of dollars.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 638, I was in a House Budget Committee hearing questioning Interior Secretary Salazar. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 629, I was detained unavoidably. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Part B Amendment No. 8 Offered by Mr. Flake

I thank the gentleman for yielding. Our deficit will soar to $1.8 trillion this year. The President's budget will triple our debt in 10 years and still under this bill be PAYGO-compliant. That is how disingenuous this bill is. This bill is so disingenuous that they didn't even allow it to go through the Budget Committee for fear, perhaps, that the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee might come up with something more reasonable.

Instead, it is the ranking member that had to come up with something more reasonable. Families in Wyoming and across the Nation don't have the luxury of exempting 40 percent of their budget from balancing. But this PAYGO bill does. Forty percent of the budget is off the table. It doesn't have to play the PAYGO game. This is sleight of hand. I ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to reject this bill, which falls woefully short of its goals. Let's slow entitlement growth. Let's control Congress' insatiable appetite for spending. Let's pass the Paul Ryan alternative.