Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, in a recent interview with C-SPAN, the President made the very telling statement, ``We are out of money.''

Yes, Mr. President, as of April 27, this country ran out of money. And yet that has not stopped the liberals in this Congress from passing record-setting spending bills. These bills were sold to the American public as necessary to stimulate the economy.

Unemployment insurance claims reached a record high for the 17th consecutive week and unemployment has reached 9.4 percent, which he promised would not happen upon signing this infamous stimulus bill. The $1 trillion spending that was supposed to stem the economic recession was nothing more than the fulfillment of a very liberal political agenda.

Reckless spending, a total disregard for fiscal accountability, and rocketing us into another inflation-debt spiral is not the solution. Now, even Socialist and Communist countries across the world are rebuking us for excessive spending and government takeover of the economy.

Bigger government is never the answer to America's biggest challenges. American individualism, innovation, and ingenuity will, even after 200 years, remain the only way to economic prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Pennsylvania for yielding me this time.

I think this is an important bill. I do rise in support of it. I'm a family physician who has treated diabetes even in and among teenagers, which is a sad situation when you consider the future of someone who develops diabetes so young. And certainly the physical future is very important.

But I am also very concerned about the fiscal future of our youth. I'm very troubled today. A constituent came to me today from the oil and gas industry and was discussing with me the problems that already are emerging with the loss of tax incentives to invest in exploration that is going on in my district and districts around. So, Mr. Speaker, I think that looking down the line here at the fact that we have not yet developed an energy policy, I know my side of the aisle, we Republicans, attempted to get to the floor a no-cost stimulus bill which would have, I think, been very innovative and certainly revolutionary in getting our energy costs down. But having said that, as gas prices now are approaching $3 a gallon and we are still in a severe recession, just think that even $4 a gallon pretty soon is probably going to be bypassed very quickly.

With that, I just want to reiterate what my friend also from Louisiana, Mr. Scalise, has discussed as we move into the cap-and-trade debate, the cap-and-tax debate, if you will, where every analyst that we have been able to read sees this as a pure form of taxation, that the real underlying purpose of it is to raise more money for, I guess, social spending or perhaps single-payer, nationalized, health care spending. I'm not sure. But the net effect of that is just what we have seen with the incubator that we call Spain, and that is cap-and-tax has been in play there for 10 years, and what has been the net result?

Well, today the unemployment rate in Spain is 17.5 percent. As Mr. Scalise mentioned, for every job that's been gained, a so-called ``green'' job--and again, I will get to that in a moment as to what a green job, I think, is supposed to be--there has been a loss of 2.2 real jobs. And I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that in the State of Louisiana and surrounding States that the jobs that we have today that come from the oil and gas industry are very significant jobs. They carry benefits. They carry pay easily in the $50,000 to $100,000 range in many cases. And the so-called ``green'' jobs that are discussed, if you look at Spain and their experience, what they found was that 90 percent of the green jobs were implementation jobs, that is, construction. And, of course, once the construction or implementation period is over, that job goes away; so there is only left a remaining 10 percent of the total green jobs that even become permanent jobs.

But then if you look further underlying that, Mr. Speaker, what you find is that the green jobs are really a pass-through of taxpayer money into the system and then as payroll for these so-called ``green'' jobs. They are not a direct result of an exponential growth of a healthy economy or a healthy oil and gas industry.

So, as we move into this debate--and I understand it's being pushed pretty hard right now--we've got to decide are we going to continue to put more taxes on our citizens in the way of higher utility bills, which will impact the poor and those on fixed income to the tune of over $3,000 a year of added electrical bills, or are we going to see our manufacturing have to leave this country and go overseas because it can no longer compete with the higher energy costs? What is really the question here? How are we going to have more revenue into our Treasury by killing off jobs?

So I don't think this is any longer a theoretical discussion. I think we are talking about real people and real jobs. And all we have to do is to look at Spain and other countries who have attempted this.

But just in summary, Mr. Speaker, I think that we need to be very careful about what government is taking over and what it's controlling. If you look to Western Europe, where socialism has been rampant for years, you actually see a retraction, a move away from that. Even Pravda made a statement recently that we are going headlong into Marxism when, in fact, the rest of the world is pulling back.

With that, I thank you for your time in the discussion.

I thank my friend and fellow physician and colleague, Dr. Gingrey.

You made reference to the 30-Something Democrats, and I watched that debate, that discussion with great interest because, to be honest with you, with 32 years of medical practice and also owning businesses for nearly as long, when I hear this discussion about how a public plan can work, I really try to view that and try to understand that; but I always come out totally mystified with how this sort of thing could ever work.

And to clarify the debate, basically Congress right now is looking at three different options. One is a total single payer nationalized health care system, Medicare for all. One would be a private system for all, which is what we, on the Republican side, back. And then the other is a public and private system that are competing with one another. So I really watch with great interest our colleagues on the other side-- none of whom are physicians, I might add--talk about how this could be a great deal, a great success, where you have a public system that's competing with a private system, somehow that's going to drive cost and prices down, and we're going to get a dividend from that.

Well, what I would do is point out to my colleagues, let's look at Medicare today and Medicaid as well, both government-run systems. Both of them are running out of money rapidly, the budgets are exploding and expanding, and they are living off the fat of the

private system. Today we know--in fact, a recent survey, a study came out showing that the average subscriber to private insurance spends an extra $1,000 a year to support the Medicare and Medicaid system. We also know that a lot of that support comes by way of the uninsured who are routed through the emergency room, who don't have any coverage; and if you think that the Medicare recipients pay for that, forget it. That's not happening. Who is paying for that is the taxpayer and those who subscribe to private plans.

So right now the systems that exist, Medicare and Medicaid, are, for the most part, supported not by premiums and not even fully by the taxpayers, but are supported by those who pay premiums into private plans. So if you expand Medicare to where everyone is eligible for a Medicare-type plan, who in their right mind is going to stay on private insurance when they know that they're going to have to pay increasing size premiums in order to get the same level of care that those on Medicare, who are largely supported by taxes, are going to get?

What ends up happening is you lose that critical mass of those under private insurance, and so private insurance then becomes only an afterthought, a sliver of the economy. So what you're left with is a giant public system, a Medicare that's much bigger than what we have today. Incidentally, I will remind those that today, as it stands, Medicare will run out of money within 10 years, as it is. It's unsustainable as it is. Now if we grow it into a much bigger system, where are those cost savings going to come from?

I will yield back in a moment, but I just want to bring out the fact that no one has ever been able to show that a government-run system, particularly a health care system, but any government-run system in which the economy is being controlled in some way has ever controlled cost. And even today we know that health care costs are going up twice the rate of inflation.

I wanted to tone down on the debate a little bit more.

Again, we heard the 30-something Group Democrats talking about the debate earlier, and one said something very interesting. It really caught my ear. He said that the debate is basically Democrats want health care reform, Republicans do not want health care reform.

Now, I have spoken on this floor, as you know, Dr. Gingrey and Dr. Roe as well, and I've heard you speak many times; many Members of our conference have spoken; I've spoken a number of times throughout the district. I've listened to everyone from Speaker Gingrich to many others. I have yet to hear one Republican say that he is against health care reform.

So I want to remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that the only way we're ever going to solve our health care problems--which make up about 20 percent of our economy--we must have an honest debate. And framing the other side into a position that really doesn't exist is not going to get us there. In fact, I would say that we really agree, from what I can understand, on 90 percent of the discussion.

We all agree that we should do away with pre-existing illness; we all agree that we should have portability; we all agree there should be a hundred percent access to care; we all agree that we should lower the cost of care. I can draw you a great list. There is really, when you get down to it, only one thing we disagree with, and that is we feel that a private system, private industry--even if it's paid for by the Federal Government--in many cases does a much better job in terms of quality of care and customer service and a much better job of controlling costs.

This is proven time after time.

Compare our economy with a socialistic economy and you see every time that we provide much better products and services and at a much better price than those countries do.

So, really, the only disagreement is who is actually controlling the care. And, of course, I submit to you that a government-run system is a real problem. And I will tell you where I learned this.

When I was in the Navy as a physician, I noticed in the first year that the commanding officer of the hospital sent out a call and said if there is--this is budget time of the year--and if there is anything that you think we could ever want in this hospital, wink wink--meaning, think of something; dream of things--put it on a list, because if we don't preserve that budget the way it is, then our budget will be cut next year. And that, my friend, is the way government works. If you don't force it into the budget, if you don't make sure and protect your territory, it won't be there next year. Somebody will cut into it. And that's really the way government works.

And I will give you an example, a real-life example of how we will never be able to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse from our health care system if it's run by the government.

Think about this: we have to throw out a wide net, which is very expensive. We may capture a few offenders out there. Because it would have to be a criminal act, we would have to prove that they really did it on purpose; and then at the end of the day we would have to prosecute them with a lot of dollars; and then we may get one person, and we may get a few dollars. That's the way you get rid of fraud and abuse in a government system.

In a private system, much different. You have a physician or some other provider in a health care organization that's privately run, and if his practices are not the best practice and he's not practicing in a cost-effective way, that shows up on a graph; and often, of course, you go to that provider and you reeducate, and you have him work with colleagues, and you get him back to the protocols. And if that doesn't work, then you fire him. Easy problem to solve. It doesn't require all of that--there is no crime involved. So you can work in the most effective way possible.

I appreciate your yielding. I just wanted to take a moment to follow up on what you said and Mr. Rohrabacher.

We have 47 million uninsured, 10 million of course are illegal aliens. And of course that is a solvable problem by only allowing legal aliens and requiring them to pay taxes and insurance like anyone else, and those who are here illegally should not be here. So that's not really a health care problem, at least primarily, that is an immigration problem.

We also have, as you point out, at least half that 47 million who are insurable people, and very cost effectively, but they choose not to. That really hurts the risk pool, and we should do things to incentivize them.

The real problem is the 10 or 15 million people who are either business owners or they work for small businesses and they can't get cost-effective insurance. And they're the ones that delay care, they're the ones that don't go to their primary doctor, they're the ones that end up going to the emergency room, getting care at a time when the outcomes are the worst and the cost is the highest.

So when you think about it--and polls show that 75 percent of people are happy with what they have, whether it's Medicare or Medicaid, private insurance--it's that 25 percent that can't get affordable care. That's where the problem is, and that's where the focus needs to be. And if we do that, we get cost-effective coverage for them--and there are many ways of doing this, and we would have to get into ways to determine that--we would really have this problem under much better control. But if we, on the other hand, blow this thing out with a single-payer system, we are going to have exploding budgets as far as the eye can see, and I don't see any end to that. I thank you, and I yield back.

Mr. Speaker, on June 1 two U.S. servicemen were gunned down at an Army recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas. Private William Long lost his life in the attack, and another soldier remains in critical condition. Based on the attacker's own statements, these soldiers were targeted because of their affiliation with the U.S. Army. There is evidence that others were being targeted, and this is not the first time.

Under recently passed hate crimes legislation, H.R. 1913, these heroes would receive no additional Federal protections. I think we can all agree that if there is any class of citizens who deserve special protection from political or religiously motivated crimes, it is our men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line each day to protect this country.

So I have introduced House bill 2677, the Military Personnel Protection Act of 2009. This legislation will right this egregious wrong and ensure those who answered our Nation's call to service are extended the same protections afforded to other protected classes of citizens. I urge my colleagues to join me in passing this legislation and extend Federal hate crimes protections to active, Guard, Reserve and retired members of the armed services. That is the least we can do for them.

Mr. Speaker, on April 5 of this year, North Korea launched a missile capable of hitting nations friendly to us and even parts of the United States. The rocket broke apart during its second phase, but it was able to track halfway across the Pacific Ocean.

What was our response to the growing threat? We announced the missile defense budget would be cut by $1.4 billion.

On May 25, 2009, North Korea successfully detonated a nuclear bomb at an underground test facility and launched at least six separate short- range ballistic missiles. And I understand that the bomb was about a 3- to 5-kiloton magnitude bomb.

Now there is news that North Korea may be preparing another long- range missile test. North Korea's nuclear weapons testing and production have been a major concern for years as they continue to make technological advances that could one day allow them to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the U.S. This is not the time to cut our missile defense budget.

Mr. Speaker, we must continue to invest in the ground-based sensors to track, intercept and destroy missiles during the mid-course of flight and ensure America is protected against attacks from those who pose the biggest threat to our safety and freedom.

History remains clear on this. Being unprepared or passive always invites aggression.

I thank the gentleman from Utah, and I, too, feel very privileged, Mr. Speaker, to have been a cosponsor on the no-cost stimulus energy plan that my friend from Utah was also a sponsor of, and it would have provided tremendous utilization of the potential energy we have, but of course, it never made it to the floor.

As a good segue into really what I want to talk about is my local district, I just want to reiterate what we discussed this evening, and we also talked about it last night, that this cap-and-tax program has been tried before. We've been 10 years down this pathway with Spain. Representatives from Spain came and spoke with us about this, and they said that the net of all that has been is they've lost companies, they've lost jobs, their unemployment rate is now 17.5 percent, and their energy costs are skyrocketing, which of course prophetically even our own President, President Obama, made the comment in January 2008 that utility costs, electrical costs, home costs of energy will skyrocket if this bill is passed.

What I want to talk about for a moment, Mr. Speaker, is the Haynesville shale. I'm from the fourth district of Louisiana. This is the northwestern corner of Louisiana, and 3 years ago no one had ever heard of the Haynesville shale. In fact, the whole idea of shale formation, that is, a rock formation that holds like a porous sponge deposits of natural gas, something that was barely heard of even 4 years ago, and today, we're finding that in the case of the Haynesville shale, it is perhaps the largest natural gas find in this hemisphere.

And hopefully, the camera will pick this map up, but you see the area, and it borders, of course, several parishes in Louisiana and then also counties in Texas. As you can see, it covers a wide swath of area, and so this represents a tremendous opportunity for the State of Louisiana and also parts of the State of Texas.

So I just want to tell you something about the impact. We're talking about 234 trillion cubic feet of natural gas production potential. This could be a source of energy for many years to come for this country, and remember that natural gas is a very clean form of fossil fuel. It produces significantly less carbon dioxide than say coal, and yet there's forces out there that would like to stop the drilling for natural gas in the Haynesville shale. We're even going to have hearings tomorrow talking about the manufacturing process and potentially issues having to do with the environment with that. But let me tell you about what we also can lose if we lose the ability to extract natural gas just in my district.

A 2008 study was done, and it showed that $4.5 billion was pumped into the Louisiana economy in that year. It created $3.9 billion in household earnings. The greatest impact on indirect household earnings was experienced by workers in the mining sector, with new household earnings of $193 million in 2008. It created over $30 million in new earnings in separate sectors; $56.7 million in health care; management, $46 million. On and on and on, many millions of dollars. It's creating cash into the local economy in my district. And as a result of this, our unemployment rate is much lower than that of the east of the country, and our economy's doing very well. Real estate is doing very well. On that, we've created many jobs. Large impacts were felt with 5,229 jobs in the utility sector; health care, 3,496 jobs.

Conservative estimates report that State and local tax revenues increased by $153.3 million in 2008. Some parishes reported a 300 percent increase in sales tax.

So as you can see, Mr. Speaker, the Haynesville shale is just starting, and yet it is creating a tremendous impact on the economy of my district. So, if we continue down this cap-and-tax road, not only are we going to lose what we have but potentially lose what we're going to have.

In the 2010 budget of President Obama on this same subject, we're looking at a potential loss of $80 billion in tax incentives for oil and natural gas businesses, and this impacts small companies. The majority of oil and gas companies in my district are small companies. They're mom-and-pop businesses, and that is the backbone of our economy. We're not talking about Shell Oil. We're not talking about Exxon. We're talking about local, Joe Smith kinds of businesses.

Independent oilmen and women in northeast Louisiana rely on these incentives to reinvest their capital in these companies. This is caused by the loss of depletion allowance and the writeoff of intangible drilling costs. It will also broaden our dependence foreign oil; of course, the thing that we used to talk about when gas was $4 a gallon and soon we're going to be talking about that again.

Well, in closing, I just want to say, Mr. Speaker, that we cannot tax and spend our way out of growing our economy. In a time of recession, the best way to encourage an economic turnaround is to preserve jobs. The State, instead of flowing money into the economy, as we've tried with this stimulus plan, which, estimates are, only 6 percent of the money is even in the economy, we may actually be pulling out of this recession as we speak.

Without the development of natural gas plays like the Haynesville shale, without increased exploration in ANWR, the Outer Continental Shelf,

without the tax incentives that I just mentioned, without these things we're going to see our economy, even if it put pulls out of this, level off.

We can have our cake and eat it, too, Mr. Speaker. We don't have to destroy our economy and clean up our environment at the same time. We can be good, responsible tenders of our environment. We can be good stewards of our environment without destroying our economy in the process.

Someday perhaps we will be able to use some of these technologies. Perhaps we can use solar, maybe wind, but at this point, my friend from Utah says it's 1.6 percent of production, and we're going to have a lot of breakthroughs to make it go much higher than that. But until that time, there's a lot we can do with the technologies we have, technologies that are coming online, and that's not even mentioning nuclear power which many countries, particularly in Europe, are way ahead of us on.

But we can do a lot to solve our problems without throwing our economy into the dumpster, as Spain has.

So with that I want to thank my friend from Utah for his time, his many great efforts with this. I appreciate his leadership on this subject.

Madam Speaker, I would like to submit the following request:

Bill Number: H.R. 915, ``FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009''.

Provision: Section 811 ``Pollock Municipal Airport, Louisiana''.

Address of requesting entity: Town of Pollock, Louisiana.

Description of request: Requires the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to approve a request from the Town of Pollock, Louisiana, to close the airport as a public airport; and release the town from any term, condition, reservation, or restriction contained in a surplus property conveyance or transfer document, and from any order or finding by the Department of Transportation on the use and repayment of airport revenue applicable to the airport, that would otherwise prevent the closure of the airport and redevelopment of the facilities to non-aeronautical uses. Upon the approval of the request to close the airport. the town of Pollock shall obtain fair market value for the sale of the airport property and shall immediately upon receipt transfer all such proceeds from the sale of the airport property to the sponsor of a public airport designated by the Administrator to be used for the development or improvement of such airport.

Well, thank you. And I want to thank my friend, of course, from Missouri for having this hour discussion, very important discussion, coming right at the heels of our classmates from the other side of the aisle speaking on the same subject, but with a different opinion.

I also thank my fellow Republican classmate, Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania as well for his discussion.

Well, let me just point out that, you know, you don't have to be detailed in the science to understand one empirical fact, and that is, this globe has warmed and cooled several times in its life before there was the first emission of fossil fuels.

So, that being said, we already have proof positive that the Earth can warm under its own circumstances and its own environment and its own test tube, if you will. And you just mentioned sunspots and other activities. There are many things that go into the global warming effect and global cooling effect.

And as you say, now that we're not able to accurately actually predict that the globe is warming, now the whole issue is changing to climate change, so that whatever happens different than what it is at this moment can somehow be blamed.

Thank you. To sort of gear down to the real topic tonight, I heard talk from the other side of the aisle this evening about terms such as ``investment,'' which really, to me, is a code for tax, and also ``jobs'' or ``green jobs.''

Exactly. Exactly.

Also, it was very interesting that the discussion hinged somewhat on the fact that this investment creates more jobs and that it creates revenue down the line. If you listen closely to the discussion, what you hear is really good old-fashioned subsidies. That is, whenever the government is subsidizing forms of energy that are not cost- effective at this point and whenever the technologies are not there, what we really get is a pass-through of taxpayer dollars that goes into what I would call artificial, or papier mache jobs, so-called ``green jobs.'' We'll learn from the Spanish experiment that has been going on now for 10 years that, for 2.2 jobs that are lost, there is only one so-called ``green job'' gained. That job 90 percent of the time is in implementation and construction. It is not a continuous job.

Well, just to extend that a little further, where are these jobs going?

It turns out that some of the Spanish jobs have come to America because we understand that the net effect of tax, or cap-and-trade, or cap-and-tax as we call it, is that there is a higher cost to produce goods for manufacturing. So as a result, for someone who owns a factory or a company that perhaps owns a factory, he has to find the most cost- effective location for that factory. Otherwise, he can't compete in the worldwide economy. We know today that this is, indeed, a worldwide economy. We can't get away from that fact.

Just today, a Chinese company bought Hummer--a portion of General Motors. So we know that to be true. Well, we actually have received a dividend from Spain going down this road. We've actually had companies coming to the U.S., and we've actually gained jobs as a result of Spain's having gone down this cap-and-trade boondoggle.

Well, I thank the gentleman. I think that really the extension of what you just said is what is the real agenda behind this, and I think that we've recognized in the last few years that the American taxpayer has had enough. They don't want to pay any more taxes. Americans feel like they pay enough on the city level, county level, State and Federal level, and I think that our more liberal friends, our tax friendly friends, have realized this, and now they're coming up with schemes to disguise taxes.

And I think Congressman Dingell said it better than anybody in this Chamber--and of course, he's a Democrat--that this is a tax, a very big tax, and I think that really strikes to the heart of what the purpose of this is. Someone a moment ago made reference to the fact that we're going to need at least $1.2 trillion if we go forward with a single- payer, comprehensive health care system, Medicare for all, if you

will. And I think that those who support that are scrambling around to find a tax that can be defined as something not a tax, and I think they've got this cap-and-tax program squarely in their sights.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor a very special group from Northwest Louisiana.

On May 16, 2009 a group of 104 veterans and their guardians flew to Washington with a very special program. Louisiana HonorAir is providing the opportunity for these Louisiana veterans to visit Washington, DC on a chartered flight, free of charge. For many, this will be the first and only opportunity to visit the memorials created in their honor. These brave men and women, from my home state of Louisiana, deserve the thanks of a grateful nation for everything they have sacrificed for our freedom.

Today I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring these great Americans and thank them for their unselfish service.

Robert M. Acosta, Edward E. Allen, William J. Archambeau, Francis W. Artley, Carl A. Barr, Clifford A. Birchfield, Joe E. Bizet, Richard E. Blake, Dudley H. Boddie, Roy Timon Buckner, Robert L. Bufkin, Jesse E. Burkheart, Adolph B. Campbell, Williard E. Charrier, James A. Clark, George Cockerham, Claude M. Corbett, Joe R. Crain, Alonza Crawford, Joe H. Curtis, Willie V. Dark, R. Debusk, Sammuel D. Doles, Thomas B. Erwin, Jack B. Evans, James E. Evans, Frank H. Falkenberry, Daniel W. Fallin, James, L. Fallin, James H. Fisher, Frank H. Ford, John C. Foster, Paul D. Gandy, Jesus Garcia, James C. Gardner, Leo J. Garner, Leon C. Green, Claude Gulley, Joseph Warren Harris, Tom N. Havard, James W. Helton, Charles M. Henley, Edward J. Heuer, John N. Holman, John L. lles, Joe M. Ivey, Loin Jacob, James Prentice Johnson, Alvin B. Kessler, Oscar C. Laborde, Charles A. Lammons, Joseph H. LeBeau, Gus D. Levy, Clayton E. Manning, W.C. Mayfield, Mary E. McMahon, Leonard S. Micinski, Charles E. Monson, McLuther Monzingo, Donald R. Moreau, Lucien L. Oldham, Elmore C. Owens, Lester L. Pace, Frederick E. Parker, Robert A. Peiser, J.L. Pennington, Carlos B. Perez, Wallace P. Perryman, James Ferrell Reeder, James E. Rigal, Kenneth Roberts, Richard Roy, James G. Sandifer, Ira R. Schulling, Luther E. Self, Geroge E. Shanks, Whilman G. Sheets, James L. Shelton, Cecil O. Simmons, Shirley R. Simmons, Richard D. Smart, Shurman C. Smith, Robert A. Stacy, Roy E. Stickman, Fletcher Thorne-Thomsen, Maurice S. Thrasher, Carroll E. Timmons, Bobby G. Turrentine, Howard V. Walker, Clomer Walton, Ray M. Ward, William B. Wardlaw, Carl J. Waters, Billy J. Wells, Claude O. West, G.F. White, James Wilson, Allen J. Wiltz, Marcus D. Wren.

Mr. Speaker, the crazy cap-and-tax idea advanced by my liberal colleagues would create $640 billion in new taxes on American businesses and raise electrical bills by $3,100 per household per year. This cap-and-tax proposal creates an artificial market to find revenue to pay for various social programs that this administration plans to enact, such as government takeover of our health care. This boondoggle will cap our growth and trade our jobs. Companies looking to invest in our economy will simply move overseas to escape this enormous tax increase.

You don't believe me? Look in the crystal ball at Spain, which has been on this plan for 10 years. After losing a number of companies, seeing utility prices skyrocket and suffering a 17.5 percent unemployment rate, we can see our future clearly. Even worse, experts tell us that cap-and-tax will do nothing to cap greenhouse gases, but it will put the United States at a global economic disadvantage because China and India will ignore this scheme. In fact, it will also serve as an economic stimulus for all developing countries which will be happy to accept our jobs.

Why not use common sense for a change and develop true renewable resources as well as nuclear power, which has a zero carbon footprint?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize one of the special veterans in my district. William Cooksey is a World War II veteran who just celebrated his 100th birthday.

Later this month we will welcome Mr. Cooksey to Washington as part of an Honor Air Trip, which flies World War II veterans to our Nation's capital free of charge to visit the World War II Memorial and Arlington Cemetery.

Mr. Cooksey began his service to our country as a member of an infantry unit. He then moved to the Air Corps and served as a chaplain's assistant from October 1943 to December 1945. When he left the military, he did so having received four Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart, the World War I Victory Medal and a Good Conduct Medal. At 100 years old, Mr. Cooksey still serves as the senior choir director at his church.

On behalf of this Congress, I thank Mr. Cooksey for his dedicated service. May God continue to bless this special man and all of our veterans who so bravely and selflessly served our country.

Well, thanks to my colleague and the gentleman from Tennessee, Dr. Roe. Dr. Roe certainly has a lot to bring to the table being a physician for many years and also having quite a political background being mayor of a city and actually having balanced a budget and even having a surplus, something we don't see very often these days. And so I thank the gentleman for that.

Yes, I wanted to make a few comments, as well, regarding this health care debate that is coming to a head here very soon. Patients are very simple in what they want from health care. Certainly they want choice. They want affordability. They want control. And they want good results. And I think that that is quite reasonable. And certainly on the other side of the aisle where there is a debate about a single-payer system, really a government-run system, I think that there is not any disagreement about the fact that we want everyone to have access to health care, and we want everyone to have access to good health care.

I think where the debate begins to fall down is that in our opinion on this side of the aisle, we feel that a government-run system is not a well run system. It is an inefficient system. It is a wasteful system. We have many, many examples of why that is true. We don't have to even turn to health care. We can look at any system that has been run by government, and not just the United States Government. Cities and States all reveal considerable waste because it is the nature of the system itself. On the other hand, in the private system, there is the administrative ability to remove fraud, waste and abuse.

I will give you an example. Today with Medicare and Medicaid, we recognize that there is fraud, waste and abuse. Everyone knows it. Many politicians get up and clamor that they will be able to remove it, but none has been able to do that. The reason is because of the nature of government itself. Government cannot remove fraud, waste and abuse. In order to attempt to do so, it has to build, first of all, a large bureaucracy. It has to catch the offenders. With that, there has to be prosecution of the offenders. And when you get down to it, you only find the very most egregious small percentage of those who are actually committing fraud, waste and abuse. So you get really a small tip of the iceberg. So much more is underneath that a government can never get to.

On the other hand, if you look at a private business, private business has all sorts of ways of finding fraud, waste and abuse and removing it administratively. For instance, a physician who is practicing inefficient medicine in an organization, in a private organization, he can be reeducated, or she can be re-educated, or just simply removed entirely from employment. But government is unable to micromanage individual behavior. And every time we attempt, we simply run cost up. And I will give you another good example of that. If you look at the post office and compare it to FedEx or UPS, you will see these private companies run so efficiently and so profitably. And yet, of course, the post office does not run efficiently. There are long lines. And that is just one way to control cost, and

then, of course, ultimately we have to pay higher rates.

So I think that we really have to look at the endemic problems within a private system versus a public system when we see that really there are only two ways to control cost in a public system. And we are attempting one of them and have been doing so for the last 20 or 30 years, and that is price controls, price controls on the providers, the hospitals and the doctors. And that would be a wonderful thing perhaps, at least for consumers, if it worked. But what goes up faster than health care every year? Nothing that I'm aware of. It is the one part of the economy where we have price controls, the only one, and yet it goes up faster than anything else.

Well, what is the only other way we can control costs? That is rationing. And you say, well, we are not rationing care today. Look at Medicare and Medicaid, still a reasonably smaller percentage of the total health care system here, and it is able to provide good service to recipients, even though they are government-run programs, only because you have a much larger private system that is able to keep it supported. Now if we expand that to a large, government-run health care system, it is going to make up 17 percent of our entire economy. Where are we going to get the money to prop that system up? Where is it going to come from? And so what we are going to end up with is the same place where Canada, the U.K. and all the other countries that have gone to a single-payer, government-takeover-run system, and that is that there is going to have to be cuts. When we get up to a point where budgets have to be evaluated, we are going to have to make cuts. And when you make cuts, that equals rationing.

Yes

I thank the gentleman from Tennessee, Dr. Roe, for his excellent comments.

What you're pointing out is that rationing is not just about inconvenience, although there is a lot of inconvenience where someone has to wait 6 months to get a surgery, elective surgery or something like that. But it also means accepted death rates and accepted morbidity rates so that people go unable to work because they need a hip replacement or someone dies waiting for needed surgery for a disease disorder. They go delayed diagnosis for a tumor which is going to end up in much more cost down the line because it wasn't prevented or diagnosed earlier. So rationed care I think is unacceptable to the American mind. And I would just say that if we go towards a government- run system, we have to be willing to accept the fact that we will have rationed care. I don't see any way around that.

I do want to just sum up before I yield, and that is that I think that in evaluating the American psyche today when it comes to health care, we find that 83 percent of Americans like the health care the way it is. They like their insurance coverage. They like the doctor that they see. They are happy. The problem that we are talking about today is the 47 million uninsured. And who are these people? Well, statistics tell us that probably 10 million or so of those are illegal aliens. And, of course, that is a whole other debate. We need immigration reform. There is also probably half that number who are young adults who are healthy who elect not to get any health care insurance coverage. And so we have a real challenge before us to entice or to incentivize them to join, because if they join into the plan, we can work through preventive health care and early diagnostic care to prevent them from disease down the road, and also their dollars up front will help fund the last 10 million, which is the most critical 10 million, and that is older adults who are not Medicare age who do not have affordable accessibility to health care coverage, and therein lies a problem. They are not the poor. They are not the elderly. And they are not people that work for corporations. They are small business owners and their employees, a critical 10 million population that are finding their ways into the emergency rooms late in their illness with outcomes poor, far more cost required. And of course we physicians and hospitals have a mandate to provide care to them regardless of their ability to pay, which is a noble American concept. But the problem is, that cost has to be passed on to others, taxpayers, those who are paying their insurance subscription rates. And I'm sure we, as Americans, are willing to do that to an extent. But if you take those same dollars and you allow these people to get insurance and early preventive care, have a medical home, a family doctor, those costs will collapse. They don't have to be the high-price, low-yield kind of care that they get through the emergency room.

And lastly, I think it is important that we look at reforming health care laws where we can allow physicians and hospitals and other providers to come together to begin to work together and to compete to lower the overall cost of health care rather than having it being dictated from Washington, which as I pointed out, is really a very poor way to try to cut costs.

And then finally, that we do away, remove from the lexicon, the idea and even the verbiage that says ``preexisting illness.'' There should never be that term used ever again.

In conclusion, I just want to emphasize the need to remove the term ``preexisting illness'' from the lexicon and that we make it easy and affordable for all Americans to access the health care system; but as I say, I think we all tonight would agree that that is done much better through a private plan rather than through a government plan. I know that we hear some rhetoric about, well, let's have both a private plan and a public plan--and I'm sure that my colleagues tonight will expand on this--but if you have one plan that's controlled and subsidized by the government, whose responsibility it is to be sure that there's an even playing field in the competitive arena, we know that the public plan will always receive advantages and benefits, and the private plan will then atrophy. I think it's far better to work through the private arena and to let

the government do what it does best, and that is to protect its citizens and to ensure an even playing field.

With that, I yield back to my friend from Tennessee.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to salute a sheriff's department veteran from Beauregard Parish in my Louisiana district who was recently killed in the line of duty.

Detective Robbie Beane had dedicated 14 years of his life protecting and serving the good people of Beauregard Parish. On May 5, he died in an accident while on duty with three of his fellow officers.

During his 14 years as a member of the Beauregard Parish Sheriff's Department, Robbie Beane worked his way up to detective and had become a volunteer member of the SWAT team and the SWAT diving team.

Detective Beane was an active member of his church and volunteered in civic organizations. He was slated to be the next president of the Deridder Lion's Club.

Detective Beane is the first member of the Beauregard Sheriff's Department to be killed in the line of duty.

He leaves behind his wife, Nikki, and their daughter, Joslynn. This is a tragic loss, and I want to express my sincere condolences to his family and thank Robbie Beane for his service to our State.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a member of the House Armed Services Committee. I am concerned that the Department of Defense has become less open and less accountable. Recent actions taken by the Pentagon has limited transparency and congressional oversight.

First, for the first time ever, nondisclosure agreements have been required of senior defense officials working on the budget.

Second, for the first time, routing ship readiness reports are being classified. This hampers Congress in its important oversight function of the military. The Army was even a no-show at the House Armed Services Committee hearing on its top acquisition project.

Do we want to wait until war to discover we have a hollow fleet or inadequate equipment? Congress has the constitutional duty to raise and support armies and navies.

This responsibility requires candid answers from our senior military leaders about the FY 2010 budget approval. To quote our President, ``A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency.'' Where is this promised transparency?

Madam Speaker, I thank Ranking Member McHugh and also Chairman Skelton. I rise to speak about and to support H.R. 2101.

We must continue providing a strong national defense while reining in out-of-control cost growth in the development of major weapons systems. Taxpayers deserve to get the most bang for their buck, especially when national security matters are involved. Cost overruns in major defense weapons systems are a huge drain on the defense budget.

This bill accomplishes this in three ways, number one, by ensuring accuracy of information for performance assessment; number two, providing intensive care to sick programs, sometimes they need just a little nudge to get back on track; and, number three, tracking cost growth in the early stages of development. By the time a program reaches milestone B, 75 percent of its costs are already locked in. Currently, there is no process to review alternative solutions when cost or schedule growth occurs during this period.

Now, there is a companion bill in the Senate we have already discussed, the Levin-McCain legislation. And members on the House Armed Services Committee share the concerns addressed in the Senate bill. By comparison, about 25 percent of the two bills are the same, about 50 percent of the provisions are overlapping, and about 25 percent of our solutions on the House side are in addition. H.R. 2101 takes a different approach from the Levin-McCain legislation bill in how it addresses issues of systems engineering and other matters.

In summary, Madam Speaker, I support H.R. 2101, and I ask that my fellow Members support it as well.