Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, some are trying to create the impression that the only problem with ObamaCare is the Web site, and the experts will soon fix that. Actually, the biggest problem with the so-called Affordable Care Act is that it is unaffordable.

We are already having trouble paying for all of the Federal medical programs we have now. The cost of all of our Federal medical programs have been greatly underestimated at the start.

Now with many millions more losing their coverage than the administration predicted, added to the millions previously uninsured, the cost of ObamaCare is already estimated at possibly four times more than when it was passed, and it is not even fully in place.

Since it took 3\1/2\ years to even get a screwed-up Web site partially ready, most people don't believe the Federal Government can run our health care system efficiently in the first place. More bureaucratic, less-humane medical care, and all at much greater cost to taxpayers at both the Federal and State levels.

This plan is a mess that will ultimately lead to shortages, waiting periods, and a great decline in the quality of American medical care.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday The Washington Times reported that the U.S. is now spending millions on life skills and art seminars for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The paper said a multimillion dollar Federal contract is teaching Gitmo detainees basic landscaping, calligraphy, and Microsoft PowerPoint, among other seminars and library services.

Last July, the Comptroller of the Defense Department reported that the cost of keeping Guantanamo prison open during 2013 would be an astounding $454 million for just 164 prisoners. This comes out to roughly $2.7 million per year for each one of these detainees held in the prison camp. This compares to $72,000 per year per prisoner in Federal high security prisons. Because the Federal Government is so wasteful and inefficient, States are housing State prisoners for half that amount.

The taxpayers of this Nation should not be forced to spend $454 million to give the good life to former terrorists. They should be sent to the most unpleasant prison in the U.S., but this and other abuses of U.S. taxpayers will continue until we drastically downsize the Federal Government and greatly decrease its funding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a Tennessean who has helped thousands of people in need across my district. Dr. Tom Kim came to America after escaping North Korea at the age of 6. Through a strong Christian upbringing and faith in God, he was led to a lifelong devotion of helping others.

Many years ago, I had lunch with Dr. Kim, and he shared with me his wish to open a clinic that provides free health care to the working poor in my district. The clinic would operate with a mission based on the Bible verse Matthew 25:40, ``Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me.'' From that vision came The Free Medical Clinic of America, which this year celebrated its 20th anniversary and 11,000th new patient. What started as a small clinic alongside Dr. Kim's own practice in Knoxville has grown to facilities in four other counties.

Most recently, the FBI office in Knoxville gave Dr. Kim the Director's Community Leadership Award. This yearly honor is given to citizens who go above and beyond in service to their communities.

Mr. Speaker, Dr. Tom Kim is one of the most selfless and kindest men I have ever known and is a man who possesses a contagious energy to help others. I wanted to bring his devotion to others to the attention of my colleagues. I hope The Free Medical Clinic of America continues to be an example of humanity and Christian service for many years to come.

While I came here primarily to honor a health care hero, I also want to make a few additional comments about health care.

The more we learn about the so-called Affordable Care Act, the worse it gets. It should be called the ``Unaffordable Care Act'' since cost estimates are already double or triple the estimated cost when it was passed, and Federal health plans have always been lowballed on the front end. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, Medicare was supposed to cost about $12 billion after 25 years. Instead, CRS reports that it costs almost 10 times that much, and this year, it will cost six times that amount, or over $600 billion.

Premiums are going way up for most people in preparation for the requirements of the new law.

The Associated Press reported on August 8:

One casualty of the new health care law may be paid

coverage for families of people who work for small

businesses.

Employers are either not hiring as many workers as they ordinarily would, with many trying to stay under 50 employees so as not to be hit by the new law, or are switching people to part-time work. The State of Virginia notified 10,000 part-time workers they would not be allowed to go over 30 hours a week, and some have said the new norm all over the country is two 20-hour-a-week jobs.

One leading supporter of the act was famously quoted as saying that we would have to pass the law before we could find out what was in it. Now we are finding out all of the promises about keeping your plan if you liked it, keeping your doctor if you liked him, and that premiums would go down by as much as $2,500 a year were all false, exaggerated, or at least incorrect. Millions have lost or will lose their coverage. Millions more are facing huge increases in their premiums.

In our offices, we have helped many people with Medicare and Medicaid problems, and no one wants to see anyone denied medical care. However, before we start another program that we can't afford, we need to do more to eliminate the tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse that exists in Medicare and Medicaid today.

More significantly, some people and companies have become rich off of these two programs. The administrators of Medicare and Medicaid need to crack down on those who are turning Medicare and Medicaid into monetary bonanzas. One place to start is in the huge discrepancies in charges by hospitals.

A May 8 New York Times article reported that one hospital in Dallas billed Medicare $160,832 for lower joint replacements while another just 5 miles away and on the same street billed the government an average fee of $42,632. Two hospitals in New York City varied by 321 percent what they charged for complicated asthma treatment, one billing an average of a little over $34,000 while the other charged an average of a little over $8,000.

Columnist Charles Lane of The Washington Post wrote that Medicare reimburses power wheelchair suppliers $4,000 to $5,000 for a basic chair that costs the supplier $700. Just yesterday, in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, we had a hearing about the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Web site. Already, over $600 million has been spent on this messed up, convoluted, confusing system. It is going to cost billions to straighten it out and keep updating the technology. None of this is going for actual health care. It is just going to some well-connected government contractors who are getting rich at great expense to American taxpayers.

What a great law this is, destroying jobs for average Americans but wonderful for lobbyists and government contractors. Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union said:

How ironic that while the Affordable Care Act is being

blamed for slowing job creation outside the beltway, the law

is offering plenty of job opportunities to firms inside the

beltway willing to promote it.

How sad this is.

Mr. Chairman, I first want to say that I rise in strong support of this bipartisan jobs and infrastructure legislation, and I would like to commend Chairman Shuster and Chairman Gibbs and Ranking Members Rahall and Bishop for working together to bring this very important bill to the floor today.

This is one of the most fiscally responsible infrastructure bills that this Congress has ever seen. I think it is fair to say that in my 25 years of service in this body that I have one of the most fiscally conservative voting records possible, so I am proud to support this type of legislation.

Every day tons of goods are transported across our waterways. Without basic infrastructure in place, much of these goods would be transported on our already overly congested highways. According to the National Waterways Foundation, a 15-barge tow can transport the same amount of goods as 1,050 tractor-trailer trucks. Moving goods on the water is also the most fuel efficient and environmentally sound method of transportation.

In addition, this legislation streamlines project delivery, potentially saving the Federal Government and our taxpayers billions of dollars.

While I would never support a project that is harmful to the environment, I do not think we should drag these projects out for years and years and spend megamillions of dollars on studies and drive up these costs to ridiculous levels. This legislation sets hard timelines and caps costs for studies that have to be completed for infrastructure projects.

Because H.R. 3080 removes so much red tape and bureaucracy, it helps us complete these projects in a timely and cost-effective manner. This bill, as I said, is a fiscally responsible one. Not only does it not contain any earmarks, as has been mentioned, it deauthorizes $12 billion worth of inactive projects that are no longer needed or feasible, which offsets all of the new authorizations made in this legislation.

This bill also authorizes the important flood control projects that we need to prevent natural disasters. We saw what can happen when Katrina hit New Orleans a few years ago. That disaster caused an estimated $150 billion in damage, according to USA Today. We need to make smart investments today so we are not foolishly spending billions of dollars after a disaster strikes.

I urge my colleagues to support this very conservative and reasonable legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman from Alaska yielding me this time, and I rise in support of the amendment.

Small businesses struggle to stay in business every day, and they should not have to compete against their government, on top of all of the other challenges they face. In fact, sometimes I think we should pin a medal on anybody who is able to survive today in small businesses. Yet every day in almost every congressional district, big government agencies are competing with small businesses.

When the White House Conference on Small Business met in 1995, it listed unfair government competition with small businesses as one of the top issues. This is not a new problem. In fact, since the Eisenhower administration in 1955, it became official U.S. policy that:

The Federal Government will not start or carry on any

commercial activity to provide a service or product for its

own use if such product or service can be procured from

private enterprise through ordinary business channels.

This is a service that can easily be provided by private small businesses, and we should support that. This amendment would simply require the Army Corps to take advantage of the private mapping and surveying services that are available instead of competing with them.

I believe this is a very reasonable and responsible amendment, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, you can never satisfy government's appetite for money and land; they always want more. Now we are $17 trillion in debt and are headed to $25 trillion in less than a decade under the best case scenario. Those are figures that are humanly incomprehensible; yet our estimates of our future unfunded pension liabilities are much, much higher. They are, probably, at least $75 trillion or more.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is the one that has put out these estimates, and they estimated recently that interest on the national debt will quadruple in less than 10 years to an astounding $857 billion in just 1 year. If we allow that to happen, the Federal Government could then pay only for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt--nothing for defense, national parks, interstate highways, and so forth. Obviously, future Congresses cannot or would not allow that to happen, so they will then come in with a combination of huge tax increases and a tremendous inflation of the currency.

The fight we are in now is over a lot more than the ``Unaffordable Care Act.'' It is a battle for the economic survival of this Nation. Anyone who wants their Social Security or their Federal or military pensions in order to be able to buy anything--or buy much at all in the very near future--should be demanding much more fiscal conservatism now. We either bite some very painful bullets now or we face much more difficult times in the very near future that will make our present problems look small in comparison. We could end up with problems like Detroit has now, but multiplied all across this Nation.

President Obama, when he was in the Senate, opposed raising the debt ceiling and said we shouldn't do it to our children and our grandchildren; and when we are in this war now over this spending, this battle for the economic survival of our Nation, Mr. Speaker, surely we do not want to ruin the future of our children and our grandchildren.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this rule and the underlying continuing resolution to keep the government open, and I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time.

This rule, and the bill it brings to the floor, also makes sure that people know that we, in the Congress, will not receive any type of exemption or special benefit under ObamaCare.

For some reason, the national media has given the President a free pass by not calling on him to compromise, or even negotiate at all, to help keep the government open. The Republicans have compromised and have voted to fund the entire government except for only one bill-- ObamaCare. If a Republican President were refusing even to negotiate, he would be criticized to high heaven by the national media.

We simply are trying to treat ordinary individuals the same way and give the same delay to individual Americans that was given to big business. I

think this is a very reasonable and moderate approach that Republicans in the House have taken.

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, the Republicans in the House compromised and voted to fund everything in the entire Federal Government but ObamaCare. Yet the President refuses to compromise on anything, even just that one bill.

If you think most of the national media is not biased, just consider the fact that they are not calling on the President to compromise at all. The national media apparently believes that House Republicans should be the only ones required to compromise.

Then look, too, at the different treatment given Texas State Senator Wendy Davis' filibuster and the filibuster-like speech by Senator Ted Cruz. The elite national media made Senator Davis an overnight sensation and treated her as courageous and even heroic. But Senator Cruz has been blasted in every way by the liberals who control most of the media--a double standard that is both very unfair and very harmful to the Nation.

If the Federal Government shuts down, it will be in large part because the national media for some reason feels the President has no obligation to compromise or moderate his views in any way.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a Tennessean beloved by thousands of students and worshippers who look to him for spiritual guidance.

Pastor Clarence Sexton has lead Temple Baptist Church in Powell for 25 years.

When Pastor Sexton took over the church in 1988, the congregation consisted of a few hundred people.

Today, the church has grown to more than 6,000 worshippers, and Pastor Sexton's role has expanded to Crown Bible College, where he serves as President.

Pastor Sexton first found his calling to ministry in Blount County in my District, where he met his wife Mary Evelyn Rogers and first attended church at First Baptist Church of Maryville. He also served as head pastor at Greenback Memorial Baptist Church.

In 1967, Pastor Sexton preached his first sermon on a radio broadcast. Decades later, he has lead Temple Baptist Church into the technological age, reaching thousands through audio, video, and the internet.

I have attended Temple Baptist Church many times, and Pastor Sexton is one of most caring men I have ever known. It would be impossible to count the many people he has touched with his kindness, compassion, and grace during his time at Temple Baptist.

I urge my colleagues to join me as I salute Pastor Clarence Sexton, and bring his service to the attention of my Colleagues and other readers of the Record. His calling as a pastor, friend, and leader will continue to inspire many more.

Mr. Speaker, before the Federal Government got into health care, medical care was cheap and almost everyone could afford it. Doctors even routinely made house calls.

When Medicare was passed, it was predicted that after 25 years it would cost only $12 billion. Instead, it cost 10 times that much. This year, it will cost over $600 billion.

All Federal medical programs have cost many times more than was estimated on the front end. Already, we read ObamaCare is going to cost at least two or three times more than it was estimated when it was passed.

Federal medical programs make and have made a few people and companies very wealthy; however, they have made it so only multibillionaires can pay what is being charged for medical care.

Howard Dean, a former Democratic National Chairman, says that ObamaCare will cause health care to be rationed.

The Unaffordable Care Act is taking us toward lower quality, shortages, waiting periods, all at greater expense for medical care. It needs to be stopped before it makes our health care problems even worse than they now are.

Madam Speaker, all over this country many thousands are not being hired because of the so-called Affordable Care Act, which is really unaffordable. Many thousands more are seeing their hours cut so they do not go over the 30-hour-per-week threshold. Someone said the new normal is now two 20-hour-a-week jobs.

Now the State of Tennessee has had to notify 16,000 Tennesseans they can no longer have coverage under CoverTN, a low-cost health care plan for small businesses and the self-employed. The plan is being abolished because it does not meet all the bureaucratic requirements of ObamaCare.

Senator Lamar Alexander said:

The new health care law has destroyed an innovative State

health insurance plan that is helping 16,000 Tennesseans

afford health care coverage.

When the President was selling ObamaCare to Americans, he said again and again that people who had insurance they liked could keep it. Despite the President's promises, Tennesseeans enrolled with CoverTN are among the thousands of Americans who are being forced to buy new, more expensive plans with much higher premiums because of the ``Unaffordable Care Act.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1541, the Common Sense in Compensation Act.

I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for yielding me this time. I also want to commend him for coming up with this very sensible, reasonable, moderate response in legislation to a problem that's been growing bigger and bigger with each passing year.

As the previous speaker, the gentleman from Michigan, mentioned, in one recent 3-year period there were over $340 million worth of Federal bonuses given out. I didn't know about that figure but I have seen some other figures which relate to this legislation that I would like to mention at this time.

A couple of years ago, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis completed a study showing that the average Federal employee received a salary and benefits totaling $119,982, while the average private sector employee made a salary and benefits of $59,909. In other words, the Federal salaries and benefits were approximately twice or double what people in the private sector were receiving.

The Washington Examiner newspaper, in a lead editorial after that report came out, described these Federal salaries as ``scandalously higher'' than private salaries, and added:

With the Federal deficit and national debt heading into the

stratosphere, taxpayers can no longer afford to support such

lucrative government compensation.

Certainly, it's already been mentioned that our national debt is now approximately $17 trillion--a figure that almost no human being can really comprehend.

At the height of the recession there was a front-page story in USA Today, which said:

Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time--in

pay and hiring--during a recession that has cost $7.3 million

jobs in the private sector.

The report in USA Today said that the ``highest-paid Federal employees are doing best of all.''

I read a report a few months ago that said 6 of the 10 wealthiest counties in this country were all suburban counties to Washington, D.C.

In addition to much higher Federal salaries and benefits, Federal employees have the best pension plans in this country, while fewer than 20 percent of employees in the private sector even have any employer- provided pension plan other than Social Security. These very high pensions were started many years ago when Federal salaries often were lower than in the private sector. But that is certainly not the case today, when Federal salaries are averaging about twice what the average salary is in the private sector. Also, Federal employees are allowed to retire at younger ages.

Almost everyone, I realize, Mr. Speaker, feels underpaid when you hear about these obscene, ridiculous salaries of CEOs and athletes and movie stars. But Federal employees need to realize that you're talking about just one-tenth of 1 percent of the people. Compared to about 96 to 97 percent of the American people, Federal employees are very fortunate to have their jobs, and are very well paid.

I know from my experience with the Tennessee Valley Authority, where they've given out many bonuses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range, this situation will spiral completely out of control because Big Government can justify or rationalize almost anything.

I will simply say that this is a good bill. This is good legislation to limit these bonuses to about 5 percent of these very high salaries. I hope all of my colleagues will support H.R. 1541, the Common Sense in Compensation Act.

Madam Chair, on rollcall No. 315 I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. Speaker, last week the 1,200 page farm bill was defeated. I'm told that the Senate's immigration bill is now 1,922 pages.

The previous Speaker of this body, the gentlelady from California (Ms. Pelosi), famously said that we would have to pass the very misnamed Affordable Care Act, we would have to pass it before we could figure out or find out what was in it.

The last issue of the Weekly Standard magazine includes an article entitled, ``Our Masters, the Bureaucrats.'' The article says that today there's only one Member of Congress for each 5,150 Federal bureaucrats and says that this bureaucracy is ``too insulated from the people.''

This gigantic bureaucracy has produced so many laws, rules, and regulations that they have not even designed a computer that could keep up with all of them, much less a human being.

Almost everyone has violated a Federal law at some point, especially a tax law. An innocent mistake is not supposed to be criminal, but a zealous prosecutor can make almost anything criminal.

A few days ago, a woman who described herself as a progressive or liberal Democrat and, thus, would favor all these regulations testified in one of my committees and said, ``at the time each rule was created, it made sense; but over time, the accretion, or accumulation, of rules and regulations ends up costing us money and frustrating the public.''

Our Federal Government has grown so big that it is now almost completely out of control, and the people are suffering because of it. Jobs are killed, small businesses go under, and on and on and on.

I started this morning by mentioning the farm bill, so complicated that cost estimates ranged all the way from $500 billion to $1 trillion. We didn't even know how much it was going to cost.

Everyone respects and appreciates farmers. We must help small farmers as much as we can. Small farmers are important for our quality of life and our economy.

However, one part of the bill that I want to discuss here briefly this morning is the subsidy for crop insurance.

Every other business in this country, small or large, pays 100 percent of their insurance on their own.

These businesses do not expect or request subsidized Federal insurance. Right now, Federal taxpayers are paying for two-thirds of farmers' subsidies in Federal crop insurance. Most of these subsidies go to the biggest giants in agriculture. These subsidies also primarily benefit a very few multinational insurance companies. The biggest crop insurer is Wells Fargo. And several of these crop insurance giants are operated by foreign companies based in places like the Bahamas, Japan, and Switzerland. That's who the U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing.

I'm not advocating doing away with the entire crop insurance program. However, the excessive amount of this subsidy just last year cost taxpayers $6 billion and was one of several reasons the farm bill went down to defeat. Actually, the farm bill should more accurately be called the food stamp bill. I think 20 percent of it dealt with farmers and 80 percent for food.

But I did offer an amendment to the farm bill to eliminate premium subsidies from being paid on any Federal crop insurance policy with what is known as the harvest price option. Under the harvest price option, if the price of the covered crop increases between planting and harvest, the farmer's revenue guarantee is recalculated, using the higher harvest price. In other words, giving the farmer more money-- sometimes, significantly more money--than he expected when he first planted the crop. As a result, harvest price options can cause a farmer to receive

much more revenue than was guaranteed at planting.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, my amendment would have saved at least $7.7 billion over the next 10 years, and possibly even much more in years with a severe drought, such as the $6 billion last year. This amendment was endorsed by the Citizens Against Government Waste, Americans for Tax Reform, the National Taxpayers Union, Heritage Action, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and a slew of other fiscally conservative organizations, as well as the Environmental Working Group.

Professor Bruce Babcock, a professor from Iowa State University who helped invent revenue coverage in the mid-1990s, has said:

Crop insurance is not an insurance program. It's a social

program.

And, he says, because of how American agriculture works, it's a social program that helps the biggest agribusinesses the most.

My amendment even got a tacit enforcement from the Farm Bureau because they realized this subsidy has now become too lucrative and too excessive. But the agribusiness lobby was afraid of my amendment and kept it from even being presented on the floor because they were almost certain it would pass.

Mr. Speaker, we have to make changes in the future so too much tax money will not go to Cadillac crop insurance programs.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in support of this very fair rule which has allowed 172 amendments.

I rise in strong support of the amendment by the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones), which would accelerate the paced withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Mr. Speaker, the American people do not want forever wars that now have lasted three or four times longer than World War II. Afghanistan has simply become little more than a gigantic money pit, with President Karzai and his cronies ripping off American taxpayers for billions of dollars. President Karzai has made it very clear that even he wants us out, but, of course, he still wants us to send him our billions. It is long past the time.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, there never should have been a time in the first place for needless wars that keep resulting in the killing and maiming of young American soldiers. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have always been more about money and power than about any real threat to the American people.

William F. Buckley changed his views before he died and came out strongly against the war in Iraq. What he said in 2005 regarding the war in Iraq can be said about Afghanistan today. Mr. Buckley said:

A respect for the power of the United States is engendered

by our success in engagements in which we take part. A point

is reached when tenacity conveys not steadfastness of

purpose, but misapplication of pride.

Mr. Speaker, as other speakers have pointed out before me, the underlying bill calls for a spending of $85 billion, or $7 billion a month, for the war in Afghanistan. That is too much.

It is time to bring our troops home.

Mr. Speaker, I wish today to honor one of the most distinguished men in my home state of Tennessee.

Dr. William M. Novick has helped many, many thousands of children all over the world in more than 30 countries. He is someone for whom I have the greatest respect.

Dr. Novick currently serves as the Paul Nemir Endowed Chair of International Child Health, Department of Surgery at the University of Tennessee. I cannot think of a more capable or distinguished person to have in this role.

During the past 20 years, Dr. Novick has performed more than 6,000 pediatric heart surgeries on the world's poor. Last year alone, he performed more pediatric heart surgeries than the Mayo Clinic.

This year, he has devoted his time and talents toward the Caribbean, performing more than 100 surgeries on Dominican and Haitian children.

Dr. Novick is currently taking more than 400 cases per year in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and the Middle East, and he has even operated on children of Chernobyl.

Mr. Speaker, Dr. William M. Novick is an example of American grace and generosity all over the world. It is fitting he has found a place at the University of Tennessee, home of the Volunteers.

I call his accomplishments as the Paul Nemir Endowed Chair of International Child Health, Department of Surgery at the University of Tennessee to the attention of my Colleagues and other readers of the Record. I hope to see Dr. Novick's work continue for many years to come.