Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this has been an interesting week for a number of reasons. I would like to call to attention a letter that was written by Chairman Darrell Issa, my friend from California, to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week.

The first paragraph, after saying, ``Dear Madam Secretary'' says:

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is

investigating the insurance exchange application, online at

www.healthcare.gov, established by the Department of Health

and Human Services. As part of this investigation, we are

writing to request information related to voter registration

data collected during the application process.

On further down, the letter says:

While HHS and its contractors continue to struggle with the

task of processing applications for health insurance

coverage, the agency uses the Web site to collect voter

registration information. Once an applicant completes the

online application for health care coverage, a dialogue box

appears asking, ``Would you like to register to vote?'' In

light of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also

known as the Motor Voter Act, which requires any agency that

provides public assistance to provide individuals with an

opportunity to register to vote, the Department decided to

include the voter registration option on the health care

application. The inclusion of this voter registration may

give applicants the impression that registering to vote is

somehow tied to receiving health care benefits, such as

insurance subsidies.

Given the well-documented flaws with the health care

application process, the public lacks confidence that HHS has

the ability to safeguard applicants' voter information.

Documents reviewed by the committee show that applicants may

submit personal information over the Internet during the

application process without encryption, potentially exposing

personally identifiable information to interception and

abuse.

Further down it says:

Further, it is unclear how HHS uses the voting information

it collects once a user submits this data on the Web site.

Applicants rightly expect that only State election officials

will have access to their information. Voter registration

contains important personal details that are valuable to

various individuals and organizations.

Toward the end, Chairman Issa says:

These facts raise questions as to what happens when the

same individual expresses the desire to register to vote

multiple times. HHS does not appear to have the capacity to

differentiate between duplicates and first-time applicants.

In short, it is unclear what happens to voter registration

information once HHS receives it. Applicants have an

expectation that the Federal Government is not transmitting

private information to third parties, knowingly or

unknowingly.

But interesting questions were raised by my friend Chairman Issa. It should also be noted that the chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, my friend from Utah, Jason Chaffetz, also signed that letter. So that has certainly caused some digging in my office to find out what this was about.

And then we find information about www.demos.org. They have a report by Lisa J. Danetz called ``Building a Healthy Democracy: Registering 68 Million People To Vote Through Health Benefit Exchanges.''

Well, that is interesting. It makes you wonder what they are up to. They are involved in this www.healthcare.gov, apparently. And their own information from demos.org says they are going to use the health benefit exchanges, apparently, to try to register 68 million people to vote.

So while people in America--and I have talked to many who are just scared because they have got someone sick in their family. They have lost their insurance that the President promised they could keep. They are scared about the superhigh deductibles they have gotten. They are scared that under ObamaCare they have been sentenced to go from full- time work to part-time work, which means, as I have heard from some, that, gee, that means we have now had to go on public assistance because I never wanted welfare, didn't need welfare until the so-called Affordable Care Act forced us into it.

So people are concerned all over America. The majority want ObamaCare gone. The Web site is not working.

And then we find out that, actually, the Web site seems to be as concerned about getting people registered to vote and getting their invaluable voter information as they are about dealing with the crisis in American lives involving their health care and their health insurance.

You have got people with ulterior motives. They are apparently not just signing people up from the goodness of their hearts because Demos makes clear in their own information, We are going to use the health benefit exchanges to register voters.

Well, now, who would they be registering to vote? Because we are all in favor of people eligible to vote voting. Although we know that the Attorney General has sued States like Texas, even though the Supreme Court has made clear that Indiana's law requiring a photo ID, the Attorney General's rules that require a photo ID to get in to see him, the Democratic National Committee requiring photo IDs to get into their convention, having to have a photo ID to get alcohol or cigarettes or basically to get on a plane or get on most any conveyance in interstate commerce, you have got to have a photo ID. And States like Texas have said, If you can't afford it, then just fill out the oath, and we will take care of it for you.

So, on the one hand, we have an Attorney General and Department of Justice doing everything they possibly can, even in the face of a Supreme Court decision saying photo ID requirements are okay. They still are going after States, which I would humbly submit, Mr. Speaker, disenfranchises legitimate voters when the Attorney General of the United States takes action to prevent States from preventing fraudulent votes.

I was shocked when people called out for international observers to come watch our own election process. This is America. We don't need international observers to watch our process, so I thought. And yet international observers watched our process of voting and were absolutely shocked that we were so cavalier about who got to vote.

No identification requirements. Clearly, people were in a position to vote more than once if they wanted to. People were in a position to vote who were not U.S. citizens, and people could vote multiple times.

I know in Iraq, I was over there right after their first election, and those people had to dip their fingers in permanent ink that they wore around for weeks until it finally wore off. But it made sure that, even in Iraq, they were protecting the integrity of their voting

system further than what we are doing here.

Well, this demos.org, they are going to register, they say, 68 million to vote through health benefit exchanges. So the thing to do, it seemed to me, was to get their annual report.

So, Mr. Speaker, that is what I got--Demos' annual 2012 report--to see who these people are that are going to register voters. I am sure they would be fair and register voters from all walks of life.

And then here we see the president is Miles Rapoport. Being the president, he has got a nice Letter from the President, the board chair.

So then you look up a little background. Well, who is this Miles Rapoport? An article from keywiki said Miles S. Rapoport is the leftist president and CEO of New York-based think tank Demos.

It goes on to say:

While studying at Harvard in the late 1960s, Miles Rapoport

was active in the radical Students for Democratic Society,

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today on a motion offered pursuant to this order, it adjourn to meet at 10 a.m. on Friday, November 1, 2013, unless it sooner has received a message from the Senate transmitting its concurrence in House Concurrent Resolution 62, in which case the House shall stand adjourned pursuant to that concurrent resolution.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the order of the House of today, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 5 o'clock and 11 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Friday, November 1, 2013, at 10 a.m., unless it sooner has received a message from the Senate transmitting its adoption of House Concurrent Resolution 62, in which case the House shall stand adjourned pursuant to that concurrent resolution.

Mr. Speaker, to follow on my dear friend Mr. Franks from Arizona's discussion about the so-called Affordable Care Act, I continue to hear from people who have lost their insurance, had insurance go up significant amounts, it is not affordable.

Now, I did hear from one of my constituents tonight that about 30 out of 147 people at his place of business actually were helped by the Affordable Care Act, and that is great. Eighty percent of Americans seem to have gotten no help or been greatly harmed by the Affordable Care Act. Their insurance has gone up dramatically. They didn't get to keep their insurance. They didn't get to keep their doctor. They didn't save $2,500. Most Americans have been harmed by the Affordable Care Act.

It is just very hard for me to call it the Affordable Care Act, but in this body so often there have been bills which had for a title, such as the Affordable Care Act, had a name that was exactly opposite of what the bill actually was going to accomplish. The cap-and-trade bill, as it was called, certainly didn't help trade, but it sure did cap a lot of commerce that could have taken place and would not have been able to if that bill had been passed.

There are just all kinds of bills. Some people are pretty creative in the way that they put a name on. There is no law that says the title to a bill has to be truthful, and that is how you can end up with a bill calling it ``affordable care'' when the majority lose their insurance and don't get the care that they need or, for example, find out that in 3 to 5 years, when they need a new pacemaker, the new law will not allow them to get it. Those are problems.

What I have also found more and more of are senior citizens who are now beginning to figure out that when the AARP-endorsed ObamaCare--and I don't think it is disrespectful to the President to call the bill ObamaCare, just as the President and others called the bill that Governor Romney signed in Massachusetts RomneyCare. I don't consider it disrespectful to former Governor Romney to call it RomneyCare, and I don't think it is disrespectful to call the un-Affordable Care Act ObamaCare. So no disrespect to the President intended by referring to his signature bill.

But people have been hurt. People have been moved from full-time employment to part-time employment. They liked their insurance policy, but then they found out they didn't get to keep it. They have lost it. They found out their deductible shot up dramatically, and now they don't think that they can afford the thousands of dollars that will be required before their insurance policy kicks in.

We have seen news reports repeatedly about companies that have had to drop spouses from coverage or families from coverage or drop coverage altogether. We found out that there may be as many as 80 percent of those who individually bought their insurance that will or have lost their insurance. And so when I see a number projected like 14 million Americans will lose their insurance, my understanding is that most of these projections about the millions that are losing their insurance are actually talking about millions of policies that are lost. So, for example, if it were my family when my children were growing up, then it would mean not just one policy was lost, but it would mean five people lost their insurance. So I think we will continue to see millions and millions losing their insurance rather than getting to keep it, which is a broken promise.

Now, there was an article written by Lisa Meyers, and it is referenced here in the blog of Ace of Spades, and I don't have the article itself here, but a great point is made that it is bad enough that we were told over and over: If you like your insurance, you can keep it. If you like your insurance, you can keep it. If you like your insurance, you can keep it. If you like your insurance, we will make sure you can keep it. You want to keep your insurance, you can keep it.

We were told those types of things over and over by the President himself and people speaking for the President as well. And the point is made that actually the law itself did not destroy as many insurance policies as have now been lost, but so many of the lost insurance policies have been forcibly lost by this administration by the law but also by the thousands of pages of regulations that have been written. And this article points out:

In other words the ACA, Affordable Care Act, did make it

incredibly hard for insurers to continue plans for the

millions of Americans who don't want comprehensive insurance.

Financially, insurers almost certainly had to adjust them in

such a way that they would lose the grandfathered status.

This isn't ``normal turnover in the insurance market,''

although there is plenty of that in the individual market.

There is a reason why an exceptionally large number of

Americans are getting cancelation notices this fall.

It points out that very often insurance companies will keep premiums down despite rising costs of insurance by raising deductibles or copayments, and that is precisely what Obama's regulations say makes a policy automatically ungrandfathered. So people were told, if you like your policy, you can keep it because we are going to grandfather them in. The President himself used that term, ``we are going to grandfather in these policies.''

Then his Health and Human Services wrote the regulations in such a way that it forced insurance companies to have to change their policies, mandated some new coverage if it was going to comply with the law, but there were so many things that were written into the regulations that forced insurance companies to change their policies which meant they could not be grandfathered. So it was bad enough that people were promised, if you like your insurance, you can keep it, and then there were going to be some people who lost their insurance anyway, but then the regulations were written in such a way that it was going to force and has forced people to lose their insurance.

So the President's own Health and Human Services Department has created more lost policies by the way they have written the regulations. They could have been written in such a way so that the President would have been allowed to keep his promise. And all it would have taken from a strong leader who wanted to make sure that no Department made a liar out of him would have been to either pick up the phone or write a letter or have an email sent saying, Hey, don't make a liar out of me. Don't you write these regulations in such a way that it causes people to lose insurance policies when I promised them they won't lose their policies.

That could have happened, but it didn't happen. In fact, what the Health and Human Services Department did, by virtue of the Secretary who is in charge, they made sure that millions and millions and millions of Americans would lose their health insurance. So it makes that point, the Affordable Care Act as written and passed, would have protected the grandfathered plans for a longer period of time and with more freedom for adjustment, but the Obama administration filled out the Secretary's ``shalls,'' and there are so many ``shall this,'' ``shall do that,'' ``shall do this'' in such a way as to make it that much harder, if not basically impossible to do.

The Obama administration's original June 2010 rules were actually even stricter and have, for example, made it impossible for an insurer company to change the firms it uses to manage and administer the plan, which needn't affect coverage and is a simple way to lower costs. But those ludicrous restrictions were eliminated, but enough rules remained that it is again near impossible to maintain a grandfathered health insurance policy.

Very tragic. Promises made were not kept.

And also, I had some folks tell me that, gee, it seems disrespectful for Republicans to say, to talk about President Obama without mentioning the word ``President.'' It seems disrespectful. And so, Mr. Speaker, I certainly don't mean any ill will any time I have used the shorthand, and I try to use

``President Obama,'' but I also hope that my friends, probably every one of the Democrats in this body and probably all of the Republicans in this body that have referred to anything that happened in the Bush administration or used the shorthand rendition ``under Bush'' without saying ``President Bush,'' that those people who want President Obama to always have ``President'' before ``Obama'' said that they will go ahead and apologize for ever referring to Bush without ``President'' in front of that.

But the reason that doesn't necessarily need to happen is I know most people didn't mean any ill will by that. Obviously, those who hung President Bush in effigy or said some of the most mean-spirited, nasty things about President Bush, it never crossed my mind that they might be racist, because I thought they just disliked the man. But we are hearing now from so many people that if you say something about the President, then you must be a racist. I just look so forward to the day when the dream of Martin Luther King, one of them, will be realized that people will be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

I testified today before the Senate Subcommittee of the Judiciary about the Stand Your Ground Act, and actually that language comes from an 1895 Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court said an individual could stand his ground, so that is not a new invention. But I was reminded, when people began to talk in terms of racism from stand your ground laws, that, as a prosecutor, we didn't care what anybody's race was, not as a defendant nor as a victim. Everybody deserved to have protection regardless of race, creed, color, gender, national origin.

But it did remind me that back when I was a judge, judges did not select the grand jury, their grand jury members. Those were chosen by grand jury commissioners the judges chose, but the commissioners chose the panel members for the grand jury.

There were some defense attorneys that decided to attack the system by claiming judges were by a disproportionate number appointing too many Anglos as grand jury foreman because that is something that judges did in Texas. A judge selected the foreman for the grand jury. He did not select the members. But among the members, they would choose who the foreman would be.

I was subpoenaed at one time back then without the defense attorneys doing their homework, and they intended to put me on the stand in their attack on a racist grand jury foreman system and use that to establish that, gee, it was grossly unfair, the disproportionate number of Anglos that were chosen as grand jury commissioners. Then, after I was subpoenaed and before I testified, they did their homework, and they found out that actually it was a disproportionate appointment if you only looked at race. I had appointed proportionately more African Americans as foremen of my grand jury than the percentage of African Americans in my district. The reason I did that was because I did not care what anybody's race was. It didn't matter to me. I had to look at the backgrounds of the individuals, look at the individuals that were on the grand jury, and then select from among those someone that I believed would be a leader, would be good at organization, would have the respect of the other grand jurors, and be able to work for 6 months as head of the grand jury and make good decisions as a peacemaker and an organizer.

I never looked at their race. I didn't care about that. But I happened to know the people that I appointed as grand jury foremen. Sometimes they were women; sometimes they were men. I couldn't have told them, but they went back and checked and, wow, I had appointed a majority of African Americans during the time I was in charge of the grand jury rather than Anglos. Once they found that out, that blew their theory as far as me as a witness. So they quickly sent word that my subpoena had been dismissed and my testimony was not desired because, clearly, I wasn't going to help them establish a case of district judges being racist.

I can remember a couple of the grand jury foremen I selected. It had nothing to do with race. They were good people. One I remember was a community leader, was in so many organizations that everybody respected her. I knew she was amazing in organization, a former assistant superintendent. Anyway, I feel like so many times people want to use the term ``racist,'' and they are like those defense attorneys that don't bother to check the facts before they start mouthing off.

Another article that I saw in the last couple of days disturbed me greatly because it follows along in a pattern of abuse of law enforcement, of the tools of the administration. It follows along in what really amounted to the weaponization of the Internal Revenue Service. We still need a special prosecutor to go through and indict anyone and bring them to trial, anyone in the IRS that abused their positions, anybody that has committed perjury. We need a special prosecutor to do that. Obviously, the Justice Department will not, and we need someone to do that.

We have seen how abusive this administration can be using the powers of its office to go after people. We also know, despite the promises before being elected that this administration would be the most transparent in history, it has not been so. More and more mainstream reporters are starting to realize that, wait a minute, these guys are not even as open as the Bush administration was. I am sorry, the President Bush administration.

This story by John Hayward in Human Events is entitled ``DHS Raids Human Events Alumnus, Seizes List of Whistleblowers.'' We also know this administration, instead of being the most transparent, has the dishonor of having prosecuted more whistleblower or leakers than any other administration, in fact, than all other administrations put together. It is ruling with an iron fist.

This article points out that:

Human Events alumnus Audrey Hudson was the target of a

Department of Homeland Security raid in August that was

ostensibly related to firearms, but in a new interview with

the Daily Caller, she revealed that DHS and the Maryland

State Police also just happened to confiscate her files and

notes, which included information about whistleblowers inside

Homeland Security.

Hudson says the files were taken without her knowledge and

without a subpoena. The Daily Caller confirmed that the

search warrant pertained to firearms and ammunition. Even

that part of the story seems rather flimsy, but then we get

to all those juicy files that got hoovered up during the

raid.

At about 4:30 a.m. on August 6, Hudson said officers

dressed--

That is 4:30 in the morning. It is hard to believe that people sleeping peaceably, law abiding citizens, a reporter who has written stories using sources within Homeland Security that the administration didn't like, they bust into her home with a subpoena and say we are here to look for firearms, and instead, without the consent--I would say that if the subpoena did not allow for them to take her notes pertaining to DHS whistleblowers that provided this reporter information, it begs the question that perhaps these law enforcement officers acting under color of State law or Federal law stole these without due process.

So it bears looking into. If we had a Justice Department that was going to do justice in such an abuse of power, the same kind that would actually prosecute people who brought a billy club and intimidated voters at a voting location--but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Anyway, the article says:

After the search began, Hudson said she was asked by an

investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service if

she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of

critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times

over the last decade. The Coast Guard operates under the

Department of Homeland Security.

Hudson said that investigator, Miguel Bosch, identified

himself as a former air marshal official.

But it wasn't until a month later, on Sept. 10, that Hudson

was informed by Bosch that five files, including her

handwritten and typed notes from interviews with numerous

confidential sources and other documents, had been taken

during the raid.

In particular, the files included notes that were used to

expose how the Federal Air Marshal Service had lied to

Congress about the number of airline flights there were

actually protecting against another terrorist attack, Hudson

wrote in a summary about the raid provided to The DC.

The Coast Guard was involved because Audrey's husband works

for them as an ordnance technician. What was the reason given

for grabbing his wife's files?

She said she asked Bosch why they took the files. He

responded that they needed to run them by TSA to make sure it

was ``legitimate'' for her to have them.

I am sorry. Legitimate for a reporter to have her own handwritten notes? What kind of a country are we living in that busts into somebody's home at 4:30 in the morning to take her notes regarding whistleblowers at Homeland Security? We are living in a scary time.

Back to the article.

This guy basically came in here and took my anonymous

sources and turned them over--took my whistleblowers--and

turned it over to the agency they were blowing the whistle

on,'' Hudson said. ``And these guys still work there.''

Hudson says none of the documents were classified, and no

laws were broken in obtaining them. She said the government

papers in her possession were obtained through a Freedom of

Information Act request, an assertion the Coast Guard

confirmed. And how did they confirm it? They handed the

material over to the ``source agency'' for review--or, as

Hudson put it, they turned the whistleblower information over

to the agency that had the whistle blown against it.

It wasn't just official documents that were seized,

however. Hudson says they also ``took four other files with

my handwritten and typed interview notes with confidential

sources, that I staked my reputation as a journalist to

protect under the auspices of the First Amendment of the

Constitution.'' One of her major reasons for coming forward

with the story is to give the whistleblowers a heads-up,

because she's ``terrified to contact them'' directly.

This is unbelievable. This is happening in America. Mr. Speaker, I think we should defund the Department of Homeland Security until such time as they start being honest about what they are doing and we get answers from the Justice Department. They need to be addressed until they provide the information that the Attorney General has been held in contempt for. We want to make sure law enforcement services are done, we fund those, but we don't defund the Attorney General himself or the head of DHS until such time as they start complying with the requirements of the law, like Americans across the country are required to do without this kind of abuse.

We have got to stop the abuse. We have the power to do it. All we have to do is defund it until they come within the letter of the law themselves.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 42 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, October 30, 2013, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, today, we recognize and celebrate the Wiley College and University of Southern California debate teams on their Exhibition Debate. On October 25, 2013 the Wiley College and USC debate teams will reenact their historic debate of 1935.

The 1935 debate was depicted in the 2007 movie, ``The Great Debaters,'' which Denzel Washington starred in and directed. ``The Great Debaters'' tells the story of Wiley's defeat of USC, the then reigning national forensics champion, under the direction of Professor Melvin B. Tolson. Following the release of the movie, Denzel Washington donated $1 million to Wiley College to revive the debate team.

October 25th will not be the first meeting of the teams in recent years. In 2012, USC traveled to Wiley College in Texas' 1st Congressional District for an exhibition match with the great debaters at the Julius S. Scott Sr. Chapel. At the conclusion of the evening, both teams were declared victors and they committed to another match at USC. The Wiley College team also known as the Melvin B. Tolson/Denzel Washington Forensics Society, will be represented by Sophomore Lyle Keinman and Junior Nathan Leal along with team director, Christopher Medina.

Now ranked fourth in the nation, Wiley's debate team completed its 2012-2013 season of competition having amassed 82 national awards, 368 season-long awards, 16 championship trophies, and the first team title by a historically black college. The debate team is affiliated with Pi Kappa Delta, the National Forensics Association, and the American Forensics Association.

We commend both Wiley College and USC in their efforts on enhancing students' critical thinking skills through the medium of debate. We wish the best for both teams and look forward to have such a historical event re-enacted in the California 37th Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, as the ObamaCare debacle continues to unfold, there is more and more that is absolutely staggering that is now coming out. People in America need to understand who shut the government down September 30, October 1.

The House of Representatives had voted out, first, a bill to completely defund ObamaCare because we could tell--many of us have read it. I read it before I voted ``no.'' I could see it was a disaster waiting to happen, that real Americans would be really hurt. So we offered a compromise.

All right. This obviously, pursuant to notice by Democrats themselves, was a train wreck, nightmare. It was not ready for prime time. So we actually gave Democrats in the Senate and in the House that pushed it through without a single Republican vote, and the President himself, an easy out because that is, if you really want to get something done, unless it is ObamaCare that you want--that America knows is going to be harmful and totally against, or at least over half are against.

Unless you are going to do something like that that is really totalitarian and against the will of the American people, it is good, a Chinese proverb notes, to give adversaries a way out.

We gave a way out for Democrats in the House and the Senate that passed ObamaCare without Republicans. We gave a way out for President Obama. We said, okay, here is a compromise that ought to be an easy agreement. You know, we will give you money that you are demanding, with a gun to our heads, namely, the shutdown, and all we ask is that you do the right thing for America and suspend the implementation of ObamaCare for a year. Clearly, it is not ready now.

Harry Reid, maybe he consulted with the President, surely he did before refusing to let that go anywhere.

So we did what people are not supposed to do in a negotiation, continue to compromise against themselves. I didn't think it was a good idea. We should have waited for the Senate to vote on something, something. Do something, because being in a legislative body requires more than just saying no, no, no, no, which the majority leader in the Senate did.

Nonetheless, our Republican leadership decided we would compromise against ourselves--yet again. All right, if you don't want to suspend the whole thing for a year, at least do for individuals in America what you are doing for Big Business. Big Business, basically, as set forward in ObamaCare, was anybody with more than 50 employees.

And yet, again, Harry Reid and the President were a ``no'' on the compromise that would have just suspended, legally suspended, the mandate forced upon individuals that they are going to pay higher taxes, a fine of $95 or 1 percent of their income, going up to 2 percent.

But that was going to be implemented, they were going to be penalized, or as Chief Justice Roberts rewrote the ObamaCare bill and called it a tax after he called it nothing but a penalty. So Americans were going to get hammered. We could see that.

At least, we implored the Senate and the President, give individual Americans the same break you have now, basically, illegally given to Big Business by saying yeah, the law says that, but we are just not going to enforce it for a year.

Why not do that for individuals in America if you will do it for Big Business? Why not? It's the fair thing to do.

Once again, it gives a legislative opponent a way out. It gives you a back door to say, well, okay, we are caving in. We are going to allow the individual mandate to be suspended for a year, like we, like the President did, legislating from the executive office.

But, again, the answer was no. And in response to Majority Leader Reid's no and the President's no, the President, of course, had called people to the White House later on, after the shutdown, and made clear to the leaders of the House and Senate, you know, I wanted to make clear to you I am not negotiating. Give me my money. Raise my debt ceiling, and then maybe we will negotiate.

Later on, in essence, it was give me my money. Raise the debt ceiling. You will be amazed at what I will be willing to negotiate once you give me everything I want.

So it was indicated yesterday, by the administration, you know, gee, there is a possibility we may have to delay the individual mandate. And in an article today from Jim Wizner, the title of the article, ``ObamaCare Mandate May Be Delayed. Official says deadline to have insurance could be postponed.''

The article says, the Obama administration may gave Americans extra time to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, postponing when penalties for failing to buy coverage will go into effect, Market Watch has learned.

Further down, it says, the administration declined to say whether people who purchase health insurance late in the enrollment period, say, on March 31, would be exempt from a penalty, even if their policy doesn't kick in until April or May; nor would the Department give a specific date by which people would need to buy coverage to escape a fine.

The HHS, or Health and Human Services, official, however, indicated that the administration may extend the deadline beyond February 15: we are exploring options currently, and will issue guidance at a later date.

The article at marketwatch.com goes on to say the potential extension comes as the Federal health exchanges are under fire for ongoing technological problems that are making it difficult for some people to enroll. The Obama administration has so far resisted GOP pleas to delay the requirement that individuals purchase insurance next year, but has lately expressed frustration with the technical difficulties. Those problems, perhaps the elephant in the room during deadline discussions, may influence a decision to provide an enrollment grace period to avoid fines.

There is another problem that the penalty policy or, as rewritten by our Chief Justice, the tax policy, may be in flux. While Health and Human Services referred Market Watch's previous inquiries about the fine and the deadline to avoid it to the Treasury, a spokesperson there referred a request Wednesday back to Health and Human Services, suggesting that the health officials are now the ones writing new rules for the law.

For this administration, for Democrats in any part of this body or at the White House to even consider out loud suspending for 1 year the individual mandate is absolutely outrageous, and it exposes, clearly exposes that there were games being played in Congress, and it wasn't by Republicans.

It exposes that people knew there were problems with ObamaCare, with the Web sites. They knew that Americans were going to have a nightmare, and were having a nightmare in even trying to get online and review different policies, and they didn't care, just as, obviously, there were people in this administration who could have changed the policy.

They didn't care about the veterans. They can say now, oh, yeah, we had a policy that World War II vets were going to get in, or people that were utilizing their First Amendment rights.

Well, I was there the first day. There wasn't any mention of that. Those barricades were connected across in front of the World War II Memorial, across in front of the Lincoln Memorial, across in front of the Martin Luther King Memorial. There were barricades, for heavens sake, on the road that just made a loop around the Iwo Jima monument, the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial.

They were out to make things as difficult as possible. Apparently, at least as early as Thursday, before the shutdown the following Tuesday, plans were being made to gather barricades. There was an indication at one point some of them may have been rented.

We still haven't gotten to the bottom of where they all came from, where all the cones came from to interrupt people's lives around the country, as this administration sought to make it as difficult as possible on Americans. As one park ranger indicated, it was disgusting, the park ranger is reported to have said, but we have been ordered to make things as difficult for people as we can. Well, they were doing a good job.

So, for them, anyone in this administration, anyone down the hall, anyone in Congress to now think about, gee, maybe we should suspend the individual mandate, is an outrage. It tells you that there were people in Congress and there were a lot of people down Pennsylvania Avenue who had no consideration for the American people.

They were out to score political points. They didn't care. They wanted people to hurt and to suffer so maybe they could win the majority in the House next year, and the American people began to see through this.

When the next-to-last compromise of a compromise continuing against ourselves was to suspend the individual mandate for a year, there was no excuse for rejecting that.

The Senate should have at least voted that through. What an incredible turn of events for this administration now to say, Yes, we are thinking about suspending the individual mandate. You have got to be kidding me.

Nothing could make it more clear to the American people that games were played with the shutdown--and it wasn't by Republicans who kept compromising against ourselves, but it was with the people who kept saying, No, no, no.

Then the last thing we did the night before things really shut down was to say, Okay, under the law, the rules, here are our conferees. You appoint your conferees, and we will have this worked out hopefully by morning before people even realize there has been a shutdown. And once again, the answer was, No, no, no. Obviously people in the majority at the other end of the hall wanted the government shut down.

And I would expect that in the future, if someone were looking for a modern day Marie Antoinette, who reportedly, in response to the suffering of the people in France, had said, ``Let them eat cake.'' So out of touch with the suffering of the people, if that were actually said.

Here is an article by Susan Jones, CNSNews.com, and it is dated today:

In an interview with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta Tuesday night,

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said

she won't be enrolling in the problem-plagued health

insurance system that she was charged to implement.

And this is the quote that the Secretary of Health and Human Services told to CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta. This is the person who is charged with implementing ObamaCare. This is the person who is charged with overseeing ObamaCare. This is the person who has been given--by an overreaching, oppressive ObamaCare bill, she has been given the power over people's lives, over their health care. There is nothing more personal than that.

This person who will have so much control, if she is still in office at full implementation, says this:

I have created an account on the site.

Talking about the ObamaCare site.

I have not tried signing up because I have insurance.

Mr. Speaker, you had insurance. I had insurance. We had the same policy that every Federal worker in America had the chance to have. There were a number of different policies you could choose from in the Federal employee handbook, the ``Federal employee cafeteria plan,'' as they call it, a number of different insurance policies with private insurance. We had insurance just like Secretary Sebelius has now. The difference is that this bill, this oppressive, government-controlled ObamaCare business, took our health care insurance away.

There has been a lot of confusion in America about whether or not Members of Congress are under ObamaCare. We are. As of December 31, we will have lost our insurance.

I had a health savings account. I wasn't totally thrilled with it. It doesn't work like it should. There are some glitches that needed to be worked out, but I had a choice. I could choose to have a higher deductible, as I have, and a health savings account that I would manage, but Secretary Sebelius had authority to take that away, and she did.

So she says, Gee, I have insurance. Well, so did I. So did all of us in here. Mr. Speaker, so did you. But an oppressive, overreaching Congress took it away. And those Americans were promised over and over and over, if you like your insurance, you can keep it. That promise has now been broken millions of times to Americans. People were told, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. That promise has been broken probably millions of times to Americans.

The arrogance when millions and millions of Americans are having their insurance taken away from them, having to get different insurance, having to pay higher deductibles, having to pay higher amounts for their insurance, the arrogance to come back and say, I am not going to get insurance under ObamaCare. I already have insurance, that takes a lot of unmitigated gall. You might as well say, Let them eat cake. I have got my insurance. Let them eat cake.

Maybe people want a different Health and Human Services Secretary as a result of the horrendous job that was done in preparing this rollout, but I would think the head of Health and Human Services, to have this kind of arrogance, should not remain in the position with an attitude like that. It would be like the president of American Airlines refusing to fly on anything but United.

In the real world, people would care so much about their own product, that is what they would use. They would be embarrassed to refuse to use the product they were forcing on others. Airlines aren't forcing their products on us. This is being forced on us. And the one who is in charge of the forcing is too good to have ObamaCare insurance.

Now, the difference was, the Office of Personnel Management had put into the law something that wasn't in the law, and that was that Members of Congress would continue to have the Federal Government, which are the taxpayers, paying for over 70 percent of our monthly health care costs. We pay a little over a third--well, actually, not quite a third--and the government, the taxpayers, pay over two-thirds, so OPM had issued an order that that could continue even though the law didn't provide for it.

I have indicated that I am not going to accept that. Likely, I will be paying a fine unless the individual mandate is suspended for a year.

Just to indicate how bad this rollout is, this is from the Washington Free Beacon, headline, ``HHS Finds Two Enrollees for Pro-ObamaCare Ads. Ad claims website is `very easy to use.' '' This is by Elizabeth Harrington. It says:

New advertisements promoting ObamaCare by Health and Human

Services claim HealthCare.gov is ``very easy to use'' despite

a flood of reports about glitches and a dearth of users being

able to actually access the site and purchase insurance.

President Barack Obama held a press conference on Monday in

defense of his health care law, saying it is ``not just a Web

site,'' which has been under scrutiny for its disastrous

rollout since October 1.

Coverage of the site has been largely negative, with

pundits and reporters alike at news outlets from The

Washington Post to The New York Times to the Los Angeles

Times noting the problems with the Web site.

However, Health and Human Services is out with new ads

touting its success.

For heaven's sake, we ought to have a law against the government lying to the American people. We ought to start with a lie like that.

The new ads ``feature two individuals who have received media attention for beating the odds to sign up.''

``The site was very easy to use, and the customer service

representatives were patient and helpful,'' she said.

The woman was identified online as Deborah Lielasus, 54, a

self-employed grant writer, who has written grants for HHS.

Well, how about that. One of the two people in the ads that they were able to find to talk about how wonderful the ObamaCare Web site was happens to write grants for HHS. How about that.

See, back when I was a judge and chief justice, we would call that evidence that could be used to impeach her credibility. Because of that link with Health and Human Services, she has a direct interest in promoting how good things are at Health and Human Services so that she could potentially get favorable treatment. That is what you would call it in a court of law. And in a court of public opinion, reasonable people might be embarrassed that all you can find is somebody who has a pecuniary interest in promoting HHS.

But this article points out:

Her process for enrolling was not as smooth as the ad

suggests. According to the Associated Press, Lielasus was

only able to create an account from before the Web site

crashed on October 2.

``As a grant writer who does a lot of research on Federal

Web sites, Deborah Lielasus was impressed by how easy it was

to use the new online insurance market that launched

Tuesday--until it stopped working,'' the report said.

``They're telling me the system is down at the moment,''

Lielasus said.

Lielasus told the Washington Free Beacon that enrolling

took several days.

``On the first day, I was only able to register for an

account, but 2 or 3 days later, I was able to submit an

application and enroll,'' she said in an email.

Lielasus said her experience with HealthCare.gov was

``primarily positive.''

`I expected some technology glitches in a rollout of this

magnitude, particularly on the first day when the site was

flooded with reporters as well as individuals trying to

enroll,'' she said.

Lielasus appears to be one of the few who have successfully

enrolled in New Hampshire. An ObamaCare navigator tried to

sign up 45 people during the first week, ``but she wasn't

able to enroll anyone online because of the glitches,''

according to the Concord Monitor . . . Lielasus said that she

does not recall who contacted her to be in the video for HHS,

only that, ``I believe I was approached for the video to

share my personal story.''

A second HHS video features Daniel McNaughton, who was the

only person able to sign up for health insurance during

ObamaCare's first week, the Orlando Sentinel.

McNaughton said in his ad that with HealthCare.gov, it was

``pretty easy'' to shop for insurance.

``I already had health insurance, but I just wanted to see

if I could do a little bit better on the health insurance

marketplace, and I did,'' he said. ``Once I was on the site,

it was pretty easy for me to compare plans. I was able to

pick a much higher quality plan, and because of my income as

a student, I only pay about 70 bucks a month for it.''

Well, the article goes on, and it says:

On Facebook, McNaughton posted a link to the plan he signed

up for, which includes a $3,000 deductible, which doubles to

$6,000 out-of-network. McNaughton, a 22-year-old male, will

have maternity care covered, which is an ``essential

benefit'' mandated by the health care law.

So another great thing, when the Federal Government decides to create a one-size-fits-all, single young men must pay for maternity care for themselves.

Because he only makes $15,000 a year, McNaughton is

eligible for a subsidy and will pay about $70 per month,

according to the Sentinel. He is known as one of the few

Floridians who have successfully signed up for ObamaCare. The

Miami Herald calls enrollees urban legends.

He is only one of two people found by the Herald, which solicited readers for stories of enrollees in the first weeks after the launch. That's weeks, plural:

Nearly 2 weeks after the Federal Government launched the

online Health Insurance Marketplace at HealthCare.gov,

individuals who successfully used the choked-up Web site to

enroll for a subsidized health insurance plan have reached a

status akin to urban legend: everyone has heard of them, but

very few people have actually met one.

It is pretty sad, but that is what happens when the Federal Government takes charge of people's personal lives.

Here is an article from National Review Online by Andrew Johnson:

An Iowa City man may have the distinction as the Hawkeye

State's first ObamaCare enrollee, but it didn't come easy.

Edward Voss, a computer programer, told the Des Moines

Register he had to try more than a hundred times before he

was ultimately able to sign into HealthCare.gov.

Voss said he didn't know whether or not he had actually

enrolled in a plan until CoOpportunity Health, one of Iowa's

two carriers in the exchange, called him on Friday to

congratulate him for being its first enrolled customer.

Even though he was eventually successful, Voss criticized

the Web site for resembling one from the 1990s, saying it was

one of the worst he's seen. He recommended that the

administration consider shutting the site down for at least a

week in order to address the problems. It's hard to fix

things while you're up and running, he said.

That's rather amazing. Over a hundred times to sign up. I guess he probably got maternity care, too, that individual young man.

Here is an article from CNS News dated today--this afternoon--by Ali Meyer. The first line says:

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Democrat from

California--

Also, the Speaker who helped push through ObamaCare without any Republican input or votes, and who famously said, We'll have to pass it to find out what's in it, this article says she:

--admitted Wednesday that the ObamaCare Web site is beyond

glitches, adding that somebody should fix it.

Well, it seems to this person speaking that the somebody that should fix it should be led by the former Speaker, who shoved it through this House without America's support, without any Republican support, and without having any clue what was really in it. That is somebody that ought to work on fixing it.

Another article from National Review Online, by John Fund. Hopefully, he wouldn't mind me calling him a friend:

The no-excuse administration has a whopper of an excuse for

ObamaCare. President Obama told the Nation there is no excuse

for the disastrous rollout of the health care exchanges that

are central on ObamaCare. But that didn't stop Kathleen

Sebelius, his Secretary of Health and Health and Human

Services and in overall charge of the project, from making

excuses in a CNN interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta yesterday.

She claimed to Gupta that President Obama hadn't been told

of any potential problems prior to the launch of the

exchanges on October 1--a dereliction of duty any way one

defines it.

But there was also this startling explanation of what went

wrong at HHS. We

talked about having testing going forward, and if we had an

ideal situation and could have built a product and, you know,

a 5-year period of time, we probably would have taken 5

years, but we didn't have 5 years. And certainly, Americans

who rely on health coverage didn't have 5 years for us to

wait. We wanted to make sure we made good on this final

implementation of the law.

Well, okay, she only had 3\1/2\ years since ObamaCare became law in early 2010 to oversee the design of the exchanges and the Web site accompanying them. So now she tells us she needed 5 years:

Bruce Webster, a noted IT consultant to many companies, is

stunned that Sebelius thinks that she needed 5 years, but

only had 2, as somehow an excuse for this disaster. That's

like Boeing saying, We know the plane crashed, but we needed

4 years to build it and a year to test it, but we only had 2

years. Color me boggled.

Bureaucratic baffle-gab like that was probably behind

yesterday's White House announcement that it had, as

Bloomberg reported, tapped former Acting Office of Management

and Budget Director Jeff Zients to work with the team

overseeing repairs to the ObamaCare Web site. Zients was

named last month as the director of the National Economic

Council, but his arrival there will now be delayed as he

takes on his new Sisyphean task.

It is pretty clear that the White House has, as bureaucrats

say, minimal confidence in Secretary Sebelius to deliver a

functioning health care exchange system. I am told that, for

now, her job is safe because firing her would prompt cries

from liberals that she was the scapegoat for mistakes made by

higher-ups such as her boss, who signed the legislation

creating this mess and then failed to hire the proper people

to ride herd on its implementation.

It also brings back to mind, through this disastrous rollout of ObamaCare, for which Republicans here in the House, with Speaker Boehner leading--he actually did a favor, with our consent, to say, Here's a way out: You want a CR, you want a continuing resolution, you just keep getting the same massive amount of money; you want the debt ceiling raised to who knows what; we'll do that. We'll give you an out on how bad ObamaCare is. Let's suspend it for a year.

When that didn't work--let's suspend the individual mandate. That gives you an out and allows us to postpone some of the harm that is going to come to America from ObamaCare, and they still said, ``No.'' Shut the government down for over 2 weeks, hurting Americans, refusing to provide death penalty benefits to families of fallen warriors in combat, even though they had the power under the bill we passed before the shutdown; making it as uncomfortable and difficult for people as possible, all the while when they were given an out by Republicans to just suspend it for a year. It is an out. It saves grief for America for a year. They wouldn't have it.

Now I know some have said, Well, the problem the administration is in is if they actually postponed ObamaCare for a year, after so many have already lost their insurance, there is no alternative. There is nothing we could do. Gee, what would anybody do? They have lost their insurance.

Well, this is just a suggestion, but I bet we in Congress could get a majority. I can't imagine there wouldn't be friends across the aisle among our Democratic friends who would agree to this, as they see how problematic ObamaCare is for Americans, and knowing that people think Federal employees have had this gold-plated health insurance policy is okay. I had better before I came here. I had better when I was in private practice.

But given where we are, there are private insurance companies that have provided insurance policies for what is called a cafeteria-style group of choices so every Federal employee in the country, before ObamaCare, could read through the thick handbook and say, Okay, I have studied the different insurance companies, the different plans, the different costs, and this is the one I choose or that's the one I choose.

How about if for the next year, 2 years, give America a break? Let's say any health insurance company that is part of a Federal exchange or a State cafeteria plan or a local government cafeteria plan, we make those available to anybody. If it is a local plan, anybody in that area. If it is in the State, anybody in that State. If it is in the Federal plan, any insurance in that plan or any insurance company that wants to offer the same type coverage for the same price.

Let's offer to every American across the country the same private insurance choices that Federal employees have until ObamaCare kicks in. But let's give them all of the choices that we had up through this year and just say we will suspend ObamaCare.

Yes, Mr. President; yes, Harry Reid; you shut down the government for over 2 weeks to make life difficult for Americans when you didn't have to. We are more interested in helping Americans. So how about a compromise plan that just says, Hey, why don't we let Americans across the country choose from any of the Federal choices we had before ObamaCare, any State choices, local choices, and you can allow employers, since the President is suspending the business mandate, whether there are more than 50 employees, less than 50 employees, let them choose from those. If their employees choose the policy and the employer wants to pay for part or all, let them do that.

Let's give them another year before we force them under the iron hand of the government. Let them choose from any of those, from private insurance companies. Let them make the choices Federal employees had until ObamaCare.

It would still take away the problem of the preexisting condition because the market would be so wide, the people signing up would be so numerous, it could afford to take care of that. If you want to leave people on that are 26, heck, I don't care, 28. Normally, people in their twenties are in good health. So let them stay on.

We offered to agree to a bill like that before ObamaCare ever passed, but the Democrats were so insistent on their way--not the highway, but their way, period--and now 3\1/2\ years later we see the consequences.

We ought to have unlimited amounts. If you have got a health savings account under a Federal plan, State plan, local plan, or if your insurance company that provided the employer insurance plan and the employer wants to continue that next year, even though it has already been canceled, if the health insurance company wanted to re-extend that, let that be part of the agreement during the suspension period of ObamaCare.

Let's allow people to put pre-tax dollars--as much as they want to-- in Health Savings Accounts with the understanding that, once it is in there, it can't be used for anything but health care. I have a fear there will be people who might accumulate over the years $80,000, $100,000--well, I don't care. I will pay a 40, 45 percent penalty in interest. Man, just think. I could have two or three good bass boats for that, but we couldn't allow that because it is too important for people's health. Once that money is in a Health Savings Account, it can't be used for anything but health care. Let's do what Ben Carson suggested, and let's start encouraging young people to have Health Savings Accounts. Let's do that.

Those who are in Medicare and Medicaid can stay there. If they have the wherewithal to sign up under one of the plans--the Federal options--the Federal employees have had until ObamaCare passed, let them do that if they would rather, but still they will be in Medicare and Medicaid. Let's suspend the hurt that is being done to Medicare through ObamaCare. Let's suspend the hurt that is being done to young people. If one is a young man, single, then until such time as we have a pregnant young man in his twenties, let's don't make him pay for maternity care. There is no need for it.

Just when you think it couldn't get much worse--this is from the Washington Free Beacon dated today, this afternoon--then we also find out the NSA spied on 124 billion phone calls in one month, and those are the people who want to run our health care--the Federal Government.

An article from The Washington Times from this afternoon, today:

House Speaker John A. Boehner predicted Wednesday that, by

the end of the month, more Americans will have lost their

insurance by being kicked off existing health plans than the

number that was able to sign up in the flawed online

HealthCare.gov Web site, and the early numbers may back him

up.

A massive number of people have now gotten their notices that they have lost their insurance or will effective January 1.

Here is an article that is on the Breitbart Web site, but it is talking about a CNN story:

CNN: ObamaCare site doomed. Riddled with security dangers.

This reports that today, on the CNN Money site, there is a terrific story about the problems surrounding the ObamaCare Web site. The story includes all kinds of new information from a host of experts. Most of the news is flat-out terrible:

A half billion dollar site needs to be rebuilt from

scratch. The site has an unwieldy 500 million lines of

computer code--it took just 500,000 lines of code to send a

rover to Mars--and that code of ObamaCare is riddled with

security holes that could result in one of the biggest

breaches in American history.

That was quoting from CNN, that article by John Nolte. It is staggering.

State exchange enrollments are mostly Medicaid, not private insurance plans.

This is another story on Breitbart by Dr. Susan Berry:

Defenders of President Obama's signature health reform

legislation claim the States that put effort into

establishing their own exchanges, mostly Democrat-led, are

signing people up successfully for ObamaCare. A new report,

however, indicates most of the individuals signing up in

these State-run exchanges are enrolling in Medicaid.

Pretty disingenuous.

Then just as you think you can't stand any more about the Federal Government--they are in your bedroom, your bathroom, your kitchen, all into your private lives; they will have your medical records, and they will be giving them to navigators who are not thoroughly vetted so as to keep it secure, and it will be put online where people are saying it is a dream for hackers to steal personal information--and just when you think you can't take anything more in the way of bad news, here is a story from the AP today. It is by Stephen Ohlemacher with the AP:

The headline reads: ``700 IRS Contract Workers Owe $5.4 Million in Back Taxes.''

It kind of reminds us of the old Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner. He signed four different documents, certifying--basically swearing--that if he would be given all of the money as an independent contractor instead of having money withheld, he would certify--he absolutely was swearing--that he would take care of paying his taxes, and he didn't do it until he got nominated to be the Secretary of the Treasury.

As one Treasury employee told me privately--she didn't want to make it public because she didn't want to lose her job--if employees of the IRS were to have done what Timothy Geithner had done in not paying the taxes he swore he would pay, they would be fired on the spot at the IRS. Of course, that was before Lois Lerner and her crew weaponized the IRS so they could go after conservative groups.

Anyway, it is bad news when it comes to ObamaCare; but, Mr. Speaker, like I say, we offered repeatedly to agree--in fact, we didn't just offer. We passed a bill that would allow ObamaCare to be suspended for a year to, if possible, get its act together and give an out to the President. The President and Harry Reid could have said, Well, those Republicans in the House--we didn't want to do it, but we needed a continuing resolution to keep the government going. We needed the debt ceiling raised, so we went ahead. We had to. They had us over a barrel. We agreed to suspend ObamaCare for a year. Gee, those pesky Republicans made us do it.

That is a political way out that they had, that we gave as Republicans in the House, that we extended as a gift. We passed it as a House bill. We extended it as a gift and gave them an out. That would have given them an extra year to try to get the act together; but, oh, no, they were more interested in scoring political points because they knew the mainstream media would give them cover, that they would blame Republicans 100 percent even though it was 100 percent not Republicans. It was the people who refused to even appoint conferees to try to work it out before the shutdown really took hold. It was the Democrats who refused to agree to just suspend the individual mandate, and the compromise before that was to suspend the bill for a year. They wouldn't even do that.

How sad for the mainstream media that the best question about ObamaCare and the horrendous roll-out of its Web site was not asked by somebody at the ABC, CBS, NBC evening news, but was asked by Jay Leno after finding out that the President said, We are putting our very best people on fixing this Web site. In essence, Jay Leno asked an entirely appropriate question:

Wait a minute. We are talking about our own health care. Why wouldn't you have put our best people on starting the Web site instead of waiting until it crashed so miserably?

The answer is unknown, but the American people deserve an answer.

Are you so intent on having the Federal Government take over people's private lives--their most personal medical secrets--that you would force this horrible health care system upon them?

I am certainly willing. I will bet you we could find a majority in the House, and if Harry Reid would let it come to a vote in the Senate, they would say, Okay. Let's suspend it for a year. Come on. Maybe make it 2 years. During that time, everybody in America--every employer--can either get their insurance back if the insurance companies will do it; and if they want, they can get the private insurance that we used to have as part of our cafeteria plan for every Federal employee in America. Let Americans choose from that. Don't force these ObamaCare exchanges on America. Let them choose like Federal employees have done. Let them choose.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay a brief tribute to a patriotic man who was devoted to the military, devoted to seeing that the military had what it needed, devoted to America. C.W. Bill Young will have his funeral tomorrow in Florida. He was 82 years old. There have been plenty of tributes written about Bill Young. There will be many more written and many more spoken tomorrow, and I will look forward to hearing those at his funeral, but there is nothing that could be said that could surpass the witness he was to who he was.

I talked to him numerous times. Sometimes I had questions. Sometimes I had points to make. When I had questions, he always had time. He was always honest--completely honest, very sincerely honest. He was a kind, decent, honest man. We miss when we lose a kind, decent, honest man.

Bill Young, you will be missed.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 42 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, October 24, 2013, at noon.

Mr. Speaker, I want to emphasize the point being made by my friend, Mr. Franks from Arizona, about the origination clause. I have been talking about this for 3\1/2\ years of when the Senate took a House bill that provided a tax credit for first-time home buyers who were in the military or veterans, took out every single word and took that short little bill and expanded that by thousands of pages--my copy was around 2,500 pages--it had nothing to do with military or veteran home buyers. It had nothing to do with that. They inserted health care. We have found out since it is costing more; and if you like your doctor, you're going to lose your doctor, and if you like your insurance policy, there is a good chance you may lose it. Fortunately, not everybody is losing their doctor, but the promises have been badly broken. It turns out those people, including the head of this administration, were just flat wrong when they said, If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance.

For example, there is a story here from Kaiser Health News from Anna Gorman and Julie Appleby, dated October 21. I won't read all three pages, but this is what it points out:

Health plans are sending hundreds of thousands of

cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage,

frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have

and forcing others to buy more costly policies.

The main reason insurers offer is that the policies fall

short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting

January 1.

On further it says:

But the cancellation notices, which began arriving in

August, have shocked many consumers in light of President

Barack Obama's promise that people could keep their plans if

they liked them.

``I don't feel like I need to change, but I have to,'' said

Jeff Learned, a television editor in Los Angeles, who must

find a new plan for his teenage daughter, who has a health

condition that has required multiple surgeries.

He liked his policy. She had a pre-existing condition. Now, because of ObamaCare, he has lost the insurance for him and his daughter, and he is going to have to find another plan, which will likely cost much more.

The article goes on and says:

An estimated 14 million people purchase their own coverage

because they don't get it through their jobs. Calls to

insurers in several States showed that many have sent

notices.

Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000

policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the

State. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to

160,000 people--about half of its individual business in the

State. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20

percent of its individual market customers, while

Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia,

is dropping about 45 percent.

The article further down talks about other notices and says:

Blue Shield of California sent roughly 119,000 cancellation

notices out in mid-September, about 60 percent of its

individual business. About two-thirds of those policyholders

will see rate increases in their new policies, said spokesman

Steve Shivinsky.

The President, Jay Carney, this administration, Senators who quoted this, Democrats, leaders here in the House, owe millions of people an apology. They owe an apology to those who they told that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, and people that were told that if you like your policy, you can keep it.

I know that our President has traveled the world apologizing for things he did not do that were done in prior generations, prior times in this country; but I think in order to keep credibility in this country, it is important that instead of apologizing for things you had nothing to do with, it is important to apologize when people trust you and you make promises and those promises turn out to be totally false.

I understand that the President's spokesman may have indicated today that they may need to suspend the individual mandate. Mr. Speaker, let me tell you that after Harry Reid and the President refused to suspend the individual mandate--that was the third compromise we proposed before the shutdown. They said, Absolutely not, under no circumstances. Their actions made it very clear that they were saying, We are willing to shut this government down. We have already worked out the purchase and rental and the use of barricades to keep World War II veterans in wheelchairs from getting to see things they want to see. We have worked out barricades for the Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial, that so many come to Washington to see. We worked out barricades across the entire Lincoln Memorial plaza.

When I asked one park ranger the second day of the shutdown, how many they normally have out there, she said four. Actually, I've been there all hours of the day and night. I rarely see more than one or two in the area; yet I was shown a photograph that had mounted police, most of them on horseback in the picture, with a few of them standing around. It looked like there were at least 16 mounted police there to try to enforce the barricades at the World War II Memorial, which would violate the existing law that says in the event of a shutdown, you are not supposed to spend more money than you were before. Yet this administration, in order to make the hurt be felt across the country by veterans, by people who had their one-time vacation planned for a national park, this administration and Harry Reid were willing to shut down the government, rather than just suspend the mandate that individuals have to buy this insurance. Now they have got to buy it in the next few months. They have got to buy it. By their actions, they were saying, We are willing to shut the government down for over 2 weeks to keep from suspending that mandate to individuals. Yes, the President already issued what should be an illegal order saying that he was not going to enforce the mandate for Big Business under ObamaCare.

So this side of the aisle repeatedly said, Look, if you are going to suspend the mandate for Big Business--businesses with over 50 employees--then why not just agree to suspend for a year, the same amount of time you are giving to Big Business, do that for the individuals? Then, as the shutdown continued, we saw what a disaster, what a train wreck it was. The Democrats that called it a train wreck, a nightmare, they were exactly right. It was playing out in front of us, and still Harry Reid and this President said, We don't care. We are not suspending

the individual mandate. We are forcing individuals to do what we are not making businesses do. Even though it is in the law required for businesses to do it, that seemed like a pretty easy ask.

That was where we were in the negotiations, right before the last bill we passed about an hour after midnight on October 1, which I saw as basically capitulation. All right, all right, Harry Reid, Mr. President, we are not demanding that you suspend the individual mandate as you have done for Big Business, but here are our conferees, negotiators. It is what the Constitution anticipates, and it is what the law and the rules require.

Harry Reid, again, by his actions said, We would rather shut this down. We would rather have mounted police out there in the face of our veterans. And as we saw when veterans ultimately took barricades to the White House, we saw, for the first time in my memory, officers of the Federal Government in uniform who were supposed to protect Americans' rights, instead for the first time in my memory, being used, the first time in my lifetime that I can remember, to take away Americans' and specifically veterans' rights that they fought for for all Americans.

It is almost unthinkable. It is like a bad dream, the Federal Government hiring officers to take away Americans' rights. How far is this administration willing to go to make Americans hurt, to get the money they want? How ironic that leaders in this administration, going to the top, would use the term ``extortion.'' Extortion is when you do some action threatening someone with action if you don't give them all the money that they demand. I always thought when Jay Carney said that Congress is putting a gun to their heads to be paid for doing their job, that that didn't make sense because this is exactly the other way around.

Some of our Democratic friends are very good at taking action that is offensive to most Americans and then blaming their opponents for doing what actually they are doing when their opponents weren't even doing what was alleged. That is basically what we saw here, people saying Republicans in the House were using extortion. Hardly. The Constitution of the United States gives the Congress the purse strings, control over the money. What this administration said by their actions and made very clear is, We will harm World War II veterans, Korean veterans, Vietnam veterans; we will harm veterans by preventing them from getting to the cemetery in Normandy, being able to pull over and take a picture of Mount Rushmore, trying to take advantage of the Claude Moore farm that operates off of individual expenditures; they would put up barricades at a World War II Memorial that was built entirely with private funds that has a trust fund of millions of dollars that is used for operating expenses; they would go out of their way to spend more extra money just to make Americans' lives more difficult and unpleasant, all the while saying, We will never agree to suspend the individual mandate, the requirement that individuals buy a certain level of insurance or be fined the minimum of either $95 or 1 percent of their income tax, whichever is lower.

One of these days some of the fact-checking people will actually admit that I have been right and they have been wrong. Even with subsidies, people that make 133 percent of the poverty level are projected to come out of pocket potentially thousands of dollars, one, two, three--one projection that I had read before I talked about this ran $3,000 even after the subsidies.

And so, you know, all the mainstream media that is doing everything they can to protect the President, some are coming around and realizing: Wait a minute; there were a lot of things that weren't true. And I appreciate NBC making some of these stories the stories they should be.

But it is appalling what is happening to Americans, what is happening to the health insurance they once had. It is time for real reform. And as I have said from this podium, going back 3, 3\1/2\ years, a bill that starts out as a fraud is not likely to get better. And when you take a House bill, because of the origination clause, article I, section 7, all bills that raise revenue must originate in the House.

Now, it could and had been considered that ObamaCare was not a revenue-raising bill. But when Chief Justice John Roberts did the unthinkable and rewrote legislation that clearly defined itself as a penalty and rewrote that as a tax--even though at page 15 he made clear that it was a penalty; it wasn't a tax. It was penalizing people for not doing an act. So under the anti-injunction statute, it was clearly a penalty, not a tax. But then to save it, he had to actually do the unthinkable and say further in the opinion, actually, it is a tax, not a penalty.

Well, once he defined it as a tax, in order to rule it constitutional, then, clearly, that is a bill that raises revenue. Clearly, article I, section 7 kicks in, and a bill to raise revenue, which is what taxes do, must originate in the House.

I have heard people say, who have not done the legal research, well, the Supreme Court has decided many times that you don't have to have precisely the same bill when the Senate strikes language in the House bill and puts other language in it and sends it back, then it still originated in the House. Mr. Speaker, I would submit to you that when you strike every single word of a bill, including the title about it being a tax credit for first-time home buyers in the Armed Forces or veterans, you even strike the title and substitute therein about a 2,500-page bill that is all about the government running health care, about getting health care records controlled by Washington, about creating navigators to get your personal information--which, actually, we have been told is just a dream for identity thieves because of how much information will be accessible, be stolen by hackers--you put all of that stuff in there, dictating about what has to be put in vending machines, notices that have to be put, requirements for restaurants--I think there is a requirement for restaurants, they may have to have a place specifically for nursing mothers--you put all of those in there, including issues--and I love the fact that women nurse babies. I think it is one the greatest gifts God gave, but that has nothing do with a tax credit for first-time home buyers in the military or veterans, so, clearly, that bill did not originate in the House. It originated in the Senate. When the only thing that is left of the bill that originated in the House is a number, like 3590, that is not a bill that originates in the House. It originated in the Senate.

And since we now know after the Supreme Court opinion that Chief Justice Roberts rewrote the law, which the Constitution simply does not allow, but the Supreme Court did it anyway--there are checks and balances. Congress could check the Supreme Court when they act unconstitutionally like that themselves. But he rewrote it to call it a tax after he called it a penalty, so that means it had to originate in the Senate. It did not originate in the House.

And what limited case law there is indicates it absolutely must be germane to the underlying bill, and that is not germane. There is no way that is germane to first-time home buyers. It is about the government controlling people's health care. It sets up a panel that will decide: Do you get a pacemaker or do you not get a pacemaker? You are too old for a pacemaker. You are going to die early because we are not going to let you have a pacemaker. Are you going to get the surgery you need?

You know, like people in England, Canada, others, again, I have had a number of people from England and Canada go, you know: Where are we going to go now when we need immediate treatment when you screw up the greatest health care system in the world?

It certainly needed reform. But what people need to understand is you can look at the entire history, recorded history of mankind, going back to the very beginning, when we knew what mankind was doing, and some medical historians say it was around 1900, 1910, 1912, maybe it was during World War I, 1916, '17, '18, maybe it was during the great influenza outbreak and protocols were established, but somewhere around that time, about 100 years ago, it has been said that for the first time in the entire human history you had a better chance of getting well than of getting worse after seeing a doctor. When you consider that just in 100

years this country has been at the forefront of saving lives, enhancing lives, improving quality of life, making incredible breakthroughs in medicine and health care--reforms were needed, but not the government taking it over and making it run like the Post Office, not the government taking it over and making it run like the Department of Education or Energy or Interior, that slows everything down, because when somebody needs heart surgery, they don't need the government in the process of slowing things down.

It is incredible what has been inflicted upon man by man, and the ObamaCare law is inflicting massive cost increases for most Americans, higher deductibles, running many doctors out of health care. It is time that this administration, if Jay Carney is willing to now say, after the President and Harry Reid shut down the government for over 2 weeks over a little temper tantrum that they did not want to suspend the individual mandate, that is what we were down to, and then after that, okay, just produce conferees--we have got ours; we will get an agreement hopefully by morning so most Americans will never even know the government was shut down--refused to even have conferees to work it out before morning because before that they weren't going to suspend the individual mandate. They would rather shut down the government indefinitely than allow individuals to have the same break that they gave to Big Business. I am a fan of Big Business as long as they treat people fairly and right. Most do.

But now to say, well, we may suspend the individual mandate, it means all the suffering this administration inflicted upon our veterans, on people on vacation, people that needed Federal services and didn't get them, on those whose loved ones were killed in Afghanistan, and this administration, though we gave them the power to pay the death benefits, wouldn't even do that, played games with their death benefits while they were grieving. This administration was willing to do all that, knowing we are probably going to have to do what the Republicans were asking anyway, but we will try to get--we know the mainstream media will blame it 100 percent on the Republicans. We know that is going to happen. They will give us cover, and so we can refuse something as reasonable as just suspending the individual mandate for a year, something as reasonable as just appointing conferees and working it out before morning. We can refuse to do those things because the mainstream media, MSNBC, CNN, they will give us cover, they will deceive the American public about who is at fault.

And I am wondering, if this administration goes about suspending the individual mandate that would have prevented there ever being a shutdown in the first place, which was the next to last thing we did before we just capitulated and said, all right, appoint conferees, if they are willing to do that now, I still have hope that even CNN will have to recognize that it was the President and Harry Reid that shut the government down, that inflicted pain and suffering upon the American people who needed Federal services for something that they were agreeable to do anyway.

We will see. But then again, this is the same administration who weaponized the IRS to go after conservatives. Here is a story from today at Watchdog.org, by Kenric Ward, ``IRS pays illegal immigrants $4.2 billion while stalling Tea Parties.''

It says:

On January 19, 2007, file photo, the U.S. Border Patrol

detains a large group of suspected immigrants at the Arizona-

Mexico border in Sasabe, Arizona.

While harrying and stalling Tea Party groups seeking

nonprofit status, the Internal Revenue Service mailed $4.2

billion in child credit checks to undocumented immigrants.

Critics say midlevel IRS bureaucrats continue to abuse the

Additional Child Tax Credit program by dispensing $1,000

checks to families in this country illegally.

``The law needs clarification that undocumented immigrants

are not eligible,'' Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of

Iowa, told Watchdog.org in a statement.

To make Congress' intent clear--that only legal U.S.

residents are entitled to the Additional Child Tax Credits--

Grassley cosponsored a clarifying amendment with Senator Mike

Enzi, Republican from Wyoming.

``Unfortunately, the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat

from Nevada, cut off debate, so we weren't given the chance

to offer our amendment,'' said Grassley, the top Republican

on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

So all the while--and I spoke to another Tea Party group this weekend, different races, all ages, even kids, very, very senior people, both genders, people from all walks of life were there, and out of hundreds of people at that event, there was only one who got more benefits from the government than he paid in.

That is the common thread I see with the vast majority of Tea Party people. They pay income tax. Those who identify with the Tea Party are a majority of those paying income tax, the 53 percent, 52 percent, whatever it is. They ought to be able to say something without being called all kinds of criminal names, without being slandered and libeled. They just want fairness, and they are not seeing it.

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the shutdown and that this administration was willing to make the American people--World War II veterans and so many others--suffer, the survivors of the loved ones who died in Afghanistan, make them suffer, when all they had to do was suspend the individual mandate for a year--and they are talking about doing it anyway--the American people ought to be furious.

Like I say, I still hold onto that hope that springs eternal in the human breast that even the mainstream media will figure out who was actually at fault for the shutdown, when Republicans submitted compromise after compromise after compromise that included things the administration may do anyway. If we are going to get this country turned around, America is going to have to wake up to who is causing the problems and who isn't.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 31 minutes p.m.), under its previous order and pursuant to House Resolution 383 and House Resolution 384, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, October 23, 2013, at 10 a.m., for morning-hour debate, as a further mark of respect to the memory of the late Honorable Thomas S. Foley and the late Honorable C.W. Bill Young.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield to my friend from Florida (Mr. DeSantis).

ObamaCare

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate so much my friend from Florida. I am always greatly appreciative and thrilled when I find somebody who attended an Ivy League school that got a good education.

The points are well made by my friend from Florida. There were many promises made and promises not kept. Go from top to bottom:

``If you like your insurance, you can keep it.'' Not remotely true.

``If you like your doctor, you can keep them.'' Not remotely true. So many stories are coming forward.

``It is actually going to be cheaper for Americans under ObamaCare.'' Not remotely true, unless perhaps you are in New York. There is a small part of the country, a small group of individuals, who were already paying so much because of a massive amount of waste or laws that allowed for a great amount of waste or abuse; in those there may be some people that actually saved money. But for most Americans, they are not only going to have to pay more, they are going to pay dramatically more.

As we have seen the government shutdown play out, it has been interesting to note the things that have been open and the things that have been closed. We were told that only essential government services would be provided.

We had also passed immediately before the shutdown and sent to the Senate a military pay bill. Now, that military pay bill was intentionally left broad enough so that it could take care of the need to take care of the death benefit, broad enough to take care of the needs of the family that are always provided by the military, by the Department of Defense, for those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in losing a loved one in the course of combat. And lo and behold, even though that was made clear, it also was made clear in the bill that civilian employees could be included. Even independent contractors under that law were allowed to continue working that were supporting the role of the military. So it was a very broadly worded act in order to give the Obama administration, and particularly the Defense Department, great latitude to make sure important things got done.

Now as we have seen, the Secretary of Defense has laid off hundreds of thousands of civilian workers, though the bill gave him latitude to leave them working and they supported the military. It was only after about a week that they finally said, okay, we are going to let a whole lot of those employees come back now that we have made the determination that the bill gives us enough latitude to allow them to work.

We told him it did. The bill gave him that kind of power. Perhaps he had talked to President Obama and they decided, yeah, let's put lots of people out of work, or perhaps he had not talked to the President. We don't know.

But as Peggy Noonan pointed out recently, talking about things that have gone on here in the last couple of weeks, she reminded us of Harry Truman's sign that was on his desk: ``The buck stops here.''

They didn't have to hurt all those civilian employees. They could have left them working. But they chose to send them home, creating more hardship. They chose not to pay the death benefit for families who were entitled to it after losing a loved one who is a patriot. They chose to do those things.

They have chosen to close parks, farms, different things that don't cost the Federal Government a dime, don't cost anything. But they have strategically chosen to close things that create suffering, some chaos, different problems for people. It is as if the park rangers, who were quoted recently, were exactly right in saying that they were told: make life as difficult as possible for people, because that is what the administration has done.

But there is good news. This story was published by FOX News:

National Parks Are Closed, the IRS Call Centers Have No

Staff.

And I insert parenthetically here:

The IRS is still getting your money in, the money is still flowing in, they are just not helping people as it flows in.

The article says:

Countless government Web sites have been taken down.

We know even the panda camera was turned off, even though it required no monitoring.

Yet despite these changes, which range from inconveniences

to major headaches, a number of not so essential government

operations are still up and running. Here are a few that have

evaded the partial government shutdown:

The Denali commission.

You have probably never even heard of the Denali

Commission. But the tiny Alaska-based economic development

agency gained some notoriety after it emerged that the

group's inspector general was petitioning Congress to defund

it.

But guess what agency survived the shutdown? According to

its own contingency plan, because the Commission's staffers

are paid under the prior year's budget, all 14 employees are

exempt from furlough, and ``reporting to work.''

That is a commission that its own inspector general petitioned Congress to defund.

Another government function that was left up: ``The White House Twitter.'' Oh, sure, there were plenty of government help Web sites that would have made life easier for people having to deal with the Federal Government. They were shut down because they would have helped people. But the White House Twitter was left up and rolling. As the article says:

Right as Congress missed the deadline last week to pass a

spending bill, First Lady Michelle Obama's office informed

its Twitter followers that: ``Due to Congress' failure to

pass legislation to fund the government,'' updates to the

official First Lady Twitter account would be limited.

But the White House Twitter account is alive and well.

The account has blasted out a series of tweets calling on

Congress to end the budget impasse.

Another item that has been left up and running despite all of the government Web sites and help call centers and all that have been shut down, and that is ``Let's Move.'' The article says:

While a number of government Web sites have been

temporarily taken offline, and the First Lady's Twitter

account has been largely abandoned, not so for Michelle

Obama's Let's Move campaign.

The Web site for the First Lady's healthy-living initiative

remains operational--though it doesn't appear to have been

updated much since September. The top of the site displays

the message: ``Cheers to Water!''

Another thing left up was the ``Park Rangers on Patrol.''

Despite national parks and monuments being shuttered across

the country for lack of funds, the National Park Service is

devoting considerable resources to putting up barricades and

patrolling them.

An innkeeper along the Blue Ridge Parkway who was forced to

close his business due

to the partial shutdown told FOXNews.com that park rangers

have set up a ``24/7 blockade'' outside his inn--to prevent

would-be customers from coming in.

Another thing, the ``Obama Campaign Stop.''

President Obama canceled a long-planned trip to Asia over

the budget impasse.

But he, nevertheless, ventured outside the beltway last

week for a rally in nearby Rockville, Maryland, to pressure

Republicans to pass a budget bill.

The article says budget bill, but actually we are past the budget time. Now it is appropriation time, and that is what we need.

The Patent Office. If you happened to invent something during the stalemate, good news. The United States Patent and Trademark Office is open for business. According to the office, it is using fees from the prior year to keep running and should be able to for roughly 4 weeks.

The IRS is taking but not giving. IRS call centers are closed. The IRS is not issuing refunds during the partial shutdown. The agency, though, will gladly accept tax payments during that time. The IRS says in a statement on its Web site:

The IRS will accept and process all tax returns with

payments, but will be unable to issue refunds during this

time.

Another article from the Right Scoop had talked about the Amber Alert Web site being taken down. Although some have been kept up, the Amber Alert Web site was allowed to go down. And, thankfully, the administration realized there was enough pressure. For heaven's sake, it is for children who are kidnapped, lost. So, thankfully, the administration finally decided after enough pressure to bring the Amber Alert Web site back up.

It has been amazing to me, and I saw it again today in some of our memorial sites, memorials that are down on The Mall, the Iwo Jima monument, or the memorial, we have spent--this administration, that is, has spent more money keeping people out of open-air memorials than it ever spends just to leave them open. They are open 24/7. I have been up to the Iwo Jima, the U.S. Marine Corps monument so many times since I have been in Congress, again, all hours of the day and night. I don't sleep that much while I am here on the Hill.

Although we have some park rangers who don't know the parking laws and give tickets to people who are lawfully allowed to be there-- apparently not enough training for our rangers--but they have gone to the trouble to get barriers to make life difficult for veterans, World War II veterans that fought to secure Iwo Jima, being kept out of seeing the Iwo Jima monument. Why? Because they put barricades in the way to keep people from going up and being able to drive up there.

One of the times I went up there during the last couple of weeks, there were probably 200 people up there, but they had to park over by the townhouses, go over rails, down steep embankments and get in there. Unfortunately, as this administration knows, our World War II veterans in their eighties and nineties that I have been with and that I have helped and pushed wheelchairs for, they are not able to climb over rails and go down steep embankments, although they sure did while fighting in the Pacific, European theater, and North Africa. But they cannot do it now. And for anyone to keep putting up the barricades at that Iwo Jima monument just to screw over our veterans is outrageous. I don't know who is doing it, but shame on the people who are doing it.

I was gratified last weekend, on one occasion I went up there, and there were plastic barricades that had been filled with water to hold them in place, make them too big for a person to push over, and yet there were three busloads of World War II veterans up at the Iwo Jima monument, and someone had rammed those plastic barriers, knocking them over, spilling the water everywhere. Once the water was dispersed, pushed them out of the way. A wooden barricade looked like it had been run over so the buses could go up there. I don't know if those buses did that or not. I like to think they did, that those World War II veterans were not going to have some mean-spirited person in the administration up there to prevent them from seeing the Iwo Jima monument for one time before they left this world.

Mr. Speaker, I hope the people in this administration that keep trying to punish the American people so that they can get the money that they are demanding, that S&P and Moody's has said you guys have to get responsible about the money you are spending, the money that American taxpayers gave the Republicans, the majority, in 2010 to do something about. My friends across the aisle are constantly saying elections have consequences. That is right. The American people didn't like ObamaCare, and so they voted the Democrats in the House out of the majority with people running on that main issue. We will do everything we can to get rid of ObamaCare.

It is true that the President won reelection. Many of us still believe that if we had had a candidate that could challenge the abuses of ObamaCare before the last election last year instead of one that gave a prototype for it in his home State, the President would not have been reelected. But Republicans chose a very nice man, a philanthropic man, a great businessman, a very caring American, but somebody who had already shown he supported a type of socialized medicine in his home State.

ObamaCare, as it was passed, as it was originating in the Senate and then passed in the Senate, sent down to the House as bill H.R. 3590, should have originated in this House because it raises revenue, called penalties. It is called penalties throughout the bill. The Supreme Court noted that. In a very hypocritical opinion, the Supreme Court went to page 15 and noted that Congress called it a penalty. It only is applied if people don't do what is required. That makes it a penalty. Clearly, it is a penalty because the anti-injunction act makes very clear that if Congress passes a tax, then no Federal court can take it up and make a decision on it until the tax is actually imposed and the person suing has standing by virtue of having the tax actually imposed on them. That is a nutshell.

So if the Supreme Court had found that ObamaCare contained a tax and not a penalty, then it would not have jurisdiction. But the Supreme Court opinion at page 15 decided it is a penalty; it is not a tax. If it was a tax, we couldn't go any further on the opinion. The opinion would be over. We would have to dismiss and wait for the tax to actually be assessed. But since it is a penalty, like Congress called it through the bill, and since it is a penalty, as President Obama made very clear to the American public--it is not a tax; it is a penalty-- the Supreme Court went on. Eventually, after determining that ObamaCare, as written, based on what the proponents said was the interstate commerce clause that gave it the authority to pass ObamaCare, the Supreme Court said, no, it doesn't. The interstate commerce clause does not give authority to Congress to pass a bill that takes over health care. That is not constitutional.

Then eventually they got over and took up the issue of exactly what was involved in the individual mandate, the business mandate, and the Court concluded that actually, despite Congress calling it a penalty, the President assuring America it was a penalty and not a tax, the Supreme Court ends up saying it is a tax, and, therefore, it is constitutional. So we, as the Supreme Court, will rewrite the law and uphold it as we have rewritten; because as it is written, it is not constitutional, but we will rewrite it. Though that would be legislating and it would be unconstitutional, they did it anyway.

So when I hear people say it has been upheld by the Supreme Court, no, the bill that was passed was not upheld by the Supreme Court. It was struck down as violating the interstate commerce clause, but the Supreme Court did them a favor. They rewrote it legislatively, violated the Constitution in doing so, and then sent it back.

And now Americans across the country, by the millions, are suffering as a result of a tax the majority of Americans did not want, that all Americans promised was not a tax, and now it is taking away their insurance. It is taking a way their doctors. It is taking away, really, quality health care that most Americans had.

So it would seem if the idea behind ObamaCare was strictly to help those who are uninsured, we should have dealt strictly with those Americans.

But that is not what ObamaCare was about. It was about the G-R-E, the government running everything.

I am amazed at how many friends across the aisle who have screamed and hollered about we don't want the government in our bedroom voted for a bill that puts the government in your bedroom, in your bathroom, in your kitchen, in your closets. It puts the Federal Government everywhere. And you combine that with what the all Democratic majority House and Senate passed with President Obama at the helm, that created a bureau under the guise of making sure that credit card companies were fair, and now that bureau is gathering everyone's credit card information and debit card information under the guise of making sure they are playing fair. This Federal Government has seized more private information. They have been more vindictive through weaponizing the IRS, and we are finding out about other agencies and departments. It is more than any administration has ever done, and American people will ultimately pay the price.

I hope and pray that the Supreme Court will take up the origination clause litigation because that bill did not originate in the House; and the origination clause says any bill that raises revenue must originate in the House, and the only single thing in that bill that was left was the number. Even the title about being a change to the Internal Revenue Code to provide a tax credit for first time home buyers who were in the military or veterans, they didn't leave a single word of that bill; and they brought in something completely ungermane to that bill for veterans and military members.

And instead of taking care of the millions they said were uninsured, that was the whole purpose of ObamaCare, they have done tremendous damage across the country to so very many.

As the shutdown has gone on that was brought on, not by the House Republicans, who passed a bill, we said, Look, Americans are being devastated by ObamaCare. The health care industry is being decimated.

Since a majority of the American people didn't want it, gave us control of the House as a result of it, let's get rid of it. We have got to start acting responsibly about the money we spend. Taking away Americans' rights to decide whether they should have knee surgery, back surgery, get a pacemaker, taking away the right and the ability of Americans to determine what kind of treatment they should get is not something, when we are in financial difficulty, we should be doing. That was struck down. It shouldn't have been a surprise. Harry Reid didn't want to pass it. The President didn't want to.

Then the House began sending down one compromise which was turned down. Okay, let's just suspend it for a year. That would be the fair thing to do. As so many have said, Republicans and Democrats across the country, it was not ready for prime time. It was a train wreck. It was a nightmare. Let's just suspend it for a year. We know the President wants it, so we are not talking about getting rid of it like a majority of Americans want to do. Let's just suspend it for a year.

When that didn't go and the Senate said, No, we want a shutdown, we are not doing this, then we sent down a further compromise to basically suspended for 1 year the individual mandate just as businesses had gotten, as the President rewrote the law. The Constitution doesn't allow him to do it. Congress is supposed to step up, as happened in past generations where I'm told no matter whether a Democrat or Republican President, no matter who controlled the House and Senate, when a President overstepped his constitutional authority this far, usually there would be a trip down Pennsylvania from leaders of the House and Senate, both parties, that would privately tell the President, You overstepped your bounds. Back off, or we are going to defund everything that you are trying to push through on this, and it would get worked out.

Unfortunately, at the other end of the Hall in the Senate, they are not bothered by the fact that the President, by a stroke of the pen, wrote legislation and undid what the law said and made up his own law. That is not supposed to happen under our Constitution, but it did. We were bothered by it in the House, so we said, Look, let's work this out like gentle people. Let's just postpone it for a year. When that didn't work, we said, Let's at least suspend the individual mandate. You have suspended it for the business community. Let's do it for individuals. They wouldn't even do that.

Then when that didn't work, we sent a bill to the Senate that said, Okay, we are not trying to push anything on you. Just sit down and talk. Here are our negotiators. You appoint your negotiators. That is what the Constitution, law, and the rules require, and we will have this worked out probably by the time people get up in the morning; and they would not even appoint negotiators. Why? Because I believe they believe the conventional wisdom from the last 3 years that if the Democratic Senate and President forced a shutdown, the Main Street media would blame Republicans. It would enure politically to their benefit, and it would be worth causing the pain of a shutdown. So they refused to even negotiate at that point. It was not until the polls showed that the President had dropped to 37 percent from a favorable rating of 53 percent to an unfavorable rating that we finally had a willingness to sit down and talk.

During those times that so many things have been shut down, including the Normandy Cemetery--this story emerged yesterday from Marketplace.org:

Coming Soon to Your Favorite TV Shows: Plot Lines About the

Affordable Care Act.

Hollywood Health & Society, a program with the USC

Annenberg Norman Lear Center got a $500,000 grant this week

from The California Endowment to help TV writers tell better

stories about the new health insurance law.

That is $500,000 to Hollywood for propaganda to tell people who are suffering from the ravages of losing their insurance, losing their doctors, losing the ability to make decisions under new policies as they once did, telling them how good they had it. That $500,000 would have paid to open a lot of memorials and parks. It would have kept the Moore farm going for years that doesn't get a dime of Federal money and hasn't since 1980, but may lose the farm because of the outrageous actions of the National Park Service in forcing it closed; as the park Ranger said, making it as difficult as they can for people.

Here is an article from Ken Blackwell:

When President Obama signed the Patient Protection and

Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010, it was the starting

gun for a massive Federal effort to get the new system up and

running. The administration had deliberately allowed for 3\1/

2\ years for the launch, October 1, 2013.

That's a long time. It's 1,288 days. You would think, in

that length of time, we could have brought a system online

that would not be bedeviled with glitches. And more glitches.

By comparison, FDR had 912 days from the Japanese attack on

Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, to D-day, June 6, 1944, the

Allied invasion of Normandy. The D-day Museum at Portsmouth,

England maintains a Web site that offers some idea of what

was involved in mounting the invasion.

It says further down:

Today, Obama administration officials are making the rounds

of TV talk shows touting the millions of Americans who have

logged on day one of ObamaCare. They are not able tell us how

many of those millions have actually signed up for ObamaCare.

But that, of course, may be due to the fact that 85% of

Americans already have health insurance and the rest,

primarily healthy young adults, may have reasons for not

having health insurance.

It's interesting to hear administration spokespersons

dodging and weaving about how many Americans actually are

eager to give all their personal data to the IRS and then be

guided about by navigators chosen by Mr. Obama out of his

compassionate concern for his people. Obama Cares was an

inspired idea for a bumper sticker last fall. It helped the

incumbent easily gain a second term in the White House.

It's odd, though, that after 4 years of major liberal

legislation, the FDR comparisons have largely disappeared.

Americans today can judge how warm-hearted President Obama

is. His administration has ordered the closure of the World

War II Memorial in Washington. Ninety-year olds on Honor

Flights faced barricades as they made that last trip to see

the monument to their heroism on D-day and a thousand days.

White House spokesman Jay Carney raced to tell reporters

that it was not the intent of the Obama administration to

deny death benefits to families of soldiers recently killed

in Afghanistan. It just seems to have

been another glitch. The Obama spokesman's efforts to avoid

responsibility were strenuous. But he might have consulted

another veteran of that great WWII generation. Harry Truman

kept a plaque on his desk in the White House: The Buck Stops

Here.

That was the article I was thinking of earlier.

Here's another article from October 10 by Jocelyn Maminta from New Haven, Connecticut.

In the midst of major changes in health care,

UnitedHealthCare has sent thousands of pink slips to

Connecticut doctors.

Termination letters went to physicians caring for Medicare

patients. Those letters were sent out to doctors caring for

``Medicare Advantage'' patients. It's a plan, marketed to

seniors to provide additional services through

UnitedHealthCare.

A mix of primary care and specialty doctors are affected by

it. And it comes at a questionable time.

Open enrollment for Medicare starts next Tuesday, and it's

still not clear at this time as to which doctors are still in

the United network.

The Connecticut State Medical Society is fighting back. The

biggest concern is patient access to healthcare.

``What the government is looking for is to manage better

care by adding a patient-centered medical home so that you

have a doctor who is totally invested with taking care of

every aspect of the patient and coordinating it. This is

clearly not a patient-centered decision,'' said Dr. Michael

Saffir, president of CT State Medical Society.

Perhaps that is Connecticut Medical Society.

Anyway, it has an update at the bottom:

In an email statement, UnitedHealthCare spokesman Ben

Goldstein told News 8, ``With the many changes happening in

health care, we are building a network of health care

providers that we can collaborate with more closely to have

the most positive impact on the quality of care for our

members.

And what a lot of people didn't realize, but they soon found out, ObamaCare, the so-called ``Affordable Care Act,'' actually cut over $700 billion in Medicare reimbursements. It took money that was going to be used for senior citizens' health care and put it towards trying to get this horrendous, this unworkable bill to the American people.

May I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.

In an article from WND Radio published October 10, they wrote:

Sticker Shock! Americans Floored By ObamaCare Cost.

The technical problems with the ObamaCare insurance

exchanges are no surprise, are further evidence the whole

program should be delayed or scrapped and Americans will be

even more horrified when they can get somewhere on the Web

site, according to health care policy expert Grace-Marie

Turner.

The first 10 days of the ObamaCare insurance exchanges have

been a technological and public relations mess for the

administration. Many Americans have suffered through hours of

stalled or crashed Web sites, no reporter has yet been able

to navigate the site, and many people have entered personal

information that online security experts believe could make

them targets for identity theft.

When WND spent hours online and on the phone trying to get

a cost estimate for an ObamaCare plan, it was told to expect

a quote by January 1. As WND reported, anecdotal evidence on

the government's own health care Facebook page suggests both

problems are significant factors.

A few users seemed simply confused, but the overwhelming

number of comments were critical, and many of those were

scathing. Complaints about the application process had three

recurring themes: long waits, glitches, and sticker shock.

There was also much ridicule of the site's ability to handle

``tremendous demand.''

Information technology experts told The Wall Street Journal

the Web site ``appeared to be built on a sloppy software

foundation.''

Another article from WND published yesterday--I am not sure I like the title, `` `Pulling Out Hair' Over ObamaCare Web Site `Nightmare.' '' Sometimes people look okay with their hair out. Sometimes they don't.

The article says:

Forget, for a minute, all those arguments about the new

health care law's ``death panels,'' the forced cancellation

of existing coverage, the violations of religious liberty,

and the transformation of full-time jobs into part-time work.

Even people who want to sign up for ObamaCare are finding it

impossible.

Digital Trends reports the healthcare.gov Web site already

has ``shut down, crapped out, stalled, and misloaded so

consistently that its track record for failure is challenged

only by Congress.'' That is even though taxpayers paid ``more

than $634 million'' for ``the digital equivalent of a rock,''

the report said.

The site itself, which apparently underwent major code

renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins,

fails to load drop-down menus and other critical components

for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise

prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 States it serves from

purchasing health care at competitive rates--healthcare.gov's

primary purpose,'' the report said.

It goes on to talk about the massive nightmares of the people that are trying to sign on to it.

Here is an article from Peggy Noonan from The Wall Street Journal: ``Now is the Time to Delay ObamaCare'':

The Obama administration has an implementation problem.

More than any administration of the modern era, they know how

to talk but have trouble doing. They give speeches about

ObamaCare, but when it is unveiled, what the public sees is a

Potemkin village designed by the noted architect Rube

Goldberg. They speak ringingly about the case for action in

Syria but can't build support in the U.S. foreign policy

community, in Congress, among the public. Recovery summer is

always next summer. They have trouble implementing. Which, of

course, is the most boring but crucial part of governing. It

is not enough to talk; you must perform.

There is an odd sense with members of this administration

that they think words are actions. Maybe that is why they

tweet so much. Maybe they imagine Bashir Assad seeing their

tweets and musing: ``Ah, Samantha is upset--then I shall

change my entire policy, in respect for her emotions!''

That gets us to the real story of last week, this week, and

the future, the one beyond the shutdown, the one that normal

people are both fully aware of and fully understand, and that

is the utter and catastrophic debut of ObamaCare. Even for

those who expected problems, and that would be everyone who

follows government, it has been a shock.

They had 3.5 years to set it up! They knew exactly when it

would be unveiled, on October 1, 2013. On that date, they

knew millions could be expected to go online to see if they

benefit.

And it goes on. It is an excellent article. She says:

A quick summary of what didn't work. Those who went on

Federal and State exchanges reported malfunctions during

login, constant error messages, inability to create new

accounts, frozen screens, confusing instructions, endless

wait times, help lines that put people on hold and then cut

them off, lost passwords and user names.

After the administration floated the fiction that the

problems were due to heavy usage, the Journal tracked down

insurance and technology experts who said the real problems

were inadequate coding and flaws in the architecture of the

system.

. . . The founder of McAfee slammed the system's lack of

security on Fox Business Network, calling it a hacker's

happiest nocturnal fantasy. He predicted millions of identity

thefts. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen

Sebelius--grilled, surprisingly, on ``The Daily Show''--

sounded like--and that is unkind, but--she failed to justify

why, in the middle of the chaos, individuals cannot be

granted a 1-year delay, just as businesses have been.

More ominously, many of those who got into the system

complained of sticker shock--high premiums, high deductibles.

She goes on to say, talking about Republicans:

They would make a mistake in dropping ObamaCare as an

issue. A few weeks ago, they mistakenly demanded funding--a

move to please their base. They will be tempted to abandon

even the word ``ObamaCare'' now, but this is exactly when

they should keep, as the center of their message and their

intent, not defunding ObamaCare but delaying it. Do they

really want to turn abrupt focus to elusive Medicare cuts

just when it has become obvious to the American people that

parts of ObamaCare (like the ability to enroll) are

unworkable?

The Republicans should press harder than ever to delay

ObamaCare--to kick it back, allow the administration to at

least create a functioning Web site, and improve what can be

improved.

There is an article from CNN from today about Utah's national parks will reopen despite ongoing government shutdown.

Utah will reopen its five national parks by Saturday, as

well as three other nationally run locations. Utah's Governor

Gary Herbert made the announcement Thursday, saying a deal

had been reached with the U.S. Department of the Interior

Secretary Sally Jewell. ``Utah agrees to pay the National

Park Service up to $1.67 million--$166,572 per day--to reopen

eight national sites in Utah for up to 10 days.''

The sad thing is, they don't have to do that. We passed the bill to keep them all going. We did it at a rate, at an amount the Senate already agrees to. All they have got to do is pass it, send it to the President, and it will be taken care of.

I have an article here from the Mercatus Center, George Mason University. It is a research summary.

Before I mention that, I want to mention something about one of our Senators, a Senator from Arizona. Some people have tried to take things I said in an inappropriate way.

I know that Senator from Arizona. We owe him a great deal for what he endured on our behalf in North Vietnam. There is no question about it. And I know that Senator would never intentionally hurt this country. But he has made mistakes that have hurt it but certainly it was never intentional.

Let me mention this Mercatus Center, George Mason University research summary. It says, ``The Debt-Limit Debate 2013: Addressing Key Myths.'' Mr. Speaker, I think it is very important the people understand that there are a lot of myths about the debt limit.

One myth is this:

Standard & Poor's U.S. credit rating downgrade in August of

2011 was caused by Washington's brinkmanship over increasing

the debt limit. Congress must, therefore, avoid attaching

spending cut demands to the current debt limit increase if

they want to avoid jeopardizing the Nation's fragile economy.

The reality, it says, is:

Washington's failure to deal with unsustainable Federal

spending mostly related to entitlement programs and debt

caused the 2011 S&P downgrade and is spurring warnings of

another downgrade by the credit rating agencies.

Of course this administration went after them through the judiciary system--after they got a bad rating, they got a downgrade. But they point out that in June of 2011 that:

S&P reported: ``If the U.S. Government maintains its

current policies, it is unlikely that S&P's ratings services

would maintain its AAA rating on the U.S. Government. From

the same report: ``One contributing factor in our negative

outlook decision is our view that there has, as yet, been no

significant progress in addressing these long-term cost

drivers nor any consensus developing among the Obama

administration, the Senate, and House of Representatives

regarding the specifics of a comprehensive plan to address

the long-term budgetary challenges.''

On July 14, 2011, S&P warned it would downgrade U.S. debt

if ``Congress and the administration have not achieved a

credible solution to the rising U.S. Government debt burden

and are not likely to achieve one in the foreseeable

future.''

So the downgrade was because we did not adequately address the massive debt that had been building up.

Another myth--and there are plenty more to back up their contention about that, just facts: ``Had Congress and the administration failed to raise the debt limit by the Treasury's stated deadline in 2011, the Treasury would have been forced to default on the Nation's debt.'' Make it very clear. The reality, ``had the 2011 agreement to increase the debt limit been postponed, the Treasury could have met Federal Government obligations, including Social Security benefits and interest on the debt until the end of the fiscal year, possibly longer.''

And then it goes into the options that the Treasury Department had. Another myth: ``If Washington agreed to significant spending reforms and cuts--and then actually followed through on them--it would cripple the recovery and devastate the economy.'' The reality is that ``the most dangerous thing Washington can do is continue on its current course. The economic literature is clear: Chronic overspending and its result, chronic excessive debt, lead to economic harm. Washington must agree on meaningful spending reforms--and begin implementing these policies immediately to satisfy markets about the credibility of spending cuts.

``Myth number four: The real problem with the last debt limit deal was that it failed to apply a `balanced approach' of spending cuts and tax increases.'' The reality is, ``Replacing borrowing with higher taxes does not solve the fundamental problem: Federal spending-- including Social Security, Medicaid, and especially Medicare--is unsustainable.

``Fiscal reform that focuses on large revenue increases and modest spending reductions is likely to inflict the most damage on the economy. A study of 21 countries looking at 37 years of data representing 107 episodes of fiscal reform, shows that reform efforts that focus on a package of both spending and revenue reductions''--that is, tax decreases--``tend to be much more effective than those that have modest spending reductions but continue to increase revenue.

``Of more than 100 attempts to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio in all developed countries over the past 30 years, some 20 percent succeeded. They had two common components: one, a focus on spending cuts; and two, policy reforms that increased competitiveness.'' And that is the truth.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, for a government that shuts down, there sure seems to be a great deal going on. Down here on the Mall, somehow the National Park Service, which has been, parenthetically speaking here, presiding over a park service, beginning with the Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial, has not had God mentioned in any memorial since that time. We don't have time or a place for mentioning God, as our memorials have in some way in the past, but, by golly, we have got time during a shutdown to approve a permit to allow people who want to demand that--though they are here in this country illegally--they have a right to demand rights. This administration, just as it did with the Occupy Washington movement, facilitates that.

We know with the Occupy Washington movement there was all kinds of lewd, lascivious stuff going on in public. The Park Service didn't seem to be bothered by that. But let veterans show up to the World War II memorial, and they have got barricades. Let World War II veterans, who fought their way to the top of Mt. Suribachi, try to get to the monument that commemorates climbing to the top of Suribachi, they put up big obstacles to our veterans getting there.

So the message from this administration very clearly is that if you are illegally in the country, we will bend over backwards to let you commit all kinds of acts on the Mall; we will send Capitol Police down to pick up your garbage; and if you just want to illegally occupy a public area, we will let you do that. We will let you use the basest services in public. All kinds of lewd and lascivious things were going on there with the Occupy Washington movement, and that was allowed to continue on and on and on.

However, if you have served your country in the United States military, then we're going to try to make life miserable for you. It just might be those people that have hung on to their God and their guns and love America and love the Constitution, so this Homeland Security thing is sure a threat. Which is quite interesting.

You know, with all the things that are going on, we have seen that this administration has not had a problem with some things that some of us felt were a problem, such as, like I've mentioned in the last couple of years, one of the members of what was originally the Countering Violent Extremism Working Group named Elibiary from Texas, who was placed on there. And then he got a promotion from Secretary Janet Napolitano up to the Homeland Security Advisory Council, and, gee, now we're finding out that he's continuing to defend one of the principals of the Holy Land Foundation.

We're finding out that he is still defending, he still considers them to be unjustly prosecuted even though Federal courts have found that crimes were committed and that terrorism was supported by the Holy Land Foundation. The Dallas Federal court, along with the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans, found that groups like CAIR, which has now changed its name to WTF, and ISNA, groups like that were the largest front group for the Muslim Brotherhood in America.

So it's rather interesting, because this administration has made life so difficult for our veterans just trying to get here and enjoy the memorials. I've been down to the memorials I think every day until today, and it's amazing. I've been down there different days, all hours of the day and night. You're lucky if you see one park ranger in the area of the World War II Memorial, and yet now they've got them very strategically placed.

They will stand there with the barricades closed most of the time. If some group comes up and explains that they're a World War II veterans group, then they'll open and let them through, but they stand there intimidating. Sometimes an officer comes by with a canine, which is a bit more intimidating to most people. So unless Members of Congress are standing there, we see people come up and get intimidated and walk away, unless a Member of Congress goes up and says, Please, come in. You are welcome.

Fortunately, veterans of Vietnam and Korea are just going around the barricades and fortunately are not being stopped. At the Lincoln Memorial, though, when a couple of Members of Congress encouraged people to come on up, like they do at the World War II Memorial, they said that it appeared that the park SWAT team--I mean, officers came in from all over, threatening arrests. Get out of here.

It's just amazing how far this administration will go to hurt Americans that love America, that have served this country.

And then we find out about Americans killed in Afghanistan. There should have been no problem whatsoever with the Defense Department cutting the $100,000 checks to these families. There should not have been. And if there was any doubt, then the bill we passed before the shutdown began should have taken care of that. There was plenty of prerogative to do that. But we had to come back today and pass another bill just to say get a check to the families of those who lost a loved one serving this country, because the administration is playing hardball and has gotten policies in place that are hurting as many Americans as possible. But when you look at who's advising this country's top leaders, is it any surprise?

Here's a story from October 6 from The Daily Caller:

Senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security is an

old friend of an activist who was convicted in 2008 of

financing the terrorist organization Hamas.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, Mohamed Elibiary, a

member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, reiterated

claims he made this summer that former Holy Land Foundation

President and CEO Shukri Abu Baker is innocent and a victim

of political persecution.

Elibiary, who in his position on the council also has

regular access to classified information, said the United

States insults Muslim dignity and compared the Muslim

Brotherhood to American evangelicals.

Elibiary confirmed to journalist Ryan Mauro of the Clarion

Project in August that he is a longtime friend of Baker. The

Mauro interview can be read at the Center for Security

Policy.

Baker and four other officials of the closed Holy Land

Foundation for Relief and Development were convicted of using

the charity to finance Hamas in 2008. It was the largest

terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. Federal

prosecutors described the foundation, which was closed by the

U.S. Government in 2001, as an entity of the U.S. Muslim

Brotherhood.

Elibiary first disclosed the relationship in a 2007 article

in The Dallas Morning News. He met Baker as a teenager and

was so moved by the terrorist funder's explanation of alleged

Israeli persecution of Palestinians that he says he began

donating monthly to Baker's foundation until it closed in

2001. The friendship continued, with Elibiary meeting with

Baker for coffee the day before he was convicted.

Elibiary maintains that Baker is innocent. And in 2010, he

wrote that the U.S. Government was ``using the law to force

compliance with unjust foreign policies.'' He reiterated his

belief that the U.S. should not have prosecuted the Holy Land

Foundation.

The Muslim activist has never disguised his support for

Muslim Brotherhood extremism. In a 2006 letter to the Morning

News, he defended the fanatically anti-American

early Brotherhood leader and theorist Sayyid Qutb stating,

``I'd recommend everyone read Qutb, but read him with an eye

to improving America not just to be jealous with malice in

our hearts.''

Let me insert here, Qutb wrote, in Egypt, a book called ``Milestones,'' where a guy named Osama bin Laden gives a great deal of credit for radicalizing him. And here we have someone that Janet Napolitano handpicked to be at the highest advisory council level, have access to classified material, somebody that thinks the guy that radicalized Osama bin Laden is somebody we all should read with an eye toward improving America.

``Elibiary has been honored by the FBI's Society of Former Special Agents,'' the article says. And again, parenthetically here--it's not in the article, but we also know that the FBI continued a relationship with CAIR, even knowing that they had gathered evidence that showed that CAIR was a large Muslim Brotherhood front organization which was supportive of the Holy Land Foundation. Even knowing those things, even knowing that it was implicated as a named coconspirator in that trial, amazingly, it took until 2008 and 2009 for the FBI to suspend their partnership with CAIR. And we know that CAIR continued until they changed their name here recently in the last few weeks to WTF.

They continued to complain. They have instant access to anyone in this administration. They helped get the FBI material, training materials purged of anything that might be offensive to someone who was a radical Islamist.

The article says:

In September, Elibiary was promoted to senior adviser at

the advisory council, a title held only by select members.

Other council members include William Bratton, the revered

former New York police commissioner and Los Angeles chief of

police; former CIA Director Bill Webster; and L.A. County

Sheriff Lee Baca.

And we have this, which has been tweeted out:

I'm honored to be reappointed to the Secretary of Homeland

Security's Advisory Council and promoted to senior fellow

position.

That's Mohamed Elibiary. This article says:

``If you've ever wondered why the Obama administration

believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate force for

good and partners with known U.S. Muslim Brotherhood

entities, this interview with Mr. Elibiary helps us find an

answer,'' Mauro said.

Elibiary received national attention in June 2012 when Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann and four other Members of Congress--one including me--wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, naming him as one of three advisers with extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations and causes.

Anyway, it's just amazing. And it is also amazing, when I confronted Secretary Napolitano in a hearing about the fact that Mr. Elibiary had accessed classified material and I was told by the director of the Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, in Texas, he had spoken with her chief of staff. He had confirmed that he had briefed her totally on what Mr. Elibiary had done, and they would be looking into it. When I asked her about it the next day after her chief of staff had said she had been totally briefed, she looked me in the eye and said she didn't know anything about it. But she did say she would investigate.

We now know from a Freedom of Information answer from the Department of Homeland Security, they never investigated. Even when you had a writer, a journalist, Patrick Poole, wrote a story stating that Mr. Elibiary had actually shot two documents that they knew he had downloaded from the classified Web site, he had shopped it to a national media, and Mr. Poole confirmed to me that they have never once asked him about his sources. And we then had it confirmed from the FOIA request that actually they never did an investigation. Instead, they just promoted him. It is incredible. But then again, when you look at what this administration is doing to those who don't necessarily worship Allah but worship God and believe in God and have served the country, this administration is making it tough.

One of our most revered monuments, Mount Rushmore. Well, I was quoted accurately in the media over a week ago saying, After shutting down these open-air monuments, just sidewalks where you can roll around in disabled veterans' wheelchairs, what are they going to do next, put drapery over Mount Rushmore? Well, it turned out what they did--I guess I shouldn't have said anything because maybe it was the power of suggestion.

Oh, there's a way we can make people miserable. Even though it's a State road, built by the State of South Dakota, maintained by the State of South Dakota, patrolled by the State of South Dakota, we had Federal authorities go put cones and barricades to prevent people from being able to pull off to the side of the road to even take pictures of Mount Rushmore. Somebody, while the government was shut down, sent enough park rangers out to put up massive numbers of cones to try to make life as difficult as possible simply for people who loved America, who just wanted to pull over and get a view of Mount Rushmore.

They weren't going to patrol it. South Dakota does that.

When South Dakota, our dear friend, Kristi Noem, she said when South Dakota had pointed out, hey, this is State road, the Federal authority said, oh, no, but this is on Federal land, and we're not letting anybody pull over.

So this is what you get. This is the way Americans are treated unless you're going to be illegally in the country and have a protest, then we will give you permits, whatever you want.

I was gratified to hear our friend, Representative Noem, point out to us that, though sad that South Dakota had 4 feet of snow in some places, unfortunately, that covered all the barricades and cones, strictly in the interest of safety, South Dakota had to send their snowplows and wipe all the snow, and there was no way to sort out the cones and barricades, so apparently they were in some ditch somewhere.

But for safety purposes, because they were just trying to help those South Dakotans and Americans that wanted to see Mount Rushmore get through that road, that State-built road.

So, anyway, another chance to make Americans miserable, but Mother Nature came through, followed by South Dakota, making things safer.

Here is one. This is out by the Moore Farm that hasn't gotten a dime of Federal money since 1980. Former Park Director, National Park Service employee as director, been a director for 32 years, they barely make it, but they have lost $15,000 to $20,000 just by being closed down.

They rented barricades to take out there and close down a colonial farm from the 1700s and, as a result of this mean-spirited action by an administration, this farm may close down for good. They are running out of money.

But I have a dear friend that has arrived on the floor, and I would certainly yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) for such time as he may consume.

Reclaiming my time just momentarily, it is also worth noting that here in the House we have actually had numerous Democrats vote with us. So the only really bipartisan thing that has been going on in this whole Capitol are our bills to fund certain parts of the government.

I yield to my friend.

And I am sure that Mr. LaMalfa has had people ask, as I have had, now, why in the world is ObamaCare costing so dramatically much more than the health insurance we had before?

And then we get notified we are actually getting less health care.

And my friend mentioned Wolf Blitzer, this article in National Review online quoted him as saying if they weren't fully ready, talking about the Web sites, ObamaCare Web sites, they should accept the advice that a lot of Republicans are giving them, delay it another year, get it ready, make sure it works.

They know how to do it; but if they didn't get it ready on time, then maybe fix the problem and make sure people don't have to worry about it.

But we come back, it is a disaster. It is more expensive than people's health care was before. They are getting less health care; they are not keeping their doctor. And most--it sounds like an awful lot of Americans are not keeping the policy they have. So why is it costing so much more?

And what people that don't know need to understand, when you hire thousands and thousands of people who don't provide health care to be navigators through the health care system, and you hire 18,000-or-so more IRS officers to go through every detail of people's personal financial and personal life, and they don't provide any health care, they may cause some health problems, but they don't provide any health care--you add all this bureaucracy--it is going to cost more and you are going to get less treatment, and it is not going to be as good a treatment.

I yield back to Mr. LaMalfa.

And there is a story today from the Daily Caller about the White House IRS exchanged confidential taxpayer information by Patrick Howley. So if you think your personal information is secure with the IRS, or with the Federal Government, it is already showing you should not be comfortable with it happening.

I yield to my friend.

Well, apparently, our time is expiring. I appreciate so much my friend, Mr. LaMalfa, helping me. And we should not be treated any differently. The President and his family need to sign up.

But, Mr. Speaker, I think it is worth noting that when I went out to the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial, this administration had tried to prevent World War II veterans from getting to the symbol of Mount Suribachi, and there were three busloads of World War II vets up there at the memorial, and the barricade was in pieces.

God bless our World War II veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 4 o'clock and 11 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, October 10, 2013, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Thank you. I appreciate my friend from Pennsylvania.

You were mentioning some of the things that the prior speakers, the Democrats, were saying. And one of the things that was said was, give us a vote, when, as my friend from Pennsylvania pointed out, there have been plenty of votes.

They also were saying that, talking about budget conferees. We're past the end of the fiscal year. The way it's supposed to work, we're supposed to have a budget very early in the year, and then after that, do the appropriations bills.

Well, the Senate has not been doing budgets in the past. This is the first time in years. They haven't done what the law required. They seem to ignore the law anytime they wish.

They have not been passing any appropriations bills. And that's a political game that allows Majority Leader Harry Reid to avoid following the law so that any potential vulnerable Democratic Senators will not have to take tough votes like people do in the House constantly, because we've appropriations bills and we continue to do that.

And so we know, since we passed the military pay bill that required that the military get paid, we treat military pay somewhat like we do Social Security pay, so that if the government were shut down, the military still gets paid. People in harm's way don't have to worry about family members getting their check.

So since my friend across the aisle was so upset about not having a vote, and I realize we get busy here and some people forget the things we've been voting on the last 10 days.

So I'd just like to remind my friends across the aisle, Mr. Speaker, that actually, we voted, after we passed a bill to pay our military; and as my friend, Mr. Perry knows, the Democrats voted for it. The Senate voted for it. The President signed it.

And in the bill, as we spelled out, civilians were supposed to continue employment that were assisting the military. Contractors were supposed to continue working that were supporting the military; and yet this administration had chosen to try to make as many people suffer as possible, even though the law didn't require it.

So the Secretary of Defense sat on his hands for about a week, had civilian personnel not working that could have been working all this time; decides, after a week, to follow the advice, he says, of his people that had been looking at the bill.

And we made clear from the very beginning, before the shutdown even started, you don't have to send all these people home, but he did it anyway.

It was consistent with what has been mentioned that one of the park rangers said, though it was disgusting to the ranger, We were told make things as difficult for people as we can.

And people keep saying we were demanding the total repeal of ObamaCare. Well, we know that would be best for America because a lot of people are already suffering. We've already seen ObamaCare is not being followed as law because the President has had hundreds of exemptions that he has waved his hand, waved his magic wand and said, You don't have to follow this law; you don't have to follow this law. You don't have to follow what's here in this provision; you don't have to follow what's in this provision. And by the way, the business mandate in the law makes no exceptions. Business folks, my party still wants to get your contributions, so I will wave my wand and you don't follow the law.

So when me friends across the aisle say, Just let ObamaCare go, I would say the same thing. You let ObamaCare go, if the President will, if Harry Reid will. If you just let it be enforced exactly the way it is, it won't last a month.

But he has had to do so many waivers, and it will continue. So it's not going into law. In fact, the Supreme Court had to rewrite it just to uphold it. Because they already said that the basis for the law that was given, the interstate commerce clause, was not a basis to take over health care in America. So they struck it down under the law as written; and the law, as written, said there was a penalty.

Well, the Supreme Court said at page 15 that it's a penalty, and therefore the anti-injunction act does not apply. Therefore, we do have jurisdiction, and so now that we have jurisdiction, we'll go ahead and decide it's not constitutional the way it's written as a penalty, but we will rewrite it, the five of us in the majority, and call it a tax. And then we'll uphold it as a tax, even though clearly that's not the way it was written.

It's not what the President promised the American people. So much for the Democrats wanting ObamaCare to be followed as it was written. We're way beyond that with all the waivers and exemptions.

But then we had a vote that said, Okay, let's just suspend it for a year because everybody knows ObamaCare is not ready for prime time. Clearly. That's why the President had to give business a 1-year exemption, where we just won't follow the law as it's applied to business.

But then, after the Senate refused to even take that up, we did the most reasonable thing that some said they could imagine and that is, Okay, you just waved off the mandatory requirements for business. So if you're going to magically wave off part of the law that's mandatory, then let's agree to do that for everyone, like the person that's making $15,000, or 133 percent of the poverty level. A year or so ago, we were told that was $14,000 something. Now it's $15,000. But even with subsidies, you're probably going to end up paying a few thousand dollar. Somebody making $15,000 is going to have a few thousands over their subsidies? And if you don't do that, you're going to pay the $95, or 1 percent of your income, as an extra tax?

People do not have that extra money. People have been sent from full time to part time. When the union members figured out what the union leaders had done to them, causing many of them to lose full time and going to part-time employment, many of them losing their great health insurance and now they'll have to go under the ObamaCare exchanges, like Members of Congress, they got upset. All of a sudden, the leaders of the unions said, Gee, look at all the unintended consequences.

We knew there were intended consequences. We talked about them at the time.

So that was something that was passed. Just waive the individual mandate for a year. That was not taken up by the Senate. So then we passed what, to me, seemed like a capitulation. We appointed negotiators and said, Okay, you don't like any of those proposals, Mr. Majority Leader Harry Reid, then this is what adults do: we appoint negotiators, and we can probably have a deal done by morning before anybody realizes there's even been a shutdown at midnight.

But Majority Leader Reid, following the lead of our President, made clear that they were going to follow the conventional wisdom of the last few years that if there's a shutdown, the mainstream media will clearly blame Republicans, and maybe that will help us politically. So he even refused to negotiate.

So once we saw that Harry Reid had completely refused to even negotiate, pretty reasonable folks that were appointed by Speaker Boehner, the majority leader says, We're not going to do that.

It's possible they could have slept through it. Maybe I was given a speech and my Democratic friends dozed off and didn't know we had all these votes. So if they happened to be sleeping while we had these votes, I would like to remind people that then we had a bill that we voted on to provide local funding for the District of Columbia. We know the District of Columbia has a lot of money of its own that comes in.

Frankly, I was shocked that our friends across the aisle--most of them--voted against allowing the District of Columbia to just move forward with its own money so that it could run the operations of the city. Apparently, they wanted to inflict as much harm as possible so that people would continue to blame the Republicans.

We know the mainstream media has long since quit being objective. Twenty-one stories from the mainstream media at first all unanimously blamed Republicans failing to report that Harry Reid would not even appoint negotiators to work something out quickly.

And then we passed the Open Our National Parks and Museums Act. It would have made sure that all of these places that have been shut down by this administration in the most hurtful, harmful, punitive way possible, trying to get everybody in America

they can to hurt some way so that they can blame Republicans, when it's simply the decision of the President.

We answered by saying, Okay, Democrats across the aisle, you want a vote? Let's vote. There's no need to do this, and the response across the aisle was to have most of the Democrats vote to leave them shut. They weren't going to vote with us to fund our national parks.

And then we had a vote on Research for Lifesaving Cures Act, H.J. Res. 73, to provide funding for the National Institutes of Health, which is responsible for lifesaving medical innovation and cancer research. Most, except for about 20 or so Democrats, all voted not to fund the National Institutes of Health.

Our friends across the aisle say, Give us a vote. They got a vote. You want to fund the NIH, then vote to do it. We'll send it down. But even though we passed it and sent it down the Hall, Harry Reid was not going to do it because, as my friend pointed out, when he was asked if you could save one child with cancer, why wouldn't you do that, he said, Why would we do that? And then he chastised the reporter for asking a question which in his mind he thought was a silly question. I thought it was an excellent question.

And then many of us believed there was enough latitude to pay some of our Reservists on Active Duty. But the Defense Department took a narrow interpretation so they could punish more people and blame the Republicans.

So to counter that, we passed a Pay Our Guard and Reserve Act on October 3 that ensured during the shutdown that it would not affect the pay for our National Guard and Reserves. Again, 160 Democrats voted against that. They asked for a vote, we give them a vote. Most of them voted against it. Then our friend, Harry Reid, down the hall said, No way, we're not funding them.

Again, maybe our friends were asleep. Sometimes when I talk, I put people to sleep. It happens. I'm a very restful speaker.

We passed the National Emergency Disaster Recovery Act. That provided immediate funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and 164 of our Democratic friends voted against that, and Harry Reid refuses to bring it up.

We actually brought up a bill to pay our veterans and make sure our wounded warriors were taken care of. The way the rules of the House have been--and are--you can bypass the committee of jurisdiction and go straight to the floor without the committee bringing the bill to the floor, without it being voted out of committee, under what is called a suspension. But to bypass the committee of jurisdiction, it requires a two-thirds vote in the House.

I, like Speaker Boehner, thought that surely you could bring the veterans bill to the floor under a suspension because surely they would vote to fund our wounded warriors. Most of us were totally shocked that the vast majority of Democrats voted against funding our veterans, our wounded warriors.

So we had to go back, have the committee of jurisdiction pass it, bring it to the floor under a rule so a simple majority would pass it. And that's what we did with H.J. Res. 72; and when 157 of our friends across the aisle who wanted a vote, they got a vote. And they voted against funding our wounded warriors.

We also took up the Nutrition Assistance for Low-Income Women and Children Act that provided immediate funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for women, infants, and children. It serves nearly 9 million mothers and young children and provides vital nutrition that poor families might otherwise be unable to afford.

Then 164 of our Democratic friends voted against that bill, but it passed the House nonetheless. We sent it down to Harry Reid. They have been wanting a vote. We gave them a vote.

On October 5, we voted for the Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act. It provided for compensation for Federal employees furloughed due to the Senate Democrats' government shutdown. It's similar to the bipartisan legislation enacted during previous shutdowns. We did pass that, but Harry Reid thus far has refused to take that up.

I appreciate so much my friend, Mr. Perry from Pennsylvania, bringing this whole issue forward.

There are a number of more votes that we did take. We took up the Head Start for Low-Income Children Act, providing official education funding to support Head Start programs across the country, and 168 of the Democrats across the aisle voted against that. Harry Reid is refusing to take that up.

My friends across the aisle wanted a vote. So we voted for the Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth Working Group Act. It seemed like if Harry Reid would not appoint negotiators before the shutdown really had a chance to take hold, I wasn't sure this was really necessary, but there's a Chinese proverb having to do with allowing your opponent a graceful way out.

So this bill was proposed as a graceful way out so that Harry Reid could come back and say, Okay, well, now we will, under this new bill, we'll go ahead and appoint negotiators and act like it was some new bill when the truth is it's just us trying to have a bicameral discussion. Yet we had 197 Democrats vote against--well, there were 197 that voted against the bill, basically Democrats, saying we don't want to sit down and work this out with negotiators.

I thought about voting against it because it seemed pretty needless since we already voted to appoint negotiators, conferees. Harry Reid wouldn't do that. But I was persuaded, look, this is a way for Harry Reid to get out gracefully, go ahead and appoint negotiators. Now maybe we can get something worked out.

We also passed the Federal Workers Pay Fairness Act, which ensured all Federal employees who are still on the job during the shutdown will be paid on time. Again, we have not seen that the Democrats in the House have any interest in bringing that to the floor to get a vote.

So my friends across the aisle here in the House who kept screaming, Give us a vote, I hope that will be directed toward their friend, Harry Reid, down the hall, Give a vote to the Senate on these bills. I just can't imagine a majority of the Senate not being willing to fund the things that we have passed.

So, let's see, the term that was used in the prior discussion was ``burning the house down,'' ``rigging negotiation.'' Rigging negotiation? We appointed negotiators. It's not rigged.

Now, it is interesting that the President wishes to have the authority--takes the authority even though he doesn't have it--to just rewrite the entire ObamaCare law. Any part that he decides to wave his hand and dismiss, he's done that. But there are consequences for doing that.

We've also seen in this shutdown something that's just not normally been seen in America. We've seen Franklin Roosevelt say, We have nothing to fear but fear itself. But it's a rare thing--an extremely rare thing--to say that the market needs to be afraid and needs to start getting concerned, trying to gin up a panic to drive down the market. And the market, after a week's time of Republicans having negotiators sitting out there for over a week, waiting to sit down and negotiate with Senators, and the Senators thinking they're winning a political battle, so being unwilling to send negotiators to sit down and work out a deal. Today, between the concerns expressed by the President that the market needs to be concerned, basically saying it needs to start dropping so Republicans will get scared and they will give me everything I want.

So it's interesting they talk across the aisle about holding a gun to the head, burning the house down. The thing is, this is not our House. It's not the Democrats' House; it's the people's House. That's why I try to take people through tours at least once a week when we're in session. This is the people's House, and it breaks my heart that it's so hard to get in here nowadays. It wasn't when I was in high

school, and I would like for it to be more accessible to people.

But burning the house down, the references are so misplaced because it's the Democratic President that says, Give me everything I want. Do not stand in my way when I legislate and rewrite the laws to suit me. We already saw that happen with the GM and Chrysler bailout. The government became socialists for a while here and decided to take up nationalist interests in things--did so with Wall Street.

With the car dealers, it should have scared most Americans. It should have scared Americans enough that they would never, ever have wanted the government to be in control of their health care, because what we saw is mainly Republican dealers were the ones that lost their dealerships. There was no due process. They violated bankruptcy law right and left. And the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg put a 24- hour hold, but then let it lapse. The Supreme Court hung their heads, let illegal actions, unconstitutional actions, takings without due process all take place. And Republican dealers, many of them were punished, had their dealerships taken away even though they still owed money on them. That should have been enough to scare everybody, but we didn't learn a lesson.

Then we find out that after the Citizens United case that the President got upset, stood up here in this Chamber, misrepresented--I know he didn't do it knowingly, but he was not familiar with the law regarding the Citizens United case and misrepresented the law as borne out by the Supreme Court Justice Alito sitting there shaking his head saying ``not true.'' And the President, I'm sure, is just taking advice that's given to him by those around him, not knowing that those who gave him advice were as ignorant as they are.

But when people keep clamoring, Give us a clean CR, when people hear the term ``give us a clean CR,'' they need to understand that this is people demanding that Congress reject the responsibility it has under the Constitution and help crown a monarchy. Let's make it official. We don't want the Congress to do its job and to appropriate as article I requires. We want Congress just to say, Here's the massive sacks of money, Mr. President; go do what you want. Go find all the Solyndras you want. Go find all the cronies that you can help in a capitalist way so that they can overtake their competitors. Go do what you wish. Maybe you can even find some more dealerships to take away without due process.

We hear friends across the aisle say they love to debate elected officials when the fact is during the 4 years the Democrats had the House as a majority and had the Senate, it was the most partisan, closed Congress in the history of this country. There were more closed rules, bills where no amendments were allowed whatsoever. Even on ObamaCare, we were not allowed input. There was some discussion, but it was made clear our input was not allowed, so nearly half of the country was not misrepresented when had it came to ObamaCare.

And it's really amazing to hear people say that the ObamaCare law was passed by Congress, by both Houses; the President signed it into law; and then of course they misrepresent--I know they don't do it intentionally--but saying the Supreme Court upheld it. Now, the Supreme Court rewrote it and then upheld what they wrote--or at least five out of the nine did. Then the President has completely rewritten anything he doesn't like, given waivers, exemptions. So it's not the law that got passed.

And it's amazing to hear people say, gee, once a law is passed and the President has signed it, you can't change it. It's the law; get over it. And almost in the same breath come back and say, now the debt ceiling--parenthetically, which was passed by both Houses, signed by President Obama and is upheld by the Supreme Court--we want to change that immediately, do that now; don't use it as a gun to our head. What do you mean a gun to your head? It's the law. You just told us if it's passed by Congress, signed by the President--the President himself said it bears my signature, we're not changing it. So why would that be a gun to the head when I thought the President said we weren't supposed to talk metaphorically like that. We weren't supposed to use violent metaphors. Why are we talking like that? Why are we calling people arsonists when we're just trying to follow the Constitution? But again, that's consistent with Homeland Security saying that those who believe in the Constitution are extremists, and they must be watched at all cost.

I think my friends are right when they say go to the American people. The trouble is the mainstream media has not done that. They have actually stood in the way of the truth getting to the American people. They're not asking questions as my friend had asked Andrea Mitchell today, Why are you not asking why the President is not under ObamaCare? She says, well, why aren't you under it? Well, we are on it.

There was an issue about subsidies. I'm not going to take them, not when other Americans don't get them the way they used to. But, gee, let's be honest about things. Well, The Wall Street Journal says that Maryland has 326 enrollees in their health exchange--got an article here talking about there. ``ObamaCare's Winners and Losers in Bay Area,'' an article from Mercury News that talks about:

Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the

Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to

say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.

Yet, like many other Bay residents who pay for their own

medical insurance, they were floored last week when they

opened their bills: their policies were being replaced with

pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new

health care law.

Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an

individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will

cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of

four.

``Welcome to the club'', said Robert Laszewski, a prominent

health care consultant and president of Health Policy and

Strategy Associates in Virginia.

For years, the Nation has been embroiled in the political

rhetoric of ``ObamaCare,'' but this past week the reality of

the new law sank in as millions of Americans had their first

good look at how the 3\1/2\-year-old legislation will affect

their pocketbooks.

It's a disaster. So when my friends on the other side of the aisle say, well, let's just let it fully take effect, we've already seen what happens, this President and Harry Reid are not going to let the full thing take effect.

We've seen the way the IRS, with instructions from somebody around the White House--if not in it, we're still trying to get to the bottom of it--was instructed to go after conservative groups. And they did. The IRS was weaponized.

We've seen what's happened with other groups. They're paying a price. And you want these people to control your health care? You want them to decide whether you get a knee replacement or a hip replacement?

``Beyond the glitches: Will young and healthy Americans pick up ObamaCare?'' is an article, October 7, that talks about one of the most heated arguments among health care policy writers has revolved around the issue of rate shock, which is a term for the premium increases many Americans--especially younger, healthier ones--will experience once the law kicks in. It's just going to get worse.

My friends on the other side of the aisle say they want a vote. They've been getting votes. They will continue to get votes. We just ask them to join us in demanding that Harry Reid bring these bills to the floor for a vote. And let's get them passed so these things will be taken care of.

And in answer to his question: Why would we do that? The answer is: To help America. It's that simple. Mr. Reid needs to bring these bills to the floor in the Senate; and if you're not going to bring the bills to the floor, for heavens sakes appoint negotiators so we can get America moving before any more punitive shutdowns by this administration occur just to punish the American people because of the temper tantrum being thrown by those who want their way or nobody gets to play.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.