Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, it is always an honor to be here on this floor where so much history has been made. I can't help but think of the quote from Thomas Jefferson: ``The natural course of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain.''

What we have been faced with and what is being negotiated behind closed doors, interesting negotiations, there are no Republicans that have been allowed anywhere near, despite all the promises of the most open government that we would have once President Obama was in the White House and Speaker Pelosi was Speaker and Harry Reid was the Majority Leader in the Senate. Those things just simply have not materialized.

I keep hearing people, and I have heard them on both sides of the aisle, say we want health insurance for everyone. What I want for everyone is health care; health care that is affordable, health care that is accessible.

Health insurance? I gave a speech to health insurance folks here last year and I pointed out, you think you are selling insurance, but this is not insurance. You are selling management by health insurance companies of health care. It is not insurance.

Look it up. Insurance is not paying a company to manage everything for you. Insurance is when you pay a little premium, a small premium, sometimes monthly, sometimes quarterly, sometimes for a whole year. You pay that to insure against some unforeseeable event out there in the future.

Now, when I was growing up in East Texas, there were precious few people that had any insurance, but the ones that did, they paid a tiny premium to insure against some catastrophic illness overtaking them or some terrible accident that left them in need of expensive health care, and that insurance would cover them.

For the rest of us, if you got sick, you knew exactly what the cost was at each doctor's clinic, at the hospital, and you also knew if you got sick and had to go to the doctor's office what it would cost. But if it was more than you could pay, then there was usually someone near the front counter who could work out a monthly payment for you to pay. But, as a patient, you had control of your health care.

I have been intrigued. It just leaves you with a broken heart to hear all the troubling stories from our colleagues across the aisle about the tragedies of sickness or accident. But I have heard the same thing except, many-fold more, about socialized medicine.

As an exchange student in the Soviet Union in 1973, I had a chance to see socialized medicine up close and personal, the way it gets after it has existed for a number of years. People rarely ever saw the same doctor when they went.

The doctors, it was not an honor to be a doctor there. College students with whom I came in contact and got to know, if they had a parent, a father or mother that was a doctor, they were not all that thrilled to tell you. They were tickled to death to tell you if they had a parent that was assistant to the assistant manager of a factory, but not so much of doctors.

Here in the United States, doctors traditionally have been paid well, and it has inspired the very best and brightest among us to aspire to go to medical school and become doctors to help people. And what seems to have been missing from heartrending story after heartrending story are any good stories.

So if someone is visiting the United States, and the only exposure that they have to hearing about our health care is from the stories from our friends across the aisle, they would certainly want to avoid U.S. hospitals, U.S. doctors and U.S. clinics because of all the terrible tragedies that seem to be the only thing that occur; when the fact is, this country provides a better level of care than anywhere not only in the world but in history.

I've had doctors who were historians indicate that before 1910--not even a full 100 years ago--before 1910, if you went to the doctor, the odds were about 50-50 that you would actually be helped by going to the doctor instead of being harmed by going to the doctor. Just down the road out here you can get to Mount Vernon, to George Washington's home. We have a beautiful painting over here similar to the one hanging in the White House of George Washington, all 6-foot-3\1/2\. Though some say he was not that tall, they knew he was that tall when they measured him on the slab after his death. But he died at an age that was unexpected for him because he seemed to be in such good health. He had been out marking trees that were going to be cut down. He didn't know that he might someday get a carbon credit for them, so he had marked them to be cut down. It was during the cold and during the rain, and he got a cold. He didn't get out of his wet clothing very quickly. He had dinner the night he came back. He didn't do much about the cold. But before long, it began to overtake him.

One of his closest friends in the world was his doctor, Dr. Craik. I think he was bled three times, and they just could not understand why they kept draining out the bad blood, as they thought, out of the great father of our country, and he just seemed to not be getting better. They didn't know the damage they were doing to this giant of a man.

But we get past 1910, and because of the free market system in this country, health care has been elevated to a level never before seen in the history of mankind. What is missing in some of the stories that have been told are some of the stories that I have personally heard and have become familiar with.

Sue Clark lives in Tyler. She told me that she emigrated from England. Her mother got cancer living in England and, as is normally the case with socialized medicine, there, in Canada and soon to be here if the health care bill either the House or the Senate is talking about makes its way and gets passed, signed into law, people will go on lists the same way here. So when the President says, We're cutting $500 billion or so in Medicare, but we're not going to deny coverage to anyone, not going to deny treatment, what we see in these other countries is that they're not technically denied treatment or care. They're put on lists. And as it goes with socialized medicine, in order for the socialized medicine health care system not to go broke, people end up dying on the list, waiting to get their health care coverage.

That's what Sue said happened with her mother. Because her mother got cancer in England, she died of the cancer, which would have been an unnecessary outcome, had she been living in the United States, as Sue said. Sue got cancer here in the United States. She didn't go on a list. She is a secretary,

as I recall, and she said she didn't go on a list. She knows she's alive today because she emigrated from England and got away from the socialized government, single-payer health care, whatever you want to call it, public option. Over there it's not a public option. It's a public requirement. But, anyway, her mother died of cancer because she was in a country that had the kind of health care that those across the aisle--many of them that is, not all of them--are aspiring to give us here.

By the same token, I know personally of incredible stories, of people who didn't have money for health care and doctors provided it, doctors who answered the call in the middle of the night and came rushing down to help, even though they knew there was a good chance they wouldn't get paid. Doctors, hospitals and clinics providing free care. I come back to my friends across the aisle who seem to indicate, like the one indicated earlier today that the guy was told because he was not from here in the United States and because he didn't have health insurance and because he didn't have $250 to pay cash, he could not demand and require that the doctor he wanted to see had to see him. My friend across the aisle was upset about that. He was told he'd have to go to the emergency room to get that treatment.

I've also talked to physicians who said that if there was any way to require even a $5 copay, it would root out so many of the people that just show up at the emergency room with colds, things like I get--maybe because of the stress or I'm not getting more than 2 or 3 hours sleep so often around here. We get colds. I don't go to the hospital. I don't go to the doctor. We have got great over-the-counter medical supplies. So you can go pick them up. I don't use insurance for those kinds of things. You just get what you need. I am familiar with what it costs. When I went out on my own as an attorney and left the big firm I started with, I was determined not to steal any clients, as I knew some lawyers had been accused of doing. So I started out with next to nothing. That first year that I was on my own, my adjusted gross income was $12,000. We had a daughter who was about 2, and the only thing we could afford to give her that Christmas was a free puppy dog that my late mother had found and thought my daughter would love, and she did.

I know something about having to scrape and scrimp and build a business. Within 3 years of going out on my own, I ended up paying more in income tax than I ever made at the big firm where I went to work after I got out of the Army service. So I know something about scrimping. I know something about not having the money to give your child everything you want. I understand. But the free market system, when allowed to work properly, can do amazing things.

But I'm telling you, Madam Speaker, and I would tell the world, I don't want health insurance companies or the government managing my health care. I want to make those decisions, and I want everybody else to have that same freedom. I want them to have coverage where they can afford it, and I want them to have the best health care that is available in this country, and that's doable. But not by socializing medicine.

You hear the stories over and over. We heard about a company in Canada which, in order to attract the best and brightest employees, was offering them the added perk that if you get sick and need surgery or need testing, we'll put you on a plane and fly you to the United States to get it done within 24 hours. That's what they were offering as part of their contract because you couldn't get that in Canada, working up there. But here if we emulate those systems, you go on lists.

The seniors, having lived on this Earth for so long, they understand what's going on. They understand when you talk about cutting Medicare $500 billion what that means, that they're expected to do as Robert Reich recently said, You know, they're not going to get the health care they need at the end of their lives; it's too expensive. Basically, we'll let them die within a couple of months.

If you remember the President's own town hall meeting at the White House, there was a lady there named Pam Sturm. She had said that her mother was 99, close to 100. Her own doctor said that he couldn't do any more unless she got a pacemaker, but that seemed awfully old to be getting a pacemaker. Everyone else said, Yeah, sure. Go for it, except, according to Ms. Sturm, the arrhythmia specialist. But he had never met her mother. Well, her doctor contacted the arrhythmia specialist and said, You really need to meet this lady before you make that medical call. Don't just do it off a list. You really need to meet her. He met her, and according to Pam, the specialist saw her and saw her joy of life, and he said that he, indeed, was going forward with the pacemaker. It's been 5 or 6 years since then. She's now 105 and doing well, according to Pam.

Now the question she asked the President, she wanted to know under President Obama's plan what treatment someone elderly could have, and asked this question: ``Outside the medical criteria for prolonging the life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life? Or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?''

I watched the video, and I typed this up so I could have every comment exactly right. President Obama said, ``We're suggesting--and we're not going to solve every difficult problem in terms of end-of- life care.'' My English teacher mother taught eighth grade English for most of her adult life, actually taught me English my whole life and got frustrated with me quite a bit. But I know that she would outline that sentence and say, The President needs to clean that up, just as she did with some of mine.

Anyway, he apparently is talking and thinking and trying to come up with an answer, kind of beating around the bush. But he goes on and says, ``A lot of that is going to have to be--we as a culture and as a society starting to make better decisions within our own families and-- and for ourselves.''

The President goes on and says, ``But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, maybe this isn't going to help; maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking a painkiller.''

That is the President's answer. How ironic. She had just explained that her mother had lived 5 or 6 years, a very joyful life after the pacemaker, and here the President is saying, Maybe you're better off not having that pacemaker surgery but just take a painkiller.

The seniors get that. They understand what that means to them, and they don't need a death panel to read them the writing on the wall that comes from that kind of approach to health care.

I had one senior say that she's concerned that they're cutting health care costs for seniors because they know that's where all the wisdom-- not all of it but a great deal of most of the wisdom resides. The longer you are around, hopefully the greater your wisdom grows. I know from having been a judge that it is true. You live and you learn. Unfortunately, there are those who just live. Very unfortunate. Some never get to that learning part.

But we have seniors who have lived and learned. They've seen the threats of fascism. They've seen the threats of communism. The greatest generation that provided us the protection and afforded us the opportunity to enjoy the blessings we enjoy, and now we say, ``You know what, maybe you're better off taking a painkiller''? What have we come to? You know, are we so self-absorbed, and we look at the money that we're throwing around from this body. We're supposed to have the purse strings and have some self-restraint as an obligation to those who sent us here, and yet we pass a bill to spend $770 million on wild horse habitat to buy them another area the size of West Virginia so they can roam around more when we have 3 million or so people, I understand, who have lost their habitats? Why aren't we taking care of their needs by creating new jobs and creating the ability to afford health care?

My health care, my health insurance here in Congress, is part of the same

big thick booklet that all other Federal employees get to have, but it was costing over $1,000 a month. It was just too much. So I elected to go with a health savings account, and it went to $300--well, it's under $300 a month, but a majority of that goes into my own health savings account. I've had some disagreements with the insurance company. I hear lots of people say, Everybody in America ought to be able to have what our Congress has for health care insurance.

My answer to that is you don't want my insurance. I'm changing it at the end of the year. I don't like it. I'm changing it at the end of the year. But what you want is not the insurance I've got right now, I don't think. What you want are my choices, because I've got a big, thick book like everybody else in here, and all the clerks, all the support staff and personnel, all the Federal employees have the same opportunities. It's not exclusive to Members of Congress.

I do support I believe it's H.R. 615 that John Fleming came up with that a number of us have signed onto. I think it's a good bill, that Congress shouldn't pass any health care system created at least with legislation that we do not put ourselves on. It seems fair to me. But people should have choices, and that will bring about better health care options for people.

But you have health insurance companies right now managing health care. It's not insurance. They're just taking care of people's health care. And it reminded me that--and someone, Madam Speaker, may be interested in taking this idea and actually going public and trying to sell the public on the idea. Maybe it will work. It sure worked in health care. And that is to tell people, You know what? Gasoline goes up. Sometimes it goes down, but it seems like more often it's going up. So why don't we tell the American public, Look, we will provide you what we will call gasoline insurance. You pay us a truckload of money every month, and we'll give you a copay and a deductible, and then we will pay your gasoline bill above that every month. How does that sound? Well, that's what people are doing with health insurance, and they're paying an awful lot of money.

The same thing is true with Medicare and Medicaid. When you take the total expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid in the year 2007--we're still looking for 2008 full-year numbers, don't have them yet--we were approaching $10,000 average for every household in America to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. A small percentage of the population is on Medicare and Medicaid; yet the average is $10,000 for every household in America just to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. That just seems outrageous. There's an easier way. I filed a bill that has a solution. There are lots of other people that have suggested solutions.

I want health insurance companies to get back into the business of insurance, and the way to do that is to have a high deductible policy and to provide tax incentives for companies to pay into employees' own personal health savings accounts, not like the old kind where if you don't use it by the end of the year, you lose it. No. If you don't use it, it rolls over to the next year, and it will accumulate and grow. And statisticians tell us that young people in their twenties and thirties, the vast majority of them, if they do that, will have such tremendous accumulated amounts in their health savings account by the time they reach retirement age that they won't need nor want Federal assistance with their health care decisions or payments because they can address it themselves with their own health care savings account and with the money that they have stored up. We provide tax advantages for businesses to do that.

Now, I do agree with those on both sides of the aisle, and not everybody agrees but I think we do have some joint agreement, on the fact that we should have health insurance policies where the insurance company just can't up and cancel the insurance policy after you find out you have some dreaded disease. That seems grossly unfair. And I would agree that would be fair, and the Federal Government can do that. We can be about making sure there is a level playing field and there's fairness across the country. That's what we are supposed to do.

This body was never intended to run everyone's life in the United States. But you give control, you give the cost to the Federal Government of all health care in America, well, that can't be paid for by the Federal Government unless they get it from the people living in America; so they're forced to tax Americans more to pay for their health care, and then you have the Federal Government, whose role is supposed to be that of referee, not only being referee but being the player.

I mean, we are constantly, it seems, most every day having people come in who are having problems with the Veterans Administration or the Social Security Administration, and it is such a nightmare dealing with the Federal Government when they are the player and the referee. There's nobody else to go around. The Federal Government is it; whereas, if it took its role from our original Constitution, it would be the referee.

I heard someone call into my friend Sean Hannity's show and he was berating health insurance companies, and he said, One of your precious health insurance companies had to settle a lawsuit for $3 million dollars and that's why the Federal Government ought to be providing the health insurance for health care.

Well, he didn't know what he was talking about because what that shows is you don't want the Federal Government in the business of being both the player and the referee because they don't play fair when they're the only player and the referee. They treat you as some of our veterans have been treated or, should I say, mistreated. What you want is the Federal Government to be the referee.

To me, if the insurance company got tagged for $3 million for some heinous way they handled somebody's situation, that means the Federal Government is doing its job. It provided an arena in the judiciary system where people could have a right of redress. That's what we are supposed to do. And by having such a heavy hammer as the arena of redress, forcing the free market players out there to play by the rules, to be fair and don't mistreat people, we do a better job when that is what we concentrate on; not telling automakers how to make cars or taking control of all these other areas that we seem to have taken control of in the last year or so.

I want to go back to the comment of Thomas Jefferson: ``The natural course of things is for liberty to yield and the government to gain.''

Of course, it was John Adams that commented, ``In my many years I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.'' What a wise man John Adams was.

With regard to health insurance, my bill that has been filed we have been trying to get CBO scoring on. But it may be recalled that earlier this year after CBO came out with a score on a Democratic bill that upset the White House, the head of CBO, the Congressional Budget Office that does all the scoring that people constantly refer to as this unbiased source, the head was called over to the White House, called to the woodshed at the White House. And lo and behold, after that trip to the White House, it's amazing how CBO seemed to try to reach out and help the majority party, the majority in the House, the majority in the Senate, and the White House.

So Senator Baucus can rush in a bill, rush in something that is not even a bill, just a plan, and get them to score it. Well, I was told back in June that they would not score my health care bill unless I could get it into the form of a bill that could be filed here in the House.

Well, I couldn't get my bill. I had the plan all drafted, what we wanted in it, and I could not get Legislative Counsel to put it into the form which is required in order to file it normally. And so we pushed and pushed. I told Newt Gingrich about my health care plan. He said you need to get that in bill form and get it scored. That should score. Well, I tried and tried. I was told, well, you are in the minority party and besides that, you are not on the Energy and Commerce Committee. So I got the highest-ranking Republican, Joe Barton, who was extremely helpful. He

made the request. He and his office started pushing to get my plan into a bill form so I could file it. That wasn't good enough. We got other Republicans. We kept pushing and pushing. It took about a month, but we finally got it into bill form so we could go about getting it scored by

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 35 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, October 28, 2009, at 10 a.m.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do appreciate this time, and I do appreciate the comments from my friend Mr. King from Iowa, and I do want to follow up on that subject, a little different approach from a little different angle, because I think it is important that we talk about truth, honesty, and integrity.

It is inappropriate on the House floor to accuse anybody else of lying who is a Member of Congress or the President. We are not going to do that tonight. But we are going to talk about what

the truth really is, and people can compare the truth to things that have been said both here in the House and around this country by our leaders and let them figure out for themselves what is truth.

In fairness to the President, we heard him say repeatedly, ``You have heard their lies. Where is their solution? Well, they don't have one.''

Well, actually we have many, and we tried to get his attention. I know he said if we have proposals, if we have solutions, there is always an open door, and I have no doubt that he is correct about that. I just have not been able to get past all those massive gates and armed guards in order to talk to the President about that. I am sure the door is open, just like he said. It is just I haven't been able to get there. One of my friends from Georgia has indicated he called for weeks and weeks to see if he could get an appointment and had been unable to.

So this is our opportunity to come to the floor and actually speak without all of the craziness and the hoopla and the political bantering.

I did notice last week on the floor right over there at that podium with an easel behind some friends across the aisle, Democrat after Democrat got up, and they had a poster and they kept pointing out and finishing their comments by saying, it has been so many days, where is their solution?

I would like to point my Democratic friends to the fact that if they are looking for the Republican solutions, we have many of them. We have tried to give them to them. We have tried to get them to the floor. We have tried to get them to be brought up in committees, because there are really some excellent solutions to health care reform, some great bills that actually do reform, instead of this stuff that is being attempted now.

Anyway, I want my friends across the aisle to know that if you are coming to the floor of the House of Representatives and asking where is the Republican solution, well, even though there are dozens and dozens of excellent proposals, solutions in bills, and I have one myself, they will not find those here on the floor of the House, because they control the House.

The Speaker controls the House. The Speaker has unbelievable power to influence the Rules Committee in what she believes. No matter who is Speaker, that Speaker has fantastic power to influence the Rules Committee. Then the Rules Committee has absolute power, despite what the Speaker says, to do what they wish.

Unfortunately, the Democratic friends can come to the floor of the House all they want to and say where is the Republican plan, where is their solution, and there won't be one here, because they have been effective in preventing us from bringing our solutions to the floor.

So I hope that that spirit of political bantering that they continually brought here, speaker after speaker, where is the Republican solution, they still don't have one, when are you going to bring one; it won't be found on the floor while they are in the majority. If they would like to give the majority back, like they are apparently working on, we will be glad to take that and immediately bring so many of the wonderful solutions that have been proposed.

I heard a wonderful comment recently. Someone said the Democratic leadership say they want to reform health care. What they are trying to do is deform it. I would have to agree.

I note, also, that so much of the Democratic bills are proposing to have payment coming for those bills from cuts in Medicare that they say will be found in waste, fraud, and abuse.

Well, if they know there is that much in waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care system, then aren't the Congress, the House and the Senate, and the President being accessories if we don't bring that fraud to the attention of the other lawmakers so that we can immediately do something about it? Why would anybody want to allow fraud to continue unabated, costing taxpayers billions and billions and, they say, hundreds of billions of dollars, and they are not going to do anything about it unless we first give them this health care deform, or reform, as you may wish?

Now, for so long the only bill we had was H.R. 3200. This is half of it. The other half is in the other notebook I have here. And I divided it up so it was easier to carry. I was afraid that the way things have played out in the past with the crap-and-trade bill and also the stimulus bill and land omnibus that so much would be brought to the floor without the opportunity to properly review those things. And, of course, as we know in the crap-and-trade bill, it came to the floor the morning that 300 pages of amendments were filed around 3:08, 3:09 a.m. And right here from this podium, I had made a parliamentary inquiry, which we are allowed to do when there's a legitimate parliamentary question, I wanted to know where can I find a copy of the 300 pages of amendments.

Because, after all, normally right outside here in the Speaker's lobby, there are tables out there and they have copies of whatever we are taking up that day. There were no copies of the amendments out there. So I came on the floor, looked around at the Democratic whip table, the Republican whip table. There was no copy to be found anywhere. So I made a parliamentary inquiry as to whether or not we were supposed to have a copy of the amendments since we were actually voting on them right then. And I was told initially by the Speaker, well, there is a copy at the desk. And one of my Democratic friends came up and set four copies of something on the bottom level of the Clerk's table and then pointed to those. So I thought, well, I guess those are copies that they just brought in. So I went there, checked. They were not copies of the amendments. It was the minority report, two copies of that, and two copies of the thousand-plus-page bill, but none of the amendments.

So I came back, made another parliamentary inquiry, and was told that there was one copy of the amendments at the desk. I made further inquiry because I'd been to the desk and couldn't find them, and I was pointed to the chair of the individual who actually had the copy, and she was dutifully going through the original copy of the bill and had the only copy anywhere about these parts of the amendments. And where the amendment would say at page such and such, delete line so and so, insert line so and so, and it would have injected language, she was inserting the language, lining out those.

So we know that kind of stuff goes on, that we vote on things that nobody could read together in one bill because there wasn't even an official copy of the entire bill here.

I made a further parliamentary inquiry since there was not an assimilated copy of the whole because, as you go through these bills and they're constantly referring to other sections, unless you have the correct language of the other sections, you can't really effectively read the bill.

So, anyway, we got this bill, H.R. 3200. There's no telling how many hundreds or thousands of hours that have been spent by individuals across this country reviewing it. I think many more outside Congress have reviewed it than inside. And I didn't the first week or so start going through and reading the bill because I was afraid there would be another 3:08 amendment that would massively change the thing. But then I figured this would give us an indication of where things were trying to be taken. And we heard repeatedly from the President, from leaders here, that if you like your health insurance policy, you're not going to lose it.

Well, page 16 of H.R. 3200 deals with that issue. And so that I am not accused of playing politics, I will just read this section. It's the ``Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Insurance.'' That's section 102 of page 16 of H.R. 3200. Subsection (a), ``Grandfathered Health Insurance Coverage Defined: Subject to the succeeding provisions of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under this division, the term `grandfathered health insurance coverage' means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met,'' Y1 being the year that this health care plan kicks in. Subdivision (1), ``Limitation on New Enrollment. A, In general, except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering

such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.''

That means, of course, if an insurance policy adds an additional insured, someone else comes to work for the company who has bought this insurance and is added to the policy, the policy is gone. It's not grandfathered. It doesn't meet the exception here. And it does have B, Dependent Coverage, you can add a dependent if it's a dependent of someone already on the policy.

Then subsection (2) of A, ``Limitation on Changes in Terms or Conditions.'' This is a good one. ``Subject to paragraph (3) and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1.''

``Restrictions on Premium Increases,'' that's subparagraph (3). ``The issuer cannot vary the percentage increase in the premium for a risk group of enrollees in specific grandfathered health insurance coverage without changing the premium for all enrollees in the same risk group at the same time as specified by the Commissioner.'' That's about more Federal control for sure.

Anyway, look at number 1 and number 2. And I was talking to some constituents. One was quite proud of his retirement policy from a large company that's been very successful here in the United States, and he says, Our union was very effective in getting us a very good policy. They've been very reasonable; so our company is very profitable, doing very well, and we have got great health insurance as retirees, and it looks great for the future, so I'm not really worried about having health care coverage. It doesn't affect me what you guys do. I've still got good coverage.

Wrong. He had not read page 16 regarding the grandfathered health insurance that he would be allowed to keep.

So I asked him, Will there be any additional people retiring that will be added to your policy?

He said, Well, of course. They retire all time.

There goes your policy. Because on page 16 it says you can't add another individual. You can't enroll another individual. So if you have more people retire from your wonderful company, then they're added to policy, your policy is gone, and you're kicked over under the Federal plan. So that brings us to here. I thought people ought to know that.

And I have heard some friends, wonderful Senators down the hall who had the best of intentions who said, well, you know, if we take out the public option, I think we could get this agreed to. I have heard some other Republicans indicate similar things.

The problem is they must not have read the Baucus bill or the House bill because this bill is not about health insurance coverage, it is about a government takeover, whether there is a public option in it or not.

How about page 21 of H.R. 3200. This is section 113, B, Study and Reports, one study, commissioner in coordination with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Labor shall conduct, that is shall, meaning they have to, conduct a study of the large group insured and self-insured employer health care markets. Such studies shall examine the following: the types of employers by key characteristics, include size that purchased insured products versus those that self-insure.

Key characteristics are not defined. The government will decide what is a key characteristic of the individual's particular business. Maybe they need to know how much you keep in inventory in your business; how much you are paying your best employees in your little mom and pop business, we are going to study those under this. It is going to be required. Shall study.

It will compare the similarities and differences between typical insured and self-insured health plans. It will study, under C, the financial solvency and capital reserve levels of employers that self- insure by employer size. So we are not just going to look at the big ones, we will look at them by virtue of size. We will look at their financial solvency; how are they doing.

And since the Federal Government has never balanced any business activity that it has undertaken, this is going to be a real stretch as we send Federal agents into businesses around the country to help them figure out if they are making good decisions that are going to help them stay solvent so they can be sure to provide for their employers.

How about D, the risk of self-insured employers being able to pay obligations or otherwise becoming financially insolvent. How do you like that? The government is going to send in somebody to analyze your business for you to help you figure out if you are at risk.

I yield to my friend from North Carolina.

If I can follow up on that point, the gentlelady raises a wonderful point. Here we are in the government. We are going to send out people to help examine businesses to see if they are making good decisions, and yet the biggest spender, the biggest risk to the entire country is the Federal Reserve. We can't even get a look at what they are spending, but they are going to come in. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that revolutions are started over. The government will not let anybody know what they are doing. The Federal Reserve is scared to death that this Congress and the people in America will find out what businesses, what banks, what guarantees they have made, what money they have spent.

There has to be some pretty scary stuff for them to fight so hard to not open up their books so we can see what the Federal Reserve is doing, and yet at the same time we want to help people examine their businesses. And it brings again the wonderful example of flood insurance to the fore. That is there were numerous private insurance companies who were selling flood insurance. If this sounds familiar, it should.

The Federal Government said we are going to add a Federal option because we are not sure that the private insurance companies are being fair enough in what they are charging for flood insurance. So the Federal Government provided a Federal option. Well, the Federal Government began immediately running into the red because it was willing to take very little to insure people whose homes were constantly blown away by hurricanes and floods. Yes, build back, we will pay again next year.

So what has happened, they drove the private insurance companies out of business because they cannot continue to operate in the red like the Federal Government does. And continues to do, but there will be a day of reckoning. Instead, it drove the private companies out. It didn't provide an option. What it provided was ultimately there was no option. There is where we are today. There is the Federal Government's flood insurance, and the others got out of the business. That is where we see this headed.

That is why when we hear about a public option, a federally funded co-op, and even if they say we can work a compromise, we will put a trigger in. We will put it back here, we're sure it won't happen, but just in case there will be a trigger and it will kick in. Give me a break. Those triggers always happen, and the Federal Government takes over that whole issue.

People need to know the kind of stuff that is in here.

One other unbelievable thing, and I say ``unbelievable'' because we can't say anybody is lying, I guess, but we are told that this Federal plan is about providing people more options. Well, go to page 84 of H.R. 3200. You want to find out about more options, page 84, this says the commissioner shall specify the benefits to be made available

under exchange participating health benefit plans during each plan year consistent with subtitle C of title I of this section. It sets out what plans the commissioner will set up the conditions for, the terms of, and there will be one basic plan. The entity offers only one basic plan for such service area. So many areas in the country may have one policy offered. One policy. Now initially there will be insurance companies that want to try to participate who can offer that one policy, but there will be no flexibility. There is one policy and that's what they have to offer or they can't offer any insurance.

So instead of having the big, thick booklet like all Federal employees, including Members of Congress, have, they give us these great choices. Many insurance companies, many different types of policies. Now what you will have is a little bitty pamphlet that says here is the basic plan, and here are the companies that offer it. Now if you offer one basic plan and you want to go further, you can offer one enhanced plan, but you have to make that comply. They will all be the same, meeting the conditions that the commissioner sets out. And if you offer a basic and an enhanced plan, then you can offer a premium plan for that particular area.

So there is a optional offering for premium plus plans if you offer those three. You could have some areas where they have four or five policies. That is possible. They will be the same policies. Now there are over a thousand policies. Then we will have--probably most areas will have two or three at the most. Some will have one policy with different people offering it.

But there are provisions in here, there is some good language for an ACORN-type group or ACORN because this requires the commissioner shall, on page 99 and page 100, assist exchange eligible individuals in selecting exchange participating health benefit plans and obtaining benefits through such plans.

And then it says, The commissioner may work with other appropriate entities to facilitate the dissemination of information in this subsection, provide assistance described in paragraph two.

So they can hire ACORN folks to go out and give people the information they want them to have--hopefully not telling them how to set up prostitution rings, but probably try to confine themselves just to the health care. But ACORN is paid to do so many different things, it's reasonable to figure that they may give advice on several things at the same time, perhaps would tell you how to avoid tax problems for your prostitution ring, and then we'll tell you about how to sign up for the Federal plan as well. But anyway, that's all in there.

This is not about choices, though. This is going to eliminate choices like have never been eliminated in our country's history.

I will yield to my friend.

Reclaiming my time, I absolutely got that reaction from people. They didn't believe it. And that's why I would carry my copy of the bill and say, Here, you read it. You figure it out, because these are smart people and they would figure it out.

But let me tell you, most people wouldn't even get this far. But if you could get clear over to page 828 of the bill, this does not impose a tax. I want to be clear about that. The President is right, there is no new tax here. This is called a fee. It's a fee, not a tax, according to the proponents of this bill.

Anyway, section 4375, There is hereby imposed on each specified health insurance policy for each policy year a fee--not a tax, a fee-- equal to the fair share per capita amount determined under section 9511(c)(1) multiplied by the average number of lives covered under the policy. The fee imposed by subsection A to be paid by the issuer.

That means there will be a fee, or, the truth is, many of us do call fees taxes. Some like to call them contributions. And I think that's very noble that we have people out there that make contributions on April 15 of each year to whatever whims happen to come before the Congress. But anyway, that is there. There are fees. There are lots of other fees mentioned.

But I'll tell you one of the most astounding things that I heard. It came a few weeks ago, is we know that the President, in his speech in this room, right there at that second level--at the second level, not the top, because we all know in here, this is the people's House, the Senate joins us, the President is not allowed to come in here without an invitation. And so we extended a unanimous invitation from the House, a unanimous invitation from the Senate. I thought about objecting if he was just going to come berate us, but as a Christian, I got to thinking, you know, what if he's coming to extend an olive branch and since the first time since March allow a Republican to have some input into this bill--even though we've been shut out for so long. What if he's coming in and saying, You know what, I heard the American people during August. I saw them rise up. I saw how upset they were, and I heard them, as I said I would over and over and over and over when I was running, and you know what? I want to work with you. I'm going to reopen the White House, and we'll start tonight as soon as this is over. We can just have an informal sit-down downstairs over in the New Visitor Center somewhere. Let's talk about this, you know, something to indicate that we were really going to work together. But instead, the President came in--and these are all words that he used in his speech. He said that those of us who are critical of the Democrat proposal are not engaged in honest debate. He said we were using scare tactics. He said we were making bogus claims. He said we were making wild claims.

The President said we were engaged in demagoguery, distortion, acrimony. Those are all words he used and leveled at us. He said we were cynical and irresponsible, that facts and reason are thrown overboard, that we were robbing the country of this opportunity, that we were killing--he used that word, ``killing''--his good bill. And then two sentences before Joe Wilson used the ``L'' word, the President used the ``L'' word first when he said, That's a lie, plain and simple.

It's unfortunate that the President would come in throwing words around like that. We have rules against that kind of thing. The President doesn't have to play by the rules, as we saw by the Auto Task Force, doesn't have to play by the laws. You can always get the Congress to look the other way. You can always get judiciary to look the other way, find a lazy bankruptcy judge to sign stuff so he doesn't have to have all the hearings. And then one of the Supreme Court judges, bless her heart, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, put a freeze on for 24 hours. That was lifted off. All of the checks and balances the Founders put in place were completely emasculated, abrogated. There were no checks and balances. So the President's Auto Task Force was free to violate the law in so many ways, and did.

And here we're coming at it again, same kind of deal. But the unbelievable quote that I heard a few weeks ago, having been told by the President if we misrepresent his bill, he's going to call us out? I mean, those are fighting words. He's going to call us out? I'm not even sure I know what that means. In the old West, that meant you're going to have a duel. I guess that's what Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr did. And that was over the issue of candor and honesty and comments that had been made.

So I felt like I was being demonized by the President because I've been reading from H.R. 3200, and at the time we had no other Democratic bill. So in

a meeting with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Sebelius, very gracious person, I had the opportunity to ask her in front of a number of other Members, since the President has constantly referred to this bill, my bill, this plan, my plan, used those words many, many times, said we would be called out if we misrepresented it, I said, Where can I get a copy of the President's bill so I can be sure not to misrepresent it? Her exact words were, I think he is talking about a set of principles. There is no bill. The President has no bill.

Now, they're working feverishly, apparently, behind closed doors. That does violate his promise that it would all be open, be covered on C-SPAN, all this stuff, that everybody would get to see the discussion so they could feel comfortable about the health care bill coming. None of that has happened. None of that has happened.

And so we come back to this point--that I know the gentlelady from North Carolina has looked into as well--about how many people don't have insurance, and we're told, at most, 15 percent. You're going to destroy health care as we know it, the best health care ever created in any country in the history of the world, because 15 percent of the population needs some assistance?

Are you going to change everything else?

Then we get down to brass tacks, and it turns out actually, if you take out illegal aliens and people who could afford the health insurance but who are young and who don't think they'll be sick so they don't buy it, then it may be as few as 3 to 5 percent that we're talking about. Dramatic drops. I mean it could be that 3 to 5 percent for which you're going to throw out the whole health care system the way we've come to know it when it just needs some serious things fixed. Throw out the whole thing?

I grew up in East Texas. I've lived in East Texas all my life, except for the 4 years when I was in the Army, because I love East Texas wisdom.

I had a guy in East Texas tell me--he said, You know, you're going to throw out the whole health care system because a small percentage of people don't have health insurance? He said, When my ice maker broke, I didn't remodel the kitchen. I fixed the ice maker.

That's pretty logical. Why don't we concentrate on those who need some help and concentrate on what needs fixing? Instead, the information that we've been able to get indicates we're still going to have a vast number of people who will not have insurance once this bill is passed.

Oh, there's one other thing I wanted to mention. I see the gentlewoman from North Carolina has some wonderful posters.

I've heard friends from across the aisle repeatedly come to the floor and talk about all of the money that lobbyists are spending on health care lobbying and that they're just all over Washington. Well, it's interesting because they don't call me or my Republican friends. In fact, I had heard that some of them--and it has been reported in the news--that they've been told, if you talk to a Republican, don't expect to talk to me, and we're the ones who are making the decisions.

So, when they talk about all of the lobbyists' efforts in Washington, they're not directed towards Republicans, because they know we've got some great bills and that we've got some things that will fix the problems instead of create more problems. They're not coming to us. They're going to the Democrats. That's who they're going to, and that's the way the Democrats want it. Don't go to Republicans, say some of them. Just make sure you come to us.

So, anyway, I want to yield to my friend from North Carolina.

I thank my friend from North Carolina for some wonderful insights. It does get very frustrating being a Member of the House of Representatives, because, I know, so much history, it never ceases to be an honor to get to serve here where so many wonderful, caring, selfless people have.

But at times you just wonder, do the American people not realize the power that they have to change what goes on in this body? The old adage is true: democracy ensures people are governed no better than they deserve. What breaks my heart is that the American people for too long have deserved a very poor government, apparently, because they have not gotten a very good government.

When my friend from North Carolina brings up the automatic increases in spending every year, that is an issue that crosses party lines. Of course, when the Republicans took Congress, the majority, in 1994, then they worked very hard and they pushed the President, President Clinton. There was a lot of friction between the Congress and the President, but the Congress prevailed. We got a balanced budget and the President ultimately signed on. We got some accountability.

Then the Republicans got the White House in 2000 and began to have both the House, Senate and the White House. Spending got a little bit giddy. It was unfortunate. I know in 2006, while Republicans were still in the majority, that I was pushing for a zero baseline budget. What that means is we eliminate the automatic increases in every department in the Federal Government, and you start with zero increase. Because the game that's played in this town is you increase automatically every year. If you decrease a little bit from the automatic increase, than you are considered mean-spirited, that you are hurting people by making these draconian cuts when actually it's a decrease to the increase but not a decrease overall.

In 2006, when I pushed my zero baseline budget bill, my Republican leadership friends did not allow that bill to come to the floor. It didn't get voted on. It didn't get fixed. That certainly was not allowed when I re-filed it in the last Congress, and it doesn't look like this Democratic leadership this time will allow it either. But that's the kind of thing we are talking about.

The games that are played around here, this is in page 149 of H.R. 3200, section 313 is entitled in bold letters, all capital letters, ``Employer Contributions in Lieu of Coverage.'' Most thinking people would call those tax, but this says it's an 8 percent tax, or it says it's an 8 percent contribution to the Federal Government.

In any event, we need transparency. The government, it seems these days, is rarely right. But the health insurance companies have not been right. As I explained to some folks in the health insurance business, they say they're in the health insurance business, but what we have in this country is not really health insurance; it's health management.

Insurance is what very few people had. When I was growing up in a small east Texas town, Mount Pleasant, very few people had health insurance. But some people did, and they would pay a little bitty premium, sometimes monthly, sometimes quarterly. That little bitty tiny health insurance premium would ensure against some unforeseeable event in the future, a catastrophic accident or illness that you just couldn't foresee, so you paid a premium just in case that ever came. That's called insurance.

When you buy car insurance, you are ensuring against an unforeseeable event, an accident that you might have someday, or somebody hit you and they're not covered with the insurance. Something you can't foresee, you pay a premium in order to have that.

But with health insurance over the years, that got adjusted. It became not health insurance, but it became health management, so that big health insurance companies began to manage health care. They would cut deals with doctors. And I know Blue Cross has just forced them down to where some of them are getting hurt, but they continue the threat of, Well, we'll include these other doctors over here if you don't sign on, and then you'll be out of the loop, and we're the biggest health insurance folks on the block, so you'll be out of our loop; and they are able to talk them down.

Well, it's good to talk people down in price if it's the fair thing to do. But normally all of that has to be transparent and above board to be effective

and to work. We don't have transparency in the health care business these days.

You can't just ask a hospital chief executive officer, as I have, how much a hospital room costs and get an answer, because they either don't know or it depends on whether it is the insurance company, the Federal Government, somebody paying cash, all these kinds of things. But I know from one personal relative, the bills they had for 2 days of hospital care was around $10,000, and the health insurance company satisfied every one of them, paid in full all $10,000 in costs, with $800 from the insurance company. That is the kind of transparency we need. But that kind of transparency right now is protected by contracts, and the State and Federal law have continued to allow that kind of thing to go on. We need transparency.

For those that wondered, I have mentioned a solution. The bill I filed, H.R. 3478, deals with these issues. First of all, when you heard the President talk about his health care plan, the Democrats down the hall have talked about their plan, and at first they were so excited because it was going to come to just under $900 billion. Then we find out we made a mistake; it is going to be over $1 trillion. Whether it is the President's plan, over $1 trillion, or the Baucus bill, over $1 trillion, whatever it is, even around $1 trillion, the last numbers we got from the census indicated there were about 119 million households in America.

If you divide 119 million households into $1.19 trillion in the Democratic health care bill, the cost, because it is going to be around there--some have said it might be closer to $2 trillion. They are probably right, but we don't know, they don't know, we don't know. But if you divide that by the number of households in America, then it is an extra $10,000 average per household for the Democrat new bill. And that doesn't even cover all the people they are saying need to be covered. It still leaves a gap, people uncovered.

So we need to get back to health insurance that people can afford that will get the health insurance companies back into the health insurance business. Of course, many of them came rushing to the White House and said they needed a seat at the table. I tried to explain, whether it is the AMA, the American Hospital Association, or individual health insurance companies, that you don't need a seat at the table when you are on the menu and your profession will be devoured. You may be able to negotiate it to be the third or fourth course, but are still going to be devoured. You don't want a seat at that table.

Anyway, my bill, when I saw that Medicare itself was apparently costing around $10,000 average for every household in America to pay for a very small percentage of our population who needed health insurance, our seniors, for Medicare and Medicaid, over $10,000 now apparently being paid per household average for that small part to have health care through Medicare and Medicaid, when I saw that, I thought, my goodness, this is outrageous.

I know my mother and other people pay all this extra money for supplemental coverage, wraparound coverage of Medicare. For what we are paying for Medicare and Medicaid, we would be better off to give them cash money, say, $3,500 for a household with more than one person in it getting Medicare and Medicaid and SCHIP, just give them $3,500 cash in a health savings account they control with a debit card that can only be used for health care, and then buy them health insurance that covers anything that is not elective. We can't be paying for people if they want liposuction, things like that. But if it is necessary health care, then provide insurance to cover everything beyond the $3,500, and buy them that insurance.

Now, I have a bill we have been trying to get scored since August 19th. We have been trying. We have had all of the Republican prominent people involved in the committees--the Joint Tax Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee. They have all been begging CBO to give a value to my plan. It also deals with illegal aliens and with people coming in who want visas. They would have to have health insurance. It gives transparency. It is a great bill.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 55 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, October 27, 2009, at 10:30 a.m., for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased that this bill will apparently benefit people in the San Francisco Bay Area with water. As I understand it, I think we have some leadership on the majority side that is from that area. And that's wonderful that they'll benefit with water, but it is deeply troubling to hear people come to this floor and start trying to blame the past administration for water problems in California.

At what point are people going to acknowledge, you know what? The Democratic majority, we're in the majority as Democrats. We took control over 2\1/2\ years ago, and we're responsible here. We have had an opportunity to do something about this for over 2 years, and we have not done anything because the majority leadership has chosen not to do anything.

My friend Devin Nunes recruited me over 2 years ago. He had me look at this, and I saw how the smelt were being protected, and that's fine. But the smelt, the 2-inch minnow, while people are starving, the land is starving, the people are starving, they're losing their jobs.

When Devin brought this to my attention, it smelt badly back then. It smelt badly a year ago. It's smelt badly all this year, and now, my friends, it stinks. It's time to have open rules that allow us to bring water to everyone who needs it.

Mr. Speaker, earlier this afternoon we heard the chairman of the Education Committee really fiery and passionate, fussing, looking over at this side talking about Republicans playing politics and how this side over here had been playing politics with the water bill. There is nothing in playing politics when you are talking about tens of thousands of people being out of work and an important part of the country not being able to produce.

What would be playing politics is when the chairman of the committee finds out that someone opposing the water bill from California has a motion to recognize the University of California, Irvine, for winning the NCAA national championship in men's volleyball and pulls the bill because he opposes the chairman's bill. My friends, that's playing politics, and it is outrageous.

Let's stop the games and get to the work of the people.

Mr. Speaker, a leading Scottish businesswoman and board member of the global charity Mercy Ships, Ann Gloag is being honored by the National Council of Women of the United States this evening at the United Nations as the inaugural recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Humanitarian Award in recognition of her humanitarian service in Africa.

The reason someone from east Texas would take note of this philanthropic humanitarian from Scotland is because she has done so much for Mercy Ships. It may surprise some that such an oceangoing charitable enterprise would have an international headquarters in my east Texas district, but it does, due to its founders.

Mercy Ships uses hospital ships to deliver free, world class health services to those without access in the developing world. Founded in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens, Mercy Ships has worked in more than 70 countries, providing life-saving and life-enhancing services to more than 2.16 million direct beneficiaries.

More than 1,200 crew work worldwide, representing more than 40 nations. They're joined each year by 2,000 short-term volunteers. Professionals, including surgeons, dentists, nurses, health care trainers, teachers, cooks, seamen, engineers, and agriculturists donate their time and skill to that effort. I've seen the results of the enormous charitable work this institution does, and it is gloriously moving.

As for the devoted Ms. Gloag, she has supported various charitable organizations, providing much needed medical care, housing, and education in Africa for over 30 years. In addition to establishing the Balcraig Foundation, the Gloag Foundation, and the Freedom from Fistula Foundation, Ms. Gloag has worked with Mercy Ships, including the funding of the Africa Mercy Ship, the world's largest nongovernmental hospital ship providing free medical and humanitarian aid to the people of Africa.

Through partnerships in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Kenya, the Freedom from Fistula Foundation alone is providing free surgeries to more than 1,500 women this year. In her home of Scotland, Ms. Gloag has already been honored for her work with Mercy Ships and has worked with the Scottish Government to promote its international development work in Malawi, where Ms. Gloag has also helped to establish a hospital.

Named for the American civil rights activist who helped form the National Council of Women of the United States, the Susan B. Anthony Humanitarian Award will be conferred annually on individuals dedicated to making a difference in people's lives, communities, or state of the world.

Don Stephens, founder and president of Mercy Ships, comments, ``Mercy Ships champions the selection of Scotland's Ann Gloag as the inaugural recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Humanitarian Award by the National Council of Women of the United States. Ann exemplifies a modern example of Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller, who almost delighted to use their wealth to assist the world's poorest. On board our new hospital ship Africa Mercy, I have personally observed Ann demonstrating her compassion for others at the bedsides of women and children who received a free surgery on the ship that she helped fund. In parts of Africa, health care infrastructure and delivery is nonexistent. Ann enabled Mercy Ships to bring hope and healing where it is otherwise often not available. Ann has found a powerful way to share her blessings.''

We must congratulate Ms. Gloag for caring so deeply and acting so generously, responsibly, and personally to make such a difference in the world. May God bless Ann Gloag as she has so richly blessed others around the world.

Absolutely correct. Texans will be devastated. I understand a lot of folks aren't concerned about what affects Texans, but Texans are. But you have to look across the country at the way it affects overall the Nation, and this is devastating.

I wanted to follow up on something my friends were talking about with regard to the costs of Medicare and Medicaid. We had just heard earlier tonight from my friend from New York, that, gee, the actual overhead cost of Medicare is, he said 3.5 percent, and the overhead cost for insurance companies is 30 percent.

I don't know where he is getting those numbers. The numbers that I have seen, the numbers I have gotten from reports here, I have got them in front of me, indicate it may be 3 percent or so for Medicare average, but that is not all-inclusive of their costs, and private insurance averages around 12 percent.

But Medicare, as this article notes, Medicare is devoted to serving a population that is elderly and therefore in need of greater levels of medical care, and it generates significantly higher expenditures than private insurance plans, thus making administrative

costs smaller as a percentage of total costs. This creates the appearance that Medicare is a model of administrative efficiency.

But what John Alter sees as a miracle is really just a statistical sleight of hand. This notes that private insurers have a number of additional expenditures falling into the category of administrative costs, like taxes that they have to pay that Medicare does not pay.

Additionally, when you compare the administrative costs on a per- person basis, Medicare is dramatically less efficient than private insurance plans. And, as this article notes, Medicare's administrative costs from 2001 to 2005 were, on a per-person basis, 24.8 percent higher on average than private insurance. So when they talk about adding millions of more people on a Federal plan, you add that additional per-person amount, it is going to be dramatic.

My friend from Pennsylvania asked that I yield.

And John Stossel had made that point well and referred to the Cato Institute, that 10 to 20 percent of private insurance administrative costs goes to preventing fraud because the private insurers care about whether or not they lose money. But, on the other hand, as he points out, Medicare is just taxpayer money, so they haven't been as concerned with waste, fraud and abuse.

From my days as a judge, what we saw was when somebody knows where there is fraud going on and they have a duty to do something about it and don't, they are accessories to the fraud. So it grieves me much to hear leaders around this town in the majority and the administration at the White House saying, if you will pass this bill, we will cut out the waste, fraud and abuse, and that will pay for $500 billion in cuts. Why don't you quit being an accessory and cut it where it is?

I have just got to mention this. I was talking to a senior that I consider a very wise individual, and this weekend she said, You know what concerns me about the $500 billion in cuts to Medicare? Maybe not, but I can't help but think, they know that as seniors, we have been through World War II, we have seen the evils that lurk in this world. We have gained great wisdom from our years. And they are willing to let us die off more quickly so that we are not around to try to get our wisdom across to the young people of what is at risk by this government takeover.

I've driven further than that to get cheaper gasoline. I've driven a lot further. In fact, I'm a guy that when I get my gasoline and I turn off the pump, I will still make sure I get all the gas out of that hose into my car that I paid for. Americans do that kind of thing when it matters.

I doubt that if anybody's got my credit card and paying for my gas that they'd go to that much trouble that I do when I'm paying for it. But I'll tell you, to follow up on what's been discussed here and mentioned about health savings accounts, even yesterday we had people across the aisle coming to this floor and saying, Republicans have no solutions. And I don't care how many times they say it, it is still not true. As my friends have been talking about, we have some plans.

I have a bill that uses the HSA, the health savings account, as the method of getting health care on track, of getting patients the power they haven't had in years, the coverage they haven't had in years, or ever. And we had people on the floor from across the aisle just saying yesterday and today that we want people to get on Medicare; we have no alternative to that. They need to read some of our proposals.

My bill, it gives seniors an option. You can stay on Medicare or we will give you money every year in a health savings account and pay for the catastrophic care to cover everything above that. You won't need supplemental. You won't need wrap-around, and we'll give you that choice, because I know where they're going to go, and when we incentivize the young like we do in my bill, like my friend Dr. Roe was talking about, that is going to get the young people on there. So as they get older, they will have accumulated, most of them, so much in their HSA they're not going to want anybody from the government interfering in their health care.

Sure.

If the gentleman would yield, another thing that does is it gets transparency back in the process, because when you come in with an empowered HSA debit card and you tell them, as Dr. Roe did, give me your best price, and under my bill, it requires that they give everybody exactly what the prices are in advance. And if Blue Cross is getting a better price, they have to tell you that, too. And then you would say, well, you either give me the Blue Cross price or I'm going down the street where they will. It gets competition back in when you get that transparency. We have that in our alternative bills that are not getting the chance here on the floor.

Thank you for yielding.

Let me just tell you about some of the problems with the rules that we in the minority have encountered here this year. It is amazing just how grossly unfair and closed and partisan the rule usage has been in this body.

Now, for example, CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, has been hailed for years and years as one of the most fair and suprapartisan-- they're above being partisan--entities that there is in Washington, D.C. And many people will recall, I'm sure, that after a tough thumping that H.R. 3200 got as just how costly it was going to be, as CBO had estimated, the head of CBO was called over to the White House, to the White House woodshed, apparently. Behind closed doors and lots of guards, there was a discussion we weren't privy to. But lo and behold, CBO seems to be much more lenient now in looking the other way on some things and coming out with scoring that we wouldn't have thought was possible.

But if you go back to early in the summer, as my friends here know, I have had a health care plan that is an alternative. It's a solution. It came from listening, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours to people that knew exactly what they were talking about and putting it together in a plan. Then we were trying to get the plan into bill form. We were told that I was not on the committee of jurisdiction, and therefore there just wasn't much chance of getting that done.

But we were also told you cannot get a bill scored unless it has been put in bill form by Legislative Counsel's office. And the Legislative Counsel's office is the one that said, Look, we've got so many submittals, there is no way we're going to get to that any time soon.

So we kept pushing and pushing because we had to get it in bill form because we were told that unless you get your plan in bill form--not a concept like the Senate has done. How ridiculous is that? A concept. You vote on a concept? Excuse me. There needs to be language that you fight over. You can't have a staffer come in at the last minute or some--maybe ACORN is going to help them with that, too, but you can't do that.

So, anyway, we fought for a couple of months. We finally, with the help of Ranking Member Joe Barton and others in our party saying please get this into a bill form, the last week of July the Legislative Counsel's office was able to get it in bill form. We were able to get it worked on and then get it filed on July 31st.

Well, in August, we started requesting that, now that it was in bill form, please, CBO, would you score our bill because we were told you couldn't get it scored until it was a bill, so we got it into bill form. And then we were told, Well, you know what? You're not on the committee of jurisdiction, so we may not be able to get to that. So again Ranking Member Joe Barton made a request, and we were told it was in the queue back in August.

Then in September I was told, Well, you don't have a request from the Joint Tax Committee. Our ranking member on that is Dave Camp, so I talked to Dave. Wonderful guy. Dave made the request as the ranking member of the Joint Tax Committee, so then we got that request in in September.

So imagine my surprise when Senator Baucus comes up with a concept-- not a bill, a concept--and lo and behold they're able to score his concept even though there is no language there, and they go through these mock hearings over a concept without having the actual language and vote on a concept. It's my understanding that the definitive language is still not there yet.

So, anyway, we know that CBO, the way they've been able to phrase it, the media has been able to come out and say, Wow, this is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but it's really not going to hurt us financially. Man, that woodshedding at the White House must have really done a lot of good for the White House. That's all I can figure.

But let me also say this to anyone who has ears. Anyone who comes to this House floor and says, The Republicans, we've reached out to them, but they have no solutions, they have no proposal, is either a very, very ignorant person who will not avail themselves of the vast amount of information around on our proposals and our solutions or they are misrepresenting the truth. That's just the way it is. And we hear that over and over. Gee, we have reached out to the Republicans. They've got no solutions. They've got no proposals.

The President himself said that on Monday before he came in here to this joint session. He said, You've heard all the lies, and what are their proposals, what are their plans? I'll tell you, they don't have any. Well, he was either being very ignorant or he was misrepresenting the facts. And it may be that he really didn't know, that whoever put that information in the teleprompter, he was just dutifully reading it and he really didn't know one way or the other. So I want to be fair about that.

In any event, when we hear all of this stuff about the fairness and reaching out, it was my understanding that the President has not invited a Republican since March to come to the White House and talk about health care. If that's different, I would love to know the facts.

I know the President stood right up here and said, you know, If you have solutions, my door is open. And apparently, you know, I don't have any way to dispel that. I'm sure he was being honest, if that is true, his door is open, but the problem is they have so many massive gates and so many heavily armed guards between us and that open door at the Oval Office that we can't get to the open door, and so that makes it problematic.

But anyway, these are some of the frustrations we've been dealing with lately. And I'm hoping maybe CBO will end up being able to score my bill sometime before the end of the session, a year and a half from now. It's just hard to know. But it is amazing how they were able to find time to score something that wasn't even a bill after I was told we can't score it unless it is. But anyway, apparently there's a lot of flexibility there after you go to the woodshed at the White House.

And with that, I will yield back to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate our dear chairman from Missouri, Chairman Skelton. He commented that we are at war, this is deadly serious, and he is right. Our troops need our support, and having been in the Army at Fort Benning at a time when we were being cut in the late 1970s, I am very sensitive to that. But our troops are fighting for freedom as well.

Bringing a hate crimes bill that is based on two false premises and putting it on the backs of our soldiers is wrong. It should not be done. We have heard from a majority Member that if we vote this down, the hate crimes will be pulled off, and then we can vote for the pay raise that these people justly deserve. There is no escalation in hate crime numbers. The FBI statistics show they have been continually going down. This would not change the outcome of the Matthew Shepard case. They got life; the maximum here is life. In the James Byrd case, the two most culpable got the death penalty; the maximum here is life. All this would do is bring that penalty down.

This is based on false assumptions. It should not be added to our soldiers' backs. Let's get a clean bill.

Well, we've done it. Today was a landmark day. This body took the body of our military and attached to that body, as they were fighting, a gay rights agenda. I say ``gay rights agenda'' about this hate crimes bill because there is already a hate crimes bill. It was part of the 1968 Civil Rights Act. It included things like race, creed, color, national origin. So that was there already.

So what we have done indicates this body has no shame. You know, we will take our military fighting for us, and attach a gay rights agenda to get it accomplished. You know, what's next? Where else do we go? What shame is there left? I guess there's more to be seen.

Madam Speaker, today we had a conference report after just voting to send the matter to conference last night on the Defense authorization bill.

This authorizes what is being done in the military. On the backs of our soldiers is put the hate crimes bill. That is unbelievable. As if our soldiers don't have enough to do, we are going to put social bills like that on their shoulders and say, If you don't pass this to help the soldiers, then we are going to say, gee, you're against the soldiers.

It's outrageous. They deserve better treatment. They deserve a straight-up vote on the Defense authorization without a hate crimes bill that will be, when coupled with 18 U.S.C. 2(a), the mechanism to muzzle ministers. I stood with dozens of African American ministers out here who knew they would be muzzled under this bill. It's not the right thing to do.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate my friend from Massachusetts comparing the national parks bill to our national defense bill. But I see a real distinction in holding our soldiers' well-being hostage to this sociological attack on what used to be the morals of America. And for those who say this is critical, and I heard my friend from Georgia talking about how these crimes have increased, actually, the crimes, according to the FBI, have decreased regarding hate. So there are no statistics that demand this bill be attached and that our soldiers be held hostage for this bill.

And then we have the name of the bill, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Those were horrible murders, and the people who perpetrated them deserve, in my opinion, to get the death penalty all. But this bill does not provide a death penalty. In fact, this bill will not change the outcome of those cases one iota.

In the Texas case, James Byrd, it would be fine with me if we passed a bill that said when you do what was done to James Byrd, then the victim's family gets to choose the vehicle and the rope or chains by which they are going to drag the defendant to his death. But this doesn't do that. In the Matthew Shepard case, the defendants now say it was a robbery gone bad. Regardless, they got life sentences, a couple of life sentences. This bill wouldn't have changed that whatsoever at all either.

Now, there are those who say it will not affect religious speech; but when we have debated this bill and people have looked at it carefully, you see that this situation can arise: a preacher preaching from the Bible, a rabbi preaching from the Tanach, or an imam teaching from the Koran says in his opinion homosexuality is wrong. Some nut hears him, goes out and commits an act of violence, and when arrested says, well, I was induced to do this by the preacher, the imam or the rabbi.

Well, under 18 U.S.C. 2(a), it says that anyone who induces another to commit a crime is just as guilty as the one who committed it. That's where the preacher, the imam, or the rabbi could be arrested.

And I appreciate in prior debate my friend from Massachusetts pointed to the folks in Philadelphia and said, well, they were arrested but the charges were dropped. Arresting and detaining has a chilling effect. There's no two ways around it.

Mr. Speaker, we had one friend across the aisle cite the 2007 statistics. The trouble is you go back 10 years, 20 years and you see that the crimes being conducted, taking place based on any type of hatred, are diminishing, so that is not a valid argument. There are no limitations on the definitions. There should have been. In committees, we tried to get them so pedophiles would be included. But we had another friend say, this is only about acts of violence. And as my friend here from Virginia pointed out, there is an ``unless'' there. And that's where the law principles, 18 U.S.C. 18(a), comes into play. If you induce someone to commit a crime, that's the government interest; it will be used, and that's why you heard a national anchorperson say about the Matthew Shepherd crimes, Gee, I wonder if people like James Dobson induced that crime. This is not where we need to go in defense of this country.

I appreciate my friend yielding.

This is a very important issue, and actually if you go back to the original bailout bill a year ago, as I read through it, and I did, I didn't read the extra pages that were added for pork at the end, but one of the things that caught my eye was here was a bill for $700 billion for bailout, basically a slush fund for the Treasury Secretary; but in the bill it raised the debt ceiling $1.3 trillion. Now that caught my eyes, because I know $700 billion is less than $1.3 trillion. So I went back through reading again for any loopholes that might allow for the expenditure of more than $700 billion.

Well, we know that before the bill finally passed, there was about $100 billion in pork added in order to get enough votes so that it would pass. That still leaves half a trillion dollars between what the debt ceiling was raised and how much was appropriated in that bill. So I went back through, and one of the things that intrigued me was a provision that allowed the Secretary of the Treasury to hire, utilize whatever personnel was necessary in order to carry out the intentions of the bill.

Well, I was impressed and went to one of the Treasury people privately and asked, what does that mean? Are we going to have a new department of asset management? Are we going to set up a whole new bureaucracy here in Washington? Is there going to be $500 billion spent setting up this kind of extra bureaucracy? And the answer I got was basically, and it was unofficial and informal, but was basically, look, we will hire some people, but ultimately this is going to be so much work we'll have to outsource it.

Well, I don't know if my friend from Texas noticed, but it turns out that the favorite firm of the former Secretary Paulson and the current Secretary Geithner had its biggest profit in the history of Goldman Sachs in the second quarter of this year.

So when my friend talks about transparency, wouldn't it be nice to know how much of that $3.44 billion in clear profit that Goldman Sachs made came from taxpayers, came from the United States Government? But do you know what? There is only one way we really get to know exactly where all that money came from and how much went from the Federal Government. Sure, Goldman Sachs will have to file reports and whatnot, but it would really be nice to see from the government's own reports just how much Federal money is going Goldman Sachs' way, and how much money is being funneled from here in Washington to Wall Street. That would be important to know.

I think one of the things that we have seen, especially in the last several months, is that just because it's good for a Wall Street firm doesn't mean it's good for the stock market and it doesn't mean it's good for rank-and-file Americans who are paying their taxes to keep this government running who also were called upon as they saved and scrimped and tried to meet the demands of the day to be called on to bail out the Wall Street firms. And so it would be nice if maybe they would share a little more than what we are able to see.

I also want to point out the subject of transparency is so important. There is not much that is more cleansing than sunshine. Sunshine, you get enough of it, the mold and mildew just dries up and dies. You get enough sunshine, and things clean up, you get rid

of all the mold and nastiness. And yet what we get around here is people are left in the dark and fed lots of manure. Well, that will grow plenty of mushrooms, but that is not what we are supposed to be about here in Congress.

So the rules of the House, the rules of the Federal Reserve it seems like right now, they are just being played fast and loose, which parenthetically that gives rise to a situation we have right here tonight this week where we played fast and loose with the rules so you have a Defense appropriation, a defense authorization bill where you bring in a hate crimes bill, and I know there's a lot of agreement over what its effect will be; but clearly, one of the effects will be that it will make homosexuality and transgender a protected class.

The elderly were rejected. We weren't going to give them any added protection. Of course, some of us fought for the elderly. If you're going to give anybody protection, how about the elderly? They are commonly sought out. But, no, they weren't protected. And they certainly hadn't been protected in this administration's proposals for Medicare cuts, half a billion--I'm sorry--half a trillion basically in Medicare cuts. So I guess the thinking is we're not going to protect the elderly as much as homosexuals, transgender or even pedophiles. We tried to have an amendment that would exclude pedophiles from a protected class under the hate crimes bill, and that was rejected along party lines basically. So anyway we are not going to protect elderly as much as these sexuality lifestyle groups.

And then we turn around and we tack that hate crimes bill on to the military or Defense appropriation or Defense authorization. We've got soldiers out in the field needing this bill, and we're going to play fast and loose with the rules. We will not be allowed to amend this on the floor; we will not be allowed to change anything about this. It's take it or leave it. And I just think it is so outrageous while we have soldiers in the field to use this Defense authorization bill that's going to help our soldiers protect us, it's going to protect them while they protect us, and you tack on a hate crimes bill to the Defense authorization? Just how much disrespect can somebody have for the rules of this body and for procedure to do that kind of thing? It is just outrageous.

But then as you see these kinds of things coming into play, you see the lack of what really is strong morality in our financial laws, in our transparency. And it was Chuck I heard earlier this year was pointing out that when you lose morality, you're going to have economic chaos; you're going to have economic instability. And when you lose economic stability, people--and this is so tragic--but people throughout history, when they have economic chaos are always willing to give up liberties to gain economic stability. You lose morality in the Federal Reserve, in the Treasury of the United States, and in ACORN and all the voting laws and the procedure of this body. You lose what is just right. You lose that, and it contributes to economic instability, and then that gives rise to economic chaos. And people always give up their liberties trying to get economic stability.

So I think we get back to that sense of morality when you start having transparency, when you're able to see what's going on, when it's not behind closed doors, when it's not some private group with an agenda out there drafting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act who has their own lifestyle agenda, when it's not some group behind closed doors saying let's push through this stimulus bill, it may not stimulate America, it won't spend money, most of it for 2 years, it really won't do what we are saying is stimulus, but, boy, will it enrich our friends.

We have to get away from that or we are going to lose this country. We cannot continue down this road with a lack of candor, with a lack of openness and honesty. We have got to return to transparency. That will help address the issues of this country. Sunlight always has a way of doing that.

If my friend would yield, this is such an important point.

Through the economic downturn over the last year or so, a lot of people across America have confused community banks and investment banks. They have just lumped them all in together, and there is a major difference. You have community banks who have to have complete transparency. They have Federal regulators who come in and check every dot and tittle. They have to make sure that everything is just the way the Federal regulators want it. Some of us have been concerned that over-aggressiveness by Federal regulators in the most stable of our financial institutions, the community banks, has helped dry up a great deal of the credit.

So imagine the hypocrisy to have Federal regulators just swarm in like locusts to community banks which are the most stable and have been the most careful in Federal banking, and they are being regulated by people who will not open their books to this Congress. That in itself is such an outrage that it alone ought to be a basis for getting Ron Paul's bill here to the floor, get it passed, and let's open them up. I love what Newt Gingrich said: If transparency is good enough for the CIA, it really ought to be good enough for the Federal Reserve.

It goes back to the issue of transparency. Everybody needs to be accountable under the same rules no matter who it is. And actually, this weekend, I had a number of people commenting on how unfair it was of Congress to be judged by one standard, and specifically mentioning the chairman of the Ways and Means, and the rest of America to be judged by another standard. It is difficult for the American people to understand.

If that were me, I couldn't do this. I would have had to pay the penalty and interest. I mentioned to my friend previously about my constituent, Mr. de le Torre, and he was very proud of his Hispanic descent. He said de le Torre meant ``of the tower.'' Apparently he had some royalty back in Spain some centuries ago.

But here he had four permanent employees, four part-time employees, and he had a sheet metal business, and he had no problem with me mentioning his name and his own situation. And with the downturn in the economy, he wanted to protect his employees. He did not want to let them go. He knew they were struggling, and he certainly was struggling. And, of course, he is the last one to get paid. He didn't have any money. And yet the quarterly payment had to be made for the portions of Social Security and the Federal tax on that payroll, and he did not have the money. And because of the additional pressures being brought to bear by the Federal Reserve, who will not be transparent against community banks, which are doing everything they can and have been transparent, he wasn't able to get a loan. He could not get a loan or a line of credit to make his payment, his quarterly payment to the government.

So he notified them, filed how much he owed, but said, I don't have any cash. I don't want to fire any of my employees, and I can't get a loan or a line of credit to make my quarterly payment.

They let him know you owe penalty and interest. We are coming after you. He was telling me that he has since been notified that they are going to start seizing his accounts and his assets, sell them off if necessary, but seize his assets if he does not make his penalty and interest payment.

So it is kind of hard for a guy like that who is being loyal to these people, the eight people who work with him and for him, how a guy that is chairman of the committee that writes the tax laws can do far worse and not be open, not just be completely transparent in what has happened.

The chairman of the committee doesn't have to pay penalty or interest, and yet this poor man does. It is hard for him to understand, and it is hard for rank-and-file Americans to understand. It is not the standard that this Congress should be establishing. I so hope that we can get back to being a Congress that leads by example.

You know, I think about the words of George Washington. He was a man who had incredible bravery. We would not have the Nation as we know it if it were not for his humility, his willingness to resign and go home after winning a revolution. His words, his exact words were, ``A people unused to restraint must be led; they will not be drove.'' And that was okay English back in those days.

I look at what we are doing now. We are dealing with a country that is not used to restraint, and yet the financial taxation laws are restraining Americans like never before, not so much because of the percentage but because of the actual effect on Americans. And we are not leading as Washington implored. We are trying to drive Americans to do what this Congress has not done and should be doing, and that is lead by example.

And we were promised by the Speaker that this would be the most transparent and open and accountable Congress. That simply has not happened. In fact, to the contrary. I don't know that there has ever been one that has been more closed and protective of its own, and that really has to change.

I yield back to my friend.

If the gentleman might yield on that point.

On the Cash For Clunkers program we know that there are many foreign vehicles that are manufactured here in the United States, and the American workers do a fantastic job. But it is worth noting that in this program that was rushed through so quickly without going through the proper order, without getting the proper scrutiny through committees and through proper chance for amendment here on the floor, where you can take a law that may have some problems and make it better, we're not allowed any of that opportunity.

And so what we got was a Cash For Clunkers program in which four of the five top vehicles that were purchased were foreign vehicles. Now, some of those were made in America, but most of them were made in foreign countries. In other words, the Cash For Clunkers vehicles helped foreign governments and foreign companies more than it helped American companies. And they want to run my health care. My goodness. Is that sad? If it weren't so tragic, how much we help foreign companies over our own U.S. companies, it would be a comedy. It's just outrageous.

If I might, on one other point. Unforeseen consequences too. Because we didn't have a chance to go through the proper channels and really look at this legislation, the Cash For Clunkers bill, one of the effects has been that the working poor in America have been the hardest-hit, because they were not able to come in and buy a brand new car with this attractive program because they didn't have the money to make the payments after that.

So it really didn't help the working poor in the United States. And, in fact, it hurt them because what happened under this Cash For Clunkers program is thousands of vehicles, used vehicles that would be sold cheaply to the working poor in America, cars they could afford, were just fixed to where they could not be run, could not be operated, could not be sold. That drives up the price of the used vehicles that the working poor in America really need to get to and from their jobs. So it hurt those who needed help in America the most and helped foreign companies over domestic companies. Now that's a government program that we're going to use, I'm sure, to model health care after.

Thank you. And the point about having time to read the bill could not be illustrated more clearly than on the stimulus bill that was basically crammed down this body's throat. We were promised by the President back when he was running for office that he was going to have, what is it, 4 or 5 days it would be up on the Internet, where all America could read these bills for days before we voted on them. But it gets a little hard to take the administration, the President, leaders of this body seriously when they all parroted that stuff and how they were going to do that.

And then on the stimulus bill we were told over and over, we didn't have time to read the bill. We just didn't. It was filed, I think, after midnight. We're voting on it, over 1,000 pages. There was no time for anybody to read it. We were told that there were thousands of people losing their jobs every day. It had to become law immediately. There's no time to read it; just do it. Just do it. Just vote on it. Well, some of us still wanted to see what was in it. We voted against it, and yet it passed on that Friday, and so because it was such an emergency, they said, and we didn't have time to read the bill, we passed it on Friday, and then Saturday came and went, and Sunday came and went, and Monday came and went, and Tuesday, when the photo op was set up in Colorado for the President to sign the bill, he finally got around to signing the bill.

Why couldn't we have had those 3 days and voted on it on Monday if it was such an important bill and if the President had been serious and the leadership of this House had been serious about the importance of reading bills? Why couldn't we have had Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then debated on Monday? But we were denied that, even though the President never had any intention of signing that bill for 4 days after it was signed. So it gets a little hard to take some of the acrimony on the floor seriously, as in that case, when we were just ridiculed for not being willing to sign it immediately and for wanting to read it when there just was no time to waste. Four days later, the President signed it.

With regard to the czars, we've seen over and over examples of people who have been placed in these positions, and it doesn't do me any good or anybody in America any good to say, well, you know, prior presidents have used czars. Not to this extent. Not ever, and I never really cared for them, no matter who the President was. I didn't like the bailout last year. I thought, until this administration, it was possibly the worst domestic action that's been taken in the last 50 or 60 years. That is, until this administration just left $700 billion in the sand as it blew through more and more money. But then, to have this massive spending spree that's, while we've got people appointed by the White House, not properly vetted, and the more we find out about these people, the more we're concerned they should never have been in those positions in the first place.

And as we know, we've already had one recently step down, he should have never been there in the first place, whereas, if you went through regular order there and had advice and consent of the Senate, it doesn't mean they're going to be perfect. Nobody is. No process is. But there was real ingenuity in the process that was set up by the Founders, and the advice and consent is an important issue. But the whole reason our Founders set up a President outside the main stream of Congress, unlike the parliament that elects a prime minister from this body, it was going to be from outside this body so that there would be more checks and balances, and the czars have done nothing but create Scars upon Thars--with all deference to Dr. Seuss--scars across America, as they have been unaccountable to the Congress, to the courts, to America. And that really has to be changed.

We need the sunlight. We need transparency. We don't need czars.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have listened to most of the last hour with great interest. I was owed the Army 4 years from a scholarship I had at Texas A&M. Most people my age can tell you exactly what their draft number was. I can't. I didn't care. I was going into the Army. I expected to go into Texas A&M and finish my 4 years, come out as a second lieutenant and end up in Vietnam, as many of my friends did. But Vietnam ended before I graduated. I spent 4 years in the Army. I asked on my dream sheet to be sent to Germany. So the Army sent me to Georgia, to Fort Benning. Pretty close. It begins with G-E.

We've heard many examples here of people saying, Well, gee, if gays are not allowed, they might not reenlist. If you listen to the current commanders of our U.S. military, you listen to the vast majority of the military, then they're concerned not about gays in the military but about openly gay individuals in the military. This isn't a debate. When we talk about Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it's not a debate about whether or not there will be people who practice homosexuality in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard. That's not the issue at all. There are people who practice homosexuality who are in the service, as my friends have already indicated.

The issue is, will they be allowed to be very openly practicing such things. The current policy is, if it's not where it's openly offensive to people who think it's inappropriate, then certainly we welcome your service in the military. It's just amazing where we are right now in America. You know, going back to last September, early October, we crammed a bailout bill down America that most Members hadn't had a chance to read. I read it. Then we come through with these stimulus bills, land omnibus bills, all this stuff that's coming down. And you just go, where have we gotten to in America? The military is not a social experiment. It's not. I think my friends know that. I heard one of the gentlemen across the aisle mention, Anything that distracts from the goals of the military should not be in the military. Whether it is heterosexual open acts or homosexual open acts, indications are it's a distraction.

So this isn't an issue about whether there will be gays in the military. It's about whether or not there will be people who are openly gay in the military. And still the commanders in the field seem to fairly uniformly indicate that it will be a problem for them completing their missions at maximum efficiency. That is what needs to be known. For every example of any individual saying, Gee, if gays are not allowed to be open in the military, I may not reenlist or I won't reenlist or I didn't, you have no idea how many people apparently have indicated, If the Don't Ask, Don't Tell is eliminated, I'm not joining. I'm not reenlisting. I'm about done with the social experimentation in the military. It's no place for it.

But, actually, it seems like this hour tonight follows, interestingly, just as a hate crimes bill has been added to the Defense authorization bill. Here we've got soldiers in harm's way needing us to authorize the money that they need to have the equipment and all that they need to protect us and to protect themselves, and we're playing games with them, attaching a hate crimes bill on a Defense authorization. Most people would say, Defense authorization is a must- pass piece of legislation, and therefore, people will be afraid to vote against it, especially conservatives, moderates. So you add a hate crimes bill to the Defense authorization? Are there no bounds to which this Congress will not stoop?

We can't just say to our military members, Here is what you need. Oh, no. We're going to go beyond Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We're going to stick a hate crimes bill on this bill and hold our soldiers, who are in the field trying to protect us, hostage unless you are willing to pass this hate crimes bill with what the soldiers need. It's just mind- boggling that people in positions of authority in this Congress would be willing to do that. It's just unbelievable.

Now, we have fought over this hate crimes bill in committee and on the floor and over and over. We made amendments, offered amendments because we could see that the definition of sexual orientation is wide open to all kinds of interpretation. And someday some court somewhere will say, You know what, sexual orientation means exactly what those words mean. If you're oriented--I hope it doesn't offend. But this is part of the law. It's laws in most States or it has been certainly in many States. If you're oriented toward animals, bestiality, then that is not something that could be held against you or any bias could be held against you for that, which means you would have to strike any laws against bestiality. If you're oriented toward corpses, toward children, there are all kinds of perversions--what most of us would call perversions. Some would say it sounds like fun, but most would say were perversions, and there have been laws against them.

This bill says whatever you are oriented towards sexually, that cannot be a source of bias against someone. Well, that's interesting.

Someone said, well, surely they didn't mean to include pedophiles or necrophiliacs or what most of us would say are perverse sexual orientations. But the trouble is we made amendments to eliminate pedophiles from being included in the definition. In fact, we made an amendment to use the definition in another part of Federal law that would have restricted sexual orientation to only talking about heterosexuality and homosexuality. We were willing to agree to that. But that also was voted down. The majority who is in control of Congress today made it very clear in committee, through rules, through the floor here, that they did not want any limits on sexual orientation on that definition.

``Gender identity,'' who knows what that will some day be interpreted to mean. There is no definition for that. It's whatever anybody wants to think it means. All of this stuff is just unbelievable.

We even went so far as to say, you know what? If you're going to try to protect transgender or homosexual individuals more than other people in society, then at least give the elderly that same protection. That amendment was voted down. We're not going to give the elderly the same heightened protection we would give transgender individuals, even though elderly are frequently picked out, targeted, because they're older and considered less able to protect themselves. If anybody deserved to be in that protected class, certainly the elderly would be. But this isn't about that. This is about forcing some type of sexual practices on those who are bothered by them on the country.

It's obviously not about run-away crime regarding hate crime that's just growing and growing. In the debate earlier today on this floor, the most we heard were statistics cited from 2007, and the reason for that is that the FBI statistics show that the numbers of hate crimes have been reduced over the last 20 and 10 years. They're going down. The laws in effect are carrying out their purpose.

Also, it should be noted that there is no act of violence that the Federal hate crimes bill covers that is not already a crime in every State in the Union. It makes no sense to hold our soldiers hostage to this hate crimes bill being added on there.

Now, when you look at the status of hate in America, there is hate in America. There is. And I don't know of anybody in this congressional body that likes the idea of hatred of one for another. It's not appropriate. Those of us who are Christians believe we are to love one another. In fact, when Jesus was asked what's the most important commandment, he said love God. The other is like it: Love each other. On

these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets: Love God and love each other. That's what a Christian is supposed to do.

Certainly, though, some people struggle with how anyone can love and care deeply about someone when they disagree strongly with the lifestyle that person is in. All I can suggest is that if someone is a true Christian, it's easier than you might imagine to love someone and totally object to a lifestyle.

But I keep hearing about how it's all about racial hatred. There is some racial hatred in this country. There's no question that there still is. But thank God that has been diminished tremendously over the years.

I am aware back in the 1980s, well over 20 years ago, I had some new neighbors move in. My wife and I and our three children, we had some neighbors move in. And we were excited because we had a doctor moving in next door. And I realized back in those days there still apparently is some feeling among some people of, gee, if somebody's of darker skin than I am, maybe I don't want them in our neighborhood.

That became apparent one night when I got a call from a neighbor who said, Did you know that our new neighbors who are living right next door to you are black? And I said, You know, we had them over here for dinner last night and I kept sitting there through dinner thinking, you know, there's something different about these people, and you know what? I think that's it. I believe you're right. I think they must be black.

Well, I was being sarcastic, for those who don't know sarcasm. As I told that neighbor, Look, I don't care what color he is. These are wonderful people. They're obviously going to be great neighbors, and I have a feeling someday he may save one of my kids. Who knows. Well, it turned out Larry Irvin did.

One night, my 5-year-old's fever spiked. I was not there. My wife was frantic, and she called Larry. He rushed over, got her in a tub of ice, got her temperature down. We didn't lose her. And I'll always be grateful that I had a neighbor, never mind that he happened to be African American. He was a wonderful person. I say ``was'' because we lost him. But a good man. But I realized from that phone call there are some people that still have these issues of race out there.

I've heard some people say that if you question our President because he happens to be black that you must be a racist. Well, that's kind of tough for me because I voted for Alan Keyes back in 1996. I never told Senator Gramm, but I liked the way Alan Keyes was able to articulate things that I believed in. I thought he was a fantastic candidate and would have made a great President back at that time. And so it would never have crossed my mind to think that those who countered Alan Keyes in 1996 must be racists. That didn't cross my mind.

So I'm very saddened when I hear somebody these days say if you're against our President, you must be a racist. That's ridiculous. Does that mean that everybody that disagreed with George W. Bush who is black was being a racist? I don't think so. So I hate to hear especially colleagues in here drag that up as being a motivation and we have to end racial hatred in America and this bill will be the way to do it.

I was very privileged to stand with dozens of African American Christian brothers and sisters who'd also been ordained, and they were so much more articulate than I am and could ever hope to be, but they were pointing out that it seems that the gay rights agenda attached its wagon, basically, to the racial movement, and now that they have arrived here in Washington, now the gay rights movement is attempting to tell them, as these African American ministers pointed out, they can't teach about what they believe and they believe the Bible teaches is sexual immorality.

Now, we have heard people on the floor here today say that this hate crimes bill is not about anything but violent acts, which I am sure they believe what they say, but it's simply not true. Not true at all.

Now, one good example, yes, it pertains to violent acts, and it does have a provision that some people stuck in here that says basically that nothing could be used that burdens a person's exercise of religion, speech, expression, or association--but unfortunately there's not a period there. There is an ``unless.'' Well, that's what makes this worth little more than the paper it's written on unless the government demonstrates an application burden to the person is in furtherance of a compelling government interest.

Now, that's the key here--unless it is in furtherance of the compelling government interest--because you see, 18 U.S. Code 2 is the law of principles in the Federal law. Most States have a similar ``law of principles,'' it's usually called, which means they're not really accomplices. Anybody that aids, abets, induces--that verb is in the Federal law--induces someone to commit a crime is just as guilty as if they perpetrated the crime. That's where this bill does so much damage to religious free speech.

And I brought this up because this has been debated in past Congresses, and I brought this up previously. What if a preacher preaching from a Bible, a rabbi teaching from the Tanach, or an imam preaching from the Koran were to say that homosexuality is just wrong in God's eyes and that such conduct merits punishment in God's eyes? Well, if some nut were to hear that and go out and commit an act of violence and he says, Well, you know, I heard these sermons or the teachings of the preacher, the rabbi, or the imam, that's what induced me into doing it, would the preacher be protected or the rabbi?

And the answer is no, they would not be protected. And you can bet that under the right prosecutor that those individuals would have DVDs, CDs, sermon notes, anything that a prosecutor could get his hands on would certainly be shown to be in furtherance of a compelling government interest, that being whether or not he induced or incited the criminal act.

So that would be a very chilling effect on anyone who teaches or preaches such things in such religious formats. It's not protected. It's not protected.

And so imagine the incredible irony of having a Defense Authorization Bill to give our valiant defenders in harm's way what they need to protect us, and we add on a bill that will limit religious moral teaching. Just amazing. Just amazing.

Now, as an example of exactly how 18 U.S.C. 2A could be applied here. I wanted to give this example. Say the preacher specifically went to Romans 1, verse--well, let's see--let's start with 18. And this is the New King James version. And say a preacher were to stand up and just do nothing but read straight from the Bible, and this is verse 18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. Even as eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.

I love that part.

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.

This is verse 26: For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

Now, suppose a preacher is preaching from those verses and just reads those verses actually, and some nut hears

them. Even though the preacher didn't advocate violence, some nut hears that and goes out and commits an act of violence. Says, Well, it was that reading straight from the Bible of Romans 1 that the preacher did, that's what induced me to do this.

Well, you can bet this language will not protect that preacher.

We also know that there are many who believe and teach that--the Koran teaches that the penalty for homosexual conduct is death, of all things. And we know that in Iran, Ahmadinejad I believe had said they didn't have any people practicing homosexuality in Iran. Well, apparently not. I mean, they may kill them, for all we know.

But this is the United States of America, and we do--or used to-- believe in religious freedom and the freedom to teach religious morality as it has been taught in the greatest book ever written.

But this hate crimes bill is going to take care of that for us. And how ironic that a movement that would allow a certain conduct to be of a more heightened protected class than even the elderly is going to be attached to the Defense Authorization Bill. It's just mind-boggling that we have stooped this far. It's just unbelievable.

Now, with regard to the hate crimes bill, it should also not be lost that when we talk about protected classes--I think the defense authorization did add the military as a protected class--but just the ability to go into a church and forcefully get a preacher's notes, DVDs, it's going to have a chilling effect. There's no question about it.

And in every country where Federal law has adopted laws like this, this has an extremely chilling effect. And I go back to what our friend Chuck Colson had pointed out earlier this year, and that is when you lose morality in a Nation, you create economic instability leading to economic chaos. And when you have economic chaos, it is tragic, but people have always been willing to give up their liberties, their freedoms, in order to gain economic stability.

It happened in 1920s and 1930s Germany. They gave up their liberties to gain economic stability, and they got a little guy with a mustache who was the ultimate hate-monger. And this is scary stuff we are doing here when we take away what has traditionally been an important aspect of moral teaching in America.

Now, some of the same people are all upset about the plaque I was trying to have added to Statuary Hall here. We filed a bill called the Church Act, and we had research done by the Congressional Research Service so there would be no question that it wasn't slanted one way or another, that it was all accurate according to the Congressional Research Service. It would simply educate people who do not understand that the term ``separation of church and State'' is not in the Constitution. It was in a letter that was written by Thomas Jefferson.

But anyway, this is the language that's proposed in the bill to be on the plaque: ``The first Christian church services in the Capitol''-- that is the U.S. Capitol and again this is all researched by CRS, all accurate, but ``The first Christian church services in the Capitol were held when the government moved to Washington in the fall of 1800. They were conducted in the Hall of the House in the north wing of the building. In 1801, the House moved the church services to temporary quarters in the south wing, called the `Oven,' which it vacated in 1804, returning services to the north wing for 3 years. During church services, the Speaker's podium was used as the preacher's pulpit.

``Within a year of his inauguration, President Thomas Jefferson began attending church services in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. Throughout his administration, which was 1801 to 1809, Thomas Jefferson permitted and encouraged church services in the executive branch buildings. Sermons regarding the Old and New Testaments of the Bible were even conducted in the Supreme Court Chambers while the judicial branch was located in the old north wing of the Capitol.

``The term `separation of church and State,' not found in the Constitution, was rather first used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists. Though Jefferson saw no problem about having nondenominational Christian services in government buildings, he affirmed that the government should not choose an official Christian denomination. The worship services in the government-owned House Chamber--a practice that continued until after the Civil War--were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary.

``President James Madison, the recognized author of the Constitution, followed Jefferson's example. In keeping with Madison's understanding of the First Amendment, church services were permitted in the Halls of State on Sundays during his administration. That was 1809 to 1817. However, unlike Jefferson, who rode on horseback to attend church in the Capitol, Madison traveled in a coach pulled by four horses. The services were interrupted in 1814 after the interior was burned by the British and had to be repaired.

``Preachers of every Christian denomination preached Christian doctrine in this Chamber. On January 8, 1826, Bishop John England of Charleston, South Carolina, became the first Catholic clergyman to preach in the House of Representatives. The first woman to preach before the House, and likely the first woman to speak officially in Congress under any circumstances, was the English evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, who conducted a service on January 12, 1806.''

So that is a history of the Christian movement, the Christian church being very much a part of the early founding of this country and the early days. And we could have quote after quote. History is replete with them, of the role of the Judeo-Christian beliefs and the founding of this country. And, in fact, through the 1800s, most of the time, somebody proposed a bill, they liked the idea of having a Scripture to back it up. They thought that would help win the support of the other Members here.

And if you look at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the 56 signers who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, between one-third and one-half of those signers were ordained Christian ministers. And they helped give us this great start.

The first Speaker of the House, Mr. Speaker, was a Christian minister, was Frederick Muhlenberg, originally from Pennsylvania, as was his brother, Peter, also a minister. But those were the early days.

So it was troubling that the Constitution, that incredible document that was not first established in 1783, that was Articles of Confederation, but then 1787 we get to the Constitutional Convention during which Benjamin Franklin was there. But all 13 colonies had made clear, we are only coming back if George Washington presides. He is the only one we trust. They talked Washington into coming back to the Constitutional Convention to preside. How much that says about an individual, that the 13 colonies would only trust this person. Washington came back. He presided. We got the Constitution.

But even then, after nearly 5 weeks, they had accomplished basically nothing. And that is when Benjamin Franklin stood up, was recognized by President Washington, president of the Constitutional Convention, and basically said, we've been going for nearly 5 weeks and we have accomplished virtually nothing. We have more ``noes'' than ``ayes'' on these votes. He said, When we met in this room during war with Great Britain, we had daily prayer in this room. How is it, sir, that we have not once called upon the Father of Lights to illuminate our understanding? He went on to say that if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God taking notice, is it possible that an empire could rise without his aid?

He said, We are told in the sacred writing that unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it. Firmly he said he believed that, not only that, but that without God's concurring aid, they would fare no better than the builders of Babel. He went on, spoke some more and ultimately made a motion that henceforth, every day of the Congress of the United States start with a prayer. From that day in 1787 until this very day, every session starts with prayer.

So that was very much a vital part of that. But we had a Constitution that

was the most incredible founding document of any country in the history of the world. It is tragic, also, that it did not come to mean the same thing that all people truly were equal for over 100 years, actually, until 18--well until the Civil War. And Lincoln was a devout Christian. He was a phenomenal theological thinker as evidenced by his second inaugural address that is etched in the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial.

That's why he came forth with the Emancipation Proclamation. That's why if you go back to his two brief years in the House of Representatives, Lincoln was supposedly asked after he was President, Did you ever remember anything occurring memorable during your brief time in the House of Representatives? And he had said nothing other than this; and, of course, history records that we had one President, after he was President, run for the House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams. He believed God was calling him to bring an end to slavery in the United States as a Christian in England had done who got elected in 1785, fought 20 years and finally had the repeal of the slave trade, that was William Wilberforce, the slave trade in 1805, then he fought for 28 more years and in 1833 slavery was outlawed completely in England.

John Quincy Adams felt that was his calling. That was something he felt he was supposed to do here in the United States, what Wilberforce was doing and had done in England.

And so after he was defeated by Andrew Jackson in 1828, he ran for the House of Representatives; 1830 he got elected. For 17 years that man preached on the evils of slavery, basically asking how could God bless America, continue to bless America when we are mistreating our brothers and sisters by putting them in chains and bondage. That was the church.

The church was all involved in the Underground Railroad in trying to protect slaves who were getting away because the churches recognized, and those who were really devout truly understood, they recognized them as being brothers and sisters and treated them accordingly.

And then you come even up to the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he was an ordained Christian minister. And there are many who believe in this country that all of his work, all of his effort, his peaceful protests, actually did one thing and that was get us closer to the day when people were judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. But many think what he did was have African Americans in an atmosphere where they are treated more evenly. But he did something more. For white people who are Christians, he helped free them to be true Christians and treat every man and woman as brothers and sisters. He helped people across all races.

But he did believe in the Bible. He was quite the Christian evangelist preacher. So this movement has been throughout.

And now all of these years later we come to the point where there is going to be legislation. It has already been attached to the Defense Authorization bill. I guess that is to give people in the Senate protection who are afraid to vote because people back home may actually figure out that this is going to have a detrimental effect on the freedom to discuss immorality as the Bible teaches particularly, but certainly the Koran and the Tanach. And if you want to get right down to it, the term ``sodomy'' does come from the city of Sodom.

But this bill, the hate crimes bill, it will affect the ability of preachers to preach sexual immorality, as I have just read earlier from Romans 1, or to talk about, and both in the Koran and in what we call the Old Testament, the Tanach, the Torah, books in what we call the Old Testament and the Koran both talk about Sodom. Both talk about Gomorrah. Both talk about Lot and his family being there in Sodom. And both talk about the attraction of men for men, and that when the angels came there to Lot in Sodom, the men did not want Lot's daughters for sexual pleasure, they wanted the angels, and that was too much for God for those who believe the account as written out in the Old Testament.

But if this bill passes on the back of a Defense Authorization, a bill that is going to equip our soldiers to defend our freedoms and then take away religious freedom at the same time, it is amazing.

Something Chuck Colson said years ago was you cannot demand the morality of Woodstock and not expect a Columbine. If the morality of the country is if it feels good do it, at some point some warped soul is going to wonder about what it feels like to kill people and what it feels like to do other things.

What is really offensive to me, this hate crimes bill, on committee, on the floor, could have been amended, but the majority would not allow us to restrict the definition even of what sexual orientations were protected. They wanted it left. They wouldn't even restrict pedophilia, wouldn't restrict necrophilia, wouldn't restrict the other definitions of sexual orientation. They wanted it wide open. And for that, you are going to hook this on the backs of our soldiers and they don't get what they need in the field unless we pass this hate crimes bill into law.

How far have we come? How far have we come? There was a reason Jeremiah cried when he fell for his country.

We were promised the most open and fair, procedurally fair Congress in history before the 2006 election. What we have seen is the most closed, fewer amendments allowed. Even when the Republicans took the majority in 1995, in the 1994 election and then were sworn in in 1995, they allowed open rules on their points of the Contract with America. It was openly debated, and yet this has been the most closed Congress.

So the only chance we have to discuss this is not in an amendment process, not on the bill itself that may be jointly in a conference report with nothing but the hate crimes bill. Oh, no, it is on the back of our soldiers and their money and supplies they need in their Defense Authorization.

This is not an open Congress. This is not what was promised. This is not what was on the Speaker's Web site for so long that would occur in this House. It is just sad.