Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Specialist David R. Fahey, who lost his life on Monday, February 28, 2011, while courageously serving our nation in Afghanistan. He was killed by an IED explosion. Yesterday he was laid to rest.

Specialist Fahey enlisted at the age of 20, in August, 2007. He was deployed to Afghanistan in June, 2010. He is mourned by family, friends, and fellow soldiers from Yorktown Heights, New York, to Washington State, Korea, and Afghanistan. He has been honored for his service with the Combat Action Badge, the Purple Heart, and the Bronze Star.

Specialist Fahey's dedication to protecting his fellow citizens extended to his plans to join the New York City Police Department after the completion of his tour of duty. His sacrifice for our nation will be remembered through the family he loved and freedom he protected. I ask the House to keep in their thoughts and prayers Specialist Fahey and all the other brave men and women in our armed services who have lost their lives, as well as those who continue to serve abroad.

Mr. Speaker, as we all know, our country lost its last American Doughboy on Sunday. Frank Buckles was our last living connection to an era in which a 16-year-old could lie about his age in order to join his nation's army to fight the ``Great War.'' It would probably be impossible for a 16-year-old to enlist today without being discovered, but there are many young Americans that share Mr. Buckles' spirit of patriotism.

Although we have lost this last Doughboy, we have not lost the spirit of patriotism and sacrifice in the name of country that Frank Buckles and so many of his comrades embodied. That spirit is present all across America, including in my district, the 19th district of New York, where we are the home of 4,400 cadets at the United States Military Academy. These young men and women have also dedicated service to our country before turning 18. Their devotion to duty, honor and country continues a great tradition of military service and embody the life Frank Buckles and the millions of service men and women they follow.

I hope that Mr. Buckles' legacy continues to serve as an inspiration for future generations of Americans, who continue to fight for our protection and freedom. May God bless America and our men and women in uniform.

Madam Speaker, yesterday morning I received a letter from a constituent, Seth Arluck of New Hampton, NY.

Seth's three-generation family business was hit hard by the housing market crash. The 1099 rule in the Affordable Care Act, Seth says, ``would place a disproportionate burden on my very small lumber yard. . .I do not need an additional and unnecessary expense that serves no apparent purpose.''

He adds that the penalty for 1099 non-compliance, to fund small- business lending, adds insult to injury: ``How clever, fine the heck out of me, and loan me the money to pay fines.''

Madam Speaker, this is no way to treat the engine of growth for America. Instead of investing in adapting to his clients' needs in changing times, Seth Arluck will now have to spend precious time and money on paperwork.

The bill we must pass today is an important step toward curing the ill effects of the Affordable Care Act. The Senate has already acted

and I call on President Obama not to delay helping Seth, and so many other of our Nation's job creators put Americans back to work.

March 2, 2011.

Hon. Nan Hayworth,

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I observed, sir, that you have brought a sign to the floor that talks about stealing America's liberty. One of the fundamental problems that I perceive, and I'm not alone in this, but in this entire scheme, if you will, that is represented by the Affordable Care Act, as it has been called, is that there was a failure to understand the very nature of American medical care. When it's at its best, and we recognize-- every colleague of mine, all of my Republican and medical colleagues have also appreciated certainly that we want to see all Americans have access to good, affordable care and to have affordable, portable health insurance. That's not in dispute. So we honor those goals. But the means by which the ACA endeavors to achieve those goals go against the grain of the American culture. Our culture is one that has always allowed us to choose, that has allowed us to pursue, in terms of our medical care, the very best that the world has to offer in terms of innovation and quality, motivation, incentive to invent and to do better. The American medical consumer, our patients, expect no less than the best, nor should they receive anything less than the best.

That's a very different way of thinking about care in a consumer society than is the case in so many other systems around the world that were cited as exemplars when the ACA was being formulated. We do not have, I can tell you from my experience with patients who have had care, who have lived in Europe for variable periods of time, some Americans who have spent sojourns in Europe because of business obligations and working with colleagues from Europe, historically it is rather a different model than we have here. American doctors are accustomed to jumping and doing and doing all they can and doing it fast, and my colleagues can certainly attest to that.

It's a little bit different sometimes overseas. They have a different kind of medical culture. Patients don't expect quite as much. It's not the same sort of thing that we have here. And indeed, that is consonant with the fact that there isn't any other country's dream necessarily as there is an American Dream. My mother is from England. She came to this country in 1948 because she was very distressed by national health care. There is no British dream. There is not necessarily a German dream or Japanese dream. But there is an American Dream.

Thank you, and precisely the point that I'm agreeing on with you and that I think we all have driven to philosophically is that we need to have solutions that empower our doctors, our patients and our providers to do all of them, to have the best and to do the best. And consumer-based solutions are possible. Our Doctors Caucus is working very hard on providing those ideas. Real liability reform has to be part of this. We cannot possibly continue as we have been. That was a glaring omission from the ACA.

In addition, we need to recognize, appreciate and act upon the knowledge that our medical care can cost less. We do need to pay attention to costs, but we need to empower our patients, our doctors and our providers to use their best judgment, not empower something like the Independent Payment Advisory Board to make those decisions for us. That is a very dangerous thing and something that Americans will find very distressing and disturbing. And the inevitable result of the ACA is that, and you can trace it out, but we will end up having less choice. The government will make decisions for us. They will be decisions we don't like. We need our consumers and our providers to be able to make those decisions.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, section 3404 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created the Independent Payment Advisory Board, known by the acronym ``IPAB.'' Beginning in 2014, this 15-member board will be charged with cutting the growth rate of Medicare spending. IPAB is designed as a bureaucracy that will be looking not at how to improve patient care but how to hit an expenditure target.

PPACA limits what IPAB would be able to do to restrict cost growth. For example, IPAB cannot recommend higher cost sharing, or otherwise restrict benefits or eligibility. The primary means of achieving expenditure targets will be to reduce payments to physicians and hospitals. This, in turn, will reduce access to providers--access that Medicare patients need to have--as the providers will find that they will not be able to afford to accept Medicare's reimbursement rates.

Furthermore, Congress ceded a tremendous amount of power to the IPAB. If Members believe that the cuts proposed by IPAB won't work or are too draconian, it will take an affirmative act by future Congresses to overturn its recommendations. This represents an abdication of responsibility by Congress, whose Members are expected to make these decisions, not unelected, unaccountable Federal bureaucrats. Equally troubling, the IPAB bears more than a passing resemblance to the British National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which governs payment for the National Health Service.

From my vantage point as an ophthalmologist, one example will demonstrate why a similarity between IPAB and NICE, which is the ironic acronym for this powerful British entity, should give all of us pause. Up until a couple of years ago, NICE refused to pay for treatment for a form of macular degeneration that led, in most cases, to legal blindness if the sufferer had good vision in the other eye. This is nearly impossible for an American to fathom that a government agency would compel a doctor to, in effect, calmly watch a patient go blind in one eye even though vision-saving treatment was available.

If an unelected board of advisers is compelled to make decisions primarily

on the basis of cost, then this is the kind of awful choice our doctors and patients may well be forced to accept; and this is one of many reasons the Affordable Care Act was repealed by the House last month. We honor the goals of this law to allow all Americans to have access to good care with affordable, portable health insurance; but we need to go about achieving those goals while preserving the choice, quality and innovation that Americans expect and deserve.

As we craft alternatives that will honor the best of American medicine, we will best serve our citizens by prohibiting any funding towards the implementation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

I strongly urge the support of all Members for the amendment I am sponsoring, and I thank you.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on January 24, I received a letter from Jeremy Vaitas, who lives in Middletown, New York.

He wrote: ``As a 13-year-old boy in seventh grade, I am concerned about my future. Currently, the national debt is 14 trillion, 16 billion, 110 million, 552 thousand, 952 dollars, and five cents. Myself and every other citizen will have to pay $45,241.77 to eliminate this debt. My parents struggle with money, and I'm afraid that I will struggle even more and not be able to own a home, buy a car, or provide for a family someday.

``I feel the only way to reduce the national debt is to reduce the amount of money the government is spending. There are many ways to do this, but I believe increasing taxes is not one of them. To reduce the national debt, I would like to see you vote against any further bailouts or any other wasteful spending programs that give money to people or businesses that make bad decisions. Furthermore, I think you should concentrate on fraud and misuse of government funds.''

Here is a 13-year-old who has the common sense to recognize that our Federal Government has been committing intergenerational theft and to call for it to stop. Our national debt is increasing at a rate of more than $4 billion per day.

We are hearing a lot about the people who would be deprived of some form of benefit through spending cuts, but

Jeremy's voice reminds us that Americans everywhere, and especially those who are most vulnerable by virtue of their youth, are being deprived of opportunity by the government's profligacy. We can help them best by returning taxpayer dollars to American pockets to buy, build, invest, and hire.

That is our most urgent task.

Jeremy Vaitas is only 13, but he gets it.

He needs us in Congress to be adults, to accept that we must say ``no'' to what has been all too easy to do in the past--to spend taxpayer dollars to grow the Federal Government far beyond its constitutional bounds. We must say ``no'' in order to say ``yes'' to the opportunity and prosperity that come only with American enterprise, entrepreneurship, and ingenuity. We must say ``yes'' to the future that Jeremy and all of the members of his generation and of generations to come deserve as the heirs to the American Dream.

Our Nation is exceptional in all of history and in all the world. It has always taken courage to defend it. The continuing resolution we will pass this week must show that we have the courage to take control of our government's spending and return power to the people.

Offered By: Ms. Hayworth

Amendment No. 567: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time we have remaining?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Hurt).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Huizenga).

I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, in New York's 19th District, our employers and small businesses and community banks tell me costly regulations are crushing economic growth by discouraging investment and expansion, by creating uncertainty in the marketplace, and by delaying hiring. We can all agree that some commonsense regulations are good, but excessive government rules and regulations are bad.

On the Financial Services Committee, we know, from reporting requirements in Sarbanes-Oxley to countless excessive new regulations in Dodd-Frank, the Federal Government is sending a message to our financial institutions--an industry vital to my home State of New York. The message is: you aren't welcome here.

The United States is currently the financial capital of the world. Our capital markets must be vibrant, and we must foster an environment that promotes growth and attracts enterprise. If we fail to do that, we will see an exodus--and that threat is very real--to nations like Singapore and China, which appreciate the opportunity a healthy financial industry brings.

What a shame, because the American people want to go back to work. They want jobs. Burdensome, costly, and unnecessary regulations must be eliminated; and we must trust and empower our enterprises and our entrepreneurs and our small businesses and community banks and our employers. By supporting the resolution, we will start America on the path to creating jobs and prosperity for our citizens in New York 19 and our Nation. They deserve it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus).

Mr. Chairman, thank you so very much.

What inspires me about President Reagan so greatly is that the power of his vision was so strong that a mere 20 minutes after he took the oath of office on January 20, 1981, our Iranian hostages left the airspace of that hostile country because they knew when he was elected that America would not stand down from its commitment to them, nor its commitment to democracy. And now is the time for all of us to take renewed inspiration from President Reagan's example. He articulated American exceptionalism and the American Dream more eloquently than any President in decades. And now is the time for us to take his example and let it strengthen us as we face tremendous challenges in this country today.

I rise today in strong support of this legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

As a physician with 16 years of practice experience, I can assure you that the Affordable Care Act will, paradoxically, deprive Americans of care. It enshrines a third-party payment system that adds to costs; then, in the name of controlling costs, transfers power from consumers to the government to make crucial decisions that belong in the hands of patients and their doctors. It neglects to deal effectively with reforms in medical liability that are desperately needed to reduce the unconscionable cost of defensive medicine.

Our vote to repeal is not merely symbolic. It represents the true will of the American public, and it will pave the way to reform our health care in a way that will allow our citizens to have the good, cost-effective health care and affordable, portable health insurance they need, while maintaining the quality, choice, and innovation that represents the best of American medicine.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor the victims of Saturday's senseless and atrocious attack. Congresswoman Giffords and her staff are constantly in the thoughts and prayers of her colleagues in the House. And as a mother, I am most profoundly saddened by the loss of the youngest victim, Christina Taylor Green. Christina was only 9 years old.

She belonged to history at the beginning of her life, and she belongs to history at the end of her life. She was born on September 11, 2001; and Christina was acutely aware of the impact that day had on our Nation. But she always found the positive and hopeful in that dreadful event. She would often tell people she was born on a holiday, and she said it was a holiday because it gave hope to say that and people came together on that day. She wore red, white, and blue; and she was vocal about her patriotism and her pride to be an American.

And in addition to being extremely patriotic, Christina was an inquisitive and mature young lady who had recently taken an interest in the most fundamental of American rights, civic engagement. She had just been elected to her own student government, and she was attending Saturday's event to meet her Congresswoman and learn more about government.

As we grieve for her loss, it is important to pay tribute to the model young citizen Christina was and for us to honor her memory. As adults, we can all learn from Christina's positive outlook on life, love of country, and participation in government.

Even during these very dark and painful times, we should take solace in knowing that with children like Christina growing up in our society, our Nation has a bright future.

Madam Speaker, as a physician, I understand the profound importance of the goals of the health care bill passed last year--to assure that all Americans have affordable, portable health insurance, providing access to good medical care.

I also understand the disruptions that this law is already causing to our economy--the predictable side effects of legislative bad medicine, and the reason we must repeal and replace it. The bill we will be considering is in no way merely symbolic. It represents the true will of the American people, the majority of whom have stated time after time to this day that they reject this law. The House's vote to repeal is the first step towards assuring that all Americans will have the quality, choice, and innovation in health care that they expect and deserve. We need to proceed expeditiously, according to the rule on which we vote today, with the understanding that we are taking meaningful and crucial action.

Article II, section 1: ``The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during a term of 4 years and together with

the Vice-President chosen for the same term, be elected as follows:''