Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to this rule.

I applaud the fact that 54 amendments were made in order, which is the most amendments that the Democratic leadership have allowed in a long time, maybe ever since they have been in control of this House of Representatives in the 110th Congress.

I am pleased that one of my amendments to remove some new programs that are in this bill will be debated later on this afternoon. However, at a time when our deficits are projected to remain above $1 trillion for the foreseeable future, I can't understand why two of my other very important amendments dealing with fiscal responsibility were ruled out of order.

My first amendment would have simply changed the authorization level to 3 years from 5 years, and would have frozen spending to this year's levels, and it would save over $45 billion of taxpayers' money. The 2007 COMPETES bill was originally a 3-year authorization. In these tough economic

times, why are we expanding yet another Federal program?

My second amendment would have streamlined the overall COMPETES program by removing all of the newly created programs. Again, in these tough economic times, we can't do everything that we want to do. So we need to prioritize our resources while ensuring basic research in science.

Many of the new programs are duplicative of other existing programs. For example, the loan guarantees are similar to the Small Business Administration's loan guarantee program for which manufacturers are eligible. Also, the HUD program appears to be redundant with existing Department of Energy activities. These are only two examples of duplicative programs that are in this bill.

Expanding the size and cost of this reauthorization while creating duplicative programs is not what the American people want and certainly not what they need. American families and American small businesses have been forced to make difficult spending decisions. Shouldn't the Federal Government do the same? We need to stop spending money that we do not have on new programs that further increase our ever-expanding debt.

Madam Speaker, our children and grandchildren are dependent upon us being fiscally responsible. This rule and this bill is not fiscally responsible. I urge my colleagues to reject this rule so that sensible amendments, like the two that I have discussed and others that Mr. Diaz-Balart discussed, can be included in this important debate.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation is the first step in a process that offers the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico an invitation to become a full member as a State in the greatest Nation in the world. It is neither onerous nor unfair to require that English be the only official language as a precondition for its admission. I introduced an amendment that would accomplish this on two separate occasions. Unfortunately, the Democrats in this body rejected my amendment on both occasions, both in the committee as well as in this rule. Without this commonsense amendment, this legislation is fundamentally flawed.

Throughout our Nation's history, the common thread that has united individuals of diverse backgrounds has been the common use of the English language. It is the glue that holds us together as a Nation. This amendment would help unite the island with the rest of the other 50 States if it is admitted as a State. President Ronald Reagan once said, ``By emphasizing the importance of a common language, we safeguard a proud legacy and help to ensure that America's future will be as great as her past.''

No territory with an official language other than English has ever been admitted to the Union. In fact, there are a number of former territories that had to comply with English preconditions before they were admitted to the Union, including Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico. All of these States agreed to the condition that their schools shall always be conducted in English, and Puerto Rico should be no exception.

My amendment does not prevent the Puerto Ricans from speaking Spanish in their home, church, business, or on the streets in San Juan.

I thank the gentleman.

It simply requires English to be the official language in public schools, local and State courts, State government agencies, and the Puerto Rican legislature. This should not be a huge problem because since 1900 English has been taught from kindergarten to the 12th grade in Puerto Rico. Without this amendment, children in Puerto Rico will never have the opportunity--never have the opportunity--to participate fully and equally with their fellow citizens.

It is my firm belief that insisting on Puerto Rico's adoption of English as its only official language must serve as a minimal requirement for consideration of its inclusion into our sacred Union. Since the Democrat leadership of this body rejected my amendment on two separate occasions, I urge this body to vote ``no'' on the rule and ``no'' on H.R. 2499.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman from Colorado for yielding.

I believe very firmly that the only way that we are going to incorporate people into this country--and we have been a Nation of immigrants, and I believe very fully that we should continue to allow responsible immigration into this Nation--but English has been the common thread that has bound us all together. It should be the official language of America.

We have required Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, and New Mexico to accept English as the official language to be admitted, and I don't think----

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment because it is a hollow amendment. No territory with an official language other than English has ever been admitted to the Union. Why this time?

Instead of reporting the English amendment I offered as a condition of statehood, the Rules Committee reported out a much watered down alternative English amendment which is opposed by every major pro- English group in the country. Unlike my amendment which required English as a condition of statehood, the Burton-Young amendment only encourages English to be taught without any enforcement.

Further, this amendment states that if Puerto Rico is admitted to the United States, the official language requirements of the Federal Government shall apply to Puerto Rico to the extent as throughout the United States. We don't have anything. That's totally useless.

This would be a great provision if the United States had an official language. Unfortunately, we do not. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, it's another 3-day work week for Congress, and there is still nothing on the agenda to spur the economy and to incentivize growth. Job creation remains the top concern of the American people. Shouldn't it be a priority of Congress as well? With 15 million unemployed Americans, it is negligent not to prioritize job creation in the private sector today. Through my JOBS Act, H.R. 4100, we can empower small businesses by reducing their tax burden and provide relief to the lowest two individual income brackets.

Mr. Speaker, I urge this body to seriously consider my legislation or any other bills that put people back to work and provide lasting solutions to the problems facing our economy.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered to be the first sponsor of H.R. 1914, a bill originally introduced by Representative Deal of Georgia, for the purposes of adding cosponsors and requesting reprintings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.

I thank Mr. Stearns for yielding.

We may very well be needing to focus on the radio frequency spectrum that is in the public domain; but, Mr. Speaker, this Congress is ignoring the greatest spectrum that the American people are demanding, and that's where are the jobs. We're not focusing on public policies that are going to create a stronger economy and create jobs. In fact, we are developing policy over and over again that this leadership of this House and this Senate and the President are forcing upon the American people that are going to take away jobs.

The ObamaCare bill is going to kill millions of jobs. The jobs bill that we saw in past jobs I and II, et cetera, are going to kill jobs and not create jobs. They're going to create government jobs. And the American people are asking where are the jobs, not where is the spectrum. Radio spectrum, though, that is an important issue.

But this Congress needs to focus upon jobs, Mr. Speaker, and the American people need to demand that this Congress do just that.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Thank you.

I am asked frequently by my constituents, Dr. Broun, what does ObamaCare mean for me? And what I explain to my constituents that ask that is that, number one, if they have private health insurance today they can't keep it because it's going to change. In fact, I will respectfully disagree with my learned colleague from Tennessee really on the semantics of what Dr. Roe was saying when he said this bill was designed to fail.

Well, actually, it's designed to fail for what it was promoted to be, and that's to provide free health care for people all over this country. Well, some people are going to get free health care, but the reality is it was designed so that we wouldn't stay in this current system. So it, according to the designers, it's going to be successful, because it's going to push everybody out of private insurance onto one single government policy.

So it is designed to be successful in what this President and what the leadership here in Congress wanted it to do, and that's to go to what President Obama said during his dog-and-pony show at the Blair House just a few weeks ago. He said he wanted everybody in this country under one pool, one insurance plan administered by the Federal Government, which means every American citizen is going to have socialized medicine, everybody.

That's what their plan is. That's what it was designed to do. So it won't fail in the respect of what they designed the plan to do, because it's going to be very successful. If it stays in place, everybody in this country is going to be under a socialized medicine system.

The second thing we were told that it was going to lower the cost of health care. But American citizens need to know it's not going to lower the cost to anybody. In fact, private health insurance is going to go up.

We are told by our Democrat colleagues that the doctor-patient relationship is going to be maintained. But that's hogwash. A Federal bureaucrat, as Dr. Roe was just talking about, about preventive care but really for all care, there is going to be a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., that's going to be making decisions for every single patient, for every single doctor in this country.

So the American citizens need to know that if you want to make health care decisions, and what I tell them, is if you want to make health care decisions with you and your doctor making those decisions, you are not going to be able to do that anymore, and there is going to be ration of care for everybody, whether you are currently under private insurance or whether you are under the government insurance program.

If you have that card, if you are given free insurance, even under this plan, given that free health care insurance card or if you are on Medicare or Medicaid, you may have the card in your pocket, but there aren't going to be any doctors that are going to accept it because they can't from a financial perspective.

Another thing the American people need to understand, that I keep telling my patients, is that, particularly in small rural communities, there won't be any hospitals and doctors there anymore because they can't afford to stay in business. They are just going to be some huge regional hospitals that eventually are going to be government hospitals like the VA.

Now, there are some good VA hospitals. We have the luxury of having a great VA health care center in Augusta, Georgia, the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center, which actually has two hospitals there. And the veterans are very fortunate, blessed, to have Rebecca Wiley in the VA system there in Augusta. But even there, there is ration of care and there are a lot of problems.

It's going to get worse at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center for the veterans that are there, but it's going to get worse for everybody. So the quality of health care is going to go down for everybody in this country. The cost is going to go up.

One other thing I tell my constituents, when they ask, Dr. Broun, what's this going to mean for me? If they are small businesses I am going to tell them that they are going to cut jobs because they are going to have to do so because of the financial burden that the extra taxes is going to put on them.

That means that many millions, actually, of American citizens are going to lose their jobs because of this bill. They are going to lose their jobs, but strictly because of this bill.

Another thing is we are going to have cost controls, or it's going to break this Nation financially, and it can cause an economic collapse to America.

Well, thank you, Dr. Gingrey.

In fact, there is a John Deere plant in Columbia County, Georgia, just north of Augusta. That's a great plant. It hires hundreds of my constituents and citizens in the State of Georgia, and people are going to be put out of work from John Deere in my district. And then people can look at your chart there, I hope that the camera will focus upon it and look at it just for a moment or two, and just see the amount of money that these companies are going to lose. Well, how can they lose that and continue in business? Well, the only way they could do so is by cutting jobs.

The people who are going to be hurt most in this country are the poor people and senior citizens on limited incomes. The Medicare folks are going to be hurt because of loss of their doctors. The doctors are not going to be able to take their Medicare anymore. We already see doctors, primary care doctors like me who practice medicine are going to have to quit because they can't afford to continue to see Medicare or Medicaid patients anymore.

In fact, I talked to a lot of my medical colleagues in the 10th Congressional District in northeast Georgia, and they are quitting seeing patients on government insurance. Why? Because they absolutely cannot afford to do so anymore because their reimbursement rate, what they are paid is less than what it costs them to give those services.

I will give you one example out of my own practice. Medicaid, I used to be in an office. As the gentleman from Marietta knows, I did a full- time house-call medical practice. I still practice medicine today. I still see patients, still do house calls, did that full time before coming here. But when I was in the office as a primary care doctor, I saw patients from cradle to grave; and some of my most favorite patients were the pediatric patients.

We would give childhood immunizations. But Medicaid cut the reimbursement rate to us, in our office, below the level it cost us to buy the serum. And that didn't count the cost of the syringe or the nurse's time or the liability coverage and all the other things and my time, anything else. So we had to stop giving childhood immunizations in my office and had to send patients over to the health department.

And, actually, they could go to Kroger and get a flu shot cheaper than I could buy the flu shot serum and be reimbursed by Medicaid or Medicare at less than what the serum cost me just to buy it. I couldn't afford to do that. And that is the kind of thing that doctors all over the country are facing, this kind of a dilemma. They want to deliver those services, they want to take care of their patients, but they just cannot afford continuing to do so. And I think, coming back to the ``designed to fail,'' what I think that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the administration have put in place is something so that it's going to fail, and they can establish a socialized medicine program.

Before I yield back to Dr. Gingrey, I want to just say one more thing. Last August, I spent a few days up in Canada and I talked to patients just to find out about the Canadian health care system. I talked to one man who makes $50,000 a year. He told me that he spends 60 percent, 60 percent of his income in Canadian federal and provincial taxes primarily to pay for the health care system; 60 percent of $50,000. That doesn't give him much to live off of. And that's exactly where we're headed in this country. So particularly lower-income, middle class folks and low-income people are going to be hit the hardest. And then the senior citizens who are on a limited income are really going to be hit hard because of the cuts in Medicare.

Certainly, Dr. Gingrey. I appreciate it.

Some of our colleagues keep saying we are just being sore losers. We have lost, that the bill is now law, and that we need to just move on. Well, that is what our colleagues who would very much like to see us have socialized medicine in America would like for us to do. But we cannot do that because this bill is going to be a killer. It is going to kill our economy. It is going to kill jobs. It is going to kill the quality of health care in this country. We are going to have rationing of care so that people who need services are not going to be able to get those services.

It is going it kill unborn babies because the taxpayers are going to be paying now for greater abortion services. We are going to have, because of this bill, a greater expansion of abortion services, and the taxpayers are going to pay for it. Even a lot of pro-choice people in this country believe it is just fundamentally wrong for taxpayers to pay for elective abortions. So it is going to be a killer bill.

But what we need to do, and we all heard during the time that many of the grass roots were here, they kept saying, ``Kill the bill.'' Well, we unfortunately weren't able to kill the bill, but what we can do is we can repeal it, and we can replace it with policy that makes sense for the American people.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

This bill, as well as the underlying bill is a farce, just two big farces. Let me tell you a couple of things that they won't do and some things that they will do.

The first thing that it will do is it's going to drive millions of people out of work. Also, besides that, it's going to drive many doctors out of business, as Mr. Burton was just talking about. When people have that free health care insurance card issued by the Federal Government in their pocket, it's going to be about as worthless as the Confederate dollar was after the Civil War because you are not going to find any doctors who are going to be willing to take the government insurance card.

So access is going to be worse. It's going to be worse for the people who can least afford it to be, and that's the poor people in this country as well as senior citizens.

We need to repeal this bill. We need to stop this reconciliation process farce tonight. We need to repeal ObamaCare, and we need to replace it with policy that will create more access, create jobs, which will lower the cost of health care and not be a government takeover of the health care system.

Mr. Speaker, the simple truth is this health care bill is a killer. It kills over 5 million jobs in future job creation with $52 billion in mandates and taxes. It kills economic freedom and the American entrepreneurial spirit. It kills the family budget with over $17 billion in more mandates and taxes primarily aimed at the poor and its seniors. It kills our future by allowing taxpayer- funded abortions.

Make no mistake about it. If you vote for this bill, you can never call yourself pro-life again. No executive order can change this.

As a family doctor, I know we can have commonsense health care reform that provides lower costs without a government takeover and without killing our economy. I urge my colleagues to listen to the American people and kill this bill.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise today in support of H. Con. Res. 244 expressing support for the designation of March 20 as the National Day of Recognition for Long- Term Care Physicians and to honor an esteemed long-term care Georgian physician, Dr. William A. Dodd. As a primary care physician for almost four decades, I understand the important role long-term care physicians play for an ever-growing elderly population.

We as a body have spent the last year debating health care reforms. It appears that a weekend vote on government takeover of the entire health care system is the best Congress can come up with. It is a shame that we have lost an opportunity to debate real reforms that will help millions of Americans either continue with or obtain affordable, quality and accessible health care for their families, reforms that many in Congress can agree on, such as allowing the purchase of health care insurance across State lines, developing associations and State high-risk insurance pools to help lower insurance premiums, allowing medical providers to receive tax credits for providing free services for those who are unable to afford care and for full deductible of health care costs, tax fairness.

We in Congress can do much better than what the current discussion is yielding. For the sake of all long-term care physicians, as well as all Americans, the health care debate needs to move away from our current path and start over with commonsense reforms.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Jordan is exactly right; the American people are not being taken into consideration. They are being overlooked. But I want to remind the gentlelady from California, and the American people for that matter, the AMA only represents a very, very small fraction of physicians in this country, a very small group. All these groups that she named off have cut their own special little deals with the President and with the leadership here in the House and the Senate. They have cut out their special deals for their own parochial interests, but they haven't considered the American people.

I will tell the gentlelady from California, the vast majority of medical doctors who are practicing medicine, like I have for almost four decades, deplore this government takeover of the health care system, the vast majority, and what it is going to do if it is passed into law. It is going to mean that patients can't make health care decisions for themselves; doctors can't make health care decisions for their patients. Government bureaucrats here in Washington, DC, will be making those decisions.

And the people who are going to be hurt most are those people on Medicaid and Medicare, the poor people in this country and the senior citizens. The reason that they are going to be hurt the most, we already see it happening as doctors are having to not accept any more Medicaid patients, any more Medicare patients because of reduced reimbursement; and that is going to get much worse if this bill is ever passed into law.

So they may have an insurance card provided for them by the Federal Government in their pocket, but that insurance card is going to be worth the same amount that a confederate dollar was after the war between the States, worth nothing, because they can't get access. And that is exactly where the Democratic leadership is taking us. Access is going to be much worse than it is today. But we have some commonsense solutions.

We have some solutions. I have challenged Democrats to introduce a bill that would do four things: across-State- line purchasing for businesses and individuals, association pools to give people multiple options, develop State high-risk pools, and have tax fairness so everybody could deduct 100 percent of their health care costs and insurance off their income taxes. I've had many Democrats say they would love to support it but their leadership won't let them. We can have some commonsense solutions that would give people what my Democratic colleagues keep asking for--lower costs, more accessibility.

But the program we are seeing on the floor and that is going to be forced down the throats of the American people is actually going to be adverse to the people who can afford it the least, the poor people and the senior citizens in this country. It's going to put millions of people out of work. The cost is going to skyrocket. It is going to be disastrous.

We can find commonsense solutions. We can do some things that will be in the best interests of patients, doctors, businesses, and everybody, if we just do it.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to vote for this bill, but we are embarking upon a history for women that is going to be bleak. My mother died from metastatic breast cancer at age 63. A government panel just recently said women under 50 cannot get a mammogram and women over 50 can only get one every 2 years. This is the kind of rationing of care which is going to be exploded upon the American public.

When a woman walks into an abortion clinic, there are two people who walk in that are alive. When she walks out, there is one dead and one wounded. We are creating more abortions. We are going to support the abortion industry in the Senate bill. The American people need to understand very clearly, the Senate bill that we will be voting on in just a few days is going to promote abortions and it is going to kill unborn children.

We hear a lot of confusion, and we hear a lot of confusion about the CBO. I call the CBO parameters, what was given by them, zombie economics because a person would have to be dead without a soul walking around to believe the parameters that were given to the CBO, and it is just not factual. This is going to create more debt and it is going to put people out of work. It is going to deny access to care to many people, particularly the poor people and the elderly, and it is going to be disastrous for women because, particularly the constraints on Medicare reimbursement, women expend more of those dollars than anybody else and they are going to be denied care because of it.

Will the gentlelady yield?

The facts are that the Federal Government will require all insurance policies to get that extra tax. It is not called a tax, but it is an extra tax that is going to be forced upon anybody who pays for insurance, and that tax is going to be what is paying for abortions. So abortions are going to be paid. They are going to be forced on the American people by the Senate bill. And that's just the facts. That's the simple facts of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, America is at a pivotal point in its history. We hear a lot of claims on both sides that are contradicting. And I want to just talk for a few minutes about some of those claims and just give you some simple truths. We heard all day long today that doctors support this government takeover of the health care plan. I brought one of several charts that we are putting together in my office. Nearly 500,000 doctors, represented by a number of organizations, including the Medical Association of Georgia, my own medical society, are against this bill.

In fact, this chart, small letters, this is just the beginning of the A's. The simple truth is that doctors don't support this bill, if they are practicing physicians, overwhelmingly.

Now, I am a family practice doctor. My own society, the American Academy of Family Physicians, has supported the bill. They have cut a sweetheart deal where the reimbursement rate for primary care docs, family doctors like me, will be upped a little bit. But what they haven't looked at is all the ramifications of this, which are going to be disastrous for their own practices.

The AMA cut a sweetheart deal. It is my understanding that they wanted tort reform, an SGR fix, and 100 percent coverage. They haven't done very well with that because none of those three are going to be accomplished in the Senate bill that we will be voting on this weekend.

We have heard claims about CBO says it is going to reduce the deficit. Well, the simple truth is they have used zombie economics to get these numbers. Because one would have to be walking around in a dead person to believe the economic parameters that were forced upon the CBO. A good example is the CBO was forced to score, or tell us how much it would cost when we pay out only 6 years' worth of benefits but we have 10 years' worth of increased taxes.

The Internal Revenue Service is going to be markedly increased in size and given more authority to snoop into our personal lives. In fact, they are going to hire 16,000 new agents to look at our bank accounts, look at our health records, look at whether we have acceptable health insurance as is deemed by a board here in Washington,