Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I want someone to show me the jobs that we have been promised by the Democrats. Many counties in my district have unemployment rates of more than 13 percent.

Show me the jobs, Mr. Speaker. My colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle promised that their trillion-dollar stimulus would immediately create jobs and unemployment would not rise above 8 percent. Nothing could be further from the truth. In June alone, almost half a million jobs were lost, driving unemployment to its highest level in 26 years.

Now, after shoving a $646 billion energy tax down the throats of the American people, liberal leadership is now shoving a multitrillion- dollar health experiment. According to the CBO, this will cost 750,000 more jobs and push 100 million Americans off of their private health care plans.

Mr. Speaker, I ask you to show me the jobs and show me why the American people should believe once again that a trillion-dollar experiment will work.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise really in amazement today to hear our colleagues on the other side talk about hydroelectric power being a renewable energy source, because we have seen multiple venues here in the House where Democrats have denied that.

Mr. Speaker, we have a tremendous need in this country for alternative sources of energy, renewable sources of energy. Nuclear energy is one of those renewable sources of energy, or a source of energy that is one that makes the most sense from an environmental perspective as well as a cost perspective.

We have many members of the opposition on the other side that want to deny us going into a nuclear age. France gets over 80 percent of its electric power from nuclear sources. The United States should do the same thing. In my home State of Georgia, the Georgia Power Company for a long period of time now has been trying to get permitting for two new nuclear reactors at their plant in Vogel just south of my district, just south of Augusta, Georgia. They already have two. They want two more. But, Mr. Speaker, they have had a great deal of difficulty because the regulatory commission and various environmental groups have made it extremely difficult.

They are not alone. All over this country, there are electric power companies that want to put in electric power plants that are nuclear- fueled. Mr. Speaker, they have great difficulty doing so. We need to use our renewable resources, not only for hydroelectric power, but for nuclear power. We need to look to wind and solar. We need to look to biomass. We need to stop this idiocy of a corn-based ethanol source of energy. Mr. Speaker, I'm from Georgia, and I love my cornbread and grits. It makes no sense to me to drive down the road burning up my food. But we've done that. And it has driven up the cost of corn for the chicken producers that produce most of the chicken for the world, all over the world in my district, and in my friend Nathan Deal's district from Gainesville in the Ninth and Tenth Congressional Districts of Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, we have an energy policy that is broken. Republicans have presented bill after bill that would solve the energy crisis. The American Energy Act is one. It is an all-of-the-above energy plan that would stimulate hydroelectric power. It would stimulate nuclear power. It would look to alternative sources of power.

But our plans are not being heard on the floor of this House. Why is that? Why are the American people's representatives not being heard?

It is because the leadership on the Democratic side wants to stifle debate, wants to shut off any alternative ideas. They call the Republican Party the ``Party of No,'' but the Democratic Party has been the Party of No, whereas the Republican Party is the Party of k-n-o-w Know because we know how to solve the energy crisis. We know how to solve the health care financing crisis. We know how to solve the economic crisis. But those ideas are not being heard. Mr. Speaker, it is time for the American people to wake up and demand that the Republicans are heard.

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

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I'm a medical doctor. I've treated diabetes for 3\1/2\ or more decades. I congratulate my good friend Joe Baca for bringing this issue to the forefront because it is extremely important for all Americans, not just only the Latino community that he's focusing on here. I've seen many patients in my overall medical career that are Latino, as well as blacks and Caucasian and people from all ethnic groups. It affects everybody no matter who their forefathers, what their skin color is, and I congratulate Mr. Baca for bringing this forward.

God tells us in Hosea 4:6, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. And as a medical doctor, I've tried to instill knowledge into my patients over the years, and this, of course, is what this resolution is all about, and I do congratulate the gentleman for bringing it forward because we do have a problem with people being knowledgeable about diabetes and the effect that it has upon them, their families, their longevity.

Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in the adult population. It leads to many health problems. It leads to heart attacks and strokes. It leads to peripheral vascular disease.

As I sat here listening to Mr. Baca, I recalled an elderly black gentleman who came to see me as a patient that I diagnosed as having diabetes, and I started talking to him about diet and exercise and those types of things. Well, he didn't take care of himself, in spite of all my warnings and all of the consequences that he was headed towards. He wound up having a foot cut off, and he had that leg cut off. I kept talking to him. His blood sugar was continuing to be extremely high. Wound up having a second leg cut off, and eventually he had both arms and both legs removed, and he was sitting in a wheelchair when he finally got the message and started controlling his diet, taking his medications as prescribed, and we finally got his blood sugar in good control.

That's a sad story. I've seen many, many patients over the years that have developed renal failure, which is what diabetes leads to. It leads to the nerves in people's legs dying so that they have no feeling in their legs so they can get cuts or even the simplest little puncture or a cut on their foot may lead to gangrene that leads to amputation, maybe even lead to what we call in medicine septicemia, which is where you have bacteria in your bloodstream, and it can go to your heart and it can affect the valves in your heart. Septicemia itself can lead to death, by itself.

Diabetes afflicts many of our population, and it's sad that people don't have the knowledge of what that disease will lead to.

That's why I congratulate Mr. Baca for bringing this forward, and I do support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, when I was practicing medicine in rural south Georgia, I had a small automated lab in my office down there, and Congress passed a bill called the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act. My lab was totally automated. I had quality control to make sure that the results were absolutely accurate so that when I checked a patient's blood sugar, I would know what it was to know if they had the potential for prediabetes or whether they had frank diabetes. I would do a fasting blood sugar that would help me diagnosis their condition.

Well, Congress passed CLIA, the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act, that closed my lab and every single doctor's lab in this country. Closed our labs. Eventually, I got my lab back up after I jumped through the hoops that were required by the legislation, by the regulatory burden placed on me and all doctors in this country.

Prior to CLIA, a patient would come in and I would take a history and physical and would suspect that they may have diabetes. Some patients would get a family history of diabetes, and so I would do a screening test of a fasting blood sugar.

I charged $10 for that test, Mr. Speaker. After CLIA shut me down, I had to send patients over to the hospital. The hospital was charging $35 for the same test. Once CLIA came along, it actually increased, and I got my lab opened back up, I had to charge $35, but the hospital, I think, went to $75 for the very same test.

The point I want to make here is this regulatory burden on the health care industry markedly raised the price for that one test. What we see across the health care industry when government gets involved in health care decisions, such as it did with CLIA, it drives up the cost for all of us.

As a physician who used to be a preferred provider for Medicare patients--I'm not now, for many reasons--but as a preferred provider, I could not see many patients, as I did previously, for free. Many, many patients, poor patients, people that had no insurance would come into my office, and I would see them for free. I have literally given away hundreds of thousands of dollars of free health care provision in my office; give free tests, free screening for diabetes, for many conditions. But under current Federal law, physicians who accept Medicare cannot do that. That makes no sense, Mr. Speaker.

It is so today because of Federal regulation. Congress passed HIPPA, the Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act. That has cost the health care industry billions of dollars and has not paid for the first aspirin to treat the headaches that it's created. And it was totally unneeded.

Mr. Speaker, the point I'm trying to make is the American people need to know that the more the Federal Government gets into the health care business, the more regulatory burden is placed on physicians and hospitals, the higher the cost goes.

In the non-stimulus bill we put a chunk of money, a huge chunk of money, for something called comparative effectiveness research. What I'd like my colleagues and the American

people to know, Mr. Speaker, is that this is a process put into place by the Democratic majority.

This could have prevented those 78-year-old people that my friend Mr. Baca talked about from getting the care that they need because it is going to be deemed, as some Federal bureaucrat says, it's not effective comparatively to provide the dialysis for that 78-year-old that Mr. Baca was talking about. It's not going to be effective to try to prevent the blindness. It's not going to be effective to provide care to people who now are getting care. And we're going to have a tremendous denial or delay of services.

I have said on this floor in Special Orders that this comprehensive health care bill that's being debated right now in committees and is going to be presented on this floor eventually--the Speaker wants to have it come up before we leave for the August recess--it's literally going to kill people.

Now I have been chastised in the liberal media for making that claim, but it's going to kill people for this simple reason, Mr. Speaker. And the American people need to understand this. People are going to be denied services. They're going to have a marked delay in their being able to get the screening tests that they need for colon cancer or for evaluation of their chest pain or they're going to have a marked delay, as we see in Canada and Great Britain today, of being able to get their bypass surgery.

So diabetic patients who have developed coronary artery disease and have angina pectoris and maybe even had a heart attack are going to have marked delay in being able to get the stints put in or their bypass surgery that they desperately need, and people are going to die.

I have seen patients over and over again with these consequences of diabetes.

Mr. Speaker, I've given away hundreds of thousands of dollars of my services over my career. I want people to have access to health care-- but they do today. EMTALA requires every emergency room in this country to evaluate and treat everybody who walks in. So the question of access is not a true question to debate today.

We hear about 47 million people. The numbers keep growing by the Democratic side. The American people need to understand that a lot of those people are illegal aliens who have come here illegally. I understand why. They come here for work, for their families. And I feel for them. But they have still broken the law.

American citizens are going to be denied treatment, denied x-rays, denied their coronary bypass surgery, denied their dialysis, and all these things because of this comprehensive health care plan that's being shoved down the throat of the American people. This is not the proper way of doing it.

CBO just last week said it's not going to lower the cost of health care. CBO just last week said it's not going to put people in the insured category. CBO last week said it's going to cost at least 750,000 jobs in America.

The more government gets involved in the health care business, the higher the cost goes, the less efficient it is, and the Democratic plan is going to destroy the quality of health care.

The American people, Mr. Speaker, need to stand up and say ``no,'' and say ``yes'' to a health care plan that makes sense, that lowers the cost of care for all Americans.

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, The Hill newspaper today reports that President Obama is pointing his finger at the Republicans, at the GOP, for the

stalled health care bill. The last time I checked, the Democrats were in control of the House; they have a 60-Member majority in the Senate, and they control the White House. Clearly, the finger needs to be pointed in a different direction or needs to be reeled in.

I wonder who the President will blame next for double-digit unemployment and for a doubled national debt. We were promised that the Democrats' $1 trillion stimulus experiment would immediately create jobs and that unemployment would not rise above 8 percent, but in June alone, almost a half a million jobs were lost. This has driven unemployment to its highest level in 26 years.

Where are Democrats going to point their finger on that one, Mr. Speaker?

What happens when the $646 billion energy tax that the leadership in this House has rammed through raises energy costs on every American family by over $3,100 and when this energy tax is seen in home utility bills and at the gas pumps, costing up to 7 million Americans their jobs? They're going to lose their jobs. Which direction will the President then point his finger, Mr. Speaker?

When the administration's multitrillion-dollar health care experiment is shoved down our throats before August, costing, as the CBO says, more than 750,000 jobs, I ask again: Which direction will the President point his finger?

The bottom line is that, instead of playing the blame game, I urge congressional leadership and this administration not to ignore the recent deficit and the unemployment news. I urge them to scrap this multitrillion-dollar government health care experiment and takeover. I urge them, instead, to work with us Republicans. Work with us across the aisle to develop a health care plan that helps small businesses create jobs instead of taking away jobs and one that gives Americans better access to lower insurance costs. Work with us to rein in spending and to rein in this egregious, outrageous Federal debt. Work with us to institute meaningful reforms that will truly stimulate the economic growth and that will create jobs for all Americans and that will not just create more bureaucracy. Work with us, Mr. Speaker, Madam Speaker, Democratic colleagues. Work with Republicans.

We are accused by the Democrats of being the Party of No, n-o, but Republicans are the Party of Know, k-n-o-w. We know how to create jobs and how to stimulate the economy. We know how to lower the costs of all health care expenses for Americans all across this Nation. We know how to help small businesses by leaving dollars in their pockets, by cutting their tax base and by giving them the money they need to create new jobs and to buy inventory. We know how to stimulate the economy by leaving dollars in people's pockets so that they can invest in their children's futures and in their children's college education funds, so they can pay off credit card debts, so they can buy new cars and buy new homes. Those are the things that will create a stronger economy.

The Republicans have presented alternative after alternative to the Democrats' plan, but our plans are being quashed by the Democratic leadership, and won't see the light of day. It's not fair to the American people that their Representatives are shut out of the debate.

Mr. Speaker, we need to return to regular order. We need to go through what historically has happened in this House so that we have appropriations bills that are presented here with an open rule so that Members can present their amendments. We need to go through regular order, and we need to stop bringing big bills to this floor through the suspension process where they don't have any vetting in the committee process. We need to return to regular order and to go back to what this country was founded upon, and that's freedom and democracy.

I thank you, Mr. Bishop, for yielding me some time. I was really touched by the faces that you've brought forward to the American people tonight here on C-SPAN about these people who have lost their jobs and my good friend Tom McClintock talking about the National Forest and the mismanagement that is going on because of the endless environmental wacko lawsuits that are going on there and the unfortunate untimely death of this young man who was fighting those fires that probably could have been prevented if we had managed the forest in a better way, in a correct way, according to normal silviculture practices.

Civil culture means forestry practices to the best extent for economic purposes, and I thank both of you for bringing the face of people to this discussion tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I'm a medical doctor, and I've seen the faces of a lot of patients who have struggled with the cost of health care expenses, the cost of health insurance and medication and hospital bills. In over 3\1/2\ decades of practicing general medicine in rural south Georgia and now northeast Georgia, I've literally given away in my services several hundred thousand dollars of my services if I had charged for them.

We have a proposal that I call ObamaCare that's being debated here in the Halls of Congress. Mr. Speaker, the director of the Congressional Budget Office last week said that if ObamaCare is passed it's going to cost 750,000 people their jobs across America. Three-quarters of 1 million people are going to be put out of work just because of passing a bill that supposedly is going to make everybody covered by health insurance.

But the Congressional Budget Office director also said that even in the next 10 years not everybody would be covered. Let me say that again, because what we keep hearing from the Democratic side is we're going to cover everybody; everybody's going to have health care. Well, everybody does have access to health care today. Federal law requires it. What everybody does not have is health insurance.

But our Democratic colleagues want to give free health insurance to illegal aliens, and that's what ObamaCare does. It gives free health insurance to illegal aliens. The 12 million, 15 million illegal aliens in this country who are criminals have entered this country illegally. Virtually all of them have illegal documents. They've broken many Federal laws. They're criminals. And my Democratic colleagues want to give them free insurance. It's going to cost 750,000 American citizens jobs to do so.

Mr. Speaker, this House considered a bill just a few weeks ago that they, my Democratic colleagues, call cap-and-trade. I call it tax-and- trade or tax-and-cap because it's about taxes. It's about revenue. We hear over and over again that it is going to create all these green jobs. Well, it will create some green jobs. In fact, I saw a friend, my next door neighbor in the hall over in the Cannon House Office Building, bring in a chart where he's going to talk about green jobs, and it indeed will create green jobs, but what you're not being told is what happened to Spain.

Our President has lifted up Spain as being the model of what we need to do on these green jobs and environmental policy. Well, about a decade ago Spain put into place a similar piece of legislation as our tax-and-trade bill that's languishing over in the Senate, and I hope the Senate will defeat it. But in Spain, for every single green job that was created, 2.2 other jobs cost. In other words, 2.2 people were put out of work for every one person put to work by these green jobs that tax-and-trade is going to create.

I know my Democratic colleagues can add and subtract. I don't want to accuse them of not doing so, but if you subtract 2.2 from 1, you get a minus 1.2, and that's exactly what's going to happen. If the American people don't stand up and say ``no'' to tax-and-trade, or tax-and-cap, whatever you want to call it, and tell the U.S. Senators, Mr. Speaker, that this is going to be disastrous and it's going to cost American jobs and to defeat it over there in the Senate, there will be 2.2 people put out of work for every 1 person that is put to work.

I already said the Congressional Budget Office says 750,000 people are going to lose their jobs because of ObamaCare, but it's going to do many other things, too, that are disastrous. ObamaCare is going to insert a Washington bureaucrat between every patient and their doctor, and the Washington bureaucrat is going to be making, Mr. Speaker, every single individual in this country's health care decision. The patient, the patient's family won't be able to make those decisions. The doctor won't be able to make those decisions. It's going to be a Washington bureaucrat that makes that decision.

We were told by our Democratic colleagues it's all about lowering costs; but just last Friday the Director of the Congressional Budget Office said that it's not going to rein in the cost of health care. In fact, it's going to cost more money.

So let me get this right. It's going to cost more money to put in place ObamaCare; it's going to take decisions away from patients and their family and their doctor about making health care decisions; and it's going to put a Washington bureaucrat in charge of those decisions, and that Washington bureaucrat is going to say whether a patient can get needed treatment, surgery, x rays, MRIs, or not.

We already know in countries such as Great Britain and Canada that in those socialized medicine, government-run programs, that the death rates for cancer overall are much higher than here in the United States. Women who get breast cancer in Canada and Great Britain, roughly 50 percent of them are dead after 5 years. Prostate cancer, the same, roughly 50 percent of people that are diagnosed with prostate cancer in those countries, or 60 percent, are dead in 5 years. Here in the United States, it's over 90 percent are still alive. So what's going to happen here? Our death rates are going to go up for all cancers.

Just today, we had a bill here on the floor that I talked about that is one to try to encourage people to understand diabetes. As a medical practitioner, I've treated diabetes for years, and the end result of diabetes and the reason it's so important to catch it early and to treat it is that people die at a young age when they have diabetes, a lot younger than they should if it's treated.

But the thing is, as we ration health care and the Washington bureaucrat tells patients that they can't get the tests that they need, they can't get the life-saving coronary bypass surgery or stints and the procedures they need to help them not die from heart attacks or from strokes, the Washington bureaucrats are going to say particularly to the elderly that you can't get the dialysis that you desperately need because you're old and it's not cost effective, it's not comparatively effective, and thus, you just must die and not get the treatment that you desperately need.

So people are not only going to be put out of work but people are going to be in poor health. We're going to degrade the quality of health care delivered by doctors and hospitals across this Nation because a Washington bureaucrat's going to say ``no'' to patients and say ``no'' to doctors.

This is going to be disastrous. We're creating a debt and a deficit that's unprecedented in the history of our Nation. We're going down a track right now, Mr. Speaker, that every great nation in history has gone down: Great Britain, Spain, even Rome. We're going down a track of spending money that we don't have, creating debt that we cannot pay. We're robbing our children and our grandchildren of their future. They will live at a lower standard than we live today because of this huge debt that we're creating, Mr. Speaker, this huge deficit that this administration is creating.

I hear from our friends on the Democratic side, even just this week I heard them blame President Bush for the debt and deficit. Well, I blame President Bush for being a big spender and he was. While I was here during the tail end of his Presidency, I fought all those big spending bills. I fought the Washington bailout of Wall Street.

But President Bush was just a piker compared to what this administration's doing. We're creating unprecedented debt and deficit that our grandchildren cannot pay. So their standard of living is going to be worse than it is today.

Mr. Speaker, there are going to be a lot of people put out of work. During the Great Depression all the spending that FDR did did put some people to work, but the unemployment rates bounced up and down and stayed very high.

Mr. Speaker, in my district in Georgia, many counties have over 13 percent unemployment today. I've talked to several managers of plants, manufacturing plants in my district, that tell me that if this tax-and- trade bill that the Senate has over here that this House passed, they are they're going to lock the doors. Those jobs are going to go overseas because they can't afford to pay the higher energy tax.

Most Americans are going to have a hard time, particularly the poor and the people on limited incomes are going to have a hard time paying the higher energy cost.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans have stood up over and over again and have talked about the proposals that we have made, proposals to stimulate the economy and create jobs; proposals to lower the cost of health care expenses to all Americans; proposals that would stimulate the economy; proposals that don't cost our grandchildren their future and, in fact, will not even cost the taxpayers today any increase in their taxes. But those proposals are not heard because the leadership of this House and the leadership of the Senate across the way won't let those proposals get to the floor to be discussed, and it's not right, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we're robbing America of its future. We're robbing Americans of their jobs today. We're going down a track that's going to put more and more people out of work. It's going to create more problems for people paying their utility bills, their gasoline, their home heating costs and things like that. Even with the mandates from our friends on the Democratic side that they are putting on health care, it's going to literally lower the income of people who are working, and it's not right and it's not fair.

Mr. Speaker, it's got to stop. The American people need to stand up and say ``no'' to ObamaCare, ``no'' to tax-and-spend policies that this administration, that this leadership in this House and the Senate are bringing forward because it's going to destroy America.

And I thank my friend from Utah, Mr. Bishop. I see he has a poster here that we have a lot of these unemployed people in my district. Praise God that we don't have 14.7 million people in my district out of work; but more and more people are becoming unemployed, and they're going to continue to lose jobs in my district in Georgia, and I'm sure they are in yours in Utah if we don't stop this outrageous spending that the leadership of this Congress, of this administration, are doing. We've got to stop it, and it's up to the American people to demand from their Senators and their Congressmen and this administration saying ``no'' to this outrageous spending that's going on.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, as we enter the fourth week of the appropriations process, I stand before you once again, angry and frustrated that the Democratic leaders continue to silence the voices of the American people by refusing to allow this body to debate legislation in an open and transparent way. As the American people

know by now, Democratic leaders have limited the time of debate and the number of amendments to spending bills that the minority could bring up. This is an unprecedented practice that has not been done by either Republican or Democratic majorities in recent memory.

Mr. Speaker, this is completely outrageous. The opposition party and the American people deserve an opportunity to examine and criticize the majority's policies, and then we deserve the opportunity to offer alternatives when we disagree.

But what Speaker Pelosi is doing now not only goes against the practices of this House; it also goes against everything she promised the American people when Democrats took control of the House in 2006. Mr. Speaker, this Congress is passing nonstimulus stimulus packages, cap-and-trade boondoggles, and now we're silencing the voices of the American people.

I ask, when is enough enough? It has to change.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, as we discuss this bill about natural gas, I think we need to look much beyond that one issue. Republicans have introduced legislation called the American Energy Act. It's an all-of-the-above solution to our problems with dependence upon foreign oil, and, Mr. Speaker, we've got to stop that dependence upon foreign oil.

We're buying oil from countries that hate us, and they're utilizing our dollars to fight us, to kill our men and women in service. And the only way we are going to bring an end to that is to not only look to natural gas, but to look to nuclear energy, look to alternative sources of energy, look to things such as wind, solar, biomass. We need to find ways of having clean coal technology. I know a lot of people find that to be an oxymoron, but, in actuality, there is technology today that will lead to clean coal technology.

Mr. Speaker, we have to be good stewards of our environment. That tax-and-trade bill--some call it cap-and-trade. I call it tax-and-trade or cap-and-tax because it is about revenue--that's not going to do anything about our environment. All it's going to do is create more revenue for the Federal Government to pay for this ObamaCare plan that we are going to be debating in committees here in the House this week and possibly voting before we leave for the August break.

But, Mr. Speaker, America is suffering. We're suffering from high energy costs. Certainly, the gasoline prices have been lowered from $4, as it was not many months ago. Just recently I saw gas, as I drove to the airport this morning in Walnut Grove, Georgia, was $2.169, but that's still too high, and we're headed higher in the near future.

Mr. Speaker, it's extremely difficult for Georgia Power to get the permitting for the two new reactors that they want to put at plant Vogtle, just south of my district, just south of Augusta, Georgia. It's extremely difficult for people to do the research and development to look for alternative sources of fuel. Natural gas is being shut out as a means of powering our vehicles, powering many things that it could power.

Mr. Speaker, we need an all-of-the-above energy plan. I hope that the U.S. Senate will defeat the tax-and-trade bill that we passed here because it will be disastrous. It will raise the costs of all goods and services here in America. It will raise the cost of health care, medicines in the drug store, doctor bills, hospital bills. It will raise the cost of food. It will cost every single individual in this country more money, and I hope the American people will stand up and say ``no'' to the tax-and-trade bill that this House passed and that the Senate is considering, will consider this fall. I hope they'll stand up and say ``no'' to ObamaCare, which will increase the time it takes for people to get x rays and surgeries and the necessary medical evaluation and treatment that they need. Thus, people who have cancer will be denied the life-saving drugs that they so desperately need or the surgery that they need.

Mr. Speaker, we're heading down the wrong road in this country. This House is taking this country down the wrong road of higher deficits.

And I hear people on the other side blame President Bush for the deficits he's created, but President Bush's deficits are piker levels compared to the deficits that have been created by this Congress since this administration took over 6 months ago. This President has presented a budget that was passed by this House that will create more debt in the next 5 years than every President, including George Bush, from George W. Bush all the way back to George Washington, more deficit, more debt than has been created by every single President.

We cannot continue to spend our grandchildren's future. Our grandchildren are going to live at a lower standard of living than we do today because of this tremendous debt that we've created.

Mr. Speaker, it has to stop, and I hope the American people rise up and say ``no'' to ObamaCare. I hope they will stand up and say ``no'' to this tax-and-trade, tax-and-cap bill that the Senate's considering. I hope they will say ``no'' to a new stimulus package, nonstimulus bill that the President talks about that he wants to bring forward.

Mr. Speaker, we've got to stop spending the money of our children's future. It has to stop. It's outrageous, and the American people need to understand that they are the key to rising up and telling their Member of Congress in the House and the Senate ``no.'' ``No'' to cap- and-trade, ``no'' to ObamaCare, ``no'' to any more stimulus, ``no'' to any more Wall Street bailout, ``no'' to taking over any more financial institutions, ``no'' to spend, spend, spend.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot tax and spend our way to prosperity. It never has worked. It was tried during the Great Depression, and it didn't work then. It's not going to work today. We seem to have elitists that think that they can do it better, but socialism never has worked, never will work, and it's time for the American people to stand up and say ``no'' to it.

Mr. Speaker, we need to have natural gas as an alternative source of fuel for our automobiles and buses and trucks. We need to have all these energy sources. We need the American Energy Act passed into law. We need to cut taxes on small business and leave dollars in their pockets so that they can create jobs, so they can buy inventory, so we can get our economy back on track.

Mr. Speaker, the Republicans are charged by the Democratic folks on the other side of being the Party of No, but it's actually the Democratic Party that's been the Party of No. We are, as Republicans, the Party of K-N-O-W. We know how to stimulate the economy. We know how to lower the cost of health care. We know how to fix the problem that we have with energy.

And, Mr. Speaker, it's time for the American people to stand up and say ``no'' to this steamroller of socialism being driven by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, fueled by Barack Obama, and say ``yes'' to the Republican alternatives that we desperately need, as a Nation, to fix the economy, to lower the cost of health care for all Americans, to get people back to work, and stop this killing jobs and killing our economy.

So the American people, Mr. Speaker, need to stand up and say ``no'' to the Democratic plan and ``yes'' to the Republican plan.

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

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I started my political activism by being the government affairs vice president for Safari Club International, and the Safari Club has been very much engaged in trying to feed the hungry through a program called Hunters for the Hungry, and it's something that's absolutely critical for us to promote this type of idea. I congratulate my colleague, dear friend from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey, for bringing this legislation to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, hunters all over this country are willing to provide some of their deer and elk meat to feed the hungry, and I think it's a proper role for us as Members of Congress to promote this type of philosophy, of letting the private sector take care of the poor, the widows and fatherless as biblically we're charged to do. In fact, I believe very firmly that the private sector can provide for the needs of those disadvantaged in this country a whole lot better than government can.

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to rise and speak for a minute in behalf of this bill. I fully support it. I congratulate Dr. Gingrey for bringing this important legislation, and I congratulate my other colleague from Georgia for speaking in favor of the bill and look forward to its passage and look forward to promoting other kinds of ideas, Mr. Speaker, where we can stimulate the private sector, provide for those things that are desperately needed by those that are disadvantaged around this country. They really need some help. They need some help in feeding themselves. They need some help in providing jobs, and the private sector's the best way to do that. We over and over on our side introduce legislation that would stimulate the economy, would create jobs, instead of robbing our grandchildren of their future as we see going on here in this Congress.

So, Mr. Speaker, I do rise in support of this bill, and I hope that we will pass it unanimously once it comes for a vote.

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