Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. Welch

Amendment No. 536: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following new section:

Offered By: Mr. Welch

Amendment No. 537: Page 9, line 15, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced by $150,000,000)''.

Page 12, line 25, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $150,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. Welch of Vermont

Amendment No. 538: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Welch

Amendment No. 549: Page 187, line 24, insert before the

period the following: ``: Provided further, That, from the

funds made available by this title, the Secretary of

Agriculture shall transfer an additional $149,000,000 to the

Commodity Futures Trading Commission to ensure that the

Commodity Futures Trading Commission is able to carry out its

duties under the law''.

I thank the gentlelady from Colorado.

Three points. Number one, any regulations that aren't doing their job, they're imposing excessive burdens, let's change them. I agree with that. The President agrees with that. You're arguing that. You're right. The American people want regulations that are limited to achieving legitimate goals and not imposing unnecessary burdens.

Second, and this is a question, why are we going to debate this? Why are we going to substitute words for actions? The Committee on Energy and Commerce and all the other committees that are being charged to act on this resolution are free to act. And rather than have a discussion and debate about it, ask those committees to come in with what their specific recommendations are. Let the House of Representatives vote yes or no on any proposed action.

But third, jobs. Both sides have been saying we've got to focus on jobs. A couple of very good speeches, Mr. Murphy from Pennsylvania, Mr. Stearns from Florida, we agree with that. Why don't we dust off a proven and bipartisan job-creating bill, Home Star, which the Energy and Commerce Committee passed out on a bipartisan basis last year, and bring it forward to this Congress this year? It's something that saves money for our homeowners on their energy bills, it's something that puts local contractors who are reeling from the decline in homebuilding back to work retrofitting our homes, and it saves $10 billion in energy bills, creates 170,000 jobs and it's all about using less, not more. It's about efficiency. And that's common ground. We're not having a debate about whether we should or shouldn't be drilling, or what's the preferred energy source, whether it's coal, nuclear or solar. It's really whatever energy source you're using, if you use less of it, as a business or as a consumer, you're going to save money. So it's something we can do together. The new majority would have the final say on how we would pay for this. It could be designed in a way to take care of the capital formation concerns that the other side has expressed.

What we're talking about here is important. Regulations should be limited to the legitimate purpose for which they're intended. They shouldn't be excessively burdensome. If there are specific regulations that ought to be adjusted and it requires statutory action, come back with the specific statute, let this body vote on it and move on. That's action. It's not words. But then the common goal that we have, even if it's a significant debate and disagreement about how best to get from here to there, is we've got to create jobs in this economy. Home Star is a way we can do it with the new majority working with the new minority.

I thank the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, about a year ago, I got a call from Donna, a mother who lives in Plainfield, Vermont, and this was her story:

She has a son who had his first job. It paid like 9 bucks an hour and it came with no health care, but they were excited that her son was getting out in the workforce, learning discipline, learning self- responsibility. But he lost the health care because he was no longer on her policy. He got into an accident. He's fine, but he has $20,000 in medical bills that were uncovered. That is a burden on him and it's a burden on the family. When she learned that we passed health care that included coverage for her 21-year-old son, she was ecstatic. It relieved an enormous burden on this family because they knew that their son would have coverage.

This repeal bill is taking away that coverage for Donna's son. Why?

The question that we have is different from the campaign where we made our arguments. We now are in Congress and we have a mutual responsibility to decide whether we are going to spend our time here continuing to make partisan political points or making practical progress for the American people.

You have some good arguments about the health care bill and about what reforms we need, and we've got to wrestle with the cost of health care. No matter how we pay for it, the cost can't go up higher than wages and salaries. But what we should do is improve what we have, correct what must be corrected, and get rid of what doesn't work. But to throw it all out, all these insurance reforms--health care for Donna's son, preexisting conditions, preventive care for seniors where by getting care in time it's going to save us money--that's the wrong thing to do.

When does it make sense to toss out the good rather than correct the bad?

Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the time for this Special Order of 1 hour to discuss the repeal of health care. And this legislation which passed today is the triumph of the Republican victory in the elections. And the Republicans ran on a campaign platform of repealing ObamaCare, as it was called and vilified, and today accomplished that goal.

ObamaCare became a vilification of health care, really a caricature of what was in the bill. It became a million different bad things to a million different people. But the moment the campaign is over and the partisan political points have been put on the board, each of us who has been elected, Republican or Democrat, has the responsibility to use our office to make pragmatic progress for the American people.

And the purpose of our Special Order tonight is to explain in concrete detail what the American people lost and will lose if the repeal is ultimately successful. We have a number of my colleagues here to join us. And to start it off for us is one of the senior members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, a leader in health care reform and elements of the health care reform that have broad bipartisan support, Representative Eshoo from California. I yield her such time as she may consume.

I thank the gentlewoman from California.

The story that Congresswoman Eshoo told is making very real what the consequences are of taking away from families benefits that they have and now depend on.

Just a quick story about Vermont, to make it, again, real. A woman by the name of Donna, from Plainfield, Vermont, a hard-working person, she and her husband both work. Their young son graduated from school, got an entry-level job that paid $8 or $9 an hour. And as the case with most entry-level jobs, it came without health care.

That child was no longer eligible to stay on his parents' policy, and they were doing all they could to pay their bills. Health care is expensive. They couldn't afford to buy a separate policy for their son. And most of the time that works out, but sometimes it doesn't, and it didn't in this case.

Their son had a car accident, $20,000 in medical bills. They are still paying those bills off.

When we passed the health care bill that included the provision that sons and daughters who were starting out in life, taking that first job, usually without health care, but learning job skills, fiscal discipline, personal responsibility, the worst, the bill we passed allowed those kids to stay on our policies until age 26.

It makes an enormous amount of sense in the peace of mind it provided. That assurance to Donna relieved her, her husband, and their son of all this anxiety about whether they'd have the health care they needed in the event of an accident. The action today by this Congress led by the new majority takes away from Donna, her husband, and their son their access to affordable health care. It didn't need to be done. And the question I think all of us have to ask is why?

There are elements of the health care bill that are imperfect. Let's improve them. There are elements that are very controversial. The individual mandate is controversial, and we have to acknowledge it. I supported it, and I'll tell you why. I believe that if everybody is going to have access to health care, and the vast majority of this country believe that's the case, then all of us should share in the responsibility of paying for it, on the ability to pay. That's why I supported the individual mandate, because folks who don't have insurance don't go forever without having the need for health care services. And most States are like Vermont. If somebody gets hit by a truck, the rescue squad shows up, and they take that person to the hospital. The hospital may inquire about insurance, but they don't condition providing full and extensive care on whether that person has insurance or doesn't. And that cost gets shifted on to the taxpayer. That cost gets shifted on to those who do have insurance in the form of higher premiums. So this is real what happened. The consequences to families are real.

I would like to yield to the Member from New York, also a leader on health care, Congresswoman Clarke. Thank you for joining us tonight.

I want to thank the member from New York. You talked very eloquently about preexisting conditions. And who of us doesn't have one? There was an article in The Washington Post today that said about 65 percent of Americans have preexisting conditions. So if the insurance companies are able to deny people coverage on that basis, it's a tremendous business model for them. They insure folks who are healthy, that's great for the shareholders, but it doesn't do much for most of us, the majority of Americans who have a preexisting condition. So thank you for focusing on that real provision in the bill.

I'm going to yield in a moment to the Member from Maryland. We have a number of Members here, so maybe we can be interactive.

But one of the things that I was going to ask you was on this question of preventive care. When we were considering this bill, I called Tom Huebner, who is the administrator of a local hospital, Rutland Regional Medical Center; and he had a lot of reservations about the health care bill, whether on balance it was good or bad. He decided on balance that it was good.

But one of the things that he said very specifically was that the free preventive care for seniors is absolutely essential. It was essential for their good health, and it was essential for bending the cost curve because folks do not come in if they don't have the way to pay for it. That was him talking to me telling me about the Rutland population. Whatever your remarks are, Member from Maryland, I am wondering if that is consistent with the experiences you have had in your district.

I thank the gentlewoman from Maryland.

In order that we can allow all Members to speak, I am going to yield to my colleague from Texas; but if there are any inquiries by Members who are present and want to engage in a dialogue, I encourage you to do that.

I thank the gentlelady.

The example you gave is of Texas, which is where the authorities who have responsibility for health care are pushing ahead to take advantage of the provisions that will allow them to do their jobs better even as we are having this debate about repealing and unwinding, but not replacing.

I mean, the point is that, if you want to improve something, you know, that's our job. Let's do it. There are provisions that all of us who supported this bill know could be improved; but we are hearing now real-world stories about things that are working really well, and we want to keep them.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time available?

I am going to yield to the gentleman from Connecticut, who has played a major role, especially in making fair the financing of this health care and not doubly taxing folks who are getting employer- sponsored health care benefits, and also for his tremendous work for seniors.

The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

I thank the gentleman from Connecticut. And as I listen, it's a good news/bad news story. The good news is businesses, large businesses and small, that have fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and to their employees have sharp pencils and figure out what makes the most sense for them, and they're signing up for this. So that's an indication that they've kicked the tires and come to the conclusion that this is good for business.

The bad news is, we apparently have done a pretty lousy job explaining this to the American people, and it has gotten obscured with the epithet of ``ObamaCare.'' But when you peel away the specifics of this--and then you provided evidence that businesses that have to make a hard-nose decision, this ain't about doing a ``good thing'' or they want to do the right thing for their company, but they've decided this is the prudent fiscal thing. So I thank you.

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia, senior member of the Appropriations Committee and one of the Members who is always a voice of conviction and conscience in this institution, Mr. Moran.

Well, I thank the gentleman from Virginia.

I yield now to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko), who has been listening to his constituents in the Albany region and hearing from them about prescription drug pricing and how it's too high. He has been bringing practical solutions to Congress to try to help make health care more affordable, the gentleman from New York.

I thank the gentleman, and I thank my colleagues for joining us for this hour tonight.

I thank the gentlelady from New York.

I say, Madam Speaker, to my Republican colleagues, you campaigned effectively, you beat us good, you ran on the agenda of defeating health care and repealing it. Now you're doing it. Own it. Admit what it is you are doing.

This is not a campaign. We're playing with fire. We're taking away health care benefits that make a real difference to our families.

Number one, this bill will raise the deficit by $230 billion. Fiscal responsibility, out the window.

Second, things that matter to families; their kids, starting out getting a $10 an hour job without health care. They have it now on their parent policies. We're taking it away.

Preexisting conditions. You have cancer and you want to buy insurance, you can. Repeal, you can't. You lose it.

Lifetime caps. If you are with cancer or diabetes and you need that insurance, you lose it before you can go without it.

And preventive care we're taking it away from seniors who are trying to take care of themselves, get those free mammograms, keep the cost of health care down. You are taking it away.

Admit it. Own it. State it proudly. It's what you campaigned on. It's what you're doing. But don't try to sugar-coat what this is about.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and welcome. I want to also thank the gentleman from New Mexico and welcome him back. Your comments about trying to work together and bipartisanship, that all makes an awful lot of sense to me and I hope to all of us. But welcome back, sir.

We are going to have an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to use this Special Order half-hour to talk about health care and also about the deficit. We do want to be bipartisan, but we also want to be real. Our job, as you know, is to legislate, and we will be judged by our actions, by our deeds, more than by our rhetoric.

Let me just say that the aspirations that have been enunciated by many of our Republican leaders are ones I quite admire; an open and transparent Congress, more open rules, fiscal discipline, things that are absolutely, fundamentally important to this country, and the question now is whether there is going to be a follow-through on those stated goals. The best way to start looking at it is what is going on with the health care bill, and the decision of the leadership is to repeal health care.

Now, that is a very radical decision, because as much as there are legitimate issues, many legitimate issues about that health care bill, a wholesale repeal as a policy is going to do real damage to real families in this country, in every district in this country, and it is also going to immediately increase the deficit by $230 billion.

As is known, that is not the opinion of a Democrat or Republican; that is the conclusion of the impartial arbiter, the Congressional Budget Office. So if we are dedicated to fiscal discipline, if we have got to bring down spending, how can we have as our first act as a Congress passing a bill that the Congressional Budget Office says will increase the deficit by $230 billion? It doesn't add up, obviously.

I am going to pause here because I have some of my colleagues who are going to be called to other locations. I want to start, if I could, with the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Perlmutter.

I welcome the gentlelady from Maryland, Congresswoman Edwards.

I want to talk about this question of will promises made be promises kept. It was the recurring question that was asked by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle when we were in the majority. Sometimes it may be uncomfortable because it's a legitimate question. And we have had to be judged according to our deeds and whether they matched our promises.

But there's this rules process under way on this health care bill. There are three issues that have come up. Number one, the fiscal issue. The Congressional Budget Office has said that this legislation will increase the deficit by $230 billion. And the Congressional Budget Office is the neutral arbiter. And we either--both sides--go by the CBO estimates, or we just say we're going to play this game without a referee and we're going to make up whatever numbers suit our political agenda. That is absolutely wrong. We cannot afford to add $230 billion to the deficit. My colleagues on the Republican side agree with us on the Democratic side that we cannot do that. It's irresponsible to do it. And this legislation that repeals health care will add $230 billion to the deficit.

Secondly, there's this question of the open process. As the Member from Maryland said, if we're going to have an open process, there has to be an opportunity for you, for the Member of Colorado, for every Member to offer their amendments, yes-or-no, on whether we can continue protection to folks whether they have a preexisting condition or not.

Right now, the law is if you have cancer, you can go out and buy insurance. Right now, the law is if you have a son or daughter getting out of college or getting out of high school, going into the labor force, they can stay on your policy. Right now, the law is if you have a mom or dad who's on Medicare and you're trying to get preventive care, they can get it for free. Right now, the law is that if you have diabetes or you have cancer, you have a serious long-term medical condition, there's no lifetime cap to cover the medical care that you need.

The repeal legislation would take away from every single American who now enjoys those insurance protections. It would take it away from them suddenly, abruptly, and with nothing to replace it. That's not right.

Now, this is real, by the way. Congresswoman Edwards gave a couple of stories--and we all have them in all of the districts, including those who are advocating for repeal. I spoke to Donna Watts who's from Plainfield, Vermont. She works in Burlington, Vermont, with 20 other employees. Four of those people that she works with, along with her, now have their children on their health care policies. Her son got out of high school, got a $10-an-hour job that came without health care, as most entry-level jobs do.

And the worst happened. He had a car crash: $20,000 in medical bills. Those are still largely unpaid--and this family takes seriously their obligation to pay their bills. They didn't have insurance. With the passage of the legislation last year on health care reform, Donna Watts was able to put her son, still uninsured, on her insurance. And she is asking me, Peter, does this really mean if we repeal health care that my son loses insurance? And the answer is: Yes. That's not right. We do not need to do this.

And it raises the other question, If this has not got a political agenda attached to it, we have gone from a campaign to governing. And the majority did a great job in the campaign and beat us up pretty good and have the majority now. But with that, of course, comes the responsibility of governing in a responsible way. If you're acting responsibly when you see a problem, you fix it. You don't abolish everything. You don't abolish a banking system in order to correct the problems in the financial world. You don't abolish all of the good things in this health care bill to deal with the things that need to be addressed.

So this is a very, very serious decision that's being made. It's going to be a template for the future of this 112th Congress. Are we going to actually deal with fiscal discipline even when that's inconvenient with our political agenda? The answer to that for the American people has to be: Yes. Are we going to protect the progress that we have made that benefits all of our constituents when it comes to these insurance reforms, and are we going to have an open process in this body so that those of us who have a different point of view are going to have an opportunity for an up-or-down vote?

By the way, that's not about giving us the opportunity to present our amendments. That's about letting our constituents know where we stand. Because at the end of the day that's the only basis upon which they can decide whether to send us back here or send us packing.

At this time I would like to recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Representative Price.

Thank you very much, Mr. Price.

I recognize the gentleman again from Colorado.

Thank you, the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have?

All right. Let me just ask the gentleman from North Carolina, Would you like to make any closing remarks and then yield to the gentleman from Colorado?

Thank you, the gentleman from North Carolina.

I yield for the final word from the gentleman from Colorado.

Well, I thank my colleagues for being here.

The bottom line is, anytime we pass a major piece of legislation, we should have the humility to acknowledge it can be improved--and we all do. We can make it better. We can make it stronger. But this totally destroys things that we have been fighting for decades to achieve on behalf of the American people: help for seniors with their prescription drugs, extending the financial viability of Medicare, changing and encouraging a new way of delivering health care services, moving away from fee-for-service, volume-driven to patient-centered, performance- based care, and then insurance reforms that put the patients in charge, which acknowledge that we are all in it together. This takes away the absolute unilateral power of for-profit insurance companies to decide whether your daughter or mine has health care.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your consideration.

Madam Speaker, I thank the Member from New York.

Let me start by acknowledging two things: One, the Republican majority won the election and has the right to bring this rules package with changes to the floor. Number two, there are some good provisions in this. Mr. Walden just described several. But, three, there is a time bomb in this.

The major responsibility that we have in Congress is to debate taxes and spending--taxes and spending. The provision that basically will protect privileged tax breaks so that we cannot have a debate about whether or not a hedge fund billionaire should pay at least the same rate of income tax as his or her chauffeur or cook; the fact we cannot have a debate as to whether mature and profitable industries should continue to get taxpayer subsidies, like the oil industry, instead of being able to divert them to emerging technologies; the fact that these are off the table so that the only outcome will be cuts in spending that affect every single person without any debate, that is the problem. And when Mr. McCarthy said that the rules dictate behavior, he left out that the rules dictate outcome as well.

Thank you.

You know, the challenge, I think, every person who is elected to Congress faces is: How do you challenge the institution but respect it? How do you stretch the limits but abide by tradition and see its importance?

David Obey has managed, over the course of a long career, to do it.

He came here as a young man, aged 30. When he came here and saw what was here, he didn't like everything he saw, and he did challenge it. He moved up in the hierarchy here, out of turn, faster than many people thought he should because he did challenge the institution, but he did it in a way that he respected what the Congress had to do as an institution.

You know, people talk about his irascible temper, or his irascibility, but he leaves with the same passion to challenge the institution--to challenge its limits but to respect fundamentally that this institution has traditions that we all are custodians of. When we are at our best, we manage to do both.

David Obey, over a long career, you have done that. Thank you very much.

I thank the gentlewoman from New York.

Mr. Speaker, America faces two great challenges: One, we have too few jobs. Over 15 million Americans who are looking for work can't find it. Even millions more are so discouraged, they don't even go out. Number 2, too much debt; approaching $14 trillion, in this bill would add $858 billion more.

Now, President Obama was right in proposing legislation, absolutely right, legislation is needed to revive our economy. And President Obama is right, he is absolutely right, that we should extend those middle class tax cuts for folks up to $250,000. They need the money. We can't shrink their paycheck, and that will help revive the economy.

But this legislation creates too few jobs and too much debt. The cost per job is in the range of $390,000. The cost of this is largely because of the success of the Senate Republicans to insist on $200 million both in estate tax reductions, in high-end tax reductions, that will go to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

This is not about class warfare. This is not about soak the rich. This is about prudent use of taxpayer dollars. If we borrow a dollar, there should be some job bang for that dollar borrowed, and those high- end tax cuts and the estate tax cuts do not generate jobs, but they will be a bill that comes due and must be paid by the middle class and working families of this country.

We have a responsibility to focus on jobs, to focus on economic revival, and to rebuild the middle class. We can do a better job. We could have a bill that extended the Bush tax cuts up to $250,000, and the money saved, put that into reducing the deficit and infrastructure development. We could have a bill that focussed on an estate tax that was less generous than what is being considered in this legislation, and we could have a bill that would protect Social Security. Americans know that we cannot take money out from the revenue stream and expect to have solvency in the long term.

So we have a chance to pass the legislation to revive us economically, to treat the middle class right, but to limit the debt.

We have been awarded 45 minutes to state our objections to this bill. And it is essentially this: Too much debt, too few jobs, too much risk to Social Security.

Our lead speaker is the member from Illinois (Mr. Jackson).

Mr. Chairman, with all the back and forth, what we really have before us are two problems facing America.

One is too few jobs: 9.8 percent of Americans who want work are out of work--15 million people. Millions more are so discouraged that they are the underemployed. We have got to find a way to put them back to work.

The second problem we have is too much debt. Without going into the history of how we went from a record surplus to a record deficit, we went from the Clinton tax rates to the Bush tax rates. We went from a surplus of 20 million jobs created to 8 million jobs lost. We have a debt now that is approaching $14 trillion, and with the passage of this bill, we will be approaching $15 trillion.

The question for us to the American people is:

If we are going to borrow a dollar for any reason, will there be a job bang for that dollar borrowed?

That dollar borrowed is coming from China. What this legislation will do is literally ask the American middle class to borrow $200 billion to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest families. This is not an objection to people being wealthy, as has been said. They can be generous, and they can create jobs. It is about whether that dollar borrowed will produce a job for an out-of-work American--and it won't.

There are other alternatives to what is before us. We should not be borrowing money that won't be productive. What we should do is a very simple alternative that hasn't even been considered:

We can extend the middle class tax cuts, as President Obama wants to, but we can stop it at $250,000. We can invest the savings in deficit reduction and half in infrastructure development. We can, as Mr. Frank said, provide a $250 one-time payment to the folks on Social Security, who haven't had a COLA increase in 2 years. We can have a piece of legislation that will borrow less, reduce the deficit, and create more jobs.

Our responsibility, fundamentally, is to the American middle class. One of the reasons they so fear this debt is because they know, at the end of the day, they will have to repay it--their sons, their daughters. The bondholders will be okay, but the middle class will pay.

Madam Speaker, l rise today to recognize an extraordinary group of students at the Mettawee Community School in West Pawlet, Vermont.

I would like to commend the Mettawee Community School for its effort, inspired by Greg Mortensen's Three Cups of Tea, to collect pennies to help build schools for children halfway around the world. The pennies collected by students at Mettawee were donated to Mortensen's ``Pennies for Peace'' charity, which helps support education for children in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. I am immensely proud of the students and teachers of Pawlet and Rupert for organizing this project.

Through a selfless commitment to supporting opportunities for children whom they have never met, Mettawee's students learned about the importance of giving to others, the invaluable nature of education, and the consequences of conflict. They learned that not all the world's children have the chance to attend school, and of the need to fight extremism and intolerance with education and opportunity.

The initiative was spearheaded by Mettawee Community School third graders Sydney Badger, Trinity Delano and Isabelle Desroches, with the help of teacher Nancy Bryant. Together they organized a collection of 47,700 Pennies for Peace. The pennies will go to children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and these funds have the potential to change lives by providing access to learning opportunities and by ending isolation and cycles of ignorance.

I would like to thank the students of Mettawee Community School for their hard work and dedication to the cause of bringing education to boys and girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan through Pennies for Peace.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, the American middle class has been built on having jobs that allow families to pay their bills, to send their kids to college, to own a home, to save for their own retirement.

The American middle class has been under assault; their wages declining, their jobs being outsourced and sent abroad. Our fundamental responsibility is to give folks who want to work the opportunity to work in jobs that are going to allow them to take care of their families. And if we stand by idly when a competitor country manipulates its currency to put our manufacturers, our workers, at a disadvantage, we are complicit in that. And this is the bare minimum of what we can do--give our workers, give our manufacturers, give our American middle class an even shot at the American Dream.

This legislation is necessary, it's overdue, and it must be passed.