Floor Statements

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I rise in opposition to this amendment.

I could spend my time talking about the cuts to the Low Income Heating and Energy Program, LIHEAP, and that's important because there are many people in my district suffering through the worst winter in Memphis' recent history and one of the worst winters in the country's history that need help with their utility bills more than ever. And that's, I think, an awful thing when people are suffering from the inability to pay their utility bills that we're cutting LIHEAP.

I could talk about what we're doing to law enforcement, cutting the COPS program that puts police on the street and helps local government put new policemen on the street to protect our people, and cuts to State law enforcement spending.

I could talk about the many calls and letters I've gotten from people concerned about title X cuts that will affect 5,500 in my community, women that won't be able to get family planning services, which include cancer screenings, annual exams in my city.

I could talk about cuts to NPR, cuts to the National Institutes of Health, where they're looking for cures for cancer and Alzheimer's and diabetes and other illnesses that affect our populace which we need to cure as soon as possible. Or cuts to the FDA, $241 million to keep our food safe and preserve public health.

Or cuts to Social Security and Medicaid. A gentleman stopped me Saturday and said, please, you tell the people in Washington, don't mess with our Social Security and Medicaid, but there are great cuts there as well.

Or the $18 billion cut to transportation--and Memphis is a transportation hub with rails and roadways and runways and river transportation, and $18 billion in cuts to transportation is going to hurt the growth of our economy and sending goods to market.

I could talk about any of those items. I could talk about the cuts to legal services and the fact that more and more people need legal services in these economic times. The housing crisis hasn't left us, and people need representation.

I could talk about cuts to education in historically black colleges and universities and Head Start programs. How are we going to compete, which we are not doing well in science and math, with the Chinese and the Indians if we cut these programs? I could talk about any and all those programs.

But one thing I want to do is I want to read a column called ``Eat the Future,'' and Paul Krugman, a Nobel

Prize-winning economist, wrote this. So I just think it's worthy to listen and have it heard on this floor what Mr. Krugman said yesterday, Nobel Prize-winning economist.

``On Friday, House Republicans unveiled their proposal for immediate cuts in Federal spending. Characteristically, they failed to accompany the release with a catchy slogan. So I'd like to propose one: Eat the Future.

``I'll explain in a minute. First, let's talk about the dilemma the GOP faces.

``Republican leaders like to claim that the midterms gave them a mandate for sharp cuts in government spending. Some of us believe that the elections were less about spending than they were about persistent high unemployment, but whatever. The key point to understand is that while many voters say that they want lower spending, press the issue a bit further and it turns out that they only want to cut spending on other people.

``That's the lesson from a new survey by the Pew Research Center, in which Americans were asked whether they favored higher or lower spending in a variety of areas. It turns out that they want more, not less, spending on most things, including education and Medicare. They're evenly divided about spending on aid to the unemployed and-- surprise--defense.

``The only thing they clearly want to cut is foreign aid, which most Americans believe, wrongly, accounts for a large share of the Federal budget.

``Pew also asked people how they would like to see the States close their budget deficits. Do they favor cuts in either education or health care, the main expenses States face? No. Do they favor tax increases? No. The only deficit-reduction measure with significant support was cuts in public-employee pensions--and even there the public was evenly divided.

``The moral is clear. Republicans don't have a mandate to cut spending; they have a mandate to repeal the laws of arithmetic.

``How can voters be so ill informed? In their defense, bear in mind that they have jobs, children to raise, parents to take care of. They don't have the time or the incentive to study the Federal budget, let alone State budgets . . . So they rely on what they hear from seemingly authoritative figures.

``And what they've been hearing ever since Ronald Reagan is their hard-earned dollars are going to waste, paying for vast armies of useless bureaucrats--payroll is only 5 percent of Federal spending''-- and others.

The bottom line is they've been hearing lies about the Federal budget. They've been hearing lies about the Federal bureaucracy. PolitiFact said that the biggest lie in 2009 was death panels. In 2010, it was government takeover of health care. If the Republicans get PolitiFact's Lie of the Year this year, they will get the Irving Thalberg lifetime achievement award. I hope they don't get it.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Willie Sutton would love it if the cops weren't trying to protect the banks--that would be great--but the cops are important.

Mr. Chairman, my first job out of law school was as an attorney for the Memphis Police Department. One of the first things I learned is that the best deterrent to crime is patrol, and patrol is policemen on the beat. That is the most effective way to reduce crime. When you have high unemployment, when you have a great recession like we've experienced with high unemployment, crime naturally does go up. When you have crime go up, you need more cops to protect property and individuals and lives.

This COPS program has been successful. It was successful in the 1990s, and we saw a tremendous decrease in crime. As Mr. Weiner pointed out--and I praise him for being a champion of this for so many years-- this has been an effective program that has saved lives and property, that has kept insurance rates down, and that has kept order and liberty in our country.

Willie Sutton would not be for this amendment. He'd like to see the cops off the streets, away from the banks, away from the widows, away from the children, away from everybody who is in the arms of a potential crime, in the way of a potential crime, and that's something we shouldn't have in this country.

The cost to get rid of this program would be tremendous. The fact is the COPS program saves money, and this amendment zeros out the COPS program. It isn't a simple change in eliminating some of the moneys. It eliminates the program, and that's a mistake.

Local police are struggling with shrinking budgets. Tax rates are down as people have spent less money, so we don't have the money to support our police and to keep our law enforcement at the levels they should be. To cut police and law enforcement is a mistake, a serious mistake that's going to cost the American people.

You can't put it down in dollars and cents. Lives will be lost. Property will be lost. Insurance rates will go up. This is one place among others, but particularly here, they're the first line of defense. Of the police powers of the State, the first one is safety.

There are other areas where you could save money. If you want to keep the budget and cut it, there are a lot of defense programs that could be cut. There are defense programs that are not effectively keeping us safe from foreign problems or from foreign adversaries, but our streets in every city in this Nation and every hamlet has the need for police. To cut this COPS program is simply irresponsible, and it disregards the American public's regard and need for safety on the streets and for safety in their communities. We should support our police and make our streets safer.

I would ask that we support this amendment. I would ask that the people on the other side understand that law enforcement is a primary concern of government and that a reduction of this program or the elimination of this program will cost the American public dearly, and lives will be lost.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I'm pleased to offer this amendment, of which many members of the Judiciary Committee have worked on behalf of legal services in the past. Many members of the Judiciary Committee have championed legal services over the years, none greater than Bobby Scott, who's been a member of the committee for some time, and the current ranking member, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Nadler, Ms. Jackson Lee and others.

Legal services is so important to giving people representation, and this amendment will restore $70 million that's being cut from the Legal Services Corporation. That's 17\1/2\ percent of the money legal services got in the past. Legal services is already woefully underfunded. If you look at the funding they've gotten over the last 30 years and prorate it, they've been behind in funds for a long time, and we've tried to make that up in the past years. Right now they turn away half of all eligible clients who seek assistance. Slashing these funds would make it even worse. And the fact is, in these dire economic times, some of the worst we've seen, although they're getting better, more and more people need legal services.

The housing crisis is not over with, and one of the major areas they work with is people who are having problems with foreclosures because of unscrupulous loans that they've been given, and there will be more and more people losing their homes or potentially losing their homes needing legal services. And if they don't have legal representation and they lose those homes, neighborhoods are hurt, individuals are hurt, and that is a major cost on the economy.

The executive director of Memphis Area Legal Services, Harrison McIver, said the cuts would be devastating to Memphis Area Legal Services, and it would be devastating to their capacity to remain an effective advocate and resource for low-income individuals with all the civil legal problems that they may have. It would require laying off at least five attorneys and taking 725 fewer cases.

Memphis Area Legal Services, as other legal service clinics, help victims of domestic violence, as well as with protective orders from abusive partners, as well as assisting folks with foreclosures and elderly people who have been victimized by predatory lenders. Think about how many victims of domestic abuse will be in danger without access to the courts, how many families will become homeless without this foreclosure assistance, and how many seniors would fall prey

to predatory loans without legal help. How many of our vulnerable citizens will have the courthouse door closed in their face?

The fact is, Mr. Chairman, that legal services is more needed in dire economic times than at any other time. And I understand the majority's positions about saying they were elected to make cuts. They weren't elected to make cruel cuts that hurt the most vulnerable people in situations that aren't of their own making, and who fall prey to predatory lenders or abusive spouses or people who prey on seniors in abusive ways. This is targeting the most vulnerable people in our society.

I realize that there isn't an offset on this, and I realize the reason Mr. Wolf has made his point. I understand, too, somewhat, and feel a little bit of kinship with the Roman gladiators who, when they went into the field of combat, told the emperor that, We who are about to die salute you. And knowing kind of what the situation is, I also understand that ave imperartor moriture te salutant.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, last night in Los Angeles, California, the Grammy Awards took place, and I am proud that one of my Memphis constituents, Kirk Whalum, received a Grammy. I am also proud that a special award was given to Al Bell who had been the head of Stax Records.

But even further, there was a tribute to Solomon Burke, one of the great singers of all time. The tribute was done by Mick Jagger. Nobody can quite do anything like Mick Jagger. But it was fitting that Mick Jagger did Solomon Burke, because Solomon Burke in the 1960s was one of the first African Americans to do Bob Dylan, and Bob Dylan was there, too. And then Eminem got the best rap song.

So it was a good, spirited night at the Grammys of biracial, cultural cooperation and understanding and love.

Offered By: Mr. Cohen

Amendment No. 173: Page 208, line 14, after the first

dollar amount within the quotes, insert ``(increased by

$70,000,000)''.

Page 208, line 15, after the first dollar amount within the

quotes, insert ``(increased by $70,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. Cohen

Amendment No. 396: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

I want to thank the ranking member for the time.

Madam Speaker, my subcommittee, Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law, has had hearings on these bills, the REINS Act, as well as the regulatory reform bills that have been proposed. The REINS Act would require all measures that have a cost of $100 million or more, before their regulations go into effect, within 70 days of the promulgation of those regulations, they would have to be approved by a positive vote of this House and our equal House, the Senate, and signed by the President before they go into effect.

The reality, Madam Speaker, is this would stifle government and stifle growth, because, as we have seen, the Senate has difficulty doing much of anything within 70 days. In fact, it had difficulty doing much in 2 years. And to ask the Senate, where any one Senator can put down a slip on a judicial nomination or hold up legislation if they so choose unless they get what they desire and want, the last vestige in reality that we have in this county of ``don't ask, don't tell''--don't ask the Senator what they want and don't tell what they got--all of these regulations would be at the whim and caprice of any one individual Senator.

That is not what the American public wants. The American public wants the government to work. They want the House and Senate to work. They don't want the system in the Senate where one Senator can kill almost anything, to where ``Senator No'' can stop the government from actively promoting the general health, welfare, and safety of the American public.

Now, the REINS Act wasn't needed, apparently, during the time that George Bush was President, and yet there were more regulations and rules during that time than there have been during President Obama's time as President. It is interesting to note that my colleagues on the other side understood the separation of powers doctrine and the fact that article II allows the executive to carry out and administer the laws, and they should be able to do so.

But once President Obama came into office and there was financial services reform--the financial services reform we needed, because without regulations the financial services sector almost took this country into another Great Depression. They did take us into a Great Recession, costing us jobs and jobs and jobs and jobs.

The high unemployment rate is the result of the lack of regulation in the housing industry, in the financial service industry, where those two worked together to almost bring down this Nation's economy and the world's economy to where we had a day when President Bush brought us the TARP to save our economy. And in a bipartisan fashion we passed the TARP that Secretary Paulson told us we had to pass because we were on the brink, as President Bush also said, of financial collapse. Yes, financial collapse because of the lack of regulation. And yet in this Congress, the 112th, we're being asked to say that no regulations would take effect unless the House, and the Senate--that body known not for its alacrity but for its ``deliberateness''--would have to act and possibly pass something within 70 days.

Health care legislation; regulations couldn't go into effect to keep young people on their parents' insurance until they're 26 unless the Senate acted within 70 days. Preexisting conditions would continue to be an impediment for children to get insurance and to be treated. Lifetime caps would continue to exist because we couldn't get regulations approved within 70 days.

The fact is, it's the executive's responsibility to carry out the laws that the Congress passes, that Congress is not the Executive. And because Barack Obama is President is no reason to change what the Founding Fathers set up as a great document, with three separate and equal branches of government being challenged now. The REINS Act would go back to what the Founding Fathers wanted. It would go back on the Constitution, which we spent time reading on this floor--the entire Constitution--that included article II, the powers of the executive, an equal branch of government to the legislature. And the REINS Act would say that the Constitution doesn't matter; that the Congress, the legislative branch that is supposed to pass the laws, will also be a part of executing the laws.

I hold the Constitution in high regard and don't believe we should shred it because we want to have an opportunity to slow up financial regulations passed as part of the Dodd-Frank bill and health care for the American public. The whole idea of this review of regulations that we've gotten and this discussion on this floor of the House has taken this House to a place where the American public doesn't watch the Congress make laws and make improvements to create jobs and to improve the welfare of the American public, but it makes it a debating society, because we already have the power to review rules, and we do it in the Judiciary Committee and we do it in all committees. But now we're going to have reality television; and C-SPAN, instead of watching us pass laws, is going to watch us discuss what we already have been doing, always do, and are supposed to do, which is review regulations and have oversight but not veto over the executive.

So, Madam Speaker, it is with great regret that I participate in this debate because this debate is not a part of a law and an action and a bill to improve the American public but simply a political show. And with all due respect to the chairman of the committee and the members who have brought this legislation, it violates the Constitution, which we read. That shouldn't have been a show. That should have been something we held deeply to our hearts. This violates the Constitution and the powers of article II.

Madam Speaker, in 1970, our air was so polluted that breathing was literally a public health threat. Recognizing that need to give Americans clean air, Republican President Richard Nixon signed into law the Clean Air Act.

In its 40-year history, the Clean Air Act has saved the United States trillions of dollars by keeping Americans out of hospitals, in schools, and in the workforce.

The nonpartisan American Lung Association estimates that in 2010 alone it saved over 160,000 lives. But despite saving 160,000 lives and trillions of dollars in the last 40 years, the Republican majority claims this legislation is destroying the American economy. They believe that act must be repealed so Big Oil and corporate polluters can no longer be held responsible for destroying our air and endangering public health.

If Republican efforts to repeal the EPA's Clean Air Act authority are successful, we will return to a time when every breath you take will endanger your life. History disproves Republican claims and illustrates that the Clean Air Act saves lives, creates jobs, and saves the government tens of trillions of dollars. But, apparently, these facts that Richard Nixon understood do not matter.

I am going to cite two Republicans who give good reasons to oppose this legislation and keep health care reform. One of the new Republicans, when he didn't think he was going to get his insurance immediately, said, ``What am I, not supposed to have health care? It's a practicality. I'm not going to become a burden for the State because I don't have health care, and God forbid I get into an accident and I can't afford the operation. That can happen to anyone.'' He succinctly summed up the reason why everyone should have the same opportunities as Members of Congress have to have health care.

But more importantly, in a more intentional way, one of the most revered doctors in the world, former Republican majority leader, Senator Bill Frist, said yesterday that he urged the Republicans to drop the charade and build on the legislation. He said if he would have been here, he would have voted for the bill. And it was important to consider the bill the ``law of the land'' and move on from there. ``It is the platform, the fundamental platform, upon which all future efforts to make the system better for the patient and the family will be based.'' And that is a fact. It has strong elements. I support Dr. Frist.

Thank you, sir.

I don't think so. And the tide has been turning. The national polls, which I think are reflective of Tennessee at least on a percentage basis, have shown that it's gone from 10 points up on people that want to repeal this bill to where it's even, as many people for it as against it in this country. There's been a 10-point switch in the last 2 weeks as people have looked at the possibilities of the repeal of the law and seen the benefit.

What I thought about, Mr. Garamendi, I was in New York, New York City, about 2 weeks ago, and I went in the Time Warner Building. They had an exhibit there of Salvador Dali; surreal, things looking out of space. Strange, strange pictures and thoughts. It's hard to think of this Congress and the Republican majority that's come in trying to repeal a bill that's going to become as popular, once it gets implemented, as Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare have over the years, that they are so out of touch with America today and its needs and the future. Because while this may seem to be important to the minority, the tail wagging the dog in that party, the tea party that's wagging the dog, saying repeal health care, the fact is down the line, people are going to embrace this bill like they embraced the Great Society's Medicaid and Medicare and the New Deal's Social Security. It's going to be a short-term possible victory but a long-term defeat. And the myopia of the other side, let alone the hypocrisy of some of its members, is hard to fathom. But you can only see it through the eyes of Salvador Dali, because obviously they are Salvador Dali, and they're saying things in a surreal way.

The nonpartisan, bipartisan Congressional Budget Office says it's going to save us $230 billion the first decade and $1.2 trillion thereafter, and they say, ``Well, they can have their opinion.'' Those are facts. Those are nonpartisan facts of people we hire to give us the truth. They don't like the truth so they summarily dismiss it.

They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie. Just like Goebbels; you say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again. And we've heard it on this floor; government takeover of health care.

PolitiFact, nonpartisan, Pulitzer prize-winning, 2009, St. Petersburg Times, said the biggest lie of 2010 was government takeover of health care, because there is no government takeover. It's insurance.

I look at my Facebook regularly and I've got some people I communicate with on different issues on Facebook. I respond to them whether they take my side or not, obviously. And one lady has been constantly talking negatively about health care. I responded. She keeps going on with the line that obviously she hears and she's taken as her mantra; and that is that this is a government takeover of health care. Well,

she's drunken the Kool-Aid, and that's just not true.

We heard in August 2009 that there were death panels and killing grandmother. Everybody agrees now, that was a big lie; just like government takeover of health care is a big lie. And it's amazing the lies: denying the effect on the deficit, claiming it's a government takeover, claiming there were death panels.

This lady on my Facebook page talked about the fact that it was going to take insurance companies out and there was a public option. Well, there is no public option. And the exchanges aren't a public option but the exchanges are private insurance where people can come together and get better rates that they couldn't get if they were dealing as individuals on the open market.

People don't understand. If you read Paul Krugman today, or yesterday--today in Memphis, we get it a day late--but yesterday in the New York Times, he talked about the errors in arithmetic, basically the lies that are being put out about how it will affect the budget. And Krugman, who's only a Nobel prize winner, says it's just not true, and what it comes down to, the bottom line, is there is a group in America that don't feel like they have a responsibility, a social responsibility, a moral responsibility, to those 32 million Americans who can't afford health care and right now are seeing death panels, the death panels that say you won't have insurance and you won't have health care.

As we are just one day beyond Dr. Martin Luther King's holiday, America's holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. King was not only for social justice, which everybody embraces today and talks about kumbayah and integration, but it was also economic justice. And economic justice involves health care, and it involves giving everybody an opportunity to stay alive, to get educated, and to get a job.

The first priority I have always believed of government is to keep people alive, their health care. The second is to get them educated. And the third is to get them a job. This rhetoric on the other side of the aisle about whatever they want to call it is not only false--read Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner--but it is the third priority. The first thing is keeping people alive. And you want to tell those 32 million Americans we don't want you to have insurance, we don't care about you. That is wrong. Dr. King wouldn't approve of it. I don't approve of it. America won't approve of it.

And it is as I started with, surreal to think that the first thing that this Republican Congress is doing is trying to repeal what will be known down the years as one of the great acts ever passed by this United States Congress. It will be to the fortune of the Democrats because like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and voting rights and civil rights, they are Democratic initiatives that brought America forward, progressive initiatives that have been brought forth by this side of the aisle. And the myopia of the other side is politically welcomed, if not policy-wise sad.

Property taxes.

Sir, I appreciate your leading this. You have been an outstanding Member; and your first vote, I think, was for this bill. You have a lot of experience of this issue. You were commissioner of insurance, if I am correct, of the largest State in the country, California. So you have knowledge here.

Mr. Pallone worked very hard on this bill, too, as I did; but Mr. Pallone was in a senior position.

As I think back on the passage of this bill, I remember a lot of criticism; and the other side and the people who were critical said we didn't take enough time to pass the bill. We only took a year, a year and a half to pass the bill. And they are going to take 2 days to repeal it. Take enough time? Where are the people who think we should take enough time for the legislative process to work, to have hearings, to have thoughtful discussion, to have analysis of expert opinion today? Two days and it is going to be voted on, and that's it. And the old mantra which we heard from so many people, ``read the bill.'' And yet so many people think it is a government takeover of health care. I say to them: read the bill.

And people who think Congresspeople are going to get something special, we get the same as everybody else. Read the bill.

Well, thank you.

Today, when I came on the floor, Ms. Slaughter--one of the senior Members of this Congress, an outstanding Member and the former chairperson of the Rules Committee, now the ranking member--told me of a Member on the other side, a Member in her fourth term--I guess it was in the Rules Committee, but it might have been on the floor--who expressed for the first time astonishment, amazement, that the insurance provided for Members of Congress was subsidized by the Federal Government. She had no idea it was subsidized. She hasn't read the bill. She doesn't even know what her policy is and what her benefits are.

The fact is people should want for others what they want for themselves. I don't have Federal congressional insurance--I don't have it--but nearly everybody else in this Chamber does. Yet they don't want their constituents to have it. Now that's hypocrisy.

What is good for the goose should be good for the gander. There but for the grace of God go I. You should care about your brother and your sister.

And this is going to be repealed in the same week as Dr. King's holiday?

I mean, I know it took a while for Dr. King's holiday to come about. It was John Conyers' steadfastness for 15 years to make it become law, and even then there were people in this House who voted against it, and there were people in the Senate who voted against it, but there is nobody who has given a better philosophy of life over 2,000 years than Dr. King.

Well, there are so many problems.

I represent an urban district in Memphis, and we do have a lack of health care in the urban areas. We need more primary care doctors, and we also need more community health centers. That's something else the bill is going to provide for, more community health centers. There are large areas in my community where there are very few doctors who are available and where there are not community health centers. So that's another portion. It's not just the primary care doctors who are so important--and we've got some of the greatest in Memphis--but it's the difficulty in not having community health centers.

Well, just the idea--and I will yield to Ms. Jackson Lee in just a second--but the idea of having medical records on computers rather than having them on notes. My father was a doctor. I inherited his penmanship. I got a C in penmanship. The teacher was kind to me.

Doctors don't write real well. If you have to go from written records, it's difficult, and they don't get transposed well. But if you have them on computers, it's very easy to see what shots and inoculations the patient has had in the past, what treatments they've had. It makes it easier to render a diagnosis and not have to repeat tests that are unnecessary and costly. It is so important. And part of this bill is to see to it that the records are put on electronic devices so that they're available throughout the Worldwide Web and everywhere. That saves medical costs in the long run.

Madam Speaker, I, as some of the future speakers here, are members of the class of 2006, which Representative Giffords was a member of. We had the opportunity to go through the orientation with her, to meet with Speaker Pelosi on many occasions, and to share many activities.

Gabrielle Giffords is a tremendous Member of this House--bright, caring, beautiful--and we all pray for her recovery and that she comes back and works with us.

I listened to her remarks on television when she talked about words having consequences and her brother-in-law, who is up in space, saying the same thing. It's true. Words have consequences, and we all need to be more concerned about how we speak about political opponents or people who have different perspectives than we do on political issues.

We are all Americans. We are all human beings. We all have similar goals and similar aspirations; and even though we may differ on philosophy, that doesn't make us communists or socialists or Birchers or whatever. We are all trying to make this government work.

One thing that we know about the person who did this shooting, besides the fact that he needed mental health treatment and was obviously crazy, is that he didn't like government. Government is good, and one thing we should learn from this is that government can be and is a good force. It is a lot about what America is. People who tear down government are doing a disservice to all of us, and they provide an atmosphere in which people think that anarchy is an answer. It is never an answer. Orwellianism is a philosophy that ought to be followed, and it isn't.

Gabby works as a Congressperson to make government work for her people, and that's what she was doing with her program on Saturday. The staffers who were there were working on the weekend, as many staffers do, and they work long hours. They love government and they love people, and they try to make a difference.

So I think we just need to remember that we are all human beings, that we all have similar goals and aspirations, that government can and is good, and it is the representative body of the United States of America. If you don't like the government, you don't like the country, and I love the country and so did Gabby.

Madam Speaker, today is the beginning of a process by which the Republicans will try to repeal the affordable health care bill. It is about 50/50 in popularity in America.

How can a bill with such individual constituent elements that are so popular, such as keeping young people on your insurance until they're 26, eliminating the doughnut hole, and seeing to it that there are more community health centers, be so unpopular? Because the Republican mantra has been--and it was even said today--that it is a government takeover of health care.

PolitiFact, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalistic group from the St. Petersburg Times--a nonpartisan group--said that was the biggest lie in political 2010.

Instead of reading the Constitution yesterday, maybe we should have just repeated ``do not bear false witness.''

Mr. Speaker, in a few minutes, we are going to have the reading of the United States Constitution--a show for the American public--for anybody who knows anything about constitutional law knows that it is up to nine men and women as to what the Constitution says.

When the Constitution was originally drafted--and I love it and I defend it--it didn't give women the right to vote, and it said slavery was permissible. Until the vilified Warren Court, in its correct decision in Brown v. Board of Education, it said separate was equal, and we knew it wasn't. African Americans were held back with Jim Crow laws.

Five people on the Supreme Court, not the whole nine, can make decisions that change the way the Constitution is interpreted.

Bush v. Gore, an abomination of a case that determined the Presidency for 8 years and took away States' rights. The Citizens United case funded the opposition that turned in the majority that the Republicans now have.

Making corporations the equal of people and putting money into politics poisoned the political system. The Supreme Court should read the Constitution. They need a lesson.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you, and I want to first start because this day has been a day that started with the reading of the Constitution which is a document that we all revere. I have a little pocket copy of it right here, and we revere it. We pledge when we take our oath of office to protect and defend and support the Constitution, but we all know that it's interpreted by our Supreme Court, and it's Supreme Court history would have been better today for people to understand.

And you mention that the foundation of the particular health care bill is in the preamble: We, the people of the United States, to form a more perfect union, establish justice, et cetera, promote the general welfare.

Also, in article I, which is the legislative article, section 8, it says that the Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce among the several States; and further, it says in article I that the Congress shall have the authority to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution of the Government of the United States, in either Department or office thereof. So, in my opinion--I'm a lawyer, but there's lawyers on both sides--there's plenty of justification for this health care bill.

Do you know next week when the Republicans will try to repeal this opportunity for Americans to get health care and wipe out these pre- existing conditions clauses, et cetera, will they be coming under the idea that health care is not part of the general welfare? Will they be coming basically on a constitutional argument that they may make that this wasn't allowed to require a person to buy insurance even though we can, of course, require a person to sign up for the draft and lose their liberty for a while and serve in the Army--and we can do that, we can conscript soldiers, but we can't make them buy insurance. Is that what they're going to say, or are they going to come and talk about these things that Mr. Scott talked about and say that we don't think it's good policy for parents to have their children on their insurance until they're 26 or it's not good policy for women with breast cancer to get treatment at a certain amount? What are their tactics?

And they will control the amendments that will be permitted to be discussed on this floor. I know Speaker Boehner said we were going to be able to have amendments and be able to have good discourse.

When I was a child, I had polio when I was 5 years old in 1954. I was fortunate. My father was a doctor, and so sometimes professional courtesy, but I'm sure he had insurance that covered my hospitalization. But there were years later, I think it was 11 years later I had a tendon-lengthening operation that was immediately related to my polio and necessary on my Achilles tendon. That wouldn't have been permitted necessarily if they could use the pre-existing condition such as polio to have denied coverage; and whether or not how my father dealt with the expense and whether it's because he was a physician, I don't know; but I'd hate to see children in the same situation and parents in the same situation not be permitted to get that type of coverage later on.

Let me, if I can, read something that I've had prepared for today that came from a constituent's story, John Hopkins; and I know John Hopkins. He's a very important and active member in my community and contemporary. He sent me an email, and Mr. Hopkins requests I share this story with the House as we consider repeal of the Affordable Care Act. I want to share it with everybody here on C-SPAN.

John was diagnosed with two unrelated cancers during his life. If you know anything about cancer, getting it twice for unrelated reasons is almost unheard of, but it happened to John Hopkins. Midway through his first bout with cancer, he was, of course, dropped from his health insurance plan. He was left with a medical bill that wiped out his and his wife's entire retirement savings, as well as the value of their house. They were never able to repay the debt in their lifetime. When he was diagnosed with a second bout of cancer 2 years later, he had no health insurance because there was no insurer anywhere in the market who would offer him a policy because of the pre-existing condition.

He got some coverage in Tennessee because of a plan called Access Tennessee for uninsurables, but it was limited to $250,000 a year. As we all know, annual limits are set to be phased out by 2014 because of this law, and lifetime limits are already a thing of the past. A quarter of a million dollars may seem like a lot of coverage; but when somebody needs something like a bone marrow transplant to cure their leukemia, that single treatment would exceed the annual cap.

My Republican colleagues have decided their first priority as the new majority will be repealing the Affordable Care Act; and when they vote to do this, they will be voting for the following: denying Mr. Hopkins the ability to enroll in a health insurance plan that doesn't discriminate against him for daring to be diagnosed with cancer again. They will deny John Hopkins the ability to enroll in a health plan that will actually continue to cover his treatment after he exhausts the current annual cap of $250,000, an amount that many cancer patients meet in a matter of weeks upon diagnosis, let alone those who are fighting two cancers over a number of years.

And it will send a message to John Hopkins and every other single American who has ever been diagnosed or will ever be diagnosed with a disease like cancer that they're on their own when it comes to coverage, that sure they're free to get treatments and meet with their doctors, undergo laborious and life-saving surgeries year after year, just so long as they can foot the bill or try to keep it under the annual cap, because when it comes to cancer, budgeting your treatment should surely take precedence over anything else. Right?

Mr. Garamendi, I am ashamed that we are considering repeal of this affordable health care bill; and when I see these numbers about $250,000 and I think of the fact that the Republicans were against any caps on taxes, they realize $250,000 annual income in many places is a middle-income salary, but for limitations on health care, they think the insurance company should determine that and that's enough; and if you have got cancer, it's not enough.

Another friend of mine Facebooked me, Jimmy Barrasso. Jimmy worked for a long time for a company in Memphis. He's always been successful. He lost his job with that corporation. Because he had high cholesterol, he had difficulties getting insurance, and it took him a long time to find private insurance because of that pre-existing condition. He just sent me this on Facebook. He was friending me and he mentioned it, and I wanted to relate it.

There are so many people in this country who are getting benefits and will get benefits and many of the benefits don't go into effect until 2014, and the idea that this Congress, the 112th, as its first act would do such harm to the general welfare of the American public is hard to fathom.

I wanted to ask you a question. Because I had said, and I was, I think, incorrect, when I suggested that the first thing the Republicans wanted to do was repeal the affordable health care bill. It's one of their first major priorities. But the first thing they did was today, and we joined with them. It was bipartisan. It was to cut 5 percent from our Members' representational allowances, a small amount of money in the big picture, of course. But the deficit was the issue that they were highlighting.

What would the repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act do to the deficit? That's the big issue, because that's one of our big issues.

And that's money we owe China; is that right? So it's okay to issue these securities and pay the Chinese the interest to be able to finance it, and our children and their grandchildren will be paying this if they don't have preexisting conditions where they can get insurance to cover the illnesses they may have to stay alive to pay these taxes.

Consistency is the hobgoblin. Right? Thank you, sir.

Let me ask a question. I was just thinking here, it's an honor to be in the House of Representatives and with a Constitution that's so beautiful that it says we are to promote the general welfare.

We are among other industrialized nations on this earth. What do the other industrialized nations on the earth do about health care for their citizens?

What do the other industrialized nations in the world do for health care? Do they program policies like ours, where 32 million people don't have health insurance reform and they are not mandated to get insurance? What do they do?

And does the United States not have one of the greatest discrepancies of wealth between the richest and the poorest in the industrialized world as well? So are we saying to our wealthy people, ``You can afford health insurance so you can get it,'' but for those people who are poor, ``Too bad''?

I just wanted to add one thing. Thank you.

The gentleman from New Jersey brought up an issue, and he said that it was not true that it was costing jobs. There is some respected group, I think it's called FactCheck. They were on national news giving the biggest lies told in politics in the last year. The number one biggest lie--this independent group--was the Republican mantra of government run or government mandated health care. It's just a fact. That's the biggest lie told the American public. And it came from the leaders on the other side, it came from these halls where they are immune from defamation suits. Because it's not government run health care. It's unheard of, unfathomable, that the other side would use the fact that they're immune from prosecution in any other jurisdiction or court for words that aren't true to do that and in politics to say it was government run health care, the biggest lie of 2010, and it comes to the floor next week.

Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth.

Indeed, the issues that Mr. Courtney brought forward in his 1 minute today were alarming to me because my hometown of Memphis depends upon transportation. That's what makes it America's distribution center, the roads, the rivers, the runways, and the rails. And if we don't have moneys to go into helping our airports--where Federal Express is located in my district, and in your district, Mr. Yarmuth, UPS--because that's how we move products all over the world. From those hubs, we move commerce. And that is why it's so important that we have an FAA Reauthorization Act passed, a lot of which would be expenses to modernize the structure and the transportation bills that Mr. Oberstar, who was one of the great Members of this House but is no longer a Member, tried to get passed last year to both stimulate the economy in the short run and in the long run, as Mr. Courtney said, with that multiplier effect by creating jobs. It's roads that take goods to market, that move commerce, that move raw materials. And I was hoping and do hope that we will have bipartisan efforts to have transportation, FAA reauthorization bills pass that will move this economy forward.

The economy is still in a difficult spot, and we can't really see that the economy is improving if we continue to cut spending, particularly in places such as transportation, infrastructure, and the airport infrastructures. That's so important. So it was distressing news to see this happen.

It is difficult to see how we can get ourselves out of this near depression that was caused by the Bush administration with cutting spending. I know Paul Krugman has people who don't think he is correct all the time. I happen to think he is correct most of the time. And the Nobel Prize people aren't always correct. But when they gave him the Nobel Prize for economics, some of the brighter people in the world thought he was pretty good on economics. And it's his belief that we need to do more spending, and I concur with him. I would hate to see us lead this economy--it's about to get out of the ditch--put it back in the ditch.

Madam Speaker, today does end the 111th Congress, which Norm Ornstein, one of the most respected historians and observers of public events, said was the most historic and productive Congress since 1965.

I am proud to have been a Member of this 111th Congress that gave us health care, which this country yearned for for over 100 years; that saved us from the precipice of economic decline with the stimulus act that has done much good for this country and saved us from a great depression; that gave us the Lilly Ledbetter law for women who were discriminated against in the workplace; that gave us Don't Ask, Don't Tell; that also gave us credit card reform, student loan reform, additional Pell Grants, tobacco regulations, and food safety legislation.

This 111th Congress did more than any Congress since Lyndon Johnson's in 1965 to 1966, and did it under the effective, passionate, honest, and remarkable leadership of the most historic Speaker in the House of Representatives' history, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, who I am proud to have voted for and served with.