Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of being recognized to address you here on the floor of the House.

Having been able to listen to some of the dialogue in the previous hour, I think it is quite curious that there would be a chart that went up with question marks on it that would be described as the Republicans' health care plan. There are all kinds of question marks in this Democrat health care plan that we have.

This is the censored flowchart, Mr. Speaker. This is the chart that the Franking Commission, I think after having been leveraged by House leadership, decided that it couldn't be mailed to the constituents of the Members of the House of Representatives because they didn't want this to say ``government-run health care,'' because that is pejorative, or ``the Democrat health care plan,'' because that is pejorative. So, instead, the Democrats put up question marks on the floor of the House and they say Republicans don't have a plan. They don't know.

Well, there are all kinds of questions about the Democrat plan. First of all, why is it so sensitive that you have to censor the truth? Secondly, let's see, we can go through a whole list of questions about the Democrat plan, great big question marks.

How much does it cost? Oh, we don't know, someplace between $1 trillion and maybe $2 trillion, or a little more than $2 trillion dollars. We don't know. We are not even within a trillion dollars on how much we think that is going to cost. That is the Democrat response.

How much deficit will it create? Well, maybe a minimum of $239.1 billion, but it could be well over that. It could run into $600 billion or $700 billion. Some answers there.

Who will get to keep their health care? Who can you actually guarantee and point to them and say you can keep your, more correctly, health insurance program? And no one can be actually promised that, even though the President has said so. He can't guarantee that promise.

So, as the questions go on and on and on, what insurance companies would survive after we have this plan? And looking at this scary flowchart, this schematic, Mr. Speaker, there are 31 different new government agencies that are created in this plan.

First I am going to take us back to 1993. I think it is instructive. This is the 1993 HillaryCare plan, and this is the chart that hung in my office in my construction company during those years, hung in my office all the way through the nineties. I didn't take it down. I think this chart, that showed this great growth in government, all of these configurations here, government agencies, programs, this whole list, a lot of these acronyms I don't recognize anymore, all of these little flows in the drug pricing, they actually call this a scheme, ``drug pricing scheme.'' I just called it a schematic, but they actually called it a scheme, drug pricing scheme.

How about the global budget? That is in here. As you read this through, the configuration between the President, the National Health Board, the State governments, the Regional Health Alliance, the Corporate Health Alliance, the ombudsman, who is there to smooth out all the things and make sure when you have trouble dealing with government, Mr. Speaker, that there is an ombudsman there who will take care of that for you, because we know how difficult it is to find your way through the maze of paperwork that is created when government is involved.

This chart, Mr. Speaker, was enough to scare the Americans off of the Clinton health care plan, commonly known as HillaryCare. This chart came in black and white, it didn't come in Technicolor, but it showed you all of these agencies and this creation. And people understood that they were being offered in place of their own health insurance program, they were being offered a government maze that swallowed up all of the things that were private and completely took it over for government.

The American people loved their freedom in 1993, and they rejected giving up their freedom to purchase a health insurance plan of their choice, to control their health care decisions themselves. They rejected it. This is an HMO provider plan. That is another piece that is not so popular today.

But the American people were scared away from the Clinton plan by simply looking at this chart and listening to Harry and Louise. Some of them, that is all the further they went. But they knew they didn't want a government option when it was going to be the only option. They didn't want to have their options taken away and put in the control of a government bureaucrat, a government-run plan, a Democrat health care plan. That is what it was then, that is what it is now.

The difference is, this is in full color, Mr. Speaker, as opposed to the black-and-white chart from 1993. This chart is flat-out accurate, and it does describe 31 new agencies created by the bill. Anything you see in white are existing agencies, and the things you see in color, in green and yellow and orange and red and blue, those are all new agencies. If you count these dots that are colored, there are 31 of them, Mr. Speaker.

One can get animated about having to wade through that massive government red tape, but when you wade through it down to the bottom is where I get the most concern, and that is, I go down to this little square right here, Mr. Speaker, traditional health insurance plans. That is those plans that insure the majority of the American people today, any private health insurance plan. There are over 1,300 companies that provide health insurance plans, and generally they have multiple plans out there, so we don't know how many plans there are to choose from.

But a reasonable estimate might well be 100,000 separate plans by the time you figure the options on the deductibles and the different things that are there so that people can get a health insurance plan that serves them at a price that they can best settle to. All of those, 100,000 plans, roughly, 1,300 companies, all dumped into this little box right here. And that's how our health insurance is provided for and paid for and administered and funded is all right here in the traditional plans.

But under--I don't know exactly how to describe this--the Democrat government proposal, all of these health insurance plans, if they were going to stay in business after that, would have to qualify. They'd have to become qualified health benefits plans. That's this little purple circle here closest to me. There are two identical circles in size, but the qualified health benefits plan would be where all the private health insurance companies go if the bill is passed and the President signs it, which he'll sign anything that says ``national health care'' on it.

And I suspect that's the case. He wants a bill, and they want to start this down the path because they believe that this will morph into a single-payer plan. That's what he really wants. That's what the Speaker wants. That's what the liberals in the Congress want. They want to take away the American people's 100,000 policies and roll them eventually into one government, one-size-fits-all plan over here.

So these 1,300 companies, 100,000 policies in this square box, if they were going to do business after the bill was signed, they have to get qualified. They would be qualified if they met the new government standards. The government would tell them, You have to cover maternity. You have to cover mental health. You have to cover abortion, Mr. Speaker. That's the standard that is coming out of the White House these days.

If the White House doesn't tell you that they're opposed to forcing Americans to pay premiums to fund abortions, then you know that if it comes the way they plan it, there will be abortions funded by the American people through the dollars they would pay to these premiums. There isn't any history in this country of this government not funding abortions unless there was an explicit exemption written into the language of the bill. There is no explicit exemption written into the language of any of the bills that are working here before this Congress now, which should tell anybody that's studied this and watched this issue since Roe v. Wade in 1973, that they plan to take the tax money and the premium money from the American people and use it to kill babies. That's going to be in this plan.

And all of these health insurance policies here will have to pay for it the same way the government intends to pay for it over here in the public health plan, and many Americans are going to object to that. But what they do is, when they require that these health insurance policies have to cover everything they think it should cover and they write so many mandates into it that the health insurance premiums will go up, and so will the copayments and so will the deductibles go up, and as they go up, then it will be easier for the public health plan, the Obama health insurance plan, to compete with the private sector.

And they will do two things with these two purple circles here. One of them is they will regulate the traditional private providers to where they become mirrors of the government plan and then have to compete with the premiums that the government plan will charge. And the other thing that they will do is they will subsidize the government plan so that they can keep

those premiums down long enough to compete with the private plan, and that will squeeze out the private plans.

And you can expect, Mr. Speaker, that there will not be private health insurance in America in a relatively short period of time, whether that be--probably not 5 years. By 10 years, we'll see the picture. By 15 to 20 years, it should be settled in if this happens. We can look around the world and see where they have made these mistakes.

In Great Britain, they have a completely socialized medicine program that was implemented into law in 1948. In Germany, they have the world's oldest socialized medicine plan that went in under Otto von Bismarck in the late 1800s. That plan provides for private health insurance, and today, about 90 percent of Germans are under the public plan and about 10 percent are under the private plan, and those that are on the private plan are generally self-employed people that have some means to try to provide a plan that they think gives them a little better access and maybe even a little better quality health care than the 90 percent of Germans that are under the public plan.

But one thing that they have in common in the United Kingdom and in Germany is they wait in line. Their care is rationed, and the quality isn't what it is in this country. The survival rates for cancer in the United States versus that of United Kingdom or the European Union are some four times greater here in the United States than they are in those countries that have socialized medicine. And now, Mr. Speaker, we can also look to the north to Canada, and understand what went on up in Canada.

When Canada passed their socialized medicine program, it was set up to compete with the existing privates, and eventually they were all squeezed out. And today there exists a law in Canada that prohibits anyone from jumping ahead of the line or going to create a new line. One size fits all. Everyone, all Canadians have to comply with the same health care programs. Government-run socialized medicine in Canada.

And now, thinking about what that means, the Canadians lost their freedom when they decided to go for a little security and still try to keep some freedom. They lost their freedoms on their health insurance, and maybe they are a little bit more secure, but the quality of their health care doesn't match up to the quality here in the United States.

And so what we know is that, let's just say the cancer survivors in Canada, their numbers look better than the people in the United Kingdom or the European Union that have been diagnosed with cancer. More Canadians survive with cancer than do the other countries that have a socialized medicine program. And I don't know the numbers, and I probably won't get time in this debate over the next week or maybe a little more to drill back into this and be able to compare the statistics.

Mr. Speaker, I'm going to suggest that a factor involved is the Canadian proximity to American health care has helped Canadians live longer. It's helped their survival rate. It's helped in such that when people get diagnosed with cancer and can't get treatment in places like the United Kingdom, Germany, across Europe, they die sooner than they do in Canada, and they die sooner in Canada than they do in the United States.

People live longer here after they've been diagnosed with a cancer than any of those countries that I have mentioned, and I've seen no data for any others. And I'm going to suggest that the Canadians' access to American health care helps their life expectancy because at least they can sneak across the border and get in line down here, even if they have to pay for it out of their pocket. Those would be the factual circumstances involved.

And so we have Democrats asking the question, what's the Republican health care plan? I'll ask the question, what do we know about the Democrat plan? We know it'll cost a lot. We can guess within 1 trillion, maybe 1 trillion or $2 trillion. We know it's going to create a deficit; 239.1 billion on up to 600, 700, $800 billion in deficit. We know it's going to create lines. Lines are rationing. People do die in line.

We know it's going to discourage doctors and specialists for taking the years necessary to be trained so that they can be proficient enough to provide the quality of health care that we have. So we'll have fewer doctors. We'll have fewer nurses. Fewer people will want to go into the industry because the government will be telling them how they are going to treat patients. There isn't going to be any way that the Democrats in this Congress will agree to pull the government out of the relationship between the doctor and the patient.

There was an amendment that was offered in the Energy and Commerce markup that specifically said that the government would not interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, and that's a short summary, and it was voted down except for one, all on a party line, all but one Democrat voted no. Every Republican voted yes. We want the doctor- patient relationship to be maintained. Democrats do not.

We also have the rules that will be squeezing out these private carriers, these 1,300 companies. There will not be 1,300 that will qualify. There will be substantially less, and they'll be squeezed out by the public option here, this public health plan, this government-run health insurance plan, but the regulations will be written by the Health Choices Administration.

It has got a nice little acronym--HCA, Health Choices Administration. You know that the people who wrote this are for choice, right?

So they have named that there will be a commissioner of the Health Choices Administration. That commissioner is the modern, fancy name for ``czar.'' We have 32 czars. The American people are fed up with czars, so now we're going to start calling them ``commissioners.'' Some said, well, ``commissars,'' but the commissioner--not commissar--will be calling the shots on what these health insurance plans are, and he will decide what they will cover and what they will not. He will also be the one who probably makes a lot of the decisions on how much health care is rationed in America. The results, again, will be long lines. How do we know this? They exist in every country that has socialized medicine.

I ran into an individual at a home improvement place in my district, oh, about a year ago. He was a legal immigrant from Germany who'd had a hip replacement over there. In order to get his hip replacement, he had to travel to Italy because the lines were too long in Germany. They were a little shorter in Italy, so he got himself in the line in Italy. He traveled down there and got a hip replacement. He didn't think a lot of the system that they have in Europe. That was just a little anecdotal discussion that took place in a home improvement center.

I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, a week ago Thursday night, we had a doctor who practiced medicine in Michigan and in Canada. He has written a book, at least one that I know of. He was our guest speaker at the Policy Committee a week ago Thursday night. He told a story. He was working in the emergency room in Canada. It must have been the first he'd been up there to work, is my guess, and he probably hadn't anticipated what kind of a bureaucracy they have. They brought a patient in who had a knee joint that was all torn up, I believe from a sports injury, but I don't know. He had a torn meniscus and a torn ACL, an anterior cruciate ligament. That knee was all swollen up. It was wrecked. He examined it; x rayed it.

He told the young man, You need surgery and you need it right away. I'll schedule you for surgery in the morning.

Well, he didn't realize how difficult it was. This is an American doctor working in Canada. He began to schedule the surgery the next morning, and he found out that there had to be a specialist who evaluated the knee and then that they had to file the forms. Then they had to get him in line. Then they had to get him approved so he could go ahead and have the surgery. Well, the examination, the secondary examination that had to take place by the doctor who does the approving for the surgery, in order to hold down costs, mind you, wasn't able to see this patient right away, so they put a brace on this patient's knee that was blown up like a cantaloupe, and they put him on crutches. After a while, he left the

hospital, waiting for his examination by the doctor who works for the bureaucracy and who decides who goes into the line.

Well, that examination didn't take place the next day, Mr. Speaker, or the next week or the next month. The examination that if he passed would approve him for surgery took place 6 months later. In America, he would have had surgery the next day, and he would have been in rehab. In a couple of months or even less than that, he'd have been back to work. He spent 6 months on crutches, 6 months with a leg brace, 6 months with a torn meniscus and a torn ACL. Then he went in for the examination, Mr. Speaker.

After the examination, one might think that the examining doctor came to the same conclusion that the ER doctor from Michigan did, which is that he should have surgery the next day. Well, maybe that doctor did come to that conclusion, but they didn't have room for him, not for a day or two or a week or a month, Mr. Speaker, but for 6 months.

No, I didn't say 6 months from the injury to the surgery. I said 6 months from the injury to the examination and another 6 months from the examination to the surgery. We know, if you have a patient who is hobbling around on crutches for a year, his unused leg atrophies, and the rehab takes longer. It takes a long, long time to get a patient back to speed after surgery, when and if the surgery is successful, which I guess I don't know.

This is the circumstance right here across the border into Canada. Many Americans live along the border, and they see the Canadians come down to the United States for their health care. It happens in Maine; it happens in Michigan; it happens in Minnesota. The Mayo Clinic at Rochester takes a lot of patients from Canada. Some companies in Canada will write into their employment contracts with their employees that they have extra good health insurance programs for them. If they are hurt or if they need emergency surgery, heart surgery, for example, in the employment contracts, they will have policies set up that will actually fly a Canadian employee to Houston for heart surgery.

Now, if you have a health insurance and health care program that is in such a condition that employers write it into their employment contracts that they will export their employees out of State to come to America, to come to the United States to access high-quality health care, that should tell us something about what we should not design. I would think it would be very clear.

So the White House and the liberals in Congress--maybe they don't want to say, House Democrats' health plan. Maybe I should say, liberal House Democrats' health plan. This plan is very similar to the plan that was unrolled in Canada where they had private health insurance for a while before it was squeezed out by the public health plan, which swallowed up everything.

In Canada, they passed a law that prohibited anyone from starting a new line or from jumping in front. Some provinces in Canada enforce it more than others, but the Federal law in Canada is that you are stuck with the same health care as everybody else. There's no jumping ahead in line. There's no creating a new line. You can't open up a clinic if you're a doctor and serve patients unless you're approved by the government. The government will require you to strap on their harness and pull in exactly the patient load in exactly the way they describe it; whereas, in America, if you license yourself as a physician, you can open up a clinic and can start taking care of patients wherever the demand is.

Now think about the difference between that where you have individual entrepreneurs who are seeking to serve a marketplace. Maybe they're working for hospitals, and they look around and decide that there need to be other services in that they're not able to take care of the patients who are there. Maybe they see a population demographic or an age demographic that needs to be better served, so they'll open up clinics or hospitals or surgery centers or they might go out and pick up some medical technical equipment and deploy that to locations where it's needed or they'll go out to the rural hospitals and go ride the circuit, so to speak, and stop in and maybe once a week do the scheduled orthopaedic surgery that's there.

It happens with OB as well. They'll schedule some of that as best they can, at least the examinations. The births come along on their own unless they're by Caesarean.

Remember, HillaryCare actually called this schematic, or at least one component of it, a scheme. This color-coded schematic should scare the daylights out of the American people, and they should be worried about all of the question marks in the Democrat plan, that plan that will give us socialized medicine in America. We can understand that, Mr. Speaker.

That's where it's going, and it will bust the budget, and it will take away our freedoms, and it will prohibit a doctor from opening up a clinic where he sees the demand. It will prohibit a doctor from charging more or less--I suppose there may be some opportunity to charge less, but that wouldn't last very long--because they're going to squeeze these resources down.

Today, Medicare is only reimbursing at 80 percent of the cost that it takes to deliver it. In my State, in Iowa, we are the lowest out of the 50 States. We have the lowest Medicare reimbursement rate of all of the States in the Union.

And yet, the proposal here in this flow chart is to squeeze maybe as much as half a trillion dollars out of Medicare. And now all for what? What is the purpose of all of this, Mr. Speaker? Why would America, why would this Congress consider upsetting, destroying, wrapping up packaging and throwing away the best health care system in the world? Why? What would be the purpose?

And I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that the argument is that there are the uninsured. Now, they continue to blur the words between ``health care'' and ``health insurance.'' They don't seem to know there is a difference between the two.

Everybody in America has health care. Everyone in America can walk into the emergency room and be treated for an injury or an illness. Everyone has that opportunity. We don't have people in America that are denied health care. Everybody in America doesn't have health insurance. And before I go down that path a little, I want to point out that we do spend a lot of money on health care in America between health insurance and providing that health care. And it's about 14\1/2\ percent of GDP. And in some of the European Union countries, socialized medicine countries, it's around 9\1/2\ percent of GDP. So maybe 5 percent more, half again more.

So our health care here costs us 3 bucks. It costs them 2. Is our health care that's provided in this country worth half again more? Maybe. We're willing to pay it today. But perhaps not in the long run, Mr. Speaker, and we can do a lot of things to reduce the cost of health insurance and health care in America. And there is a difference

A number of those things would be: Address the medical malpractice, the irresponsible litigation that's taking place, the suing of doctors and clinics and hospitals and providers all for an opportunity to try to cash something in rather than correct something that's wrong. And perhaps the word ``all'' is not the right one, because there are cases where someone has had the misfortune of being a victim of medical malpractice.

We pushed legislation and passed it through the Judiciary Committee a few years ago and off the floor of the House of Representatives that limited the medical malpractice settlement and capped the noneconomic damages at $250,000 and still took care of the patients who had unfortunately been subject to medical malpractice. Paid the patient's doctor bills, paid them loss of income. Paid them pain and suffering. Just didn't pay punitive damages, that $7 million for the cup of coffee that the lady spilled in her lap. That's the punitive damages that we call it out in the layman's world. It's called noneconomic damages in that bill. Those are capped at $250,000. That's the model that California has that has been relatively successful. That's one of the things we can do to hold down the cost.

Another one would be provide for 100 percent deductibility for everybody's

health insurance premium, for a corporation to purchase health insurance and pay the premiums and fully deduct those premiums, but if someone goes and buys that same policy, they can't deduct it from their taxes. A self-employed person can't deduct their health insurance premiums fully like say an employer can for their employees. So if you are a sole proprietorship and you have high health insurance premiums and you haven't formed a corporation, you might be paying $11,000, $15,000 a year in high health insurance premiums. Let's say it's $15,000 a year. You can get around that lack of deductibility by forming a corporation and paying yourself a salary, and part of the salary package would be the health insurance premiums. Then you can deduct them.

Those are a lot of hoops to jump through to try to meet a government regulation when there should be no particular advantage for one company over another, one individual over another. If we have someone who is self-employed or someone who is independently wealthy and they are responsible enough to go out and buy their health insurance and pay the premium, every dollar that's deductible by a corporation should be deductible by an individual. All of those health insurance premiums should be deductible.

We should raise the maximum amount for health savings accounts so we can be sure that people that are young today, when they arrive at Social Security age, will have enough money in their health insurance, in their health savings account, to be able to purchase a paid-up Medicare replacement policy and take the difference, the hundreds of thousands or perhaps more than a million dollars, take the cash in the difference on their HSA tax-free if they're willing to take themselves off of the entitlement rolls of Medicare by buying replacement policy. That's something else we can do in the long term.

So expand our HSAs, provide for full deductibility on our health insurance, limit the liability for these doctors so we can hold down the costs of medical malpractice premiums and the cost of the extra tests that are there in order to protect themselves from the litigation that's bound to come when you ambulance-chasing lawyers are chasing doctors around. What percentage of this 17 percent of our economy is going to the trial lawyers in America? I say, Mr. Speaker, it is significant.

So there really aren't questions about what Republicans are for. There are a lot of questions about what comes out with this chart, but the idea that the Franking Commission, which appears to be controlled by the Democrat majority in this Congress, would censure this document and tell Members of Congress they can't send this off to their constituents, they can't package it up and put it in an envelope and mail it to their constituents because the Democrats didn't like the idea that it says ``House Democrat Health Plan.'' And they don't like the idea that it says ``government run.''

Well, it is government run, and it is the House Democrats' health plan. There are bipartisan programs here when it comes to health care in this Congress. The bipartisanship is in opposition to this kind of a government-run plan, and that's what Democrats and Republicans that oppose this today--I cannot find a single Republican that supports this plan, and I don't think that individual exists in the United States Congress.

So that would be my component of the speech here that has to do with this schematic that should scare the living daylights out of the American people, and they should rise up. And, Mr. Speaker, the American people should rise up. And in August when their Members of Congress come home and they start doing parades and townhall meetings and corn boils and whatever else is going on, crab fries or whatever they do in the East Coast, this chart should be out in front and the American people should go see them and say, Vote ``no,'' be a ``no,'' oppose this plan, oppose this plan. Give people their freedom, and we can do so in the fashion that I've described.

Now, there is another huge entity that's taking away our freedom. Right here, Mr. Speaker, this is a picture that I took of the headquarters of ACORN, and this is down in New Orleans, Louisiana, at 2609 Canal Street, New Orleans. This is a fortified building. I mean, these bars are heavier the lower you go. This is up on the second or third floor of the building.

And I just zoomed in on this window because something caught my eye. ACORN's national--maybe even international--headquarters, where they have 174 or more corporations running out of this single building, four or five stories, glass, with bars, the most fortified building in the whole neighborhood.

But inside that window you can see at least two posters there. This one says ``Obama '08.'' ACORN is to be, and is registered as, a 501(c)(3) corporation, a not-for-profit corporation, a nonpolitical, nonpartisan organization organized as a corporation. If this is their headquarters and they have ``Obama'' posters inside--it's clearly displayed in the window so people can go by on the street and look and see that. And in the State where I come from, we call that electioneering. If you are a not-for-profit, nonpartisan corporation, 501(c)(3), you don't do any electioneering. You certainly don't post an ``Obama'' sign in the front window of the national headquarters of the Association For Community Organization Reform Now, ACORN.

And if anybody wonders about where this picture came from--and I've got the pictures of the address and everything, but over here is the flag that hangs outside. It is kind of a faded red flag. It is clearly, and you can read it, that is the ACORN logo.

So the ACORN logo on this flag hanging outside the window at the national headquarters of ACORN, and the Obama sign in the middle of the window displayed so people can see it, is it intentional? Either that, or stupid. Is it okay to say that something happened that was stupid in America, Mr. Speaker? I'm a little concerned about that. It seemed to be not a very good tactic for the President, but I see his name inside this window at ACORN at their headquarters and I see the ACORN logo, and here is where it is, 2609 Canal Street.

Now, this is an interesting turn of events. I took this picture just before the 4th of July. And last week, on Thursday, about the close of business, there was released a report, and this is a nonpartisan report from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The ranking member is Congressman Darrell Issa, California's 49th District. The subject of this report--and Mr. Speaker, I hold this up. It is what the cover of it looks like. The United States House of Representatives.

The subject of this report is this question: ``Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?'' This report is dated July 23, 2009. And if anyone should like to look this report up and read it, I believe if they googled, ``Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise,'' they will be able to find it, or if they go to the Government Reform Web site--I know that it is on Mr. Issa's Web site and it soon will be on mine.

I have here the executive summary. It is 88 pages long. I have read carefully through the first two-thirds of it. It has in it a list of 361 affiliated corporations. I have listed 174 in the amendments I have offered that were designed to eliminate Federal funding to ACORN. ACORN has received at least $53 million in taxpayer funds to operate their criminal enterprise. And I have the executive summary here.

And just to go into it a little ways, Mr. Speaker, this executive summary of this report out of the Government Reform House of Representatives that asks the question, ``Is ACORN intentionally structured as a criminal enterprise?'' July 23, 2009, the executive summary reads, in part, like this:

``The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN, has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a wall of paper, of nonprofit corporation protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors to launder Federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate.''

Corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors and launder money. That is the first paragraph.

Then it reads, ``Emerging accounts of widespread deceit and corruption raise the need for a criminal investigation of ACORN. By intentionally blurring the legal distinctions between 361 tax exempt and nonexempt entities, ACORN diverts taxpayer and tax-exempt monies into partisan political activities.

``Since 1994, more than $53 million in Federal funds have been pumped into ACORN, and under the Obama administration, ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds.

``Operationally, ACORN is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43 States, and the District of Columbia through a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes and to distract investigators. Structurally, ACORN is a chess game in which senior management is shielded from accountability by multiple layers of volunteers and compensated employees who serve as pawns to take the fall for every bad act. The report that follows presents evidence obtained from former ACORN insiders that completes the picture of a criminal enterprise.''

So they describe them as a criminal enterprise, and they describe them as to conceal a criminal conspiracy. A criminal enterprise, a criminal conspiracy. And these are some of the headings under the executive summary.

``First, ACORN has evaded taxes. ACORN has obstructed justice, engaged in self-dealing, and aided and abetted a coverup of the embezzlement by Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke.''

And that embezzlement was $948,607.50, Dale Rathke embezzlement covered up by his brother, the founder, Wade Rathke, whom it appears provided misinformation to the counsel for ACORN and redirected--and it appears to be willful--to string it out and delay any kind of punitive action that would come to visit his brother, his brother Dale, who did embezzle the $948,607.50. And it seems to be beyond question that that happened, that some of the money was misappropriated to fill the hole in their accounting system. That is the first point.

The second point is, ``ACORN has committed investment fraud, deprived the public of its right to honor services, and engaged in a racketeering enterprise affecting interstate commerce.'' Committed investment fraud. That is the second point.

Third point, ACORN has committed a conspiracy to defraud the United States by using taxpayer funds for partisan political activities by having the equivalent of a slush fund, where dollars were moved around from corporation to corporation, affiliate to affiliate, resulting in get-out-the-vote efforts that may have had--and likely did have-- 501(c)(3) not-for-profit taxpayer dollars invested in them, but used for political and partisan purposes, Mr. Speaker.

It says, ACORN forged both formal and informal connections with former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, also formal and informal connections with Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, and formal and informal connections with President Barack Obama, among others. ``Each of these campaigns received financial and personnel resource contributions from ACORN and its affiliates as part of a scheme to use taxpayer monies to support a partisan political agenda.'' A scheme to use taxpayer monies to support a partisan political agenda, Mr. Speaker. ``These actions are a clear violation of numerous tax and election laws.''

Another point, the fourth point, ``ACORN has submitted false filings to the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor, in addition to violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, FLSA. Committee investigators have tracked ACORN's numerous failures to comply with Federal laws that required the payment of excise taxes on excess benefits to Dale Rathke. SEIU Local 100--the Service Employees International Union--under the direction of ACORN founder Wade Rathke-- filed bogus reports with the Labor Department in order to conceal embezzlement.''

Now, all of this off of this report, this nonpartisan House of Representatives report that asked the question, ``Is ACORN intentionally structured as a criminal enterprise?'' dated July 23, Mr. Speaker.

And fifth, ``ACORN falsified and concealed facts concerning an illegal transaction between related parties in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).'' ACORN falsified and concealed facts concerning an illegal transaction between related parties in violation of ERISA.

Findings go on. They should pierce the corporate veil and do an investigation. Justice needs to do an investigation. And something that they point out is that, when ACORN crosses the line--which I don't think anyone questions they do--the individuals harmed are the low to moderate income workers whom ACORN was founded to protect. They hurt the very people that they were founded to protect. Dale Rathke's, the brother of the brother, embezzlement and the cover up are violations of ACORN's corporate duties, and they are fraud. The identities and roles of those involved must be disclosed.

This goes on, Mr. Speaker. I have poked through this report. I have spent hours and hours over the last 4 to 5 years tracking ACORN. This report lists the 361 affiliates, and in there will be information on campaign contributions, who received what money. It will be easier to take that information and cross-reference it back to the FEC documents and follow the money. It will tell us a lot about what is going on.

I think there's an indicator here that is pretty interesting. I have in my hand the ACORN celebration of 39 years. ACORN was founded in 1970. They held a celebration on June 17 of this year. And the celebration takes place at the National Education Association Atrium, probably birds of a feather. That is at 1201 16th Street Northwest, Washington, D.C. This is a celebration of 39 years of ACORN. And it is interesting that some of the people that are less than enthusiastic about doing the investigation of ACORN are invited to be headliners there at the ACORN celebration of 39 years. Now, I remember 39 years might be Jack Benny's year to celebrate, but 39 years is not a year ending in a zero or a five; so this must be the annual celebration of ACORN's founding.

Who is there in the headline? Who is honored? Well, let's see, Senator Charles Schumer, New York, the number one headliner for the ACORN celebration, their annual celebration. I don't know that Charles Schumer has demonstrated a lot of enthusiasm to investigate ACORN. I can't imagine that would happen.

The next one on the headline is Representative Luis Gutierrez, Chicago. Chicago politics. Chicago ACORN. Let me see, President Obama made his first political reputation in Chicago as an employee of Project Vote. He also represented ACORN in court a couple of times, some said pro bono. But in any case Project Vote, according to this report, this U.S. House of Representatives nonpartisan Government Reform Committee Congressman Darrell Issa report, dated July 23, 2009-- according to this report, it's indistinguishable between Project Vote and ACORN. They commingled their funds. They had dozens of accounts, and one affiliate that managed all the funds of all the affiliates, according to the report. But President Obama, according to all reports, Democrats and Republicans, made his political reputation working for Project Vote in Chicago. Project Vote, inseparable from ACORN, thought of as ACORN, and the head of Project Vote was also a top officer of ACORN in Chicago.

Chicago politics. Remember Rod Blagojevich? He's listed in this report. Well, Chicago politics are listed in this annual celebration that ACORN held in this city in Washington, D.C., June 17, this summer, headlined by Senator Charles Schumer; Representative Luis Gutierrez; Representative Maxine Waters, who stood before an ACORN celebration and told them all that they were all going to get together and vote the Republicans, some certain part of their anatomy, out of office. So she has, in a partisan way, spoken before that supposedly nonpartisan organization. Now, of course, we know they are a partisan organization.

ACORN is a get-out-the-vote machine. It's a fund-raising machine. It

writes campaign checks by its affiliates to candidates, and the three people who headlined this, on the top of the list, Charles Schumer, Senator; Representative Luis Gutierrez; and Representative Maxine Waters, all tightly affiliated with ACORN, none of whom are very interested in investigating ACORN.

And if we go down through the list, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Interesting. A number of interesting names. John Podesta, Henry Cisneros of the Clinton administration, recognized and patted on the back for their affiliation with ACORN.

It is a sad day, indeed, when we see the corruption of our election politics, Mr. Speaker, and we see it done by an organization that is set up now with 361 affiliates. And, strangely, the Congress doesn't have enough curiosity in order to do an investigation, and the Justice Department doesn't have enough curiosity to do an investigation, and ACORN themselves admit that they produced over 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations in the last election cycle.

Their goal was to register, they said, I believe, 1.3 million, and they admitted to producing and turning in over 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations. ACORN is under investigation in 12 to 14 States. Across those States, there have been at least 70 ACORN employees that have been convicted of some type of fraudulent activity. Most of it is voter registration fraud. ACORN itself in Nevada is under investigation/ indictment for election fraud.

This isn't something that is an anomaly; this is a pattern. This is the MO, the mode of operations, of a criminal enterprise that is corrupting our election process. And we know it's for political gain. We know it's for the money machine that gets churned. They are linked together with the SEIU. I read that part.

There is more to that as well. Those dollars pour into the coffers of Democrat candidates, not Republican candidates. ACORN then hires people and gets volunteers to go to the streets to turn out the vote, turn out the vote for Democrats, not for Republicans. I don't know of a case where we have ACORN out supporting a Republican unless it would be--let me just say for tonight I don't know of a case, although I've got something in mind.

This is the headquarters, ACORN's headquarters, 2609 Canal Street, an Obama sign in the window, an ACORN sign on the outside.

President Obama got his start in politics, in Chicago-style politics, with Project Vote, an arm of ACORN, that was registering people and turning out the vote. And he has since hired ACORN to turn out the vote. It was an ACORN affiliate to the tune of $800,000. And that fungible money, some of it was commingled into the same accounts and distributed out as if it's their own personal slush fund, Rathke's own personal slush fund, to build power in a power-based width.

We have also the White House having reached out and signed an agreement with ACORN to help with the consensus.

Now, any organization that can produce 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations can't be trusted to count the American people, not when there is political gain involved. This can be done without ACORN.

There has since been a statement issued by the Census Bureau that they were not going to use ACORN. I have to see that to believe it. Are they not going to use any one of the 361 affiliates that are listed in this Government Reform report? I think it's going to be hard to see, no, they aren't. Are they not going to use any of the employees that work for them, Mr. Speaker?

So let's not forget President Obama has been tied to ACORN since the first days of his political life in Chicago. He has worked for them; they have worked for him. He has hired them with campaign money, and they have contributed campaign money to him. President Obama is part and parcel ACORN.

When the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, took interest in investigating ACORN and made such remarks in a Judiciary Committee meeting a couple of months ago, I was given heart that perhaps we would start to investigate ACORN. But 3 weeks later, the chairman came back in a public statement and he said the powers that be decided that there isn't enough evidence there to investigate ACORN.

Now, who would the powers that be be that are more powerful than the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? Would it be Speaker Pelosi or President Obama?

Mr. Speaker, I am not convinced that it's necessarily Speaker Pelosi. But I point this image out. This is the cover of National Review magazine from March 23, 2009, this year. They put this image out here, Mr. Speaker, and I have just removed the letters so that it doesn't blur the image. It just says National Review on top, the date on the bottom, and whatever their headline story was. I take note to the logo on the shirt pocket of the polo shirt. That says it all, I think, Mr. Speaker.

This is what we have going: we have a criminal enterprise that is being hired by the White House to help run the census that helped put the President in the White House, a massive organization that reaches into 43 States and the District of Columbia, that has engaged in a number that approaches a million dollars in embezzlement and covered it up for 8 years, 400,000 fraudulent voter registration forms, Federal tax violations, and violations of not-for-profit conditions on 501(c)(3) corporations that are being used for partisan purposes.

And, Mr. Speaker, we have the image, we have the logo, and we have the national headquarters here at 2609 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, with the Obama sign in the window and the ACORN flag out on that side.

Mr. Speaker, we have to investigate this organization. We have to bring the Judiciary Committee to bear and the Government Reform Committee to bear. We need the Justice Department to drill into this. No one single entity can unravel this spider web of 361 corporations. It must happen, or it will corrode and destroy this great constitutional Republic, the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 50 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, July 28, 2009, at 10:30 a.m., for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received as part of H.R. 3288, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King

Bill Number H.R. 3288, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Account: Federal Highway Administration, Interstate Maintenance Discretionary

Amount: $500,000

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Department of Transportation

Address of Requesting Entity: 800 Lincoln Way, Ames, IA 50010

Description of Request: The requested funds will be used to provide to the City of Sioux City to help it meet required funding obligations to the Iowa Department of Transportation for the relocation of utilities that will be required for IDOT to complete the reconstruction of Interstate 29 through Sioux City.

The Iowa DOT has included the much needed reconstruction of Interstate 29 through Sioux City in the 2009-2012 State Transportation Improvement Plan. The goal of the I-29 improvement project is to enhance the safety and operation of Interstate 29 through Sioux City. A project of this magnitude has many challenges, including the need to relocate utilities existing within the Interstate 29 right-of-way, a very confined area in which to work, as the bluffs border the east side and the river borders the west side, as well as the challenge of staging a interstate project of this size. This project has been a priority for the region for many years. A needs study was jointly completed by the Iowa DOT, SIMPCO, and the City of Sioux City in 1997. The same three entities as well as the City of South Sioux City, NDOR, Dakota Dunes, and the SD DOT have participated in the current planning study started in September of 2004. The project has been identified in Iowa in Motion, Iowa's 5-year program, Siouxland Interstate Metropolitan Planning Council (SIMPCO) MPO TIP, Iowa STIP, SIMPCO ITS Architecture, and the past/present SIMPCO LRTPs.

The City of Sioux City will incur costs in relation to the much needed reconstruction of Interstate 29. These costs include utility relocation, relocation, connections to the local street system, and aesthetic improvements. The total estimated cost for the project is approximately $250 million. Of this total amount, the City will likely be responsible for approximately $30 million.

Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King

Bill Number H.R. 3288, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Account: Federal Highway Administration, Surface Transportation Priorities

Amount: $750,000

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Department of Transportation

Address of Requesting Entity: 800 Lincoln Way, Ames, IA 50010-

Description of Request: The requested funding will be used to continue construction of four-lane US 20 in northwest Iowa. The Iowa Department of Transportation continues to devote significant funding toward completion of the final 90 miles of this expansion project. Activity ranging from grading to environmental study and design is taking place on each of the 90 miles, with nearly half of those miles in the IDOT's Five Year (Construction) Plan. The requested funds will assist in this critical project to increase traveler safety, economic development and stem population loss in one of the state's most productive regions by providing funding for the continued construction of four-lane highway 20 west of highway 71 in western Iowa.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received as part of H.R. 3293, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King

Bill Number H.R. 3293, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Account: Department of Education, Higher Education

Amount: $100,000

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Briar Cliff University

Address of Requesting Entity: 3303 Rebecca Street, Sioux City, IA 51104

Description of Request: The requested funds will be used to help fund the Nursing and Health Education Improvement Project at Briar Cliff University. Since 1930, Briar Cliff University has provided superior healthcare education to students, which has positively affected the quality of life for the citizens of the Siouxland region. Many healthcare professionals in the region were educated at Briar Cliff University. In keeping with this legacy, Briar Cliff University is inaugurating a new center for gerontology during 2009. In support of this program and the nursing and

healthcare programs of the university, this project will provide state- of-the-art nursing simulation equipment, science laboratory equipment, and instructional technology (including distance learning technology) to enhance access and academic quality for students. Providing $200,075 to assist in this critical project will help ensure the quality of education for the healthcare graduates of the university and prepare well-qualified professionals in fields that serve seniors.

Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King

Bill Number H.R. 3293, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Account: Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Amount: $350,000

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Visiting Nurses Association

Address of Requesting Entity: 300 West Broadway, Council Bluffs, IA 51503-

Description of Request: The requested funds will be used to purchase home health monitors and to train nurses on best practices protocols for the management of chronic illnesses in seniors in the Council Bluffs area through the Visiting Nurses Association's Telehealth Program. The program has national and local significance. In Iowa, specifically the Council Bluffs area, many senior citizens suffer from heart failure, diabetes, and other serious chronic illnesses, contributing to millions of Medicare/Medicaid expenditures for costly care. The VNA's telehealth program demonstrates the capacity to save the Medicare/Medicaid program significant money. VNA estimates that the VNA telehealth program saved Medicare and Medicaid $932,500 with prevented emergency care and hospitalization costs since 2004.

2004--Estimated savings $198,620

2005--Estimated savings of $363,220

2006--Estimated savings of $370,660

2007--Estimated savings of $526,840

Total cost savings for Medicare and Medicaid are estimated to reach $1 million over the next 7 years.

The intended benefits are significant: it will save lives; improve the quality of life for chronically ill seniors and their caregivers; reduce hospitalizations; and save federal funding and reduce nursing costs.

The project will have direct economic and safety benefits. VNA telehealth program is a viable solution to the four most pressing concerns in healthcare delivery today including: (1) Skyrocketing healthcare costs; (2) Challenging chronic disease management; (3) The shortage of nurses; and; (4) Consumer & patient demand for more control over health care information and treatment. Research shows that the program save lives, improves the quality of life for seniors and their families, and it save millions of Medicare and Medicaid dollars.

Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King

Bill Number H.R. 3293, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Account: Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration--Health Facilities and Services

Amount: $150,000

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Graceland University

Address of Requesting Entity: 1 University Place, Lamoni, IA 50140-

Description of Request: The requested funds will provide Graceland University with the resources necessary to establish a nursing patient simulation lab to train 80-100 nursing students every year. This lab will allow Graceland University to better prepare its 40 to 50 nursing graduates every year to enter the field and care for a diverse group of patients they may never have had the ability to care for without such technologies as simulation. This training will help to address the acute nursing shortage that the rural midwest is expected to experience in the coming years. Graceland also plans to make the lab accessible to other health care training programs in the area, including a school of osteopathy, fire departments, hospitals, area vocational health programs. This will allow for an even greater leveraging of the federal funds invested in Graceland's Nursing simulation lab.

In addition, Graceland has requested funding to complement the new educational opportunities offered through the creation of its Nursing Simulation lab with the purchase of two pieces of lab equipment that play a key role in medical education and research: A Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer (the forerunner of the MRI) and a Gas Chromatograph / Mass Spectrometer.

Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King

Bill Number H.R. 3293, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Account: Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration--Health Facilities and Services

Amount: $250,000

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Western Community College

Address of Requesting Entity: 2700 College Road, Council Bluffs, IA 51502-

Description of Request: The requested funds will be used to increase the number of highly skilled nurses in the state of Iowa through continued development of Iowa Western Community College's Nursing Center of Excellence. Iowa Western Community College's graduates have passed the state nursing certification test on the first attempt, which is better than many of the states, as well as the region's, four-year institutions. Because Iowa Western Community College currently graduates many of the state's top dental assistants, dental hygienists, practical nurses, registered nurses, surgical technologists, medical assistants and emergency medical technicians, enrollment could be greatly increased to meet demand if the college had the necessary equipment and expanded faculties. Therefore, Iowa Western Community College proposes a new Iowa Western Nursing Center of Excellence, with multiple laboratories and high-tech equipment on which to train thousands of future nurses within the next decade. The college, community and private donors have recently committed at least $10,000,000 to the Center's construction. The college now reaches out to the Iowa congressional delegation to respectfully request that the laboratories be equipped with the finest nurse training technology available, which is expected to cost the college $1,560,901.

The new laboratories and equipment will strongly enhance substantial job creation within Iowa, improve access to health care for Iowans and expand the creation of a scientifically qualified workforce in the medical and health services arena. By greatly enhancing the teaching environment, as well as the physical learning space and equipment, Iowa Western Community College will alleviate the region's nurse shortage and double the number of nurses it trains annually by 2013.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I hereby notify the House of my intention to offer a resolution as a question of the privileges of the House.

The form of my resolution is as follows:

Whereas the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. King submitted an

amendment to the Committee on Rules to H.R. 3293, the

Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and

Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010;

Whereas the said gentleman's amendment would have required

that none of the funds made available in this Act be made

available to ACORN or any of its 174 known affiliates;

Whereas, since 1994, ACORN, the Association of Community

Organizations for Reform Now, and its affiliates have

received $53,643,444.58 in taxpayer funding from the federal

government;

Whereas despite the trust placed in ACORN by taxpayers to

act as a responsible steward of the funding provided to it,

ACORN has proven itself to be an organization committed to

breaking our laws and undermining our democratic political

process;

Whereas during the 2008 federal election cycle, ACORN

mobilized its nationwide, grassroots organization in an

effort to affect the outcomes of elections nationwide through

voter registration campaigns; and

Whereas ACORN is now under investigation in at least 14

states regarding allegations of fraudulent activities that

were undertaken by the organization as part of its voter

registration campaigns;

Whereas ACORN was charged with voter fraud in Nevada;

Whereas ACORN has admitted to submitting over 400,000

fraudulent voter registrations in the 2008 election cycle;

Whereas, because of its alleged fraudulent behavior during

the 2008 election cycle, it is important that ACORN be

prohibited from receiving any additional taxpayer funding;

Whereas the need to prohibit additional funding to ACORN

led the Gentleman to submit his amendment to the Committee on

Rules;

Whereas the gentleman's amendment complied with all

applicable Rules of the House for amendments to

appropriations measures and would have been in order under an

open amendment process, but regrettably the House Democratic

leadership has dramatically and historically reduced the

opportunity for open debate on this Floor; and

Whereas the Speaker, Mrs. Pelosi, the Democrat leadership,

and the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, Mr.

Obey, prevented the House from voting on the amendment by

excluding it from the list of amendments made in order under

the rule for the bill: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That H. Res. 673, the rule to accompany H.R.

3293, be amended to allow the gentleman from Iowa's amendment

be considered and voted on in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for his yielding and for his relentless work on the Rules Committee that has taken on a responsibility that goes beyond what was anticipated by the Founding Fathers or the tradition of this House.

Mr. Speaker, 229 years, and Members are reduced to sitting in tiny little chairs with their elbows tucked into their waistline, not having room for their own staff to come in the room, sending e-mails out where the staff has congregated in order to get a piece of paper handed in that you might need to beg the Rules Committee to allow for an open debate here on the floor of the House of Representatives. This is the deconstruction of deliberative democracy. This usurps 229 years of tradition in this House, and it muzzles Members of the United States Congress and disenfranchises the people on this side of the aisle especially that represent over 600,000 people.

I have offered, the number goes upwards of 40 amendments to the Rules Committee. Only two have been allowed to come to the floor. Both of them passed. In 2007, the last time we had a legitimate open rules process under appropriations, I offered something like 12 amendments; nine of them passed. I don't think anybody in Congress was successful in passing more amendments than I happened to have been myself, but my constituents have been muzzled by this.

Today, my amendment that was offered would have cut off funding to the criminal enterprise ACORN in light of this report that came out of the Government Reform Committee that is about 82 pages long and now lists 361 entities that are affiliated with ACORN and claims that there has been systemic fraud, that they have created a paper wall, that they are a criminal conspiracy, that they have laundered Federal money, that they manipulated the elections and the electorate of the United States of America, that they have evaded taxes, that they have obstructed justice, that they have covered up embezzlement of $948,607.50 embezzled by the brother of the founder and covered it up for 8 years.

The gross abuse of tax laws that is affiliated with that and other bookkeeping procedures, the documents they have from insiders, the definitive evidence that is here, this amendment needs to be allowed, and this rule needs to be voted on.

I want to acknowledge the presence of the chairman of the Judiciary Committee here tonight and Mr. Ellison both. I appreciate the young man from Minnesota coming down here and spending an hour down here. I expect that out of him since he's got all of that youthful vigor. But the chairman of the Judiciary Committee could have found something else to do, and I think this is a testimonial to his commitment and his belief in the policy.

And so as much as I was tempted to engage in that debate, I was also very interested in the exchange from the gentleman of Minnesota and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

There are other Members off doing other things tonight, and perhaps doing nothing. But some of us are interested in the future of America.

And I wanted to point out this chart that I am sure will be something that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) will recognize, or at least when I describe it he will recognize it.

This is the flow chart from Hillary's national health care plan from 1993. And it has some differences between that and the current plan that we have. But I had this chart on the wall in my construction office when it was available in 1993, and it hung there throughout the decade. And I believe it's still somewhere in my archives unsorted. They're still some things left over from that from the time I sold my business out to my oldest son.

But this chart animated me. It animated me because I'm a private- sector person. I'm a person who had to make a living competing on low- bid and being efficient producing and building things, and I provided health insurance for my employees and retirement plans for my employees. And I was one of the early people to do that. I recall back in the 1980s, that was an exception in people that were within the scope of the business that I was in and many other businesses. And I was happy to do all I could do because I wanted to keep employees working for me. I wanted to give them the best employment we could, the best employment package we could.

And when I saw this come out, this Hillary's plan, I began to look through all of this chart, all of these new programs, acronyms that I don't know that the gentleman from Michigan could come up with what these mean today. I thought I knew them all back then. But there were many of them new government programs.

And some of this is similar to the proposals that are out there today. The stark difference, is this is black and white. The new flow chart is in Technicolor. I imagine a generation from now it's going to be 3-D. But it creates whole new different programs and new different agencies, and that was enough to put the brakes on this program back in the early 1990s.

When the American people got a look at all of this government that was prescribed, all of the hoops they were going to have to jump through, they concluded that they didn't want to make that big change and didn't want to make that big leap.

So just the idea of this chart, I think, if this chart had been pulled out of the equation, I think perhaps Hillary's health care plan would have passed. But the American people can see--and in one snapshot picture--this huge growth in government that comes about and the loss in freedom. This is about freedom. And when I look down through this list, I see HMO provider plan. Global budget plan. A global budget plan for a national health care plan? All of these agencies over on this side, DOL, PWBA, I don't even know what those mean any more, but grown, creating new government. How it's interrelated with State government, a national health board. That sounds pretty familiar. Executive office of the President sitting on the top of that.

But this chart was something that caused the American people to wonder how many lines would they stand in, how many government agencies would they have to deal with. And when you look at Americans standing in line, it's pretty--you know we do that occasionally in the cities when things are busy in the grocery store or wherever. If you are standing in line, you are giving up some of your freedom, your time that you could be doing something different with. And when you stand in line for retail, you always have the opportunity to go for another line. When you stand in line for government, there is only one line, and you shall wait until that line slowly progresses through the door.

We have a new chart here, and this is the chart that reflects the new language, and this chart is--this is a chart that when the American people absorb all of the components of this, they will also understand that there is freedom that will be lost.

I put this out here because I want to make sure that the gentleman from Michigan can see this. And I want to make this point because this is a dialogue situation that we have here on the floor. When I looked at this chart, I will say that reading the bill over and over again doesn't draw a description that you can see in your head the way you can if you have the chart to follow.

This is 31 new government agencies. This is 31 new hoops that people have to jump through. They won't have to jump through every one to get their tonsils out, but they will have to jump through some new ones to get their tonsils out or a hip replacement, or a knee or whatever it might be.

But in this whole flow chart that reflects these many pages of legislation, the one that I bring my attention to--and the one that causes me concern--is this right here, this little segment down at the bottom: Traditional health insurance plans. These are the 1,200 or 1,300 plans that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee alluded to. I call that a lot of competition; 1,200 to 1,300 health insurance plans competing against each other for the premium dollar. They're out there trying to devise new packages and new ways to market and different ways to accommodate the needs of the health insurance consumer. Thirteen hundred. In fact, my number is over 1,300 of these policies.

Well, under this proposal, this new national--the House Democrats' health plan, this new health care plan, any health insurance policy that you have today would have to go into this circle, this purple circle here called the ``qualified benefits health care plans.'' They would be the private-sector plans. So these 1,300 or so plans would have to meet the newly written government regulations in order to qualify under the qualified plans.

Those regulations will not be specified out in this bill. They won't say in the bill that you have a certain deductible or a certain copayment or no copayment. There will be some regulations that will be written in there such as, perhaps, portability--which I know that we need to address--but in any case, the qualified health benefit plans, that's the pool that this whole box of 1,300 would have to go into. They will have to meet the new standards, the new standards that will be written by the Health Choices Administration Commissioner, whom we can confidently define as a health choices administration czar. It's just ``commissioners'' have a better sound to it today, because we have 32 czars. We're kind of worn down on czars, but commissioner are okay.

This commissioner will, with whatever board that directs him and whatever direction he gets from the White House, and perhaps with input from the House and the Senate, perhaps will write new regulations. And he will tell these 1,300 and some health insurance policies, You will conform to these standards in order to be qualified. If you are not a qualified health insurance plan, you will not be allowed under this law to sell insurance in the United States of America.

So, when the President promises that if you like your health insurance plan, you get to keep it, I do not believe that the President could be able--with any kind of confidence--to make that promise, because in reality, he doesn't know yet what these qualified health benefits plans are. But we do know that they aren't going to qualify every plan as it is. They may not qualify any plans as they are. But they will be pushed into this circle here, and they will have to be written in such a way that the new plan, this other purple circle, the public health plan--that's the public option that the gentlemen had been speaking about over this last hour. The public option is designed to compete against these 1,300-and-some private health insurance plans.

Now, there are a couple of things that can happen. If the public option is having trouble competing, they can either lower the premiums and subsidize them with tax dollars, or they can raise the regulations on the private plans so that the health insurance plan today that people have--one of those 1,300-and-some plans that are there--they have to meet the new government regulations. You raise the regulations, you raise the cost, you raise the premiums.

These policies will not be the same policies if this health insurance plan

changes. That's why the President can't make that promise. He can make the promise, but he can't keep it, and the American people know he can't keep it.

So the difference between this full technicolor plan and the HillaryCare plan behind us in black and white is this: That the HillaryCare plan was a single-payer plan. It was a plan that was not quite one-size-fits-all, but it was one government plan for all.

This is a transitional plan to HillaryCare plan. This is a plan that sets up and transfers all private health insurance today into government-approved, qualified health benefit plans. The government will write the regulations. They will say what's mandated. They will tell the companies what they have to provide for insurance, what they have to cover, whether they can have deductibles, whether they can have copayments, and what kind of portability may or may not exist. And I think the portability will exist.

By the time they write the regulations, you won't be able to tell whether you have a private health insurance plan or whether you have the public option because they will be written under the same rules. So it will just be the difference of whether someone is out there still hanging on.

I can tell you what happened in Germany. Germany has the longest history with a public health insurance plan of any country in the world. They put it in under Otto Von Bismarck, for political reasons I might add. And today, even though they have a private option as we are being promised here, 90 percent of the health insurance in Germany is the public plan. It is the plan that they write and they put the dollars into it. The 10 percent that are out there that have private plans are mostly people that are self-employed, that are making the kind of an income that allows them to go outside the government market to buy some health insurance that they think might give them a little bit better access to the health care, 10 percent private, 90 percent public, 90 percent government.

Now I don't know what is in this dialogue or in this bill that is going to change our way of thinking, that will change what happens here in the United States. But we know that as much as people say about how popular the Canadian health care plan may be, they keep coming to the United States for health care from Canada. And in Canada, there is a law that prohibits the Canadians from jumping ahead in the line. They have lines now that, let's see, the numbers, I will recall them, a 360- day waiting period for a knee joint, for a new knee joint and 196 days waiting for a new hip joint.

In America, well, we can get you in tomorrow or next week. What's your pleasure? We will make sure we adjust the schedule of the health care providers so that we do get people in for that kind of surgery, whether it is heart surgery, knee surgery, hip surgery, whatever it might be. We don't have waiting lines in the United States, unless they are waiting at the emergency room with people that are walking in there.

I will point out, also, Mr. Speaker, that the dialogue that we have heard, not just here in the previous hour ahead of me, but constantly throughout this entire health care debate, has been the blending, the merging and the confusing of the terms ``health care'' and ``health insurance.''

For example, when the gentleman said just previously, ``Millions and millions of people who don't have health care,'' that was the chairman. Well, we don't have anybody in America that doesn't have health care. Everyone in America has access to health care. But we don't have everybody in America that is insured. When we blur the terms and we say that there are millions of people that don't have health care, we need to drag that thing back to the reality of the truth and make it the point that, no, everybody has health care. At least if they will access it, they have health care. But they don't all have health insurance.

When you take the full numbers of people in the United States and you start subtracting from that the numbers of people who are just simply not exercising an option of picking up health insurance, we will hear the number that there are 44 million to 47 million people in America that are uninsured.

But when you start subtracting from that, first, I'm not interested in insuring the illegals in America. I think those people that came into the United States illegally should go home. I think we have got an obligation to put them back in the condition they were in prior to them breaking the law. We should not reward them for violating our immigration laws. So the illegals should be subtracted. Also, newly arriving immigrants are supposed to take care of themselves. They can't hardly press themselves on the public dole and plead with us that the minute they arrive here we should provide them health insurance. We provide them health care. Nobody gets turned away. But they cannot demand health insurance. Then when you subtract from that the people that are making over $75,000 a year, they could surely find a way to take care of some health insurance with some income like that.

And you shake this number down, what are we really after here? We are after a number that identifies those people who apparently can't take care of themselves, who can't take care of their own health insurance, the chronically uninsured. The chronically uninsured in America are a number between 10.1 million and 12 million, depending on whether you believe the two-professor study at Penn State University or a number that came out from one of our nonpartisan organizations here, and I hesitate to quote them.

But 10.1 to 12 million, some place in that zone, is the total number of those who are chronically uninsured in America. Divide that out, say 11 million, and divide it by 306 million, you're in the zone of about 4 percent. We have the best health care system in the world. We do spend a high percentage of our gross domestic product on health care, and we have got the best health care system in the world. I won't argue that we shouldn't take some dollars out of this, because there are a lot of dollars in our health care system. But we are looking at upsetting the best health care system in the world to try to address the 4 percent of our population that are chronically uninsured.

Why would we do that? What is our goal? Don't we know some things from all of the experience that we have had in dealing with people who have had public policies offered to them? If you look across the States, what percentage of those kids that are eligible are signed up for SCHIP? And we look at how government abuses SCHIP when in Wisconsin 87 percent of those signed up for State Children's Health Insurance Program are adults, and in Minnesota, the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Ellison's, State, 66 percent were adults? They were abusing the system. They were not using the system.

If you look at the numbers of people who are eligible for Medicaid versus those who are actually signed up for Medicaid, just slightly over half of those that are eligible for Medicaid are actually signed up. So why would we think that we can fix this problem of the 4 percent of the population that is chronically uninsured even if we do bring a public plan and a public option? Why would we think that they would sign up? I don't think they are going to sign up in any greater numbers than they do for SCHIP or any greater numbers than they do for Medicaid.

One of the reasons is because a certain percentage of the population is just simply not responsible enough to step up to that responsibility. And there is supposed to be a reward in this country for people who do take the initiative and take care of themselves. But I'm concerned about this loss of freedom. I'm concerned about this transition of the traditional health insurance plans crowded into the qualified health benefits plans with new regulations written that may compel them to pay certain benefits that would be morally objectionable to many of us.

And then it is written so that they would compete with the public benefits plan. And seeing also that this is a transition to get us to the HillaryCare plan which was a complete substitution of the private health insurance in America and replaced with a government-run plan, another major moral objection that I have.

I will say this is actually the moral objection, and I will tell this in an anecdotal form. Sometime in the early

80s, at least sometime in the 80s, my Congressman was Fred Grandy. Many people will remember Fred Grandy as Gopher on ``Love Boat.'' He was a very smart guy, a Harvard graduate, a policy wonk. He still has left an impression upon colleagues I serve with here on how smart and how policy-able he is and was active in those years.

It was unusual for a Member of Congress to come to my little town. Fred Grandy did do a stop in my little town of Odebolt, and we met in the basement of the Lutheran church. There was a pretty good crowd for a small town. There were about 80 people there. I went and sat down in the front row. Most of the reason is because I can't hear very well in the back row. Of those 80 people there, Congressman Fred Grandy proposed his model for a national health care plan. As he described it, I listened to it carefully.

Then he stopped, and he said, how many of you in the room are employers? I raised my hand. I remember looking around the room, and there were 12 of us with our hands up, a dozen out of 80 or so that were employers. And then he asked the question, how many of you provide health insurance for your employees? I left my hand up. But it was the only hand up out of the 80 in the room. And then Congressman Grandy came directly in front of me, and he leaned down and he said, and of the way I have described this national health plan, how much will this change the way you do business? And I gave him the answer that was in the front of my head, and I think I would do that pretty much today, as well. I said, well, Congressman, it probably won't change the way I do business very much unless you're going to compel me to pay for abortion, in which case I quite likely will no longer be an employer. That was my answer. It was a blunt answer, and it was exactly what I was thinking. And the place erupted in applause. I had no idea that there was a nerve out there to be touched in that fashion. I had no idea that I would ever enter into public life in any fashion. I had no idea that I'd be serving on the Judiciary Committee at a time like this, no idea I would be standing here on the floor of Congress relating a story that was more than 20 years old where I found out it wasn't just me that considers requiring Americans to pay tax, to take their tax dollars to fund the ending of innocent human life and calling that the expansion of freedom is abhorrent to many Americans.

And that, at the core of this, I don't know how this administration avoids the position that they have taken, but I don't know how American people step up and get out their checkbook and write a check to the IRS if that check is going to go into--or write a check for health insurance premiums for that matter--if that check is going to go into Planned Parenthood, the abortion clinic, into the snuffing out of innocent human life.

When it gets to the point where it is a moral principle, the American people, I don't believe, will tolerate the imposition of a policy like that. And this policy, some will say, well, we don't have any proof that it's going to be, we're going to be compelled to pay for abortion in this health insurance plan. The history of the entire funding of abortions since Roe v. Wade has been, if there is not a specific exemption in the bill, if there's not a specific exemption passed by Congress, then government will fund abortions. That's how it has been since 1973.

And so this bill, when it was offered in committee to prohibit any of this money from going to abortions, that amendment was shot down on almost exactly a party-line vote. So this Congress has already spoken. If anybody thinks that this massive, technicolor flowchart, new health care plan, crowd your private plan into competing against the public plan and eventually the public plan swallowing all of the private plans, if anybody thinks this isn't designed today by the people in power in this Congress to fund abortion, they would be wrong.

And we had the opportunity of the White House Budget Director, when asked the question, he would not rule it out that they would be funding abortions under this program. So, we all have to take them at their word, their spoken or unspoken word. But if the legislation doesn't explicitly exclude abortion, we know that they are going to be seeking to fund abortion.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans oppose taxpayer funding for abortion according to a Zogby poll just last year, 69 percent oppose. And in May of 2009, a Gallup poll finds that 51 percent of Americans identify themselves as pro-life. But if you start dropping off some of the exceptions, you go right on up the line as high as 75 or more percent. And no one can win the argument, if you ask them what instant their life began if they believe in the sanctity of human life, unless they take the position that they are pro-life.

And so I think that this legislation that goes after a big chunk of our economy, at least 17 percent of our economy, it goes directly after a strong moral objection that many of us hold against abortion itself, let alone compelling people to fund abortions here in the United States or in a foreign land.

And now, Mr. Speaker, I take you back to the President's basic principles that he's argued about as to why he says we need to establish this national health care plan. His principle is this: The economy is a mess. It's not quite any longer in free fall, but we are in an economic situation that's quite difficult. And he says, President Obama, health care is broken. And he also contends that we can't fix our economy unless we first fix health care. Well, health care/health insurance, let's put that all together, because now I think he's talking about the package.

And so here's the situation. The economy is in a shambles. It's limping along. It doesn't show any signs of recovery. It may still be declining. And so with a bad economy, and the President says we have to overhaul the health care system in America in order to recover economically, here's the principle.

How do you bring something out economically if you're going to propose a $1.2 trillion to $2 trillion plan that's going to require increasing taxes by $800 billion or $900 billion and leave, by all accounts, at least a negative $239.1 billion deficit created by all of this?

How do you, if we can't afford a health care plan that we have, how do you create one that costs $1 trillion to $2 trillion more, increases the deficit and increases the taxes, how do you create all that and say that's a fix? It looks to me like no, it's more like an addiction on increasing taxes and increasing government.

Here's a conclusion that I've come to, Mr. Speaker. No matter what kind of logic this side of the aisle will apply, no matter what the metrics are from an economic approach, no matter what we can point to that shows that this is the best health care system in the world--and by the way, before I get to the conclusion on the no matter whats, I want to list the things that I do agree on.

We spend too much money on health care in this country, too high a percentage of our GDP. We have to do something about portability in America, because when people move from job to job, they should not have to stay in a job because their health insurance doesn't go with them if they leave. We agree on those things.

Something else that's missing from this flowchart, though, is liability reform. Medical malpractice insurance is too high, and it is a significant part of this, but, you know, if you can produce all government workers producing all the health care, then you can end up with sovereign immunity and we can maybe get rid of this litigation in the end, if that's where it's going. I suspect it's not.

So those are the two things that we agree on. Costs too much money, we need to make it portable. Aside from that, there are many other solutions that I would apply.

One of them would be if health insurance premiums are deductible for anyone, if they're deductible for the corporation or the employer, they should be deductible for everyone. The same kind of commodity should be deductible for an individual, for the ma and pa shop, for the farms. They should be deductible for everybody in America in the same fashion that they're deductible for a company. That would move a lot of people out of their existing programs and let them market or shop and own their own policy. So I'm for full deductibility.

I'm for expanding health savings accounts. I'm for limiting the liability

under medical malpractice, adopting the language that we passed out of the Judiciary Committee and off the floor of this House about 3 or 4 years ago that caps the noneconomic damages at $250,000. I'm for doing those things.

I don't know anybody that's for doing nothing. We want to do all we can to fix this program, but we want to keep the competition in place and we want people to keep their freedom. But it does not follow logically, Mr. Speaker, for the President to claim that we are in an economic difficulty of proportions not seen since the Great Depression and that we can't fix the economy without first fixing health care/ health insurance, and that the fix for health care and health insurance is a $1 trillion to $2 trillion government spending program with an $800 billion and $900 billion tax increase, with a $239.1 billion deficit.

How does going further in debt, spending more money, solve a problem for a health insurance program that already spends too much money? If you put more money into the system, where are they taking it out? I don't see where they're taking it out except squeezing down Medicare. That's one of the components that are there, and I've seen numbers as high as $500 billion that might be, not in here on this flowchart, but in the finer print of the bill.

If they squeeze down Medicare, Medicare that, in my district and on average is paying only 80 percent of the cost of delivering the service, and in Iowa, out of the 50 States, we have the lowest Medicare reimbursement State in the entire country. We have the lowest reimbursement rate. We are in the top five in quality year after year. There are a number of different categories. Sometimes we're number one in some of the categories. But out of all 50 States, when you look at the aggregate of the quality of the health care, Iowa ranks in the top five consistently year after year after year, and we are last in reimbursement rate in the country year after year after year.

And so this idea of squeezing $500 billion out of the Medicare reimbursement rates because they think somebody's making too much money, what happens is it pushes those costs over onto the private payers, called cost shifting. You shift the cost. At some point, this bubble has to burst. I think that this bill squeezes it to the point where the bubble bursts.

And so I would make this point, too, that we should get our verbiage right. We should call health care health care. That's the providers. That's the service. That's when we are taking care of patients. We should call health insurance health insurance. That's when a premium gets paid to an insurance company and the insurance company pays the liability that comes when there's a claim, when there's health care provided.

That's the difference. I've watched this verbiage get confused over the immigration debate over the last few years, too. I made the point then--and in fact it was to the White House at the time--that they couldn't get past the idea that they were proposing amnesty. They tried to redefine amnesty, and the American people didn't buy it. We can't redefine this language around health care. The American people are not going to buy it. They know the difference between health insurance and health care. And they like to know where it is because they know their very lives are at stake, and they don't want to stand in line.

I have a chart here that describes the quality of American health care. This is the survival rate of cancer patients compared to different regions. Here's prostate cancer, here's breast cancer. There's two good indicators that are there. If you look at the United States, our survival rates are at the top in both prostate and breast cancer. And then when you see the--shall I call it burgundy here-- that's Canadian. Canadian survival rates are higher, substantially higher, especially for prostate, than they are for Europe or for England. Europe and England are down, Canada's up, the U.S. is better than Canadian. It's also the case when you look at breast cancer, only it's not so stark, the difference between Europe and England and the United States.

I look at this and I think, how did Canada be so close to the United States with survival rates of cancer? We have the best survival rates here, by the way. How can Canada be so close? Could some of it be that because Canada is so close, Mr. Speaker? Could it be that Canadians come from Canada down into Detroit to get their cancer treatment? Could it be that they're coming down to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to get their cancer treatment, and could that be one of the reasons why their survival rates are better in Canada as compared to the other countries that have a socialized medicine program?

But make no mistake, Mr. Speaker, this is socialized medicine. It's the government writing the rules. It's taking away your freedom. You can't own your health insurance policy the way you own it today. The government will interfere and intervene and will write new rules. And when the President says that you get to keep your plan if you like it, I guess maybe if you're working for a company, you may get to keep your plan if you don't like it. But when Wal-Mart makes a decision, as they did a couple of weeks ago, that they would endorse an employer mandate health insurance plan, that should tell us something.

Why would Wal-Mart do that? They insure about 52 percent of their people. Their competition insures about 46 percent of theirs. So there's a little push there competitively. But surely they have to think that the health insurance for their employees is going to be cheaper if it's under a public plan.

So when the President says if you like your health insurance plan, you get to keep it, what does he say if Wal-Mart, for example, should decide that they're going to drop all of their private insurance carriers and policies and go over onto the public plan? Doesn't Wal- Mart or any employer have the option to shift if we offer? If we offer people a public plan over here in this chart, is it the President's position, that a company can't switch? Is he saying to a company that's providing health insurance to their employees, if your employees like these plans, you have to keep it? Is he saying that to the descendants of Sam Walton?

I don't think so. I think companies will make that decision. It will be an economic decision. It may well be a moral decision for a lot of our responsible employers as well. But the President cannot guarantee that you get to keep your health insurance plan. That decision will be made by the employer if he provides it. And if you're an individual that owns your own plan, that plan will still have to qualify to be sold in the United States of America. It will not be legal to sell health insurance in America unless you comply under this circle with the qualified health benefits plans, the rules of which will be written by the health insurance czar.

Thirty-one different agencies there. There's a lot of freedom that's lost, a lot of lines will be created, a lot of freedom will be lost, some lives will be lost, and we know that people die in line.

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of subjects that I wanted to address when I came here tonight, and I wanted to just take this little moment while the Chair of the Judiciary Committee was here and ask, as we've had many of these discussions and dialogues, if he would be open to a little colloquy. I would make the point to the gentleman from Michigan that today the Government Reform Committee released a report on ACORN. I have read the executive report on ACORN. From my perspective if the 82 pages of report that's released support the statements made in that executive summary, it is earth-shaking for me to read all the implications of that.

I know that you've had some real interest in looking into ACORN to examine the propriety of the operations that they have, with the very breadth of all the corporations that are affiliated, and I would just inquire if the gentleman has had an opportunity to read the executive summary of the Government Reform report at this point.

Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for that commitment. I look forward to having

that dialogue. This is something that you know I've been very concerned about for many months. I know that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee has taken a real interest in this. This is real evidence, as I understand it, real definitive evidence that's now in the Congressional Record in a composite form.

Hopefully the chairman and his committee staff could take a real thorough look at this and either produce a response to the evidence that's there, or I would be very interested in opening up hearings so we could examine ACORN.

Would the chairman have any inclination on what he might do at this point?

Reclaiming my time, I thank the chairman for his indulgence in this. Again I appreciate it. It's late at night here, and John Conyers is here engaging in this health care debate and paying attention to the things that matter. I did intend to bring up the ACORN issue at this point, so it wasn't an injection into the dialogue.

If the gentleman had further points, I would be happy to yield.

Reclaiming my time, I thank the chairman again for his indulgent attention to the matter. I will at this point, then, move on to that subject matter. And unless the gentleman from Texas came to speak on health care and health insurance, I would be happy to yield.

Briefly reclaiming my time, I hope to come back to the gentleman from Texas. I would add to this that in this bill there's also language in there that sets up government counselors to go and see the family and talk to the children of people who are aging and presumably to counsel them on hospice care and end of life decisions in order to avoid the cost of taking care of people when they get older.

This is going to be an economic equation that's going to be counseled by people who will go to college to learn how to do that and they'll get a check from the Federal Government to go and visit the children of our senior citizens, and perhaps our senior citizens, and counsel them in why a pacemaker is not a good option; why pain pills are a good option instead.

This changes our values. When I think about the President answering that question with recommending a prescription for pain pills, even after the fact, what kind of arrogance does it take for an individual who, let me just say, has no medical training, has not examined the patient. Just simply tosses out a prescription because he is President of the United States. That is a very high degree of self-confidence and that is very much an understatement on my part.

I'd illustrate also what happens with the health insurance. When you see the private health insurance plans get crowded into the public health benefits plan and they have to compete against the public, they will have set up under this bill a very similar scenario to what we had when the Federal Government decided to get into the flood insurance business.

Now, you can look across the country and try to buy a private flood insurance plan, and all you can find out on the market is a Federal flood insurance plan because the Federal plan crowded out the private plans and crowded it out because they didn't charge premiums that reflected the risk. And the result is, the Federal flood insurance plan is $18 billion in the red. They've starved out all the competition. The government has a monopoly on flood insurance. They set the premiums, and the taxpayers in America are subsidizing the flood insurance for other Americans to the tune of $18 billion. That's the deficit.

When government gets in this business, we lose those automatic checks and balances that come with competition, and we lose the human nature of dealing with people individually. I don't want to be in these end- of-life decisions. I don't want to write the rules for that, and I wouldn't think that a President would want to make such a prescription of take the pain pills. It's what you have. Old age is terminal, so take a pain pill until it's over. That's what I hear was prescribed to this lady.

I yield to my friend from Texas.

Reclaiming my time, I completely agree with the judge in that statement. This is a horrible policy for America. I would put it out this way: This is the HillaryCare plan. This is 1993 HillaryCare, the flowchart that I think sunk HillaryCare. The chart that scared the American people and mobilized them to ring the phones off the hook then, to run ads and raise their resistance because they did not want to have a government-run plan that took away their freedom. That's HillaryCare. This is ObamaCare. If you hated HillaryCare, you can't like ObamaCare.

This flowchart, the black-and-white HillaryCare flow chart, was devastating to a national health care agenda. Can I say, a government- run health care program? Can I say that about the old one, I wonder? I wonder if this one was mailed off by frank mail. I wonder if the people in charge then in 1993 had ruled that there wasn't freedom of speech on the part of Members

of Congress. I will bet that this chart went into all kinds of envelopes and got spread all the way across America, and people opened it up and put it on their kitchen counter and stuck it up with magnets on the refrigerator and thought, What are they doing there in Washington, D.C.? We didn't send them there to grow a Big Government program. They rejected it. That was the end of the momentum of the Clinton Presidency then when HillaryCare went down.

Now we have ObamaCare, and the censoring of this--first of all, I want to make this point that I don't really need to show this chart and send it to my constituents. They already know what we're going into. They know that my vote on this and my effort on this thing are pretty well settled. I have said for years that I'm going to oppose any national health care plan.

No amount of logic is going to change the minds of the people over on this side of the aisle. They have come to a political conclusion, a conclusion that they're going to band together and they're going to pass something that President Obama will sign. He'll sign most anything as long as it says that it's got the public health plan in it. If it has the public health plan in it, it will starve out the private and we will have what almost all of them have said from the beginning.

They want a single-payer plan, a government plan. They don't believe in private health insurance. They don't believe in the best health care system of the world. They do believe in censoring, but the American people cannot be censored. We have Internet. We have Twitter. This kind of a chart can be forwarded all over this country, and by tomorrow morning it could be on every computer if the American people just decided they wanted to make sure that you could see it. You can't understand this health care program if you read the print, but if you look at this chart on your screen, you will pick up the phone, and the American people will be scared enough, I think, to jam the phone lines again in field offices.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

When men were free. Reclaiming my time, and concluding. I want to conclude. However appropriate it was, the statement made by the gentleman from Texas, that when the President says if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it, here is what the bill actually says.

Section 102, ``By the end of the 5-year period, a group health plan must meet the minimum benefits required under section 121.'' That set qualified plan I talked about, no plan is going to be the same in 5 years as it is today. If you like your health insurance plan that you have, as John Shadegg said, get ready to lose it or rise up and defend your freedom.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 30 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, July 24, 2009, at 9 a.m.

Offered By: Mr. King of Iowa

Amendment No. 20: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Sec. 524. None of the funds made available in this Act

shall be made available to the Association of Community

Organizations for Reform Now, Acorn Beneficial Assoc., Inc.,

Arkansas Broadcast Foundation, Inc., Acorn Children's

Beneficial Assoc., Arkansas Community Housing Corp., Acorn

Community Land Assoc., Inc., Acorn Community Land Assoc. of

Illinois, Acorn Community Land Association of Louisiana,

Acorn Community Land Assoc. of Pennsylvania, ACORN Community

Labor Organizing Center, ACORN Beverly LLC, ACORN Canada,

ACORN Center for Housing, ACORN Housing Affordable Loans LLC,

Acorn Housing 1 Associates, LP, Acorn Housing 2 Associates,

LP, ACORN Housing 3 Associates LP, ACORN Housing 4

Associates, L.P., ACORN International, ACORN VOTES, Acorn

2004 Housing Development Fund Corporation, ACRMW, ACSI, Acorn

Cultural Trust, Inc., American Environmental Justice Project,

Inc., ACORN Fund, Inc., Acorn Fair Housing Organization,

Inc., Acorn Foster Parents, Inc., Agape Broadcast Foundation

Inc., Acorn Housing Corporation, Arkansas Acorn Housing

Corporation, Acorn Housing Corp. of Arizona, Acorn Housing

Corp. of Illinois, Acorn Housing Corp. of Missouri, New

Jersey ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc., AHCNY, Acorn Housing

Corp. of Pennsylvania, Texas ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc.,

American Institute for Social Justice, Acorn law for

Education, Rep. & Training, Acorn Law Reform Pac, Affiliated

Media Foundation Movement, Albuquerque Minimum Wage

Committee, Acorn National Broadcasting Network, Arkansas New

Party, Arkansas Acorn Political Action Committee, Association

for Rights of Citizens, Acorn Services, Inc., Acorn

Television in Action for Communities, Acorn Tenants' Union,

Inc., Acorn Tenant Union Training & Org. Project, AWA,

Baltimore Organizing Support Center, Inc., Bronx Parent

Leadership, Baton Rouge ACORN Education Project, Inc., Baton

Rouge Assoc. of School Employees, Broad Street Corporation,

California Acorn Political Action Committee, Citizens Action

Research Project, Council Beneficial Association, Citizens

Campaign for Fair Work, Living Wage Etc., Citizens

Consulting, Inc., California Community Network, Citizens for

April Troope, Clean Government Pac, Chicago Organizing and

Support Center, Inc., Council Health Plan, Citizens Services

Society, Campaign For Justice at Avondale, CLOC, Community

and Labor for Baltimore, Chief Organizer Fund, Colorado

Organizing and Support Center, Community Real Estate

Processing, Inc., Campaign to Reward Work, Citizens Services

Incorporated, Elysian Fields Corporation, Environmental

Justice Training Project, Inc., Franklin Acorn Housing

Corporation, Flagstaff Broadcast Foundation, Floridians for

All PAC, Fifteenth Street Corporation, Friends of Wendy Foy,

Greenwell Springs Corporations, Genevieve Stewart Campaign

Fund, Hammurabi Fund, Houston Organizing Support Center,

Hospitality Hotel and Restaurant Org. Council, Iowa ACORN

Broadcasting Corp., Illinois Home Day Care Workers

Association, Inc., Illinois Acorn Political Action Committee,

Illinois New Party, Illinois New Party Political Committee,

Institute for Worker Education, Inc., Jefferson Association

of Parish Employees, Jefferson Association of School

Employees, Johnnie Pugh Campaign Fund, Louisiana ACORN

Political Action Committee, Louisiana Acorn Fair Housing,

Inc., Labor Neighbor Research & Training Center, Inc.,

Service Employee Int UNION L100, Local 100 Health and Warfare

Fund, Local 100 Political Action Committee, Local 100

Retirement Plan, Service Employees International Union L880,

Local 880 SEIU Political Action Committee, Local 880 SEIU

Power Political Action Committee, Massachusetts ACORN

Political Action Committee, Maryland ACORN Political Action

Committee, Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund, Mutual

Housing Association of New York, Inc., MHANY A/A/F

Neighborhood Restore HDFC, MHANY 2003 Housing Development

Fund Corporation, Missouri Home Day Care Workers Association,

Inc., McClellan Multi Family Corporation, Minnesota ACORN

Political Action Committee, Neighbors for Athelia Ray,

Neighbors for Maria Torres, Neighbors for Ted Thomas, New

Mexico ACORN Fair Housing, Inc., New Mexico ACORN Political

Action Committee, New Mexico Organizing Support Center, New

Orleans Campaign for a, New York Agency for Community

Affairs, Inc., New York Acorn Political Action Committee, New

York Organizing and Support Center, Oregon ACORN Political

Action Committee, Pennsylvania ACORN Political Action

Committee, Pugh Election Committee, People's Equipment

Resource Corporation, Progressive Houston, Pennsylvania

Institute for Community Affairs, Inc., Phoenix Organizing and

Support Center, Inc., Progressive St. Louis, Referendum

Committee for an Accountable Future, Rhode Island APAC, Sixth

Avenue Corporation, San Jacinto Street Corp, St. Louis

Organizing and Support Center, Inc., St. Louis Tax Reform

Group, Inc., Service Workers Action Team, Texas United City-

County Employees, Texas United School Employees, Inc., United

Security Workers for America, Local, Volunteers for America,

Inc., Voting for America, Inc., Washington ACORN Political

Action Committee, WARN, Working Families Association, Inc.,

Wal-Mart Workers Association, 385 Palmetto or 650 Political

Action Committee.

I anticipate we're going to have a seamless transition here this evening. It looks as though there wasn't anybody from the other side to appear down here to defend themselves or advocate for this policy. I'm wondering if some of the people haven't gone underground that have advocated for this national health care plan.

But as the gentleman from Missouri had said, we lost more jobs in the last 6 months than since the Great Depression. I think there's something here to illustrate.

I would make my point and then yield, and that is this is a direct contradiction to what the gentleman from Missouri has said. This is the White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who said-- what day is today?

So it would be today. He said, ``We rescued the economy.''

That's the gentleman I intended to yield to. If we rescue the economy, lost more jobs in 6 months than we have since the Great Depression, unemployment has 14.5 million, 14.7 million people unemployed and there are another 5.8 million people who are looking for a job that have exhausted their unemployment benefits, that no longer qualify under the

definition of unemployed, which takes us up over 20 million people in America that are looking for work.

According to a study that was done by one of the lead thinkers in this, they went to 25 million effectively unemployed because many have had their hours cut down so they no longer are truly a full-time employment.

Rescued the economy? I don't think so. Let's hope they don't rescue health care the same way.

The gentleman from Michigan.

Reclaiming my time, I'd like to pose a question here that is at the bottom of this. And there are a lot of different numbers out there and we know this is a moving target, so we're trying to shoot at a moving target because we know, once it's completed, it's going to come through here like a lightning bolt and it's going to be over.

So I'm seeing numbers that show this as high as $2 trillion, but I can see CBO numbers that come to about $1.2 trillion and I can see tax increases that are in the area of $800 billion to $900 billion and deficits that are about $239.1 billion.

Now, whatever these numbers are, we know that the calculations and predictions are different than what it's actually going to be. Programs always cost more money in reality than when they're actually estimated.

But here's the point. President Obama has said we can't fix the economy unless we first fix health care. Health care is broken.

Well, if you have a company that's broken, you don't go out and borrow more money and lower your revenue stream and increase your deficit. So if health care costs too much money, why do we have to add $1 trillion or $2 trillion to it to fix the program? That's the rhetorical question that I ask. It's more than rhetorical. Hopefully, we'll be able to get to that.

I see the gentleman from Louisiana was leaning forward and I'd be happy to yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).

Reclaiming my time, and letting the gentleman from Missouri relax for a minute. I wanted to bring this up. We see the flow charts that are today in color, and when you look at the color flow charts, those that are in white are the old existing programs that are there; and those in color are the new programs that are laid on top of the existing bureaucracy. This is the HillaryCare flow chart from back in 1993; and this is the flow chart that is, I believe, a replica of what hung on the office in my construction office throughout that entire decade and probably past the change of the millennium. It hung there because it scared the living daylights out of me, as an employer who was providing health insurance for my employees and, of course, my family as well.

When I looked at this chart--I had an aversion and anybody who has ever been in business has an aversion to redtape--this was a redtape chart. This chart being put up back in 1993 was enough, I think, that added enough weight on that it sunk HillaryCare, because the people in this country did not want to create all of this bureaucracy and give all of this control and authority over to the government. They wanted to maintain their own independence, their own freedom. In the end, it was a freedom argument that won out, that killed HillaryCare.

Now we have ObamaCare. The difference is, it's in color. It probably takes not quite as much freedom as this one might have. But I would point out on the gentleman's chart that the part that concerns me the most are these two purple circles down here at the bottom. The white square is the existing private health insurance, traditional health insurance. All of those insurance policies of those 1,300 or so insurance companies that are competing right now for the dollar for health insurance would have to flow through and become qualified health insurance plans. They would only be qualified if right here the health insurance czar decided that he had written the regulations in such a way that the newly created public health benefits plan--the Federal health insurance plan that's designed to compete against the private sector--could stay in business.

So they will set the regulations and establish the mandates and determine what these private health insurance policies offer. Then when they write those standards, then they'd be competing directly against the public; and at some point the public swallows up private. This is where it gobbles it up right here. This is where you lose your freedom. This is where President Obama cannot make the promise that if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.

You don't get to keep it. You don't get to keep it because the people that make the decisions, those who are employers that are providing health insurance, are going to look at the premium that's here, the rules that are set by the government; and they will decide whether you keep it. You will not, even if you're a happy employee.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia who has a statement to make.

Reclaiming my time, and as the gentleman raised the issue of about who will be making the decisions on health care, whether it will be the doctor and the patient or whether it will be the bureaucrat, we have on record, before the committee in the markup 2 days ago, an amendment that was offered by Republicans--and I believe it was Dr. Gingrey from Georgia who offered the amendment. I happen to have the text of it right here handy; and it is this, Nothing in this section shall be construed to allow any Federal employee or political appointee to dictate how a medical provider practices medicine. That was a simple amendment that preserved the doctor-patient relationship and cut the bureaucrat out of it.

It failed. It failed on a party-line vote, save one. Only one Democrat would defend the doctor-patient relationship in the entire committee. It was shot down as a partisan vote, and that would be a clear principle that you would think Democrats and Republicans could agree upon.

That's correct.

The gentleman.

The gentlelady from Minnesota.

If the gentlelady will yield to a question.

Reclaiming my time, if I could just make the point that President Obama might have told the truth tonight when he said that he wasn't going to increase the deficit with his national health care plan. We already know there are $800 billion or $900 billion in tax increases that are written into this, and they're only about, maybe, $239 billion from making their books balance. Imagine that. It's $239.1 billion by one set of measure. It might be a lot more. So all they really need to do is raise taxes another $239 billion and accept the estimates they have--and they might have already arrived--and he just simply uses his little rhetorical trick of giving you a definition. Well, he gives America the definition, and people hear what they want to hear. He speaks in a way that people hear what they want to hear. Again, I think that's the deal.

I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

9.5.

Well, let me take us back to that original question again, which is, when the President says that the economy is a disaster and that we can't fix the economy unless we first fix the broken health care system in America and that the only way you can fix the broken health care system in America is to add to the spending by $1 trillion or $2 trillion, depending on how you want to evaluate the proposal, and to add to the taxes by $800 billion or more. If we end up with a huge deficit of $2 or $5 or $7 or $800 billion created in all of that and if something is broken and if you have to fix it, how can it be, if we're spending too much money on health care today, that we're going to spend more on health care tomorrow and add to the deficit and to the unemployment and fix the problem?

This proposal exacerbates the problem. That's the flaw in the President's logic. So this is similar to the things that came out a couple of generations ago on another continent. If you repeat the same thing over and over again and if after a while people are afraid to challenge you, then some begin to believe it's true. It can't be true.

First the gentleman from Georgia and then back over to Louisiana.

Could we direct the attention down here to the Chief of Staff for the White House? ``We rescued the economy,'' said today, Rahm Emanuel.

I'm emphasizing the gentleman's point.

Under President Obama's health care proposal, somehow I just can't imagine ladies waiting in line to get an abortion. I just can't imagine they're going to do that.

The gentleman from Louisiana has been patiently waiting.

Reclaiming my time, in recognizing there are folks that are lined up to speak, the gentleman from Louisiana mentioned ACORN as one of the huge machines that drives the Democrat turn-out- the-vote effort that has produced over 400,000 fraudulent voter registration forms that seems to be behind a lot of the things that are going on that are pushing the hard-core, left-wing agenda.

And by the way, they are registered--I have it as a 501(c)(3) not- for-profit, nonpartisan organization. This is a picture of their headquarters at 2609 Canal Street, New Orleans. And there I stood across the street right before the Fourth of July, put my little camera up there, and here's a picture of the window at the headquarters at New Orleans where there is at least 174 or 175 corporations affiliated with ACORN, and here are the Obama posters inside the glass. This is your not-for-profit organization. Here's the ACORN logo hanging and the flag outside. You can draw your own conclusions, but there is the get-out- the-vote machine that's funded by your Federal tax dollars, funding abortions with your tax dollars.

I would like to kick this over to Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman.

I thank the informed gentleman from Louisiana.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

The gentleman from Michigan, he's absolutely correct. And the people that generate these kinds of flowcharts--and they are liberal elitist utopianists, but they believe they are smarter than your average person. They don't believe the average person is capable of taking care of themselves. They believe they can devise the perfect flowchart that will make everything work out perfectly.

And the only thing that gets in the way of all of this is because there are some people in the world that try to give people their freedom, and they will always trade off American freedom for security. It happened in Western Europe.

I took a trip down to Cuba here a few years ago, a legal trip to Cuba. This is what occurs to my mind. As I listened to Mr. Hoekstra speak, how in the world do we ever balance a budget if we swallow up the private sector by growing government to eat up the private sector. Eight huge entities have been swallowed up and nationalized by President Obama. A large percentage of our GDP is now run by the government, by the White House, some of it directly, some by Rahm Emanuel.

If the Federal Government continues to take over huge sections of the economy, like this 17 percent or whatever that number is, I don't know how you balance the budget. You do like they do in Cuba. You take a cut out of all commerce, because Castro has an investment in all things, and that's where this Nation is heading if we don't get a grip and get our freedom back.

The best thing we have going for us is these government bureaucrats aren't always on the job. Sometimes they're on the job but they're not always paying attention to the job.

This is the President's economic adviser Larry Summers, who back about the turn of the administration--which seems eons ago around January 20 of this year--made the statement that what we need to do to bring the economy back around was everybody's got to go out and spend, spend, spend. And some of us, myself included, said, Wait a minute. Saving this economy is about increasing our production. You can't spend your way into prosperity. You have to go out and produce something that has value and marketability and you can earn your way into prosperity.

Just this week this gentleman woke up and said we need to produce now; the spending era is over. It's time to produce. I don't know if he went back to sleep or not, but he was right the second time, not the first time.

I yield to the gentlelady from Minnesota.

Twenty years ago this coming October 9, the wall in Berlin came crashing down. It was literally the Iron Curtain crashing down. And when it crashed down, within a few short months, almost bloodlessly, freedom echoed across Eastern Europe and all the way to the Pacific Ocean. We all knew what that was. That was free enterprise, capitalism, destroying a managed economy. The Soviet Union couldn't keep up. Ronald Reagan kept raising the stakes, and the question was, Will the Soviet Union checkmate us militarily before we bankrupt them economically?

That was the equation, and nobody wondered in 1990, 1991, 1992 what was the dominant economy, what had proven, without any question, was the most powerful civilization in the world based on free-market economics.

And here we are not quite 20 years later, the stock market takes a dip, and the people over here on the Democrat side of the aisle begin the chant: That proves capitalism has failed. Reconstruct the Soviet Union and tell me that.

Dr. Broun.

Reclaiming my time, and I thank the gentleman from Georgia, I would point out that as I saw our President stand next to Hugo Chavez in that photo-op, that glad-handed, double handshake that took place down there, it occurred to me that in the last month, our President had nationalized far more businesses than Hugo Chavez had. He had only taken out one Cargill rice-processing plant in the previous 30 days, and President Obama took over billions in our national economy in the same period of time.

So they are going in the same place, and if anybody would like to know what the strategy is, they just need to go to www.dsausa.org. That is the Democratic Socialists of America dot org, the socialist Web site. There they will tell you their legislative arm is the Progressive Caucus here in the House of Representatives. It has 75 Members, and they say on their Web site we want to nationalize. It is happening under our very nose. And in the last minute, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin).

And reclaiming my time, and just to briefly conclude, and that is I would like to thank all the Members that have come here tonight and made this 2-hour special order primarily on health care, on this national health care plan, this socialized medicine plan, and our budget and our economy. You are leaders in this Congress, and you are all to be commended.

Madam Speaker, I thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 48 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, July 23, 2009, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Indiana be allowed to address the statement that was made by the majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Is there a rule that prohibits this body from agreeing to a unanimous consent request to allow a Member to be recognized?

Mr. Speaker, I am recognized for a parliamentary inquiry, as I understand it. My parliamentary inquiry is: Does there exist a rule that prohibits a Member from being recognized to speak under a unanimous consent request?

Mr. Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Indiana be allowed to speak out of order.

Mr. Speaker, I would say to the leader, where are the jobs? I listened attentively. I pricked my ears up. I thought I was going to find out where the jobs are. I didn't hear that answer.

I looked back at what happened for the 108th and 109th Congress. Members of the Democrats came down on the floor and they said, Just put us in charge and we'll solve the problem. They won the majority, and we saw a hockey stick graph going downward of industrial investment. That's what happened to our economy; it reacted to the Democrat majority.

You elected President Obama. Now you don't have any excuses, and you are angry because we are asking, ``Where are the jobs?''

There are 14.5 to 14.7 million unemployed, another 6.8 million that are simply looking for a job that don't fit into that category, 21.3 million people looking for jobs in the United States, all of this under Democrat leadership.

We had historically low unemployment and a growing economy because we lowered taxes, and we kept the pressure off of regulation. You are turning this into the nationalization of the private sector and the health insurance industry, and the American people don't want to live in the kind of countries that exist on the east side of the Atlantic Ocean or north of the 49th parallel.

Where are the jobs?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House and in the aftermath of the previous Special Order that has discussed primarily the health care and health insurance issue here in America.

I notice continually the expression ``health care'' gets substituted for the expression ``health insurance.'' There is a distinction. Everybody in America has access to health care, which means everybody in America has health care. Everybody in America does not have health insurance.

When we blend our verbiage, sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it's not. I catch myself occasionally using the wrong expression because our debates here blur the two. It's comparable to the situation when people say ``immigrants.'' They sometimes

mean illegal immigrants and sometimes they mean legal immigrants. Sometimes they mean legal and illegal immigrants. Well, health care and health insurance have been blended the same way, but there are distinctions.

We should remember, everybody in this country has access to health care. Everybody in this country that needs service will get service. We're talking about how we address those that are uninsured, not those that don't have access to health care or that do not have health care.

I thought it was interesting that the gentlelady from Texas put up the poster: Republicans' ideas on health care--or health insurance. I've forgotten which that is. I look back on last week, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) put up a poster that actually had about the same title to it. The gentlelady from Texas' poster was blank on Republican ideas and the gentleman from Ohio's poster was full of question marks on Republican ideas, but they were both generated by the same people. The Democrat majority caucus produces these posters that come here to the floor.

But we are full of all kinds of ideas. I am happy to talk about those ideas, Mr. Speaker. Some will say that you can't beat something with nothing, and I would submit that you can beat bad ideas with most anything. And a really, really bad idea is socialized medicine, national health care, HillaryCare, ObamaCare, United Kingdom Care, Canadian Care, European Union Care. All of that is bad stuff. Freedom is good stuff. I am all about freedom, and these proposals that are coming from the Democrat majority are about diminishing our freedom, about taking away our rights, about taking away our responsibilities and in the process of doing so, devolving downward the American vitality, the American Dream, the American can-do spirit.

What kind of American would sit around and wring their hands and say, Woe is me, I can't figure out how to take care of myself? Did anybody come to America and walk through the Great Hall at Ellis Island, thinking, I'm so glad I am here now in this welfare state where I don't have to worry about taking care of myself, woe is me no longer because the United States of America will take care of me?

That kind of people didn't come through Ellis Island. Ellis Island now is a tourist center. The United States of America is a welfare state. Now they sneak into the United States, thinking, Yes, America will take care of me. They think that they have now arrived at the giant ATM of the Western Hemisphere that will provide for everyone's wants and needs. And if they aren't so sure, they just have to listen to Congress here for a while, and somebody over on this side of the aisle, as a rule, will articulate some other defined want of some people that's not a need. But even though it's just a want, not a need, it will be declared to be a right and maybe even a constitutional right.

We have got to understand what we're doing here. It's real people that are working, real people that have jobs, real people that toil away to produce goods and services that have a marketable value; and they're being taxed day after day, month after month, tapping into the sweat of the brow of the salt of the Earth people in America.

They're being told, Your taxes won't increase. It will just be everybody else's taxes that increase and that ObamaCare is going to be a better deal than whatever care you have. But if you like yours, then you don't have to worry because if you like the health care you have, you get to keep it. That's what the President said, correct? If you like the health care or the health insurance--I'm not sure which phrase he was actually talking about--if you like it, you get to keep it.

The problem is, it's not true. The President of the United States, however powerful he is, cannot make that promise with any sense of confidence that he can keep that promise because it will not be the President that decides whether Wal-Mart, for example, keeps the health insurance programs that they have in place for their employees. That will be decided by the management of Wal-Mart who, a little over a week ago, announced that they would support an employer-mandated program that requires employers to provide health insurance for employees. Now once they made that decision, it didn't necessarily mean that they endorsed the Obama plan because it really isn't quite yet an Obama plan. There are only concepts throughout and some language that is moving through this House. But what it said was that they would endorse an employer-mandated plan.

Now that opens the door for Wal-Mart to be in a position to make the decision when the public option, the Federal Government-run health insurance policy would be set up to compete directly against the many hundreds of private health insurance policies that we have.

For the President to say, If you like your health insurance policy, fine, you get to keep it, you only get to keep it until there is an alternative there that might be a better alternative for your employer. Your employer, like Wal-Mart or any other proud private sector company that's there that is providing health insurance for a majority of their employees, will be making a decision on whether they want to opt into the public plan or they want to maintain the private plan; but also the newly-to-be-named health insurance czar will be writing some new rules for every single health insurance company in America.

Now that lays the backdrop for what was said over this last hour and the way we need to be thinking about what transpired here within the last hour. However, I've also come here to talk about a number of different things.

One of them is that if we remember correctly, Speaker Pelosi came to this Congress, and she said that she was going to drain the swamp. She was going to drain the swamp of corruption and alleged that there was corruption. Night after night a team would come down here for years--I would say 2 or 3 or 4 years--and make allegations about certain Members of Congress, allegations about the motives of certain Members of Congress. The comments about the culture of corruption was fairly baffling to me. You can point to examples on either side. But Nancy Pelosi pledged that she would produce the most open Congress in history and that there would be legitimate debate, and there wouldn't be favorites being played.

Now here is an example of what Nancy Pelosi said. She said, ``I don't want to have legislation that is used as an engine for people to put on things that are not going to do what we are setting out to do, which is to turn this economy around. I have the most to prove with this package. The choices we are making are those that will work, that must work. Our economy requires it. America's families need it. This is urgent.'' That's Speaker Nancy Pelosi, January 25, 2009, this year, the end of January.

That was her statement about how we were going to direct the efficiency of the stimulus plan to doing what's good for our economy. We're going to turn this economy around. Well, I came down to the floor and put up this very same picture. This very same picture is of a saltwater marsh harvest mouse. This is the saltwater marsh harvest mouse. It's a mouse that Speaker Pelosi has been trying to get special earmarks for for a long time. And as she has been resisted on that, I pointed out that in the stimulus package, there were $32 million set aside for the saltwater marsh harvest mouse. I came to the floor with a picture of this mouse and the numbers up on top.

Of course, the spokespersons for the Speaker, the defenders of the status quo, and the defenders of the person that was going to come here and clean up this Congress, the one who has now established the most draconian Congress, I believe, in history, the one that is the least deliberative body in history, the one who has launched an all-out assault on this deliberative democracy and said that she didn't have an earmark in the stimulus bill for this saltwater marsh harvest mouse and others in her defense said, Steve King made it up. He just pulled a number out of the air and made an allegation that there was an earmark in there for the saltwater marsh harvest mouse.

However, now here we are far enough down the road, here are the real facts: the $32 million has been reduced to $16.1 million. Now the saltwater marsh harvest mouse not only has his own special earmark of $16.1 million, it sets aside his brackish little marsh down there by San Francisco so that he can

hop around in it and sets aside a marsh down there near San Francisco at the cost of $16.1 million, Madam Speaker, which is no economic stimulus plan.

We're going to do the things that count. We're going to do the things that do the most for the economy. The language here: turn this economy around. We're going to do that by setting aside a hopping zone for a pet project here. This little pet, the saltwater marsh harvest mouse, he gets an earmark. You can't quite see it there, but he needs that ear notched a little bit because now he is a $16.1 million earmark.

All this borrowing, expanding the debt to the American people, the American taxpayers and Americans not yet born, to where the debt for every man, woman and child in America today totals up to over $37,000 per individual. Still their hearts are hardened, and still they want to raise the debt, and still they want to spend money on frivolous projects that don't have a merit that affects the people that are paying the taxes, nor could a project like that ever gain the support of the majority of the people in this Congress.

This is like the little mouse bridge to nowhere, $16.1 million for the little pet project, notched little earmark, the saltwater marsh harvest mouse, the pet project of Speaker Pelosi. She said she came here to clean up this process to make sure that there weren't favorites, and President Obama went on at great length about how he wasn't going to sign any bill that had any earmarks in it. Then he signed a bill with about 9,000 earmarks in it, and then President Obama made other remarks about the integrity of the process.

Yet we've seen earmark after earmark, billions and billions of dollars that have been unfolded here going on our debt, stacking it up against the American people. We've seen a process that has been shut down where we get surprise bills that get dropped on us. The stimulus package was a last-minute drop on us, and we could count not days but hours of reading and understanding what's in a bill. Thinking in terms of 1,000 or more pages with 8 or 10 hours to read the bill and then try to analyze all that it means when bills reference other sections of existing code, they reference definitions that exist in other places; and then if you get something like that read through, you also have to figure out what's not in it, what's missing, what's been omitted and, furthermore, what are the implications of what is in it, and what are the implications of what's missing.

That's why we need the public. There is no one person--in fact, all 435 Members of this House of Representatives do not have among them, even if given enough time, the ability to analyze the implications of big pieces of legislation on their own, not without our staff, not without our constituents, not without people that have a direct responsibility for the components of the legislation that affects them the most.

Good legislation is written by Members of Congress that go out among the districts and among the real people that are working for a living and paying real taxes out of their income and their profits, taking a look at the circumstances of what's right and what's wrong, listening to the proposals that come from them and putting together careful legislation that brings about a right result.

Once that's put together, and then you float that out to get the input from Democrats and Republicans; and it isn't just the input from the people that sit in these seats, Mr. Speaker. It's the input from the American people that talk to the people that sit in these seats who make the difference. When you short-circuit this process, when you take this process and bypass the committee process or do a mock markup, a sham markup in a committee process and pass a bill out and then do a bait-and-switch and bring a different bill to the floor than passed out of the committee--and it has happened at least three times this year, a different bill came to the floor than was passed out of the committee because they didn't like an amendment that actually passed in the committee--they don't seem to understand that the job of the Speaker or the job of the Chair of a committee is to bring out the will of the group. That's the essential responsibility of someone who is the Speaker or someone who is the Chair of a committee, bring out the will of the group.

It's not to impose their will on the group but to bring out the will of the group even when the Chair of the committee recognizes that there are good ideas coming before the committee but maybe it doesn't exactly fit the politics that they've been directed to bring about out of committee, and when an amendment comes out of committee like, example for, an amendment that would have blocked all funding to ACORN to have the Chair afterwards change the language, send a different bill or a different piece of substance to the floor of the House of Representatives, and the Members here have a right to have full confidence that the bill that comes to the floor reflects the product of the committee, too often it does not.

The window for reading a bill and debate and deliberation has been so short that on the cap-and-trade bill, that big bill of 1,100 pages that we had a very short time to digest, was brought to the floor, was filed, scheduled for debate; and at 3:09 a.m. there was a 316-page amendment to an 1,100 page bill that was dropped into the Record at 3:09 a.m.; and that morning we took the bill up.

And we are to debate and deliberate and understand and evaluate with good judgment and due diligence the implications, ramifications and factors that come out of one of the biggest, most important bills in the history of this Congress? I believe Congress made, the House of Representatives made the most colossal mistake ever made in the history of this House. Three hundred sixteen pages at 3:09 a.m. on an 1,100- page bill. If you wanted to read it, no one had a chance to read it. No one had an opportunity to evaluate it. It was a surprise tactic. Actually, it wasn't a surprise. We have gotten to the point where we expect those kinds of tactics. But that is bad policy. If you are passing legislation that cannot withstand the light of day, it should be pretty clear that it must be bad legislation, and the American people will reject it.

To read a bill and have time to read a bill, I would direct, Mr. Speaker, your attention, and the public's attention, to section 108 of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 which reads in part, A measure or matter reported by any subcommittee shall not be considered in the House unless the report of that committee, upon that Member or matter, has been available to the Members of the House for at least 3 calendar days. And that is 3 calendar days prior to the consideration of that Member or matter in the House of Representatives.

We have a law, Mr. Speaker, we have a law that requires 3 calendar days to read a bill. But Mr. Speaker, the ``saltwater marsh'' Speaker, the ``personal earmark for brackish wetlands'' Speaker, insists that a bill can come to the floor, and it can be a bill that no one has seen, it can be one that is written in the Speaker's office, and it can have an amendment right behind it written also in the Speaker's office just as a surprise tactic, and before the public can understand what is going on, actually before they can even believe someone would tear asunder this deliberative body in the process, it is an act of the House of Representatives messaged over to the Senate, and on the cap- and-trade bill, the 1,100 pages sat down here, the 309 pages didn't. And when the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) asked the question, do we have a bill before us that is the subject of our debate? The answer that came from the Speaker's chair was--I don't remember exactly, but I remember the response: Well, we don't quite have it yet, but everyone knows what we are talking about.

So after many exchanges, finally, we suspended the operation for about 35 minutes while we went through this exchange of trying to determine, what is the subject of our debate? Shouldn't the House of Representatives have, even if no one else can get their hands on the paperwork or the electronic version, shouldn't the United States House of Representatives have at least one copy of the subject? Have got a dictionary over here, a big unabridged dictionary. It is there if someone were to argue about what the English language is. But we are here arguing about a bill that no one can look up and read. No one can verify if we are accurate. The

bill's amendment was not here. The bill was. The amendment wasn't. Later they brought the amendment down and began to integrate it. It takes a long time to integrate 316 pages into 1,100 and to get it right.

And the question was asked, If this bill passes the House and it is not available for inspection by any Members of the House, is it possible for us to message over to the Senate if it doesn't exist at the time of its passage? Well, somehow, we did. But it shouldn't be possible. The process has to be right.

We should follow the law. We should follow this section of the law that is section 108 of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970. That is one of the laws we should follow. We should follow the law of common decency and respect for each other and respect for the process and the Founding Fathers and for the Constitution and do due diligence and not put generational legislation up and pass it because there was a political momentum to get it done before anybody can see what it is that we are actually doing here and do it sometimes in the middle of the night.

I would be really happy to yield to the gentlelady from Minnesota, who I know has been very engaged in these issues and on top of helping to clean up some of the open doors that are here for the culture of corruption that exists under this leadership of the House of Representatives.

I yield so much time as she may consume to the gentlelady of Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann).

I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota. And I can't help but reflect that the President's earliest promise on this stimulus package was that he would create or save 3.5 million jobs and that got lowered down to 2 million jobs altogether. But the instant those words came out of his mouth, I thought, why would someone say ``create or save?'' ``Create or save,'' what does that mean? What would be the point of a promise that he would ``create or save'' 3.5 million jobs? And the answer, of course, is that if you say, I will create 3.5 million jobs, then you have to identify which jobs it is that you have created. Was it Caterpillar who he said had actually signed on with him in his stimulus plan? Was that an assumption on the part of President Obama? So where are these jobs that you would create? You would have to point to them and get a CEO that said, Yes, because of this stimulus plan, I have opened up this new production line, and here are 20,000 jobs here, and you add them all up, and you have to come up with 3.5 million. But if you say ``create or save'' jobs, you can always point to existing jobs and claim that you have saved them.

So in the analysis of his rationale, if someone is going to create or save 3.5 million jobs, if they are remaining, if they haven't been laid off except for the last 3.5 million and you can say, Oh, yes, they are the ones I saved. I saved the 3.5 million that were left, even though we may have lost 137.5 million jobs in the process, and he would be telling the truth.

This is a situation where we have the master of ambiguity. We do have the master of mesmerization going on at the same time. People hear what they want to hear because the language is crafted to speak to our hearts instead of our heads.

When he says I'll create or save 3\1/2\ million jobs, that is mostly on the save side, not on the create side, because this has gone south in a sad way. And we've seen our unemployment go from the promise that it could go above 8 percent to 9.5 percent. How many people is that, Mr. Speaker?

Well, the number is 14\1/2\ million unemployed. That's the ones on the unemployment roll. Then there's another 5.8 million people that don't qualify for unemployment that are looking for a job. So you add the total up to that, and it isn't hard to get up in that number of over 20 million.

And there was an article written just the other day. I believe it was in National Review. I've forgotten the name of the author that had done the calculation of this. And the projection was that it's closer to 25 million people unemployed, especially when you account for those that are underemployed, those that have seen their hours reduced.

So we have had the data that shows that unemployment, the extended period of time that people are claiming unemployment is longer than it's been. I believe the number is the longest it's been in 48 years of unemployment. And at the same time that was extended, the length of unemployment benefits, we've also seen people who are working fewer hours per week. So we have a lot of underemployed that don't qualify yet as unemployed.

This economy that's here completely misunderstands what this economy is about. This is the experiment of the Keynesian economists on steroids; the people that believe that you can borrow money to no end, grow government to no end, replace private sector jobs with government jobs, and stimulate the economy with borrowed tax dollars, and buy goods that are made in China and borrow money from the Chinese to buy them.

This whole circle doesn't work. You have to produce things that have value, and you have to lay out the truth when you do it.

I want to go back to this statement that I made earlier, and just very briefly point out section 108 of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 that says this. And without reading all that language through, it says, 3 days to read a bill or we're not going to take it up on the floor. That's the law. That's the law, but apparently the Speaker of the House isn't bound by the law, and I hope that there was a way to enforce that. And I actually don't know how we enforce such a law. Republicans are doing all they can do, everything they can do procedurally.

This is the quote, of course, from the majority leader that said, if every Member read the bill, well, there wouldn't be a bill because they would come to grips with their senses or else the public would make sure that they did.

This is a list of the bills that were rushed through to the floor, and many of them were addressed by the gentlelady from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann). But here in the 111th Congress, every controversial bill passed by the House has been forced through in less than 3 days, in violation of this section of the code here. In less than 3 days. Every one has violated this section 108 of the code, every one of these controversial bills.

And to take you through them, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2000, the stimulus bill. I guess I didn't really know what the real name was. The stimulus bill, $787 billion that was rammed through in less than 3 days. Violation of public law 108, section 108.

Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP, rammed through, and this violates the very principle that SCHIP was established on in the first place, and it's designed to bring about, to close the gap so that we end up with a mandatory national health care act. It's one of the incremental changes that are there. They actually passed out of this House a bill that was 400 percent of poverty, that would have paid people's health insurance so that children in families making over $102,000 in Iowa, and some of those families would have been paying the alternative minimum tax, in fact, 70,000 families in America would have been, well actually in the end, are paying the alternative minimum tax even though their children's health insurance is paid for because SCHIP is designed to pay health insurance on children whose families can't afford it.

So, $102,000. Tax them some extra in the rich man's alternative minimum tax. And we tax them so much they can't afford to provide health insurance for their children, so we buy them health insurance, and we rush the bill through. And by the way, in there it opens up the door for Medicaid to provide health care for illegals under Medicaid. That rule was also changed in this and the data that I put out holds up to be fact.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007. That was the bill where Lilly Ledbetter alleged that she was discriminated against in a job way back some years ago. There was a statute of limitations on that bill, on the legislation that she sought to sue her employers under. The statute of limitations had expired, long past. And still Democrats argued that, even though the Supreme Court upheld the statute, that they thought it just wasn't fair. The old ``it ain't fair'' brothers got at it again and decided that they wanted to change the rules after the fact.

I'm okay with changing the rules after the fact, as long as it doesn't affect the people that were living under the law at the time, during the fact. But this was retroactive. This was like

double jeopardy for the taxpayers. And the Lilly Ledbetter Act rammed through this Congress.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, rammed through Congress. Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, rammed through. Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, the big stacked bill that runs the government when you're afraid to do appropriations in a legitimate way, rammed through. No amendments either, by the way.

Then, to impose an additional tax on bonuses received from the TARP's AIG bonuses. So we had to ram through TARP, and then when the rules weren't written in TARP with any oversight, then AIG decided to pay millions of dollars of bonuses to people that worked for them, retention bonuses they were. But 11 of the people no longer worked for AIG. They got part of the millions in retention bonuses, too. That had to be rammed through because Democrats were vulnerable to public criticism because they had passed legislation that opened the door, and they rammed legislation through quickly so there wasn't an opportunity to evaluate, debate, amend or scrutinize. And the result was hundreds of millions of dollars paid off to provide retention bonuses for AIG executives, at least 11 of whom didn't work for AIG anymore. So we had to pass some legislation to take the public's pressure off of the people that opened up the door for that legislation. So that was that.

The Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009, rammed through. The American Clean Energy and Security Act, which, I'm sure--yeah, here we are. The cap-and-tax bill, rammed through. All of these major bills rammed through in violation of public law section 108. Three days to read the bill. That's the law.

You know, they've got the votes to repeal any piece of legislation that's been passed by any previous Congress. When you've got the votes to do that, you would think you have--remember the audacity of hope that comes from the White House? You would think you'd at least have the audacity to change the law instead of violate it. That's what I'm seeing here in this Congress, and it really irks me to see people do this to our Congress and to our system.

This is the President's promise. I spoke to it but not--I didn't quote it. The President said, We need sunlight before signing bills. Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the President before the public has the opportunity to review them. As President, I will not sign any nonemergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for 5 days. Barack Obama.

Does that sound like anything we've seen him do?

I'd yield.

I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota. And as you talk about that percentage, 30 percent, the private business profits in the country, who would have been believed a year ago or 8 or 9 months ago, who would have believed that eight huge private sector entities would be nationalized by this administration?

We have three large investment banks nationalized by this administration, one large company, AIG Insurance, nationalized. Fannie and Freddie used to be private, became a government-sponsored enterprise, and now they're wholly owned by the Federal Government, with about $100 billion dropped into each and about $5.5 trillion in contingent liabilities wrapped up in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And of course we have General Motors, 61 percent, and Chrysler a smaller percentage. I don't remember that exact number.

But then you've got, also, the Canadians that own about 12\1/2\ percent of General Motors and the unions that own 17\1/2\ percent of General Motors. There's not a lot left out there for the bondholders, the people that were the secured creditors, because they got aced out.

Who would have thought eight huge entities, hundreds of billions of dollars, and taking these companies off, out of the private sector and put them into the hands of government control?

And the President fires the CEO of General Motors and hires his guy, Fritz. And the President cleans out the board of directors at General Motors and appoints all but two of the board of directors of General Motors.

And then he says, the President says, I'm not interested in the day- to-day operations of General Motors. I don't think we should be running the place. I don't want to do the nationalization of this. It is just something that we have to do.

And here's the irony of it. President Obama was elected at least in part because he attacked George Bush for going into Iraq and not having an exit strategy. Now, President Obama has gone in and nationalized these eight

huge private sector companies that I have listed here, and he says he doesn't want to be nationalizing and he doesn't want to be in the day- to-day operations, but he names the CEO, replaces the board of directors. His car czar is on the phone every day with the chairman of the board of General Motors, sometimes multiple times a day. Well, that was the former car czar. We don't know what the future car czar is going to be. We've got 32 czars.

The President is in the formerly private sector. He got invested in all of that. He found a crisis, capitalized on it: nationalized. Now, I have read the Web page for the Democratic Socialists of America. That is exactly their plan. It is in print. In fact, it's more aggressive than on their own Web site. The President has nationalized proud private-sector corporations, and he has done so without an exit strategy.

All at the same time, he has been critical of President Bush for not having an exit strategy in Iraq. President Bush's exit strategy in Iraq is in print. It's called the SOFA Agreement, the Status of Forces Agreement, negotiated and agreed to by President George W. Bush. The exit strategy for Iraq was victory, victory with honor, victory and leave a legacy of a self-governing democracy of a moderate country that could govern themselves and that could control their own national destiny.

All of that is in place today, and President Obama is carrying out the exit strategy of George Bush to the letter, spelled out in the Status of Forces Agreement, without a peep in the media about what's going on over there. All they talk about is we're deploying out of Iraq. No, we're deploying out of Iraq cities back to the bases because the surge worked.

Now, President Bush had an exit strategy. He didn't talk about it completely because he had to be a little flexible. He carried out his exit strategy. He ordered the surge. He negotiated the SOFA Agreement. He handed over an Iraq in a war that was won. The war was won on the day that Barack Obama took the oath of office here just outside these doors, and now it needs to be sustained and maintained. Afghanistan is a lot harder, but there is an exit strategy in place set by George Bush. There is no exit strategy for these eight private companies that have been nationalized by President Obama.

When I see the picture of President Obama standing next to Hugo Chavez and when they ask me what that tells me, I say, you know, the chief nationalizer is our guy, not their guy. Our guy has nationalized more companies and more billions of dollars' worth of privately held assets than Hugo Chavez ever dreamed of doing--well, at least within the last year. Chavez might have added a bit more companies over time, but so far this year, he has only taken out one Cargill rice plant, and has nationalized that in Venezuela.

It is a chilling thought to think of how fast this Nation has lurched to the left. We've leaped off of the abyss, and we've got to figure out how to fly to get back to where we are in the free markets again.

So I would be happy to yield to the gentlelady from Minnesota to pick up from there.

I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota.

Having seen the Technicolor, modern version of the National Health Care Act that has been delivered to us courtesy, so far, of a committee or two here in the House of Representatives, I went back through the archives and dusted off this scary concept here. Some will look at this and will recognize what this is:

This is the 1993-1994 HillaryCare version. This is a copy of the poster that is the precursor to the full color one that Mrs. Bachmann put up. This poster was on my wall in my construction office back in those years, and it actually hung there for years. I hung it there for years as a reminder to me of what they could cook up if you put people in a room and closed the door.

Remember, this was a secret process, too. It was driven about the same way.

It's a process that they don't want the American people to weigh in on, so they met in secret week after week with all of this intensity and with all of these--Ira Magaziner, do you remember that name? Harold Ickes was another one. These people were meeting in there. They were smart people. They put smart people in a room. I can tell you what happens when you put a whole lot of smart people together and you give them an assignment, Mr. Speaker. Highly intelligent people will always overcomplicate things. The reason they do that is, otherwise, there wouldn't be any particular advantage to being highly intelligent.

So you could just go down to the simple solution to the complex problems and let human nature take over, and all would go on just fine. But, no, we put highly intelligent people in place, and these are generally liberal elitists who are working to try to create this utopia here on Earth because they do think that is the ``be all and end all'' for them. It is not for us.

So here is the HillaryCare version. I look down through this list, and there are some things that concern me a lot: the Regional Health Alliance, the ombudsman. Why do you need him? You need another ombudsman here. The Accountability Health Plan, that sounds really familiar. I think that might be different lingo there. The HMO provider plan, I don't know that that's in there. HMOs were de rigueur then, but now they have reached a little bit of criticism. Here is one, the global budget. Why do you need a global budget to provide national health care?

So of all of these things on this schematic, this schematic, this scary flowchart, is, I think, the biggest thing that sunk HillaryCare back in the '90s because the American people looked at that, and it scared them that anyone could cook up such a schematic. This is the black-and-white version that could be printed back then, which was just shortly after the advent of the Internet.

Mrs. Bachmann has the full Technicolor version, and I would appreciate it if the camera would turn there.

If the camera would focus on the colored chart, on the bottom are two identical-sized purple circles. The one on the left is the qualified health benefits plan, and the one on the right is the Obama plan, the Obama health insurance plan. The white box to the left of the left purple circle is the existing health insurance, the traditional health insurance plans. None of them could qualify to sell insurance to any American until the health insurance czar qualifies them to go into the purple circle, the qualified health benefits plan circle. The health insurance czar would be the guy who would make sure that the new public health plan that was written could compete with the private plans.

So if you're going to write the rules for your guy, are you going to make one size fits all? Are you going to put conditions on those private insurance plans so that the public plan can compete? Or are you going to take the public plan and try to get it to compete with the private sector? I think it's the former, not the latter. I think we will see a one size fits all.

I would be happy to yield.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence, and I know I've convinced you deeply, and I would yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 57 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, July 21, 2009, at 10:30 a.m., for morning-hour debate.