Floor Statements

I want to thank my colleague from Baton Rouge--in fact, both doctors from Louisiana who have exhibited so much leadership on this broader issue of health care reform. But I think, as you've pointed out, what so many Americans are finding out now as they are looking at more and more of the details of that 1,990-page bill that we opposed but unfortunately passed the House a week and a half ago, is they're realizing not only all of the taxes, as you pointed out, over $700 billion new taxes that would cripple small businesses and families, the $500 billion in cuts to Medicare that our seniors know will lead ultimately to rationing of health care and other devastating consequences.

When this whole debate started, it was about lowering costs of health care. Now they're realizing that Speaker Pelosi's 1,990-page government takeover of health care will actually lead to increased cost for health care, which is the ultimate irony and really the ultimate kick in the teeth to the American people who want--as we want--real health care reform to lower cost.

In fact, the alternative bill that we presented here on the House floor where we had a record vote here on the House floor that same day that Speaker Pelosi's bill passed, our bill actually would have reduced health care cost by 10 percent scored by the Congressional Budget Office, would have had no absolutely no tax increases, no cuts to Medicare; but on the other side, we're seeing more and more now how many costs are now increasing. In fact, we just saw a report come out earlier this week that showed that prescription drug prices have increased this year by 10 percent because some of these drug companies that supposedly are going to help out with lowering costs, what they did was they jacked up their costs 10 percent this year to accommodate for the increased cost down the road by Speaker Pelosi's government takeover.

So not only are all of our families across this country that have health care that they like, realizing that the bill will actually take away, potentially, their health care, it will also lead to higher health care costs overall and even higher prescription drug costs. So it is really a double whammy for American families who were expecting something completely different

from this Democratically controlled Congress.

Unfortunately what they're seeing is a 1,990-page government takeover of health care that raises taxes, cuts Medicare, and they'll increase costs for health care, which is just the opposite of what Americans were promised.

So it is a very big disappointment as more details come out. Hopefully, we can stop this from actually becoming law so that we can do real health care reform to address pre-existing conditions, to bring in more competition so families can buy across State lines, have true competition, have portability to take their health care with them, and have medical liability reform which we actually put in our bill which would have reduced costs saving American families millions and millions of dollars every year.

On that issue of jobs, we are seeing more and more on the stimulus bill, the so-called stimulus bill that we also opposed, a bill that added another $787 billion to our national debt, was completely financed on the backs of our children and grandchildren. I noticed and I am sure my colleagues from Louisiana will be happy to find out, when you go to the White House's Web site, Louisiana has 15 different congressional districts and they talk about the jobs that were created by the stimulus bill in Louisiana's Eighth Congressional District, and the only problem, and you are laughing and it is almost comical, while they talk about on the White House's Web site all of the jobs created by the stimulus bill in Louisiana's Eighth Congressional District, Louisiana only has seven congressional districts. In fact, when we looked across other States, we were seeing the same exact thing.

So there is a whole lot of not only deception, but fraudulent numbers being reported on the White House's own Web site about jobs that were created in districts that don't even exist in this country. And it was using money that doesn't exist because it was borrowed from our children and grandchildren.

Mr. Speaker, today is the showdown on a government takeover of health care. And while there are still deals being cut to try to round up the last few votes in the dark of night behind these closed doors, what the American people have said is they want transparency, and they don't want a government takeover of health care.

The American people want to fix the problems that are broken like we do in the Republican alternative we will be presenting that actually lowers costs. The CBO score says 10 percent reduction in health care premium, addressing preexisting conditions, and, yes, we actually do real medical liability reform to lower the cost of health care and stop all of these tests that are run just for defensive medicine purposes.

Just a little while ago, one of my friends on the Democratic side said that he wants to redefine freedom. Well, with all due respect, I think the Founding Fathers got it right. We don't need to go and rewrite freedom and have a government takeover of health care.

Let's fix what's broken, but don't break all the things that make medical care work so well for many Americans in this country.

I want to thank the ranking member from Texas for yielding.

I rise in opposition to Speaker Pelosi's 1,990-page government takeover of health care. Weighing in at nearly 20 pounds, this bill comes out to over $530 million of spending per page. And where does this bill spend that money? Well, first of all, it fails the American people. It fails those small businesses and families that are going to have to pay the $730 billion in new taxes in this bill. It fails our seniors who have to deal with over $500 billion in cuts to Medicare. And it fails many of President Obama's own pledges and promises he made right here on this floor, like when he said, If you make less than $250,000 a year, you won't pay any new taxes, ``not a dime.''

In this bill, there is over $20 billion of new taxes just on people who have no insurance. The President has said multiple times, If you like what you have, you can keep it. Unfortunately, this bill fails the President's promise because it allows the health care czar to take away your insurance even if you like it. It's so bad, that even when we brought our amendment to say all Members of Congress have to abide by this bill, they actually refused to allow a vote on that amendment.

We need to defeat this legislation and do real reform.

Mr. Speaker, Speaker Pelosi's latest attempt at a government takeover of health care adds an extra $730 billion in new taxes onto the backs of American small businesses and families. It cuts $500 billion out of Medicare, which our seniors know is only going to lead to rationed care for them, and it will take away another 5.5 million jobs out of our economy.

You wonder, today, on the day that we broke the 10 percent mark that President Obama set right here when the stimulus bill was passed, the bill that he said would stop unemployment from exceeding 8 percent, unemployment went to 10.2 percent. Now that we're over 10 percent, when are the liberals running Congress going to realize that it's their policies, it's their taxing, it's their spending, cap-and-trade, card check. It's policy after policy that puts a target on the backs of business, and it is running millions of jobs out of this economy. When will it stop and they actually go and work with us Republicans who want to put commonsense reforms in place to lower the cost of health care and avoid preexisting conditions?

I want to thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in opposition to this bill because it has nothing to do with security of our chemical facilities. The chemicals facilities spend millions and millions of dollars to secure their facilities, and I would suggest that those facilities are more secure than most Federal buildings because there is so much at stake, and nobody has challenged or suggested anything other than that they do protect their facilities.

What this is about is radical environmentalists coming in and trying to impose new policies. They call it ``inherently safer technologies.'' And what is that? Well, clearly it is not anything that is going to make the plant more efficient because those companies spend millions of dollars continuing to upgrade and make the most modern facilities that they have so they can continue manufacturing in this country. What it means is there is some people in the Federal Government who want to go in and tell manufacturing companies which products to use in their manufacturing facilities.

Now, one of the problems we have got right now in our economy is that the government is trying to run every business that there is out there. The government is trying to run car companies, and look at how well that has turned out. The government is running banks, and look at how well that has turned out. The government has czars trying to run all of these different aspects of our economy, and it is not working.

In fact, unemployment is now at 9.8 percent, approaching 10 percent, when they said their stimulus bill would cap unemployment at 8 percent. So clearly their approach to fixing this economy is not working and it has led to more job losses.

In fact, if you look at the results of the elections on Tuesday night in Virginia and New Jersey, people turned out in droves and said it is jobs. It is the economy. We want government to stop running jobs out of this country.

So what do they do? They bring us another bill today that runs more jobs out of this country. Because if you look at what is going to happen to these facilities, petrochemical facilities that refine oil, there is talk about, oh, we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Sure we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. You don't do it by running every refinery out of this country to China or India or the Middle East. That is what this bill will do. It will increase our dependence on foreign oil and on companies in the Middle East that refine oil.

It will run millions of jobs out of this country, and these are high- paying jobs. The average cost at some of these chemical facilities is over $70,000 per year per employee. And their bill that they are bringing forward will run thousands, in south Louisiana thousands, of those jobs out of this country.

You wonder why businesses are running around right now feeling like they have a bull's eye on their back by the Federal Government. It is because of policies just like this. Cap-and-trade is still out there. You have the card check bill that has businesses scared to death to hire anybody in America because of what Congress is going to do to them.

That is not the role of government. That is not the role of Congress. We should be trying to spend time here helping create jobs. Instead, we have got a bill on the floor, yet another of a long laundry list of legislation, that will run more jobs out of the economy, out of this country.

Nobody has disputed that. All of the business groups that have looked at this have said this will run jobs out of this country, and it won't do anything to increase security at our facilities, because they are already doing the things they need to do to keep us safe, and nobody has suggested otherwise. We need to defeat this legislation.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding and for taking leadership in tonight's discussion that we're having, this House call, as we're trying to continue to go through this debate on health care.

When you showed that important document--what I think is the second most important document ever written since the Bible--the U.S. Constitution starts with those powerful words in the preamble, ``We the People.'' Last night, we heard what we the people said in those two elections in both the State of Virginia and the State of New Jersey, where the people very vocally said they don't want this kind of rampage to socialism, they don't want this massive government takeover of all aspects of their life when they spoke in those two elections last night. Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi has not heard that same message.

When we talk about health care, all of us agree we need to reform things that are broken in health care, but I think those of us here tonight would all also recognize that many things about health care in this country make this the best medical care system in the world with some problems, and so you should go and fix those problems. And what is Speaker Pelosi's answer? It's a 1,990-page government takeover of health care.

We have gone through and we have broken this bill down, and we have seen so many bad things that would actually make health care worse. First of all, we have seen $700 billion in new taxes on American small businesses and families. We've seen $500 billion in cuts to Medicare in this bill. And if you go through this bill, with all of the regulations and the czars and the different things that take away components of health care that people like and want, one thing we do see is the real cost of this bill. It adds up, with over $1 trillion of new spending. The real cost of this bill is over $530 million per page.

When you look at a bill this big, 1,990 pages, you know, people ask me, what is $1 billion? When you hear of all the ridiculous, outrageous spending in Washington and trillions of dollars being thrown around left and right, people say, What is $1 billion? Well, you can just take pages one and two of Speaker Pelosi's bill. At $530 million a page, these first two pages right here add up to over $1 billion in spending on health care that doesn't do anything to improve health care.

What we have done is we have gone through and come up with a commonsense alternative. It is going to be filed in response to this bill, but it's a representation of legislation we have been pushing for months to actually fix the problems in health care. And those problems are:

Preexisting conditions. We would all agree that it's not fair that somebody is discriminated against because they have a preexisting condition. We address that in our bill.

People should be able to have portability so that if they leave a job, they can take their health care with them. We address that in our bill.

We should have commonsense medical liability reform so that people don't have to go through all these invasive tests, as you know, Doctor, that people have to go through where about one-third of all the tests and procedures that are run are just strictly defending against frivolous lawsuits.

And then you look at this bill, the 1990-page bill, this could be called the ``trial lawyer protection act'' because there's not one page dedicated to commonsense legal reforms. So we save hundreds of millions of dollars to lower the cost of health care in our bill. In fact, the CBO has now scored our bill and said that it would reduce health care premiums by at least 10 percent and save billions of dollars in deficits that we wouldn't have to pass on to our future generations.

So our bill lowers the cost. It addresses preexisting conditions. It allows portability and buying across State lines, and it lowers the cost of health care while lowering the deficit. Their bill has $700 billion in new taxes. It has $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, and it makes health care in this country worse. Two very different approaches to this health care issue.

And as my friend from Michigan points out, we do have another document here, and that is the United States Constitution. I think the most dramatic contrast is when you take Speaker Pelosi's approach to health care--20 pounds, by the way, and I've carried this thing around enough to know it is about 20 pounds of paper--and yet you take the U.S. Constitution and contrast it to this massive document of 1,990 pages--and this is the founding document of our country--we don't need a government takeover of health care. We need to fix the problems that are broken. We don't need to break all the things that make medical care great in this country.

That is why I thank you for your leadership. We need to continue this debate and encourage the American people to stay engaged because the American people want the problems fixed, but they don't want the government--that couldn't even run a Cash for Clunkers program properly--to be taking over their health care and interfering in that relationship between the doctor and the patient.

I yield back.

If my friend from Iowa would yield through my friend from Georgia, that's one of the reasons we

call this in some ways the ``no trial lawyer left behind act,'' because this gives a protection to trial lawyers so that they can continue to raise up the cost of health care by forcing doctors to run all of these tests that they know they don't have to run for the health of patients. And all of us patients have to endure those tests. We have to pay for those tests, not because it's better for our health, but because those doctors are concerned that they're going to be faced with these frivolous lawsuits that we protect in our bill. And in fact, they prohibit in their bill those protections to patients.

So that's why their bill does so many invasive things. It protects the trial lawyers, and it prevents us from trying to address those issues that would actually lower the cost of health care, which is why we're addressing it in our bill. Unfortunately, they're blocking it in theirs.

And I yield back.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this latest attempt at a government takeover of health care that has been proposed by Speaker Pelosi.

Now, this 1,990-page bill that has just been filed a few days ago by the Speaker adds up to over a trillion dollars of new spending. If you break this spending down, how much does this really cost? $530 million per page, $530 million per page.

What's in this bill? Sure enough, they still have components that allow a health care czar to take away your health care plan even if you like it. They still have over $700 billion in new taxes on the backs of small businesses and families. Yes, as senior citizens know well, they still have over $500 billion in cuts to Medicare.

Now, with all of these horrible provisions, this has nothing to do with health care reform. It is clearly an attempt at a government takeover of health care. In fact, this bill at $530 million per page has been called the worst bill ever by The Wall Street Journal. Let's do real reform.

Madam Speaker, it is with sadness that I announce to the House the passing of a former Member of this body, a former Governor of the State of Louisiana, Dave Treen, who passed away this morning at East Jefferson Hospital. He was 81 years old.

He served in this Chamber from 1973 until 1980 and then served as Governor of the State of Louisiana from 1980 until 1984. He was the first Republican Governor elected from Louisiana since Reconstruction. A man who is considered by all on both sides of the aisle as probably one of the people who had the most honor and integrity of anybody in the history of Louisiana politics, somebody who truly set the bar for integrity in public service. Dave Treen is somebody who truly is respected by people all across Louisiana as one of the truly most honorable men to serve in public service.

He also joins his wife, Dodi, whom he loved dearly. He's a proud father, a proud grandfather, a brother as well, and somebody who will dearly be missed in Louisiana.

I yield to my colleague from Louisiana (Mr. Melancon).

Madam Speaker, I ask that the House observe a moment of silence in honor of Dave Treen and his family.

I want to thank my friend from Missouri for your leadership on this issue. This is an important issue.

As we are discussing health care, I think what is frustrating so many American people is that they are seeing what is happening here in Washington. Right now there is a back-room deal being cut where literally the liberals running Congress are rewriting this government takeover of health care, and the American people deserve and want to know what is actually in the bill.

I think what frustrates the people the most is they look at all this massive spending, $1 trillion in new spending. How many people really think the $1 trillion spending with this government takeover of health care is not going to add another dime to the deficit?

People clearly know not only is this going to be a massive spending bill, but it is a massive tax increase, over $40 billion of new taxes, most of which is going to go on the backs of American families and small businesses. And then the cuts that senior citizens know are coming, $400 billion in cuts to Medicare, including programs that people like, like Medicare Advantage.

This is not the way to do health care reform. We need to fix what is broken, but we don't need to break what is working in health care. Unfortunately, their bill is nothing more than a government takeover with taxes and mandates that the American people don't want.

Mr. Speaker, right now, while the Democrats who are running Congress are meeting behind closed doors to rewrite a government takeover of health care, the American people are asking why are they being left out?

Senior citizens know that they are being left out of this health care bill because they are looking at the $400 billion in cuts to Medicare that President Obama and Speaker Pelosi's bill will impose upon them, including almost the elimination of Medicare Advantage, which is a program that over 100,000 in Louisiana want and like and will be denied under their bill.

Small businesses and families are wondering why they are being left out of these discussions when they look at over $800 billion in new taxes that American families will have to pay, many of which make below $70,000, which violates one of the President's pledges.

What the American people want is real health care reform, and that is why we have brought a number of bills, including H.R. 3400, which actually goes in and addresses the problems, like preexisting conditions, addressing those problems like lowering the cost so that people can have portability and buy across State lines, and actually passing real Medicare liability reform to lower the cost of health care.

Let's fix the problems that are broken, not break what is working.

Madam Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart to honor my friend Joe Maselli, the son of Italian immigrants who passed away on October 18, 2009. Joe Maselli was a proud New Orleanian for over 60 years. He may best be known as a proud and tireless advocate for the preservation of Italian heritage and culture, and a devoted family man.

Joe Maselli earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Tulane University and served for three years in the U.S. Army.

Joe devoted much of his life to the celebration of the Italian cultural contribution to America. He helped create the Italian Village at the 1984 Worlds Fair in New Orleans, and founded the American- Italian Renaissance Foundation, as well as the American-Italian Sports Hall of Fame, which awards scholarships to up and coming athletes and scholars.

Joe was an Ethnic Affairs Advisor to Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. In 1992, the Governor of Louisiana chose him to chair the Louisiana Quincentenary Commission honoring Louisiana's 500th Anniversary.

Even with all of Joe's accomplishments, he always put his family first. Joe is survived by his wife of 63 years, Antoinette Cammarata, their four children, and eight grandchildren, which I know he considered his greatest accomplishments.

I extend my sincere condolences to the Maselli family and will work to ensure that the distinguished legacy of my friend Joe Maselli is not forgotten by future generations.

Madam Speaker, on Thursday, October 15, 2009, I was unable to cast votes in Congress due to my attendance at President Barack Obama's visit in New Orleans to discuss Hurricane Katrina related recovery issues.

It is critical that President Obama stand firm by his commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast from the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. There are several top priorities for which I personally requested the President's direct assistance including his explicit support for Category 5 hurricane protection, including strengthening our levees, improving our interior drainage protection, and rebuilding our eroding coastline. Category 5 protection is vital to the safety of Louisiana's families and to the full recovery of our region. The Corps of Engineers must make a full commitment to move forward with the safest and strongest plan to provide our communities with comprehensive flood and storm protection, and the President's support of the Louisiana Congressional delegation's efforts to achieve this goal is critical to our successful recovery. Coastal restoration is an essential component of our flood protection efforts, as Louisiana loses about 25 square miles of coastline each year. These wetlands provide a natural buffer to protect us from storm surge, and without them, the potential for loss of life and property damage increases significantly with each approaching storm. It is important that the Administration and Congress work together expeditiously to make significant investments in coastal restoration efforts.

While much has been done since Katrina to help restore the region, bureaucratic red tape remains a major hurdle to a successful recovery and continues to slow down our recovery and impair the abilities of our State and local governments to serve our citizens and respond to future disasters. If we have learned anything since Hurricane Katrina, it is that we cannot allow the same approach that failed us during Katrina to be followed again. FEMA must continue to work with our Congressional delegation and officials in Louisiana to expedite our recovery. During the town hall meeting, President Obama was asked to resolve the delays in our recovery, particularly with regard to Public Assistance projects and Community Disaster Loans, and to ensure that other states and communities do not have to face these challenges with future disasters.

There are too many lives and too much taxpayer money at stake to get it wrong again. I hope we will be able to continue discussing these efforts in the future and that this and future visits will help the President understand the very serious issues we are still facing.

I want to thank my friend from Missouri for hosting this and for helping to continue this debate to really get the facts out about some of the dangers of the proposal being brought by President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and others to really have a government takeover of health care. I agree with most Americans in this country who recognize that there are problems in the system but also recognize that with those problems we still have some of the best medical care in the world and we surely don't want to see the government come in and take over health care and destroy the things that work all in the name of fixing the very specific things that are broke.

If you talk about medical liability reform, doctors will tell you that many of the tests, maybe a third of all of the tests and procedures that are run on people, are just purely in defense of trying to avoid a frivolous lawsuit. Experts will tell you you could save about a hundred billion dollars--billion with a B--a year in medical savings just by doing something to eliminate the frivolous lawsuits and address medical liability reform which, as my friend from Pennsylvania points out, we do in the bill that I'm a cosponsor, many of us are cosponsors of, H.R. 3400.

Not only that, for Americans who have to go through these tests and procedures that they know they don't have to go through and they wonder, why do I have to go through these CAT scans and these other tests that my doctor really doesn't think I need but because he's afraid of a lawsuit, I've got to spend the extra time and the extra money.

Outside groups have now come and just earlier this week, Pricewaterhouse said that the bill being brought by President Obama and others in Congress would add another $1,700 a year to the average American family's health insurance cost.

That's exactly what the Pricewaterhouse study says.

Right. Because as we're getting more information on this bill that just passed out of the Senate, they still won't put the legislative text out there, and I think we should have at least 72 hours where the bill is available online so that not only Members of Congress but all Americans can read it, but also as they're starting to research and look at all of these taxes.

The Democrat bill in the Senate has $400 billion in new taxes that would be passed on to American families. The House bill has $800 billion in new taxes. All of that will raise the cost of health care.

Madam Speaker, I support our troops, and that is why I voted for the Defense Authorization bill when it came before the House earlier this year in a straight up-or-down vote. Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi decided to use our troops as political pawns by allowing the unrelated and ill-conceived ``thought crimes'' bill to be rammed into the final version of this conference report.

It is a sad day for our country, and a shameful precedent, when the liberals running Congress hold our troops hostage to pass their radical social agenda. It is an insult to our servicemembers who are offended that they are being used as ``human shields'' in a political war waged by Speaker Pelosi to pass her radical social agenda, and I'm standing up for our troops by opposing this abuse of power. Speaker Pelosi and the liberals running Congress owe our military and their families an apology for playing political games with their mission.

I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this conference report. There was language in this bill that was stripped in the conference report that would have directed the Corps of Engineers to pursue a much safer level of flood protection for the New Orleans region.

Our entire delegation, Republicans and Democrats, were unanimous in support of the language that was in the bill, and the conference report stripped out that language, which would have directed the Corps to pursue a much safer option than the one they're currently pursuing.

If we have learned anything from the lessons of Katrina, it's that the Federal levees that failed us before cannot be rebuilt the same way they were the last time that they failed. There's too much taxpayer money that's been put at stake for us to get this wrong. And so we much more support the option that would have actually made sure that the Corps gets it right for all the money that's being spent as opposed to the route that they're choosing right now.

Option 2a, which was the language that we would have directed the Corps to pursue, is known as Pump to the River. According to the Corps's own report, Pump to the River, this option 2a that's being thrown out by this report, is more technically advantageous than the one they're pursuing. It's more operationally effective than the one the Corps is pursuing. It provides greater reliability, and, most importantly, it further reduces the risk of flooding.

That's the option that our entire State delegation, that our Governor's office, that all the people back home--the city of New Orleans, the parish of Jefferson--fully support; an option that reduces the risk of flooding. That's what we should all support after what we saw happen during Hurricane Katrina; yet that language that we had unanimous support from our delegation that was in the bill is now being stripped out by this conference report.

We need to learn from the lessons of Katrina. And it's time this administration stopped paying lip service to our flood protection needs and actually put its money where its mouth is and do the right thing as opposed to making the same mistakes that were made in the past.

We cannot afford to let them go forward with building an option that, by their own admission, is much less reliable in protecting the people of New Orleans for future flooding, so I rise in opposition.