Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to tell the stories of real people in Arkansas' Second Congressional District who are being hurt by ObamaCare.

Many of them have seen their work hours reduced. Others are seeing their premiums double, triple, and quadruple. Many are losing the health insurance plans they would like to keep and wondering why President Obama told them repeatedly that that would never happen.

One single mom in Little Rock told me that her current health insurance plan will be canceled at the end of the year in just 6 weeks. She is worried this will affect her daughter who is about to start graduate school.

Terry and his wife in Rose Bud, Arkansas, will see their premium rise from $380 to more than $1,000 per month. That is not affordable.

Daniel Hanley, here with his horse, a vet in Little Rock, received notification that his health insurance plan was being canceled because of ObamaCare. The cancelation notice says:

ObamaCare will ultimately prevent us from offering

competitive medical insurance . . . as a result, we

anticipate that your medical insurance policy will be ending

effective midnight December 31, 2013.

It is clear that ObamaCare is a broken law, and its broken Web site is only the beginning. ObamaCare must be repealed so we can pass real patient-centered health care reform.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Dr. Linda Rushton Selman, whose strong intellect, work ethic, and determination are being recognized through the creation of the Dr. Linda Elizabeth Rushton Selman and Jo Ann Rushton Endowed English Scholarship.

Linda hails from Magnolia, Arkansas, my hometown. She graduated first in her class at Magnolia High School. Her talents, drive and work ethic took her to Sullins College in Virginia, where she earned her Associate of Arts degree and, once again, graduated first in her class. She pursued further education at the University of Arkansas, where she was a ROTC Cadet Colonel, named an Arkansas Traveler and was voted a Razorback Beauty. At UA, she pledged Chi Omega and earned both her Bachelor's and Master's degrees, with Phi Beta Kappa honors.

Throughout her life, Linda has been steadfast in her commitment to educating and teaching. She has taught at the University of Arkansas and Southern Methodist University, and has spent the majority of her career at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, where she recently began her 38th year in the university's English department. In 1983, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas, and while teaching at SAU, she raised four children.

Linda has continued to support the University of Arkansas, with numerous gifts to Fulbright College, the Alumni Association, the graduate school and the English department. She remains active in Chi Omega and is a life member of the Arkansas Alumni Association. She has been a 27-year contributor to the Razorback Foundation and Arkansas Athletics, where she sits in the very same seats at Razorback Stadium and War Memorial Stadium as she did when she rooted for the Razorbacks over 50 years ago.

Through Linda's tenacity and vigor she has made good on the promise she made to her younger sister, Jo Ann, who passed away from a kidney infection in 1952 at the age of two. Linda, who was 11 at the time, promised her dying sister that she would live her life for both of them. Without question, she has honored that promise.

The scholarship in Linda's honor has been established by her husband, Dr. Frank Selman, in an effort to preserve Jo Ann's memory and to honor Linda. I am proud to call Frank and Linda my longtime friends.

On behalf of Arkansans and Americans everywhere, I congratulate Linda Selman for being a leader in education and for the establishment of this scholarship in her name.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of House Joint Resolution 99, offered by the gentleman from Indiana, my good friend and colleague on the House Ways and Means Committee.

And I want to be clear: this is not a resolution for default. This is an opportunity to talk about how we have got to, when raising the debt ceiling, deal with the underlying drivers of the debt.

History shows numerous instances in which spending cuts and reforms have been coupled with increases in the debt limit. This dates back to the inception of the debt ceiling limit in 1917. It also includes two instances during the 110th Congress when President Obama served in the Senate.

Further, in March 2006, then-Senator Obama voted against raising the debt limit. And we have heard some folks tonight talk about how they agree with President Obama. Well, let's listen to what he said in March 2006:

Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and

internationally. Leadership means that the buck stops here.

Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices

today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.

America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.

Americans deserve better.

Well, I also agreed with then-Senator, now President, Obama. And it is abundantly clear that no one is going to fail to raise the debt ceiling. No one is going to jeopardize our credit, but we must speak out on the failure to address the debt drivers.

In July 2008, then-Senator Obama said that adding $4 trillion to the national debt over 8 years was ``irresponsible'' and ``unpatriotic.'' I agree with what he said then.

Since he became President in 2009, President Obama has increased the

total Federal debt from $10.6 trillion to over $17 trillion. One has to wonder what then-Senator Obama would have to say about President Obama.

He has continually called for raising the debt ceiling during his Presidency without implementing any of the necessary reforms needed to get our Federal spending under control.

My focus has always been on working with anyone who is willing to find a real, long-term solution to Washington's spending addiction. This resolution shows the House is ready to start talking across party lines about how to fix our debt problems now, not at the next deadline.

Late last year, CNN reported that ``the United States spends about 71 cents of every Federal tax dollar it collects on what is called the Big 4--Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest on the debt.''

If nothing is done, in just 13 years the Big 4 could eat up every penny of tax revenue collected by the Federal Government, leaving nothing to pay for the discretionary spending that we like. That includes spending on defense, veterans benefits, education, roads, national parks, museums, medical research, food safety and air traffic control, to name a few.

CNN further said that ``by 2040, more than half of all Federal tax revenue would be eaten up by interest payments on the debt alone.''

In 2006, then-Senator Obama said those ``interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans, a debt tax that Washington doesn't want to talk about.''

But let's be clear: House Republicans in Congress, and the voters who put us here, are the only reason--the only reason--anyone in August of 2011 talked about the debt problem and reached a debt deal. Otherwise, the President would have simply had the debt ceiling raised, and there would have been nothing done structurally.

And we are the only reason why we talk about it now. Otherwise, it would be a clean debt ceiling increase with no strings attached.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important resolution and getting our excessive spending under control.

I thank the gentleman, and I thank the gentleman for his service.

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk first here about a fellow Screaming Eagle, a fellow member of the 101st Airborne Division, who was wounded in action, Sergeant Carl Moore, III, from Bigelow, Arkansas, in the Second Congressional District, my district.

Sergeant Moore in early June of this year was wounded while on patrol in Afghanistan. A bullet struck him under his arm, puncturing one of his lungs and grazing his spine.

I pray for Carl's speedy recovery so he can get back to enjoying the things that he loves. My thoughts go out to his parents, Carl and Teresa of Conway, Arkansas, also in my district, and his wife, Heather, and their 4-year-old daughter, Addison.

This is just one example of the type of service that we should all be thankful for, and tonight I want to thank Sergeant Carl Moore for his service and for his sacrifice, and for his family's sacrifice.

When I think about all the vets who have impacted my life personally, it is a list that is too long to read, and they have impacted me in so many ways.

I often think of my grandfather who served in World War I in France in 1918. I never met my grandfather on my mother's side. He died in 1966, just 2 years before I was born, but he was in the Army. He processed through Camp Pike in Little Rock, Arkansas, where I did a lot of Reserve duty. I often thought of him when I was there. I went to basic at Fort Lee in Virginia, and come to find out, that is where he went. He went to Fort Lee before he went to France in 1918, and I thank him for his service.

I also want to mention one of our famous vets in closing, one of our most famous vets from the Second Congressional District of Arkansas, and that is Nick Bacon. We recently were able to name a post office after Nick Bacon. He is a Medal of Honor winner. He passed away recently. He was born in Caraway, Arkansas, in 1945. He enlisted in 1963 at age 17. The story goes that he was too young to enlist, so he just sort of fudged a little bit on the age. He was stationed in Germany for awhile, did a tour in Vietnam. He was wounded three times during his first tour in Vietnam when the helicopter he rode in collided with another, and all were killed but Bacon and one other. So he volunteered for a second tour in Vietnam because that wasn't enough. I want to read this little paragraph that talks about what happened that led to him being awarded the Medal of Honor.

On August 16, 1968, while leading a squad in Bravo Company's 1st Platoon, in an operation, Bacon and his unit came under fire from an enemy position. He personally destroyed the position with hand grenades, but the platoon leader was wounded on open ground. Bacon assumed command, led the platoon in destroying still more enemy emplacements. The 3rd Platoon lost its leader, and Bacon took command of that platoon as well and led both platoons against the remaining enemy positions. During the evacuation of the wounded, Bacon climbed the side of a nearby tank to gain vantage point and direct fire into enemy positions, despite being exposed to enemy fire himself. He was personally credited with killing at least four enemy soldiers and destroying an antitank gun. For his actions in this battle, Bacon received the Medal of Honor, formally presented to him by President Richard Nixon during a 1969 White House ceremony.

He earned multiple awards within the military for various accomplishments. In addition to the Medal of Honor, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal with two Valor devices, and two Purple Hearts.

Then he went back to Arkansas and years later served as the director of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and was reappointed by Governor Mike

Huckabee in that position, and he served until February 2005.

We lost Nick in 2010, but he is a shining example of the type of selfless service that veterans often give, demonstrate for their country, and I just want to say thank you to Nick Bacon and the many veterans that he represents, the thousands of veterans from Arkansas that he represents.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio for putting this together. A lot of times we come down here and debate a lot of policy issues, but I think it is the right thing to do, to take this time tonight to honor our veterans.

Mr. Speaker, when I look across this country and look at who opposes the President's health care law, ObamaCare, it's not just Republicans. The New York Times today says the AFL-CIO is fed up with the law and ready to get it repealed if they can't fix it. Employers across this country are fed up with it. That's why the President delayed it for a year till after the elections.

Come on, let's get a grip and face reality.

But my dislike of the law aside, that's not what this is about. This is about the Federal Government handing out money without verifying who's getting it. That's ludicrous. It's unbelievable.

We have to verify, when I, as an Army Reservist, sign up for TRICARE Select, because now I'm thrown into the ObamaCare exchanges. If you buy alcohol, you have to show an ID. I mean, this is pretty basic.

We just want to verify who's getting government cash. That's it. And that's why I support the bill. It's common sense. Let's pass it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Sergeant Carl Moore, III, from Bigelow, Arkansas, for his continuing service to our country. Sergeant Moore, a fellow Screaming Eagle, is with the 101st Airborne Division.

In early June of this year, Sergeant Moore was wounded while on patrol in Afghanistan. A bullet struck him under his arm, puncturing one of his lungs and grazing his spine.

Sergeant Moore is currently at Tampa Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center where he is recovering. He's unable to walk, but he has feeling in his legs and toes, and his prognosis is good.

I pray for Carl's speedy recovery so he can get back to enjoying the things he loves. My thoughts go out to his parents, Carl and Teresa, of Conway, Arkansas, and his wife, Heather, and their 4-year-old daughter, Addison.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in thanking Sergeant Moore for his service and saluting all who have served and continue to serve our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take a little time tonight with my colleague, Representative Young from Indiana, to talk a little bit about health care in America, talk a little bit about the Affordable Care Act that is currently being implemented, and talk about the need for real health care reform in this country.

I want to start out by just emphasizing that I firmly believe we need health care reform. I believe that the health care reform we got in the form of the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, is not the health care reform that we need. And I would say that we have lots of proposals here in the House. I think last Congress we had over 200 bills introduced that related to the health care system, reforming our health care system. And this Congress, we have dozens of health care reform related bills as well.

So the idea that it's either the Affordable Care Act as we're seeing it unfold, or nothing at all, it's a false choice. That's not the choice that we have. There are lots of ideas; lots of much better ideas, I must add. And while I am personally for repeal--I certainly want the Affordable Care Act repealed--I want to replace it with quality, patient-centered health care reform.

I am not against providing relief to Americans who are feeling the burden of the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare right now. In fact, we had a hearing on the implementation of the ObamaCare law in the Ways and Means Committee today, a committee of which I am a member. And my colleague Representative Young is also a member. And we heard a lot of people say hey, this is the law of the land, don't mess with it. This is the law of the land, let it go. This is the law of the land, any attempt to criticize it, to discuss its shortcomings, is a waste of time.

Well, I reject that outright. And, you know, I think the President, through his actions, has rejected that.

What am I talking about? Well, it's interesting because we've passed seven bills in this House, seven bills, that relate to ObamaCare, changing ObamaCare, repealing a part of ObamaCare, seven that not only passed this House, we sent them to the other side of the Capitol. They passed the Senate. And you know what? The President signed them into law. That may come as a surprise to some folks, but it's the truth. We passed seven bills to change, to modify, to repeal parts of, to make better ObamaCare, and the President has agreed with us on all seven. He signed them into law.

Those are the same bills, and I would like to go through, if I can, the seven bills, and talk a little bit about what they do and how they were an improvement. I think they are evidence that yes, we'd like to replace this bill with something much better, this law, but in the short term, we will do whatever it takes to provide relief to American workers, relief to American families, relief to small businesses that are under the burden of ObamaCare.

So let me mention a few of these.

H.R. 4: H.R. 4 repealed the small business paperwork 1099 mandate. I remember when I first got to Congress, I heard from a bunch of folks about the 1099 filing obligation under the President's health care law. We repealed that. You know what the President did? He agreed. Bad part of the law.

Next, H.R. 1473. We cut $2.2 billion from what was characterized as a stealth public plan, a consumer-operated and -oriented plan, and froze the IRS budget. The President signed that into law.

Next, H.R. 674. We saved taxpayers $13 billion by adjusting the eligibility for ObamaCare programs. The President signed that into law.

H.R. 2055 made more reductions to the consumer-operated and -oriented plan that I mentioned earlier, also to the IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, an independent board that's going to cut Medicare, because it hasn't been reformed, when it runs out of money. So that was signed into law. And again in today's hearing in the Ways and Means Committee, folks on the other side of the aisle were saying this talk, this criticism about the President's law, ObamaCare, a waste of time, meaningless, all politics. Hogwash; the President signed a bunch of it into law.

Precisely. And a lot of people ask, why all the focus, why all the energy, why all the speeches? Because it's important, number one. And, number two, it takes the energy, the focus, the time, the prioritization, the resources, to convince people, the President included, that this is not the way to go.

Now, I think if you were to throw these seven different bills out there a few years ago when ObamaCare passed and say, hey, what are the chances of the President signing this? People would have said no way. No way it's going to happen. So it's a process. It's a process of making the argument with facts; not through personal attack, with facts. Make the vigorous argument. That's what this body and democracy is about, make the argument, win the argument, and then repeal or change.

And I would mention, there are three more: H.R. 3630 slashed billions of dollars from some discretionary funds, some slush funds which they had some flexibility to use, and the President agreed with that. He signed that into law.

H.R. 4348 adjusted a drafting error. It saved $670 million.

And H.R. 8 repealed what was called the CLASS program--Community Living Assistance Services and Support program. The former Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee called the CLASS program ``a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would be proud of.''

We saved billions of dollars through the repeal of H.R. 8. So to reiterate, there are seven bills we fought hard for, and every single one of them ultimately was signed into law by the President of the United States.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the biggest change, the most consequential change to ObamaCare, the most open and full recognition that the President's health care law is unworkable and problematic and a burden is the fact that the President himself just a few weeks ago on July 2, through a blog post, a Department of Treasury blog post, said, you know what? I am going to suspend, postpone for a year the so-called employer mandate that is one of the key pillars of the ObamaCare law.

Now, what is that mandate?

If you were to ask me what does full-time mean to you, I'd say, growing up in south Arkansas, full-time means 40 hours in a week or more, right?

That's a commonsense, practical application of what full-time is.

Would that be right under ObamaCare?

So the bottom line is the President recognized--and I applaud him for this--I applaud him for recognizing the problem, the burden of his law, particularly the employer mandate. And he said, I'm going to postpone that part of the law. I'm basically going to repeal, in effect, repeal that for a year; just make that go away for a year as a practical matter.

Now, I applaud his recognition that the law has problems. The problem I had with that action is I don't think, still do not believe the President had the power to do that. If he wants the law changed, he should have called Congress. We would have been more than happy to deliver up a bill--send it over to the Senate--that postponed the employer mandate a year.

In fact, because of the President doing that, that's precisely what we did. So I introduced H.R. 2667, that does that in legislation, not through a regulatory change, a blog post. But I introduced the Authority for Mandate Delay Act, which we voted on. We passed on this floor.

Why?

It does the same basic thing, a little bit different, but the same basic thing that the President was doing, and we did it so that what he did would be legal. And you know what? Thirty-five Democrats supported this bill. Thirty-five Democrats supported this bill, and I applaud them for doing it.

And I would add to that there are many of us that believe the reason this law is not working is because it will never work. It is unworkable by design. It is top-down. It is the old way of doing things in a world that is becoming network bottom-up, innovative, new way of doing things. This is an old central control, top-down way of legislating.

And so the President recognized that. But, of course, for partisan politics reasons, even though my bill did basically what he did, he opposed it. He opposed the bill that would have made his actions legal.

And, of course, now it is sitting, napping, because we hope to awake it, it's napping in the Senate, in the United States Senate, with your companion bill, the Individual Mandate Delay.

Thirty-five Democrats.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

Well, and one in nine of the Democrats voted for your bill. I think it was 22 total. I think, just a year or two ago, that would have been unthinkable, that 35 would have joined voting for the Employer Mandate Delay and 22 or so for your bill. It would have been unthinkable.

It is because we have been relentless in pursuit of a better way, relentless in pursuit of real health care reform, relentless in identifying and letting folks in Washington know that the people back home, constituents, have made their voice very clear, where I live, in Arkansas, on the issue of the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare.

And what's interesting is, today, in the Ways and Means Committee, we had the head of the IRS testifying. And he was explaining why the President decided to delay, for 1 year, one of the two key components of the Affordable Care Act--one being the employer mandate, and the other part of the law being the individual mandate.

We know that the President delayed that one, the employer mandate, and he was explaining why he did that. And this is a paraphrase of what he said.

It's the head of the IRS describing why the President gave 1 year relief to businesses impacted by the employer mandate. He said, to paraphrase, not a direct quote, but to paraphrase, he said, in effect, we heard from a lot of American small businesses that this was a burden on them, and so we acted to give them relief. That's a paraphrase, but that's effectively what he said.

I agree with the general sentiment. It is a burden on American workers and small businesses, et cetera, and they do need relief, and I'm glad they're getting it.

But it raises the question, why wouldn't you give that same relief, as a matter of fairness, to individuals, families, workers impacted by the individual mandate, the other key component of ObamaCare, of the Affordable Care Act?

Why would you give relief to small businesses and businesses and what have you, but not give relief to individuals?

It fundamentally doesn't make sense. It's not fair.

And when he said that, I thought to myself, well, is it possible that he doesn't know, that the head of the IRS and the administration don't know that individuals and families and workers are also impacted in a negative way, that they are burdened, many of them, by this law?

Yes, they want health care reform. Yes, people need insurance. Yes, people want to be covered. But this is not the way to go.

Does he not know the impact that this law is having?

So I thought, why don't we put all the opinions aside, the op eds, the editorialists, and why don't we just talk about some of the news headlines?

Without my commentary, I thought you and I could just read some of the headlines. These are news stories, not op eds, not editorial writers. These are news stories from a variety of publications from around the country. And I thought it would be instructive to run through some of those tonight.

I tell you what, I'll read through one of these, and I'll put one up. You could read through, and then I'll take one. These are headlines from around the country. And we're going to run through them because they are news stories that, regardless of what you hear from this administration, this is what's happening around the country.

The AP: Florida Insurance Officials: Rates Will Rise Under ObamaCare.

Georgia Insurance Rates Spike Under ObamaCare.

Now, I would point out, we don't have to guess what's going to happen anymore. We don't have to predict what's going to happen.

Why? Because we're already there. Implementation is under way. It's already happening. So we'll just let the facts speak.

Chattanooga Business Owner Says ObamaCare Costing Workers Pay Raises and Benefits.

Consumers Could See 25-Percent Premium Increases Under ObamaCare.

UNA Asks Student Employees to Work Fewer Hours.

I would point out that these are from all over the country. Growing worries about ObamaCare forcing insurers out of State markets.

Iowa Public Radio: Full-time vs part-time workers. Restaurants weigh ObamaCare.

ObamaCare forces work-hour limits for CMU students.

Brevard cuts some workers' part-time hours to avoid ObamaCare rules.

ObamaCare delay is a relief for a family business.

As we see here:

Texas Business Owner Facing $1 Million in Annual ObamaCare Costs;

Maryland Employers Cutting Hours Due to ObamaCare;

Waitress Said She's Losing Full-Time Status Due to the ObamaCare Rule;

St. Pete College: HCC Cut Adjuncts' Hours Over Health Care;

Local Entrepreneur Sells Part of Business Due to ObamaCare.

I share your feeling there. I found common ground with a lot of labor union folks on the Keystone pipeline because they want the jobs.

Here, the labor unions are realizing this is a nightmare.

The members are speaking out.

Here you see:

Restaurant Shift: Sorry, Just Part-Time.

There's a theme here.

Workers' Hours Cut--`ObamaCare' Blamed.

Again, for those just tuning in, we're just reading news headlines, not op-eds. These are news headlines, stories from around the country, everything from the Weekly Standard to the Huffington Post, the AP.

ObamaCare Strikes: Part-Time Jobs Surge to All-Time High; Full-Time Jobs Plunge by 240,000;

16,500 Working Fewer Hours Due to ObamaCare Mandate.

This is one of the mandates we've been talking about here tonight.

Sure.

And these are folks that the Obama administration says are full-time, but they're really not full-time. They may be working 35 hours a week. They don't even have a truly full- time, 40-hour-a-week job, what most folks across America know to be full-time. We talked about this before. Who said that 30 hours is full- time?

A lot of folks working 35 hours are trying to make ends meet. They would rather work 40 and get some other time. But what is happening is they're being cut back below 30, which is not just the number of hours they work. It's simultaneously reducing the money they take home.

That's your bill.

Houston Doctors to Close Doors Because of ObamaCare;

Aetna Letter Warns Customers: `Many People Will Pay More for Health Insurance' Under ObamaCare;

East Penn Cuts Cafeteria Workers' Hours to Avoid ObamaCare;

Affordable Care Act Insurance Mandates Leading Some Businesses to Cut Employees' Work Hours;

Limiting Part-Time Hours Unintended Result of Health Law.

Maybe the unintended consequences have something to do with the fact they didn't know half of what was in the law in the first place.

And we can help those people. We can help those people through other means. As I said before, the idea that it's the ObamaCare model or nothing is a false choice. There are many other better patient-centered ways to do this to reach the same goal.

Health Care Law Causing SCC to Reexamine Adjunct Faculty Members;

Local Employers Struggle with Affordable Care Act.

When employers are struggling, the workers are struggling. The families are struggling.

ObamaCare Glitch Could Make Coverage Unaffordable for Low-Wage Workers;

ObamaCare's $96-an-Hour Cost Spike May End 30-Hour Workweek.

We're getting short on time, so I think we ought to run through these.

I want to talk a little bit about where our bills are now, sitting at the other end of the Capitol. I want to urge our Senate friends to think about the opportunity they have.

But let's take a quick look at these before we close out.

Rancho Cucamonga May Reduce Part-Time Hours to Avoid Health Care Costs;

Part-time Staff Hours in Flux Due to ObamaCare;

Fort Wayne Community Schools Cut Hours for Part-Time Positions;

Maricopa Community College Staffs Pinched by Obama Health Law;

Dallas Area Cities, School Districts Expect Budget Hits from Affordable Care Act.

And the good news just keeps on coming. There's a little sarcasm there. This is just awful.

And there's so many more. One that I actually didn't get up here was reported just tonight. In Ohio, they announced that premiums statewide are going up 41 percent.

AAA Parks Full-Time Jobs, Cites Health Law;

Agencies Must Cut Some Part-Timers' Hours or Offer Health Insurance;

Part-Time Employee Hours Cut Over Health Care;

Fast-Food Worker Hours Cut, New Health Care Law Blamed.

I know we're short on time. We've got some other colleagues that want to talk tonight, but I just want to close

by first of all thanking my colleague, Representative Young of Indiana, for being here with me.

But I'd just like to point out that the employer mandate bill that mimics what the President did, that postpones the employer mandate for 1 year, we passed it here with 35 Democrats, bipartisan. Your bill, the individual mandate postponement, 22 Democrats. We passed them out of here. We did our job.

The worst the White House could say about my bill is that it was redundant. Those bills are sitting down in the Senate, waiting for action.

On the employer mandate delay, they should pass that immediately to make the President's actions legal, and they should pass the individual mandate delay to make the President's actions fair.

I appreciate you being here with me tonight. You are an outstanding member of the Ways and Means Committee, and I appreciate your leadership.

We're running out of time. I want to thank folks for joining us tonight, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, on March 29, 2013, the ExxonMobil Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas, spilled thousands of gallons of oil into the homes and onto the properties surrounding the ruptured pipelines. I am committed to making things right for the people of Mayflower by ensuring that another spill like this doesn't occur again in Arkansas.

The U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, PHMSA, is responsible for regulating and ensuring the safe and secure movement of oil and petroleum products to industry and consumers through our Nation's interstate pipelines. As an interstate pipeline, the inspection of the Pegasus pipeline was PHMSA's responsibility.

Pipelines move nearly two-thirds of the oil and petroleum products transported annually. Interstate pipelines deliver over 11.3 billion barrels of petroleum each year. The cost to transport a barrel of petroleum products from Houston to the New York Harbor is about a dollar. American pipelines are indisputably the safest way to move oil, and I remain supportive of the pipeline infrastructure as it will provide important jobs and energy to Americans, but we've got to make sure these pipelines are safe. Every year, pipelines transport more than 11 billion barrels of oil, and last year, less than five ten- thousandths of 1 percent of it was lost to spills.

We've got to do what we can to make sure spills that did occur don't happen again. Although the number of spills is a minimal fraction of what we safely transport throughout the country, I know that we can still make more certain the safety of our Nation's pipelines. I continue to support the safe transport of our Nation's oil and petroleum products, and I have introduced my amendment to increase the budget for PHMSA's operational expenses by $500,000 to further ensure the safety of our Nation's pipelines.

This appropriation finances the operational support costs for PHMSA, including agency-wide functions of administration, management, policy development, legal counsel, budget, financial management, civil rights, human resources, acquisition services, information technology, and governmental and public affairs.

I ask that the House support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, the employer mandate provisions in the Affordable Care Act are already stifling job growth. We don't have to wait to see what's going to happen. In my district, I was approached by a 21-year-old Hispanic American. He contacted me.

He said, I'm a franchise owner. I'm the vice president of a small franchise that I inherited from my mother.

He said that his business has grown about 25 percent each year over the past 2 years and that he is one of the top franchisees in his group. He is a rising senior in college who is managing a small business. He said that he currently has 45 employees; and according to him, right now would be the perfect time to add another 10 or 20 full- time, good-paying jobs--but this is a small business owner. He said he can't do it because of the employer mandate. It makes him choose between increasingly expensive insurance premiums or punitive tax penalties for each employee. He contacted me for relief. If this mandate cannot be repealed, he said, could he please make the 50 threshold 250 so as not to strangle his business. The 21-year-old said it best:

The government should be my partner so I can help my

employees prosper. I can help them more than the government,

but I'm literally not able because of taxes, the Affordable

Care Act and other regulations.

After 3 years of pain, the President has finally realized that the employer mandate is a bad idea. It is already costing jobs and lowering wages for millions of hardworking Americans. Americans who are forced to be part of ObamaCare deserve more than to be governed by blog posts from the Treasury Department. Only Congress can change the law. Personally, I want to repeal and replace the law; but today we can join with the President and vote for my bill.

You know, when I look at this issue of energy, what strikes me is the President talking about jobs sounds good, but he doesn't like this sort of job or that sort of job. For example, he talks about wanting to create jobs, but he doesn't want the Keystone pipeline kind of jobs, he doesn't want the kind of jobs that come from coal. He doesn't want the kind of jobs that come from fracking, this technology that we have developed in the United States that is helping us lead the world. So he wants to talk about jobs, he has this idea that there are somehow these jobs out there, but not the ones that are right under his nose.

I am holding in my hand a Washington Post article from earlier this year, and the headline is, ``European Industry Flocks to U.S. to Take Advantage of Cheaper Gas.''

Wait a minute. I've heard the President talk a lot about jobs. I've heard him talk a lot about wanting more manufacturing jobs. Natural gas that is being developed here in this country, cheap natural gas, clean- burning natural gas, abundant natural gas, that is what is helping this economy.

Despite all the regulatory obstacles that this President has put in front of this economy, despite record debt, despite all of the problems that we in this body want to address, the economy is still doing some incredible things because the private sector is leading, and natural gas is a big part of that.

I've got another article here from The Wall Street Journal, from October of last year. The headline is ``Cheap U.S. Gas is Europe's loss.'' Manufacturing in Europe moving to the United States because of innovation in the area of natural gas.

Now, the interesting thing is I know the President is in a political bind because workers want jobs and environmentalists want to kill a lot of these projects, so he's torn between the two. How about you just go with the jobs?

Working Americans need jobs, Mr. President. And it seems to me, those are the folks that you ought to put first.

And I would note that there's a lot of talk by the environmentalists about killing coal and having a war on coal. Do they not realize that if you kill coal use in a country that regulates it very closely and that has developed clean coal, that coal's still going to be used?

But who's it going to be used by?

It's going to be used by China, where they don't have the clean air rules that we do, and so they're going to make even more pollution. Instead of turning to clean coal and the coal technology that we have here, he's sending it overseas.

This is another reason that folks may want to go elsewhere to create jobs. We've got the gift of abundant, cheap energy. Let's not mess it up.

And let's be clear. This is not just a war on coal. This is a war on working people. This is a war on the family who is sitting at their table trying to figure out how they're going to pay their power bill, how they're going to heat or cool their home, how they're going to put food on their table.

And you know what?

Energy costs. We all know this. When it goes up, it's passed down through the cost of product.

I will tell you that Arkansas, where I'm from, a big percentage of our energy is based on coal

I've got some good news for my colleagues here tonight.

I would like to lay this out and give the President the opportunity to digest what I'm about to say and change his mind on the Keystone pipeline. We know that he's been torn between workers on one side and environmental extremists on the other. And he's been looking and grasping for any excuse not to approve the affordable energy and the jobs that come with the Keystone pipeline. And there's a lot of these same, similar arguments, whether you're talking about coal or the Keystone pipeline or the natural gas that we're getting out of the ground that has really revolutionized this country and provided so many jobs for so many workers.

But one of the reasons that opponents of the Keystone pipeline have said that they're opposed to the Keystone pipeline is that the tar sands that's being taken out of the ground in Canada at its core, its bitumen, which is a little bit different kind of crude, a lot of them have said, Well, we're opposed to the Keystone pipeline because it's different than other pipelines. This crude is different. This crude is more corrosive. This crude is dangerous. This crude should not be going through pipelines across this country because it is somehow more dangerous.

Well, I've got great news for the President tonight if he's watching this. The great news is in January of 2012, we put in a requirement in the legislation. I want to be real clear about this because this is breaking news. It broke today. It hasn't gotten a lot of attention, but it's critical. We put in our bill that became law that the Obama administration needed to do a study through the Department of Transportation to determine whether this bitumen really was different than other crude, whether it was really more dangerous to pass through a pipeline across the country, whether it was really something we needed to be extra worried about. Because all the environmentalists, all the different folks who opposed the Keystone pipeline preach about bitumen and how dangerous it is.

Here's the study, my friend. And this is just great news. It's from the National Research Council and not some third-party political group working for the Obama administration, the Secretary of Transportation, pursuant to this Congress's request that they study it. I have got the executive summary right here. And this just came out today. Here's what they concluded. And this is big news because this is one of the reasons the President is against the Keystone pipeline.

It says:

The committee does not find any causes of pipeline failure

unique to the transportation of diluted bitumen. Furthermore,

the committee does not find evidence of chemical or physical

properties of diluted bitumen that are outside the range of

other crude oils or any other aspect of its transportation by

transmission pipeline that would make diluted bitumen more

likely than other crude oils to cause releases.

I wish I could have said it that clearly. But the bottom line is, this isn't Tim Griffin saying it. This is the Obama administration's own study that we mandated they conduct. And I'll tell you, if you look at the argument against the Keystone pipeline that the environmental extremists have been putting out there, this is numero uno, number one, at the top. They've been basing almost their whole deal on this. And the Obama administration says, Sorry, not backed up by the facts.

I would almost rather the President just be straight up and say, I only like some kinds of jobs. And I don't like any of those kind.

Just be straight up with us, President. Just say, I've got a war on coal. I've got a war on the Keystone pipeline. I've got a war on natural gas and removing it out of the ground, slowing down permits. I like a certain kind of energy, and I'm going to try to fund it through the government. Just be straight up.

Well, I would also point out, again, going to the environmental responsibility that we have--you as a mother; I'm a father of two, a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old--we all want clean air and clean water for them.

I would point out that Duke University last month, working with the University of Arkansas and working with the Obama administration's own U.S. Geological Survey, tested about 130 wells in Arkansas, something like that, and concluded that well water was not polluted by the natural gas extraction that's going on there. Just more factual evidence that we can have the jobs; and if we extract the energy responsibly, we can take care of the environment at the same time.

I totally agree with the gentleman. We understand--and hopefully we can get more and more folks to understand--that this body is not creating the jobs. We want the private sector to continue to create the jobs and lead. But sometimes the barriers to job creation and growing jobs in this country are barriers that Washington has put into place.

I find that a lot of the times when we're legislating in this body, we're not trying to create jobs to get in the way of the private sector. We go to people in the private sector and we say, what's your biggest hurdle? What's your biggest barrier? How can we help you grow more jobs? And more often than not they will say: Get out of the way. A lot of the bills that we put on the floor are to help Washington get out of the way, move it out of the way and let the private sector continue to lead in this area.

I want to mention one more thing real quickly on optimism. If you study where we are as a country, whether it's with regard to the debt and regulations--some of these things, yeah, we've got a lot of work to do there. But if you study where we are with regard to innovation, energy extraction, natural gas extraction, the low cost of natural gas, the companies that I mention in these articles that are moving from Europe, I smell nothing and I see nothing but optimism.

The future of this country is limitless. And when I'm long gone, my kids that are 3 and 5 now are going to be living in a country--if we do things right--that just continues to grow and has all the energy we will ever need.

And as an economist pointed out to some of us earlier tonight, if you're Russia and you're Saudi Arabia and you're looking at the innovation that has come out of American companies, and you're looking at the deposits of natural gas and shale oil that we have in North America, you're worried.

Mr. Speaker, as Co-Chair of the Congressional Motorcycle Caucus and a motorcycle enthusiast, I rise today in support of Motorcycle Awareness Month, which is celebrated each May.

With more than 27 million motorcycle riders today, and that number steadily increasing, being mindful of other types of road and highway users is critical for everyone.

This is especially the case as the weather is warming up and more motorcycle riders are hitting the road.

Drivers' failure to see motorcycles is one of the leading causes of motorcycle crashes, and the prevalence of distracted and inattentive driving poses a significant threat to motorcycle riders.

I urge vehicle drivers to check mirrors and blind spots and actively look for motorcycles--especially at intersections. Taking that brief moment can mean the difference between life and death for motorcycle riders and vehicle drivers alike.

I also encourage my fellow motorcycle riders to take appropriate safety precautions by practicing safe riding techniques and wearing appropriate safety equipment.

The goal is to get all road and highway users to their destinations without incident.

Let's work together to make this a reality.

Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman.

I think it is important to say first and foremost that no matter how passionate you are, no matter how loud you scream, it doesn't convert nonsense to facts. The point is China's debt holdings are less than 8 percent. It makes for a great talking point. I understand that.

Madam Speaker, nobody wants to hit the debt ceiling. In fact, no one wants to get anywhere near it. On the contrary, we are the ones that are trying to get Washington's spending under control so it will live within its means. That's why we talk about budgets and spending and living within our means, because House Republicans fight that fight. If we weren't doing it, we wouldn't even know that there are limits to our spending. The House budget does just that, balancing the Federal budget in 10 years.

We understand that we must take precautions to protect the creditworthiness of the United States. We can hope for the best, but we must prepare for the worst. And the worst that can happen with the debt ceiling is a government default. The bill before us today takes default off the table, period. No more, no less.

We've been told by the credit-rating agencies that the greatest factor affecting our national credit rating is the government's ability to pay its debt-holders. This bill makes sure that it will. This bill requires--not allows--requires Treasury to continue to pay principal and interest on existing debt if, and only if, we hit the debt ceiling before a deal is reached. This is a backstop that takes default off the table.

With it we can focus on the other issues of debt and spending that created the problem in the first place. We can have an honest debate about what is driving government debt and how to deal with it. I hope we don't get anywhere near the debt ceiling limit. I hope we use the next few months to negotiate and reach an agreement that avoids any risk of hitting the debt ceiling; but until then, we should agree that it's our duty to protect America's credit rating.

I look forward to voting for this measure, and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting it.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the importance of natural gas production to America's energy security.

Natural gas production is a critical part of a new economy, a new economy where energy costs are lower. In fact, there have been several articles lately that talk about manufacturing plants in Europe moving to the United States because of lower energy costs, because of the lower cost of manufacturing products using low-cost natural gas.

And, also, recent studies have shown that our greenhouse gases in the United States are lower because of more natural gas use.

My home State of Arkansas is an energy-rich State, and the Fayetteville shale play has helped fuel our State's economy. It's one of the biggest deposits of natural gas in the United States. It spans approximately 4,000 square miles. It's estimated to contain up to 20 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It's considered one of the most productive shale plays in the country.

But what does that mean for everyday Americans? What does it mean, what has it meant for Arkansans?

Well, natural gas production is providing high-paying jobs for folks in my State and my district. According to the University of Arkansas, the average annual pay in the oil and gas extraction industry was $74,000 in 2010. That's good pay. That's money that pays for food on the table, for a kid's education. That's twice the average pay of all industry in the State of Arkansas.

Further, the Fayetteville shale play supports over 20,000 jobs. It's added $12 billion to Arkansas' economy since 2008. That impacts families.

Across the country, though, you've heard some detractors. These individuals have spread exaggerations, in some case, falsehoods about the environmental impacts of natural gas extraction through fracking.

And I want to point out that President Obama's own U.S. Geological Survey recently produced an important report that highlights the safety of natural gas production in Arkansas. Now, you're probably not hearing a lot about it, but it's an important study that was done in conjunction with Duke University and the University of Arkansas.

In January of this year, they published a study entitled ``Shallow Groundwater Quality and Geochemistry in the Fayetteville Shale Gas Production Area.''

What's the point of this study? The point of this study is that they tested groundwater, and they found that what's going on in the Fayetteville shale is environmentally safe.

The yearlong study examined the water quality of 127 shallow wells in the Fayetteville shale play. The report concluded there's no indication of systemic regional effects on shallow groundwater. This supports the understanding that natural gas production is safe for our environment and communities.

And as the father of two young children, I recognize the importance of ensuring that our air's clean and that our water's clean.

We must always seek to ensure that energy development is undertaken responsibly, but this report is an inconvenient truth for many out there who oppose fracking, which has given us so much natural gas and a competitive advantage.

Mr. Speaker, we must support the continuation of environmentally sound natural gas production in the United States to ensure our energy independence and further decrease our reliance on foreign sources of energy. It is absolutely critical to grow our economy so that families across the country can put food on the table and pursue happiness in this great country.

I appreciate that transition. Thank you very much.

What I'm concerned about is because we haven't gotten our fiscal house in order, we are not able to invest in a lot of things, like medical research and roads and education, the way we need to in order to be prepared for the future. I've got a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, and I want their America to be as good as the one that I grew up in. To do that, we have to invest in these things.

So I call this the ``PAC-MAN problem'' because nearly two-thirds of our Federal budget is on autopilot. It's mandatory spending. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest make up that mandatory spending; and this is money that's basically spent without congressional approval because it's written into the law. Unless we save and strengthen those programs represented by the yellow here, then they're going to go bankrupt; and they're going to crowd out the investments that we need to make that will help families and help grow our economy. Basically, PAC-MAN eventually will swallow all the investments up; and when it does, all the spending for medical research, scientific development, and all of these other things will go away. So we've got to get that under control for our families.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 890, to prevent the administration from gutting critical TANF work requirements which have been central to TANF's success over the past two decades.

President Clinton shared the belief that welfare reform should be about moving people from welfare to work, and the 1996 bipartisan welfare reform law he signed promoted work as central to these reforms. The TANF program's statutory work requirements have reduced poverty and welfare dependence for the program's recipients. Since the enactment of the 1996 welfare reform law with its work requirements, the number of individuals receiving welfare has dropped by 57 percent, and employment and earnings among single mothers has increased significantly.

In my home State of Arkansas, TANF success stories are based on the core work requirements. We've got the story of Suzette. When she started participating in Arkansas' Work Pays program, she was a single parent without child care or transportation. With TANF assistance and support from her caseworker, within 6 months, she was promoted to shift manager at McDonald's and then on to a career at Tyson Foods. Now Suzette is providing child care and transportation herself, and her self-sufficiency was made possible through this program's key work requirements. This success story is exactly why Arkansas has not requested a waiver from the work requirements. In fact, no State has requested a waiver.

The administration's unprecedented action of pushing the waiver idea is a fundamental unwinding of years of progress made toward work as the cornerstone of moving people from poverty to self-sufficiency. We must uphold TANF's statutory work requirements and protect Congress' constitutional authority to legislate. I encourage my colleagues to support H.R. 890.