Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I think it's time for a little bit of a history lesson.

Before President Obama even got into office, that first January, we were losing almost 800,000 jobs a month; the stock market was at 6,000, and the Republican policies had all been implemented on energy, on health care, on budget, on foreign policy, with tax cuts for the wealthiest, with borrowing the money, and with running our country and our economy off the cliff.

We are turning the country around. We now have positive job growth. The stock market went up to 11,000 and now up past 10,000. 401(k)s are returning. Jobs are coming back. We do not need to go backwards with the Republican economic policies that drove us off the cliff in the first place.

I ask my friends on the other side, Mr. Speaker:

What are you going to tell the police officers, the firefighters, and the teachers who will get laid off if this country doesn't step up to bat and reinvest back in America? What are you going to tell them? What are you going to tell them?

We have enough money for the wealthiest to get tax breaks, but we don't have enough money for police, for firefighters, and for road projects in the United States.

Good luck.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlelady.

Forty years ago yesterday, May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fired on students at Kent State University who were protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the ongoing war in Vietnam. Four unarmed students, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder, were killed. Nine others, Alan John, Thomas, Dean, Joseph, Donald, James, Robert and Douglas, were injured at the noon- time rally. These students were exercising their right guaranteed by the United States Constitution to freely assemble and dissent from their government. The Kent State shootings were followed 10 days later by the shootings of two students protesting at Jackson State College in Mississippi.

The tragedy at Kent State has had a broad resonance in American history. Richard Nixon's former chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, wrote in his book ``The Ends of Power'' that the Kent State shootings began the slide into the Watergate crisis, eventually dooming the Nixon Presidency. The shootings led to an uptick in student protests across the country, which prompted Richard Nixon to push for a series of unconstitutional moves to target his political enemies. These culminated in the Watergate break-in 2 years after the Kent State shootings.

Kent State University has established a number of resources to honor the 13 students shot on May 4, 1970. The university has established the May 4 Memorial; Kent B'nai B'rith Hillel Marker; individual student markers and scholarships in memory of Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder; May 4 collections maintained by the university libraries, the department of art, and the Kent State Museum; the Center for Peaceful Change, now rededicated as the Center for Applied Conflict Management; and an experimental college course entitled ``May 4, 1970 and Its Aftermath''; an annual Symposium on Democracy; annual commemorations sponsored by the May 4 Task Force; and recognition of the site on the National Register of Historic Places.

We were honored, Mr. Speaker, several nights ago to have our colleague, John Lewis, attend and serve as the keynote speaker of the 40th anniversary of the May 4 shootings. He delivered a passionate, insightful speech, keynote address, which the people of Kent State University and the city of Kent enjoyed. But as we were milling around after, there has always been this tension between what happened at Kent State that day and the community and the students, and one person said this brought healing to Kent and Kent State, and that is what John Lewis has done for us, and I hope this resolution in some way helps to continue the healing process.

Madam Speaker, I submit the following.

Youngstown--Calling hours for David John McKelvey, 58, will

be held at St. Edward Church (240 Tod Lane) from 2 to 4 p.m.

and 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 29, 2010.

Funeral services will be held on Friday at St. Edward

Church at 11 a.m. Additional calling hours will be held from

9:45 to 10:45 a.m., prior to the service.

David was born on March 23, 1952, in Youngstown, the son of

William B. McKelvey and Sallie Turner McKelvey. David was a

lifelong member of the community.

David was a member of St. Edward Church and attended

Ursuline and The Rayen School. After graduation, David joined

the Peace Corps and later attended Youngstown State

University. He worked in real estate and business development

for the majority of his life.

He was married in 1985 to Meg Mitchell of Youngstown.

He is survived by his children, Jonathan (22), Catherine

(18), and Connor (11). David is also survived by his mother,

Sallie T. McKelvey; his siblings, Letitia McKelvey, Lucius

McKelvey (Terrie), Walter McKelvey (Carol), William McKelvey

(Sarah), former Mayor George McKelvey (Sherry), Sally

McKelvey Bulger (David) and Anne McKelvey; and many loving

nieces, nephews, and cousins.

David was preceded in death by his father, William B.

McKelvey.

David was passionate about his faith, family, friends,

fishing and traveling. David was an avid volunteer. His

favorite charitable cause was serving holiday meals at the

Rescue Mission. It gave him great joy to see his children

participate in this charitable work.

David was held in high esteem by his many friends, earning

respect by his character strengths of integrity, reliability

and loyalty. David will be sadly missed and remembered fondly

in the hearts of the lives he touched.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that your generosity be

best expressed by a donation to the Gleaner's Food Bank, 94

Pyatt St., Youngstown, OH 44502.

Funeral arrangements are being handled by the McCauley

Funeral Home on Broadway Ave. in Youngstown.

Madam Speaker, I submit the following.

Starks, ``a Legend in Politics,'' Dies

By David Skolnick

Even though Herman ``Pete'' Starks last held office in

1985, he remained a local political force. Starks, 80, died

Sunday.

The local political icon served 22 years as the city's 2nd

Ward councilman, representing most of the East side. Sparks

spent 17 of those years as chairman of the council's powerful

finance committee.

``He was very instrumental in my campaign,'' said

Councilman DeMaine Kitchen, D-2nd, elected in 2007. ``He was

a sounding board for my campaign. He was a legend in politics

in the Mahoning Valley.''

Starks was elected to his first two-year term on council in

1963. When he was re-elected in 1973, he became the first

person to serve six consecutive terms as a representative of

any ward in the city.

Starks was elected 11 straight times before opting not to

run for his council seat in 1985. Instead, Starks ran for

mayor that year, losing the Democratic Primary to Patrick

Ungaro.

Ungaro served on council with Starks for six years as

council president. Ungaro was elected mayor in 1983, serving

14 years in the capacity, and is Liberty Township's

administrator.

``We fought like cats and dogs, but we shook hands when we

were done,'' Ungaro said. ``He was a dominant person in

government. Even after Pete left office, his influence was

enormous and overwhelming with council. He was still the

person you had to work with.''

James E. Fortune Sr., a former 24-year council member,

served six of those years with Starks.

``He was a teacher,'' Fortune said, ``I learned so much

from Pete, particularly about finances. When he was on

council, he was practically the leader of the city. We had

the utmost respect for him.''

George M. McKelvey, a former 3rd Ward councilman and eight-

year mayor, started his political career sitting next to

Starks at council meetings.

``I am, still to this day impressed with his knowledge,''

he said. ``When he talked, I listened. His best qualities

were his loyalty and honesty. With Pete Starks, his word was

his bond.''

When Jay Williams announced he was running for mayor in

2005, Starks called him.

``He said, `You're going to be mayor,' '' said Williams,

who won that race and was reelected to a second four-year

term last year. ``He said it so matter of fact like the sun

will come up tomorrow.''

Williams said Starks ``was never shy about offering his

advice and perspective. You always knew where Pete stood.''

Councilman Jamael Tito Brown, D-3rd, and currently chairman

of the finance committee, said the would speak with Starks

from time to time about city finances.

``He was legendary in the city,'' Brown said. ``He was

still on top of things in city government'' before his death.

Funeral arrangements being handled by L.E. Black Phillips &

Holden.

Mr. Speaker, I'm not going to take my entire 5 minutes here, but I wanted to come to the floor after hearing about, experiencing, and reading some reports of what happened here today in the Nation's Capitol to some of the finest servants that this institution has ever seen by some of these tea bagger protestors who have been out today.

It's one thing to have disagreements on policy and it's one thing to have disagreements on political philosophy and how that is implemented and the role, either more or less of government, and what the government role and responsibility may be, but today, we had several Members of Congress, as they were walking from this Chamber back to their office, get spit upon; get called derogatory, racial remarks; derogatory remarks about a Member of Congress' sexual orientation. That is unacceptable. And I am calling upon, Mr. Speaker, the Republicans who spoke at this tea party today and who have supported this movement to come out and condemn this tea party.

This behavior is irresponsible. It does not belong in a civilized society. It shows that many people in this country want to divide this country, want to seek out our differences and not what unites us. It's a shame. One of those Members was John Lewis, one of the greatest civil rights leaders this country has ever seen.

And let me say this in closing. Baseball bats and dogs and firehoses didn't stop John Lewis from the last cause that he had, and spitting on Members and calling them names is not going to stop the progress of this bill. Have your disagreements about our philosophies, but let's conduct ourselves in a responsible way--not spitting on Members of Congress. Disagree with them. Give them your ideas. Calling them names? One of the greatest civil rights leaders in the United States of America has to walk, as a Member of Congress, from the House Chamber to his office and get worried about getting spit upon, getting called the N word?

The Republican Party needs to distance themselves from this kind of behavior. It is irresponsible. It diminishes this office. It diminishes this country. And we call upon the Republicans to say: shame on the tea party for that type of behavior.

I appreciate it, and I appreciate the gentleman from California and our other colleagues here.

I have got a nephew at home who is like 3 years old I think. You know how these kids have different little cute things that they say. His new thing is that if you ask him, you know, Why are you going in this room, and he'll say, Well, I'm going in here because of X, Y or Z, that's why. So he finishes all of his sentences with ``That's why.'' You ask him why, he says, ``That's why.''

So I was thinking about this debate, and people say, Well, why are you supporting this legislation? Well, so kids can stay on their parents' insurance until they're 26 years old. That's why. You know, we have got kids that are getting denied because they have a preexisting condition. The insurance company says, We won't cover you. I'm supporting this bill because that's going to change. The other provisions that you're highlighting here, tax credits for small businesses, up to 35 percent, and it's actually in some instances 50 percent of a tax credit for our small businesses for people who are providing tax relief to small business men and women who are providing health insurance. That's why I'm supporting this bill. If you get sick, and you try to get coverage, and all of a sudden the insurance industry, the insurance company says, Well, we can't cover you anymore, that's going to be done with.

Think about these significant investments, these significant protections that we are making as a country. I love the idea of all the tea baggers that were down here today talking about these concepts of liberty. I would ask them today, Tell me, what do you mean? What liberty are we taking from you? And let me compare it to the person in my district, the 1,700 families last year in my district that went bankrupt. Are they free? They are not free. They are trapped in an economic system that buries them because someone in their family got sick.

My goodness gracious, what did our Founding Fathers mean when they gave us these ideas of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Who can pursue happiness when they're bankrupt? Because of nothing that they did--it wasn't bad financing; it was bad luck. And if we don't start to recognize in America that some people in our country just have bad luck, and if the government doesn't step in and push back the insurance industry to say, We're going to carve out--we're going to box out the insurance industry so this family will have some freedom, have some protections, that's what this is about.

I've got no interest in stymieing business growth. I come from Youngstown, Ohio, for God's sake. We've been in a recession for 30 years. You think I have an interest in stymieing business development? I want to help it. You've tried yours. They've tried their side, I would say to my friends. I was here. I'm not that old, but I've been here 8 years now. I sat here, and I watched while Bush jammed through his tax policy, cut taxes for the rich. They said, This is going to trickle down and help the poor. It didn't help anybody but the rich.

I sat here and watched while he passed a prescription drug bill, didn't negotiate prices, didn't do anything, didn't pay for it, borrowed the money, started wars, didn't have money for the wars that he started. I sat here and watched while the Republican rubberstamp Congress rubberstamped all of those policies. The economy didn't improve. Wages didn't go up. They had control of every single thing. They had a chance to implement their health care strategy. It didn't work because they didn't do anything. They had a chance to implement their energy strategy. And when gas goes to $4 a gallon again this summer, we're going to feel it again. This is significant stuff we're talking about, and Democrats are stepping up to bat for the American people. We are taking on the insurance industry.

It is interesting, I was listening to my colleagues from New York and California, I can't get over what all of the fuss is about against this bill. This is something that Bob Dole and Senator Chafee had worked out in the eighties. This is middle-of-the road stuff. Many of us wanted other things in here. I am not afraid to admit that. There is no public option in here. This is not single-payer. This is right down the middle. This is bread and butter, all American, apple pie and Chevrolet. This is baseball.

Look at it, tax cuts for small businesses. Many people in our districts make $50,000 a year. Under this proposal, a family of four making $50,000 a

year in Niles, Ohio, will get $5,800 worth of a tax credit. That is a middle class tax cut. This is what is in the bill. We are regulating and putting in new rules for the insurance companies. We are not taking over, but this is pretty simple. And the gentleman from New York mentioned it: this is about prevention. There is no one who can argue with the fact, Mr. Speaker, that we have 30 million-plus people in the United States of America who have no preventive care at all, dumped into our emergency rooms, much sicker than they need to be. And it doesn't take a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out that that costs a lot of money, as opposed to giving each one of those, and they pay nothing, they go there and they pay nothing. They don't pay anything. So it is all free, shifted off to the next person who comes in with an insurance card.

What we are saying is, it is cheaper for us as a country, since we are all already paying for them anyway through higher insurance premiums, it is cheaper for everybody if we give them an insurance card and make them pay something. No more free riders. Everyone is going to have to pay something, and get them to a primary care physician who will give them a $20 prescription drug instead of going to the emergency room a week or two later and costing us $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000. That is what this whole thing is about.

And when the industry is set up, as it is currently, to knock people off the rolls and deny coverage, especially the stories we have heard coming out about people with HIV and AIDS, you are not covered. That gets pushed off and dumped on everybody else. We are saying this is a pro-business bill.

I am glad, as the one gentleman said earlier, I am glad that the tea baggers are in Washington, D.C. to watch this pass because this is going to be the most significant tax cut for middle class people in the history of our country, especially geared towards health care.

When I can go home and tell my folks that a family of four making $50,000 a year, they are going to get a $5,800 tax credit for their health insurance, they probably don't know that right now, but I am going to spend the next 6 months making sure that every single family in my district knows that they are going to get that tax cut, and they are going to like what we have done here.

Just listening, I want to speak directly to Members of the House because we've got a few minutes left tonight and some debate tomorrow. How does this play out over the course of the next few months? By listening to what you gentlemen have just got done saying about Medicare, the significant improvements of strengthening Medicare, we're going to have to run an election. And there is probably going to be an election on this bill. What has happened over the last few months is our friends on the other side have consistently tried to throw arguments again the wall, and they would just fall; they wouldn't stick because they weren't true.

We started with death panels, and illegal immigrants, and abortion, and we went right down the line. None of them ended up working out. ``It's going to bankrupt the country.'' And then we get CBO--I mean you just go right down the line. They said it's going to support abortion, and then we have 60,000 Catholic nuns, 600 Catholic hospitals, 1,400 Catholic nursing homes, a bunch of Catholic theologians saying this is not a pro-abortion bill, this is a pro-life bill. Same thing with illegal immigrants.

Then they say it's going to spend a ton of money, and then the Congressional Budget Office, a neutral third party, says it's going to save $1.2 trillion, reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion in the second 10 years, $130 billion in the first decade. That is a reduction in the budget deficits on the backs of what President Clinton did by reducing the budget deficit. So we have a history of doing that.

So quickly, the debate in the fall about health care is going to go something like this. We pushed an initiative that is going to close the doughnut hole and give our seniors 250 bucks just this year to help close that doughnut hole. Our friends on the other side running against us will be saying we want to repeal that. We don't want that closing of the doughnut hole.

We're going to be campaigning on little kids who have a sickness are now being denied insurance coverage because they have a preexisting condition, we're going to say, we stopped that from happening in the United States of America. Our friends on the other side are going to be running a campaign saying we want to repeal that.

We're going to have in there we want to have a ban on preexisting conditions for all citizens across the board. Our friends on the other side are going to be running a campaign saying we want to repeal that. And on and on and on.

People who are now getting kicked off the rolls, their insurance rolls, because they got sick, we're saying that

could never happen again in the United States of America. And next fall our friends on the other side of the aisle are going to say, no, no, we want to repeal that ban. We want to continue that practice of the insurance industry being able to kick people off of their insurance because they got sick.

We're going to be saying, hey, your kid that just went on the insurance rolls because they were 24 years old and we allowed that to happen because of the health care reform bill. Our friends on the other side are going to be saying they want to repeal that provision that allows young people to stay on their parents' insurance until they're 26 years old.

Very clear. The family in my district, your district in New York, your district in California, your district in California, all across the country, those families of four making $50,000 a year who are going to get a $5,800 tax cut that we put in because of this reform, our friends on the other side are going to say we want to run this election about repealing that tax cut.

Same with the 35 percent and then up to 50 percent tax cut for small businesses. Our friends on the other side are going to say, we want to repeal that. This is a referendum on health care reform. I say I want to have that debate day and night for the next 6 or 7 months because that is a debate, Mr. Speaker, we can win and we shall win. The only issue now is a lot of people do not know all of these benefits that have been itemized here tonight. They will know in the next 6 months.

I yield back to my friend.

I thank the gentlelady, and I appreciate the opportunity to come here. My friend from Ohio, we have been through this routine before. We were in the State Senate many years ago together, except I was arguing against his proposals and he was passing them. This time, he's arguing against ours and we're going to pass ours.

The issue really, here--and I think the gentlelady from California brought it up. Our friends on the other side, Madam Speaker, like to say, Well, seniors are against it. But then AARP endorses it. Our friends on the other side say doctors are against it. But the American Medical Association endorses it. You say that this is pro-abortion, and you have 59,000 Catholic nuns from across the country endorsing this bill, 600 Catholic hospitals, 1,400 Catholic nursing homes endorsing this bill. So you're not calling anybody over here pro-abortion. You're calling 59,000 Catholic nuns pro-abortion, which I think really brings this debate to a head.

We are doing something that we've not been able to do in this country for a hundred years. We all go back to our districts and with this bill alone we're going to make sure--I know in my congressional district-- that over 9,000 people can go back on the rolls because they've been denied because of a preexisting condition. We had 1,700 families in my congressional district last year go bankrupt.

I know this is difficult. And nobody on this side is saying that this hasn't been a difficult process. It has been. But nothing good happens without it being a little bit difficult and challenging. And that's the point we are at now in our country. We cannot get to the point where we are afraid to do bold things in our country. We have to do this.

Small businesses all over our State--to the gentleman from Ohio--all over our State can't get enough money to reinvest back into the capital, the technology, the wages that we need in order to get our businesses jump-started because it keeps going over to health care. If you're a small business, you're going to get a tax credit up to 50 percent of your health care costs. This is a tax cut for small businesses. And we're going to make sure that people are healthier and more productive.

I know our friends on the other side want to say, Well, let's start over. Let's get the blank piece of paper out and let's start all over. Let the insurance industry start all over. Let them go back to 1993 and 1994, revoke all of their increases that they gave to the American people over the last 15 or 20 years. Let them start over. Put all the people who have been denied because of a preexisting condition back on the insurance rolls; all the people who got sick when they had insurance and were kicked off insurance. Put them back on, and then maybe we'll consider starting all over. But we've got to make this bold move to make sure that everybody's in the tent. This is a moral issue on so many levels. We can't keep telling citizens in the wealthiest country that this globe has ever seen that we have the ability to care for you, but we can't afford it. It's time to pass this bill. We're going to do it this weekend. And we're going to look back, just like on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and civil rights. We did the right thing, the moral thing.

I would like to respond to that, Madam Speaker, because if we want to talk about memos, let's talk about the memo that the pollster and the consultant for the Republican Party put out last spring saying, No matter what you do, do not let President Obama pass health care. It will put you in the minority for another decade or two. It will make his Presidency. That was before we had any bill ready to go. It was socialism, it was this--the other side, Madam Speaker, was told by their consultants not to support this bill. And as for the Medicare costs, why are we going to save $500 billion? Because there is waste in the Medicare program, and this is something that they've proposed on the other side for a long, long time. In addition to that, if those people 55 to 60, before they go onto Medicare, actually have health insurance, they're going to cost less when they get into the Medicare program because they're not going to be as sick.

When you come from an old industrial area like ours, there are sick people who have lost their jobs, don't have health insurance. They wait until they get into Medicare. They are chronically ill, and they cost more money. That's how we're going to save money.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to follow The Price is Right and my friends from Ohio, with whom we obviously disagree on this issue but consider ourselves friends and colleagues. And I appreciate their levity here tonight. We're going to talk a little bit about the substance of this health care bill that is now coming very, very close to being passed. But before we do, I just want to clarify the record a bit because throughout the course of the day today many people have been commenting on procedure and self-executing rules. And I just want to share with the House and put into the Record for the American people to be able to reference what the history of these self-executing rules has been.

In the 104th and 105th Congress under Speaker Newt Gingrich, Republicans used 90 self-executing rules. In the 106th, 107th, and 108th Congresses under Speaker Denny Hastert, Republicans used 112 self-executing rules. In the 109th Congress, under Speaker Hastert, Republicans used self-executing rules more than 35 times. This is a common procedure used here in the House. It has been proven under the Gingrich-Hastert regime before the Democrats took over. I also would like to show

and read and ask to submit this for the Record.

[Prepared by the Office of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, March 17, 2010]

Experts Call Out GOP on Hypocrisy, GOP Owns Up to Legitimacy of Rule

Republicans Cry Crocodile Tears On Legislative Process to Distract From

Unfair Insurance Process

With final passage of health insurance reform quickly

approaching, Republicans are making another desperate attempt

to distract from the substance of the health care debate. The

GOP is hypocritically crying foul on a legislative process

that they used more than 200 times under the last two

Republican Speakers. Republicans clearly are trying to

distract from the unfair insurance process that they support

continuing:

Process that allows insurance companies to cancel coverage

when a person gets sick;

Process that allows insurance companies to filibuster

consumers' claims to fair coverage; and

Process that makes Americans fight for their health

insurance even as they are fighting for their lives.

If Republicans are so sensitive to fair process, they

should oppose those unfair insurance procedures and support

passage of health insurance reform. And if they don't do

that, then their record on using the same House rules to pass

major legislation should be enough to end the legislative

process debate.

Republicans Use Self-Executing Rules to Pass Major Legislation

When Republicans complain about process--whether on

reconciliation or self-executing rules--they conveniently

ignore their own record on using the same procedures to pass

major legislation. In fact, according to Don Wolfensberger,

former staff director under a Republican House Rules

Committee, Republicans have used self-executing rules

hundreds of times in recent history:

104th & 105th Congresses: Under Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-

GA), Republicans used 90 self-executing rules.

106th, 107th & 108th Congresses: Under Speaker Dennis

Hastert (R-IL), Republicans used 112 self-executing rules.

109th Congress: Under Speaker Hastert and Rules Committee

Chairman David Dreier (R-CA), Republicans used self-executing

rules more than 35 times. [Norm Ornstein, 3/16/10]

Republicans, Experts Acknowledge Legitimacy of Rule

``[D]espite Republican claims that such parliamentary

gymnastics as reconciliation and self-executing rules are

somehow in violation of House rules or rare, neither is the

case, says congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings

Institution. `On the self-executing rule, Republicans in

their last Congress that they controlled, the 109th, used it

36 times; the Democrats, in the next Congress they

controlled, used it 49 times,' Mann said. And in many cases,

Mann says, they were on some pretty major bills. `The

reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the Tax Relief

Reconciliation Act, the Deficit Control Conference Report;

all kinds of major measures have been approved through self-

executing rules, which means the House votes indirectly

rather than separately on these measures.' '' [NPR, 3/17/10]

[Prepared by Offices of Democratic Leadership, March 18, 2010]

I tell you, what a cute kid he was. He was just the cutest little kid. You get caught up in this debate with numbers and statistics and whatnot, but he really was the poster child for why we need to do this.

With that, we are blessed with someone who has come from the great State of New Jersey and has been in the middle of all of the negotiations on behalf of our leadership and who chairs the subcommittee on the Education Committee which handles these issues. I yield to my friend, Rob Andrews.

I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I always learn something when he is around.

This bill, we ask: How does it affect the country? And it only makes good sense that if we are reducing health care costs over time, that will reduce the deficit; because the government is so intertwined with Medicare and Medicaid and veterans' benefits and everything else, taking the health care system and putting in these fixes and including everybody in the system so that they don't run up health care costs, and fixing the waste in Medicare and those kinds of things, at the end of the day will be very, very beneficial for the deficit.

I have got a district in northeast Ohio. Very specifically, Mr. Speaker, I just want to state what this bill is going to do for those people in Ohio who have been for 30 years in a recession, for the most part. They lost the steel industry, lost the rubber industry, and lost a lot of the manufacturing in the United States and have been hurt very, very badly. I wish this was in place 30 or 40 years ago and it would have saved a lot of people from a lot of suffering over time.

This bill alone will improve coverage for 355,000 citizens in the 17th Congressional District. This particular bill will give tax credits and other assistance for up to 180,000 people. There a lot of people in my district who have a family of four, make about $50,000 a year. That family, under this bill, will get a $5,800 tax cut for them to be able to afford health insurance.

Last year alone in the 17th Congressional District, we had 1,700 families, neighbors of mine--this is all throughout the country--who went bankrupt because of the health care system. Because of health care issues, they went bankrupt, and many of those people had health insurance. They actually had health insurance and still went bankrupt. How many kids, how many families, how many parents had to file for bankruptcy in this country last year because of the current health care system that we have here?

So 53,000 young adults in the 17th Congressional District will be able to stay on their parents' health insurance because we extend it up to 26 years old. This bill will guarantee 9,300 people in the 17th Congressional District will no longer be able to be denied health insurance because of a preexisting condition. This is where the rubber meets the road.

I mentioned about the $250 that the Medicare part D recipients will get this year, a $700 savings in Medicare part D next year. They will save $3,000 by 2020. So this is a bill that has great significance.

We will have enough money in this bill, just in my congressional district, for four new community health clinics. We already have a few sprinkled around, but four new community health clinics so people can go and get the kind of preventive care that we are focused on in this bill. Hospitals will save $11 million.

This bill is a good bill. Is it a perfect bill; not even close. Nothing is perfect. We are all imperfect here, so why would we create something that is perfect? But we have extended it. We implement things over time so we have an opportunity to tweak things.

As the gentleman from New Jersey said, this reduces the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next couple of decades. That's what this is all about for our kids and our grandkids, to have the kind of future that we want. So I think it is an important piece of legislation. I am excited about it.

If I can say lastly--because the Ohio State Buckeye's basketball game is coming on and we have to do our part, Mr. Boccieri and I, to make sure that we root them in as much as we are rooting in the health care bill this weekend--I want to say this, and I don't mean to be glib or arrogant, but I want to be honest.

I look forward to the campaign in November. I looked forward to going out and talking to the constituents in my district and around the State of Ohio about what is in this bill. And I very much look forward to the Republican Party running on a platform of repealing this bill, repealing the ban on preexisting conditions for children, repealing the ban for preexisting conditions on adults, repealing the tax credits for small businesses, repealing the tax credits for someone in Niles, Ohio, who makes $50,000 a year and will get $5,800. I want to have that debate.

I want to have the debate where the Republicans come up and they say we need to repeal that and we need to make sure that our seniors, we continue to keep the doughnut hole wide open. We don't want to close it. I look forward to that debate and look forward to the debate saying that we should keep the lifetime caps in and keep the status quo.

So it is going to be an exciting time in our country. And as I heard one of my colleagues say, we are debating real issues here. And we have an opportunity to talk about what is in this bill and how it is going to benefit the American people.

I will then yield back the balance of my time.

I appreciate the opportunity to come up and continue the discussion on health care from a little different perspective than my friends on the other side have been giving the American people.

I want to talk about the need for health care reform in the United States of America and what we need to do here in the Congress to get it done.

We had a nice discussion yesterday in Cleveland with the President of the

United States. I've been one who has said that if we're going to do this, we need to do it. We have got other issues that we're dealing with simultaneously now with jobs, passing a second jobs bill. My community back in northeast Ohio has benefited a great deal from the original stimulus package that has passed here. But we need to continue the work of getting the American people back to work. And in the short term, that means job packages, that means financial reform so we should bring some integrity back.

But in the next week or so, we have to pass this health care bill. And I know there's been a lot of controversy surrounding this bill. There's been an extended discussion over the course of the last year or so on this issue. We have talked about all of the issues, and now it's time for us to have a vote in the House of Representatives--hopefully here in the next week--and pass this bill so that we can move the country forward and start addressing the other issues with regulatory reform on Wall Street, trying to bring some discipline back to the financial system. It's also allowing us to go back and continue to focus on the jobs issue.

But under this bill, you talk about long-term economic growth as we try to be competitive in the United States, globally competitive competing with China, competing with India. The American businessperson now has an anchor strapped around their neck in the form of health care costs. And if we think that we can continue to grow our economy, hire American workers, make the proper capital investments, make the investments in technology, if our businesses are asked to compete while dealing with the health care system that over the last 5 years has increased over 120 percent for small business people, we are asking our small business owners to go into the shark-infested waters of the insurance market so that they can cover their citizens, their workers, and then ask to compete on the global playing field.

They can't do it. The small business people are screaming for health care reform. Now, you want to get into an ideological battle, but what we are trying to deal with on this side of the aisle are practical, pragmatic solutions to the problems that are facing us, looking at the facts, looking at the issues that are facing our country, and addressing those issues in a bipartisan way.

I know many on the other side have said, well, we have been locked out of the debate. I want to know one time when the last President spent 7 hours sitting around a table with people from both parties to discuss any issue, let alone health care. President Bush never sat down, Madam Speaker, for 7 hours. President Bush never came to our caucus and had the kind of discussion and question and answer that President Obama had a few months ago when he went to the Republican Caucus. And I think this shows why he is the President of the United States, by dealing directly with their questions. He was able to do that and has included the Republicans and tried to include the Republicans every single step of the way.

But the Republicans are getting their marching orders from their pollsters and their consultants. And one of the memos was leaked early last year, as many of us remember, that said to the Republican Caucus, do not let Obama pass health care, because he will succeed, and the Democrats will succeed, and you will be in the minority for decades. That is what their consultants told them.

So right from the get-go, our friends on the other side of the aisle had no interest in being part of the solution here because their pollsters were telling them that they had to defeat this bill before we even knew what the bill was. Our friends on the other side were calling it socialism and government-run medicine before we even had a bill to actually look at and discuss.

So they got the media machine all cranked up, got everybody all fired up before we even had something to talk about. So fast forward through a long discussion, long talks where we included both sides of the aisle to try to solve these problems, and now we have a solution. We have a compromise that President Obama has submitted for us to vote on. And we continue to get some numbers, hopefully here tonight, on the exact scoring, but we are close, we know give or take a few bucks where we are at, and we know that this bill will cover 30 million more Americans and this bill has a number of issues in it that are going to benefit the American people.

Let's look at some of the issues, some of the pieces of this legislation that will be implemented within the year. Small business tax credits, the President's proposal will allow small businesses tax credits up to 35 percent. We close the doughnut hole in Medicare. Now our seniors have $2,000, $3,000, where it's covered through Medicare part D, and then they fall into a doughnut hole for months and months and months until part D picks back up again several thousand dollars later. Our Medicare recipients have to come out of pocket. We close that hole up. We close that doughnut hole up.

We end the rescissions so that insurance companies can't kick you off the rolls once you get sick. We eliminate insurance companies from being able to deny people coverage because they have a preexisting condition. That is in this bill. We have a provision in this bill that says no child can be denied health insurance because they may have a preexisting condition. We eliminate the lifetime caps of policies so that when someone in your family gets sick and they need coverage, that all of a sudden the insurance company can't say, well, you have spent your allotted amount of money, you're on your own.

It is our moral responsibility to prevent millions of Americans from getting hurt, from getting hurt under the current health care system. And there is no denying it: free preventative care under Medicare under this provision, free Medicare under private plans in this piece that we are putting together here.

Also for people who are 55 and older, between 55 and 64, this creates a temporary reinsurance program until we get the exchange up and running to help offset the cost of expensive health claims for employers that provide health care benefits for those people between 55 and 64 years old. That's what's in this bill. Those are the things that just come online this year. And the improvements will continue.

This is a good bill. Is this a perfect bill? Of course it's not. But we have people on the left saying it doesn't go far enough and voting against the bill, and we have people on the right saying it's socialized medicine. But if it were socialized medicine, people on the left would be voting for it.

This is a pragmatic bill, a pragmatic solution to the health care crisis in the United States of America. And our friends on the other side of the aisle and our friends in the insurance industry say that we should start all over, we should start from scratch, get out a blank sheet of paper. Well, maybe the insurance industry should start from scratch and go back to 1992 and '93 and revoke all of their increases that they have given to the American insurance consumer over the last 20 years or so, rescind all of those increases. You start over. Let the insurance industry start over, and then maybe we can consider starting over.

But people in my district over the last few months, few days, few weeks, were getting 20, 30, 40, 50 percent increases. Small businesses are almost going bankrupt because of the increase of 50 percent to their health care costs. This fixes it. This allows small businesses to go into the exchange, to get tax credits so that they can provide insurance for their employees.

Now, some of those things that I read, and I know a lot of our friends on the other side say that people don't want this, here is the poll that says American people don't want this. And I'm the first to recognize and acknowledge that we probably haven't done a very good job of telling the American people what's in this bill. And that was the essence of Speaker Pelosi's comments about when you pass the bill you'll find out what's in it, meaning that when we pass the bill, the rhetoric and the fiction that has surrounded this bill for the longest time will fall away, and there will be a document that we can all point at, and the American people between now and November will be able to look at what has passed.

We know what's in this bill. We've been debating this for a month. I like how our friends on the other side in one breath say we're trying to jam it

through, and then you look, and the American people are tired of the debates. But you can't have it both ways.

Now all of those things that I mentioned, here is a Kaiser poll: tax credits for small business, 73 percent of the American people more likely to support the bill. Tax credits are in the bill. In fact, these are all in the bill. Insurance exchanges, 67 percent of the American people support the insurance exchanges. The ability to keep what you have, 66 percent of the American people are more likely to support this bill if you can keep what you have. You can keep what you have in this bill. Ban preexisting condition denials, 63 percent are more likely to support this provision of banning preexisting conditions denials. Expanding Medicaid, which is what we do, 62 percent; dependent coverage through 26 which means if you're 26 or under, you can stay on your parents' insurance. How many people support it? Sixty percent. Closing the Medicare doughnut holes, as I mentioned earlier, 60 percent; subsidy assistance to individuals, 67 percent more likely to support the bill.

So we have not done a good job of messaging this bill, but I will tell you what is going to happen. We are going to have an election in November, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to the debate because in the debate our friends on the other side are going to want to repeal this piece of legislation. They are going to run their campaign in November about repealing health care reform.

So they are going to have to go out and run commercials saying, those small businesses tax credits are up to 35 percent, we want to repeal them. The ban on preexisting conditions, we want to repeal that. The ban that says no kid, no child can be denied because they have a preexisting condition, they're going to run a campaign in the fall saying, we want to repeal that. The lifetime caps that we're going to eliminate so you can get coverage no matter how sick you get, our friends on the other side are going to run an election saying, we want to repeal that.

The subsidies that people are going to get so that they can afford health insurance, our friends on the other side are going to run a campaign in November saying, we want to repeal that. Helping people 55 to 64 get reinsured, they're going to want to repeal that. Closing the doughnut hole in Medicare, I can't wait to go to the senior centers in my district when this has already been implemented and we've started to close that doughnut hole and the seniors have seen some of the progress, and we go in there and we say, our opponents want to repeal that provision where we closed up that doughnut hole.

Let's have this debate. Let's have this discussion. Let's do it. That's what this is all about. We implement our agenda, then we go out and defend it. And we know what happened. The 8 years, more like almost two decades, 14 years, 12 years actually, that our friends on the other side were in charge, and then with President Bush controlling the House, the Senate, the White House, our Republican friends on the other side had an opportunity to implement their political philosophy.

House, Senate, White House, we got their supply side economics, we got their foreign policy, we got their health care policy, we got their energy policy and we got their education policy. And look what happened. We got their Wall Street policy, and look what happened. We had a collapse of the financial markets, we had college tuition balloon through the roof, we had energy costs balloon throughout the roof, we had health care costs balloon through the roof, the collapse of our economic system, a prescription drug bill that was not paid for with a doughnut hole you could drive a truck through, and a foreign policy that forced us to a war, an elective war in Iraq.

All of these things were implemented when our friends were in charge. And we had elections on those. And now we are going to pass health care, and we are going to pass our agenda and you look and you see what happened with this stimulus package, the economy is starting to open up, trying to straighten up Wall Street. But we know we can't move forward until we get health care costs under control. We know small businesses are never really going to be able to grow at the pace and the capacity that they need to grow to with this health care anchor hanging around their neck.

Now, I believe that, and many of us on this side of the aisle believe, the government has a moral mission, a mission, a moral mission to protect its citizens. Whether it be terrorists or criminals on the street, there is a moral mission to the government to protect people. And that doesn't stop at the borders. That doesn't just stop with the issues of crime. That responsibility hits every aspect of our society. And if we have an industry that is hurting people, then we have a responsibility to step in and push back that industry and say enough is enough. You're hurting people.

In our country, the government has a moral mission to stop that from happening. That is what this debate is all about, yes, the role and the responsibility of government. And the government is not allowed to just completely step aside while industry abuses happen and happen and happen.

And that is what this debate is about. That is what this bill of rights, health care bill of rights is all about.

And our friends on the other side say, We are for this stuff. They say, We are for it. You pull it out; we are for it.

Well, that is interesting, because we had some votes over the last day or so in committee. This is the House Budget Committee that is starting to pass the legislation that is going to be needed.

Here we go. Protecting Medicare for America's seniors and closing the prescription drug doughnut hole, 15 Republicans voted against it.

Closing the doughnut hole, voted against it. If you talk to them, Well, we are for closing the doughnut hole. We have got to close the doughnut hole.

Protecting Americans from insurance caps, as I just talked about, and banning annual and lifetime limits on health care coverage, 15 Republicans voted ``no,'' we don't want to do that.

Holding health insurance companies accountable, 15 Republicans voting ``no.''

Bringing down the cost of health insurance for everyone and providing tax credits to small businesses, all of them voted ``no.'' Every Republican on the Budget Committee voted ``no'' for giving tax credits to small business people.

I mean, this is the equivalent of our friends on the other side who all voted against the stimulus package, and then they go back to their districts when money is coming in and they say, This bridge, this road, this money is going to create jobs in our district.

But you voted ``no'' against the stimulus package. Don't tell anybody. That is the kind of thing that has been going on in Washington. That is called the old Potomac two-step. The old Potomac two-step.

So we have these provisions in this bill that, when you pull them out and you explain them to the American people, have anywhere from 57 to 73 percent. This is what the American people have been crying out for. And when this bill passes, we are going to have a lot to campaign on and run on.

But our friends on the other side like to talk a little bit about polarizing issues. One of the most recent polarizing issues that they have tried to pull out is the issue of abortion and trying to say that this is going to publicly fund abortions.

Well, we have a letter here from, I believe, 25 or so of the top pro- life citizens in our country: Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church. I believe he was head of Focus on the Family at one point; Jim Wallis from Sojourners Magazine; a lot of evangelical and Catholics; the former associate general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, all saying that this Senate health bill upholds abortion funding restrictions. The Catholic Health Association, 600 Catholic hospitals.

I went to Catholic school for 12 years. I know where the Catholic church and the Catholic hospitals stand on the issue of public funding for abortions, and believe me, believe me, I had a lot of nuns and a lot of priests and a lot of brothers going to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in Warren, John F. Kennedy High School, and I will tell you that those nuns and those administrators who run Catholic hospitals, 600 of

them, would not support this legislation if they believed that there was public funding for abortion.

And I think the head of the Catholic hospitals said that--we are all pro-life, but they believe that the language in the Senate bill, some of the language that we kicked around here early on in the House version, will sufficiently prevent public funds from being used for abortions.

That is 600 Catholic hospitals saying that. That is not me saying that. That is not the Democrats say that. This is Joel Hunter and a variety of others who are professors of Christian formation and disciplines, discipleship, Pentecostal, theological seminary, Leadership Institute, Loyola University, University of Dayton, Duquesne. These are some of the leaders. Jim Wallis from Sojourners; Ron Sider, Evangelicals for Social Action; Catholics and Alliance for the Common Good, on and on and on.

But our friends on the other side, because I know, I was getting calls in my office today, getting people all hopped up on the abortion issue. Let's look at the facts. Let's look at what is in this bill, and we are going to have that debate. And just like the discussions in August about death panels and we are going to kill people's grandparents and all that nonsense that we heard in August, where did that go? It dissipated. It just disappeared because it wasn't the truth. And so it just faded away. And all of these arguments that our friends on the other side are making now are just going to fade away because they do not reflect the facts. What reflects the facts are the things that we are trying to deal with here.

Now, look at some of the stuff that we are trying to address. Between 2009 and 2010, monthly prices in the doughnut hole increased by 5 percent or more for half of the top 10 brand-name drugs. So increased by 5 percent or more for monthly prices for these drugs that most of our seniors get.

Now, from 2006, full negotiated prices for top brand-name drugs between 2006 and 2010, and I will just use some of the percentages here: Plavix, for example, 25 percent. Lexapro went up 25 percent; ADVAIR, 32 percent. Unbelievable increases in prescription drugs. And we are asking our seniors to continue to pay these increases that happen when they fall into the doughnut hole.

So, Madam Speaker, we have got a moral responsibility because so many people are being hurt in our country today, and I stand here this week as we stand on the brink of passing a significant piece of legislation that is not perfect, and I don't think anybody says it is. We are all human here in this Chamber and in the Senate. The President and his team, we are all human. We are going to make mistakes. It is not going to be perfect. But what we are doing is moving forward in a significant way.

One of the huge issues we have in this country is that we have millions and millions of Americans who don't have health care, so what they do is they show up at the emergency room and have no money. They are not on Medicaid. They are not on Medicare. They don't have private insurance. They are not a veteran, so they go into the emergency room when they get sick. This is what happens.

Not only is that inhumane and not only, I would think, do we have some kind of moral duty as elected officials in the United States to say, you know, that is just--I have got a problem with that. That is just not right. What do we do? We have got to do something.

So this bill is an attempt for us to do that, to step in and help people, empower them to be able to afford insurance, and create a system where they are able to afford their health insurance and go into this exchange and be able to afford insurance. Because some people say, Well, I don't want to pay for those people. I got mine and I got my health insurance and I am cool. I have got a job and it is all right.

But you are already paying for them, because what happens is four or five uninsured go into the hospital, go into the emergency room, costs a lot of money but don't have any way to pay for it, and then you walk in behind them and you have your insurance card. Guess who is paying for their treatment that they didn't pay anything for? You are and the next guy who walks in with an insurance card and the next person. These costs all get shifted and so you see these huge increases.

So we have a system where we don't prevent anything. We wait until people get deathly sick, go into the emergency room, stay there for a week instead of getting a $20 prescription that would have saved us all a boatload of money.

This is not a discussion about whether the government is going to run the health care industry or the insurance companies are going to run the health care industry. This is about doctors running the health care industry. This is about making sure doctors don't have to call up the insurance companies and haggle with them over what is covered and what is not covered.

It is 2010 in America. We are the wealthiest country on the planet, and we have the most dysfunctional health care system going. Yes, we have got tremendous high-end care. But if you were setting up a system, you wouldn't certainly say to 30 million people in your country, Just wait until you get absolutely deathly sick, then show up at the emergency room and we will take care of you then. That is not how you would set it up.

And our friends on the other side love to have this discussion about we are losing your freedom. You are losing your freedom. You are not losing your freedom. How free are you when you are sick and you can't get anybody to take care of you? How free are you then? How free are you when you want to leave your job and go get another job, but you can't because you have a preexisting condition or your spouse has a preexisting condition or your child has a preexisting condition and you are stuck? That is not our idea of freedom.

How free are you if you want to go start a business and create wealth and jobs in the United States, but you can't because you have a preexisting condition? How free are you as a small business person? If you are just the average small business person, you had a 126 percent increase over the last 5 or 6 years. Now, how free are you to run your business the way you see fit, to make the investments that you want to make into capital, into technology, into worker training, into wages for your workers, more into the pension plan for workers, hire more workers? How free are you?

And these folks that can't afford health care and they get a lot sicker than they would normally have gotten, what kind of quality of life is that? Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. These things mean something. And when you talk about what the Founding Fathers meant when they said life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they meant that government has the responsibility, a moral responsibility to protect people's lives, liberty, and their ability to pursue happiness. And when we have a system in place now where an industry is limiting that freedom, reducing that quality of life, the government has an obligation to protect them so that they can be free, and that is what we are doing with this piece of legislation.

I mean, look at what is happening here, the issues that we are addressing. Think about this. This is what is in the bill. This big bogeyman that you hear about on Fox News that is going to end western civilization as we know it if this thing passes has a 35 percent tax credit for small businesses. It says that children cannot be denied health insurance because the kid has a preexisting condition. It is going to say that the lifetime caps that people have on their insurance will be eliminated so, no matter what, kids will get covered. It will extend coverage so that young people can stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26 years old. If they are getting out of college and want to go on to get an advanced degree or they hit a rough patch with the job market or they are trying to figure things out, you are not going to be booted. And how many parents aren't going to have to worry about that anymore? Free preventative care under private plans, free preventative care under Medicare so we can prevent a lot of these problems from happening.

If you are 55 to 64, there will be a reinsurance opportunity for employers who are employing people 55 to 64 to make sure that those people have coverage. The doughnut hole will be closed over time so that senior citizens can afford their prescription drugs. And

when you look at all these things, from time and time and time again, these are very popular among the American people.

Tax credits for small businesses, 73 percent more likely to support. Insurance exchanges, 67 percent. Keep what you have, 66 percent. Ban preexisting conditions, 63 percent. Medicaid expansion, 62 percent. Dependent coverage through 26, 60 percent. Close the Medicare doughnut hole, 60 percent. Subsidy to individuals, 57 percent. And all of these things, as we start to vote on them, our friends on the other side say, Well, we are for those.

So in the last day or so the House Budget Committee was working on this legislation and they had some opportunity to vote on these issues, and so I just want to share with Members of the House how our friends on the other side on that committee voted.

Protecting Medicare, closing the prescription drug doughnut hole, 15 Republicans voted against that.

Protecting Americans from insurance caps, banning annual and lifetime limits on health care coverage, 15 Republicans voted against that.

Holding health insurance companies accountable; 15 Republicans voted against that. Bringing down the cost of health insurance for everyone and providing a tax credit to small businesses; 15 Republicans voted against that.

These are the basic provisions of our health care reform bill that between 57 and 73 percent of the American people support. This is not Medicare for all. This is not single-payer. There's no public option in this bill. Many of us on this side don't like some of that--the fact that those aren't in there. But this is a significant step forward, some basic reforms, and when we have 15 members of the Budget Committee on the Republican side consistently vote against tax credits for small business to get health care, you know they're doing it for one reason: They're doing it for politics. Madam Speaker, this is all about politics. Go back to the memo that someone left somewhere in some room that the press got a hold of that told the Republicans, Do not let Barack Obama pass health care reform. Do not let them. Do not let the Democrats get this big victory because you will be in the minority for another decade or two.

And so right out of the gate they had no interest, Madam Speaker. Our friends on the other side had no interest in cooperating. No interest in adding to the debate. They were against this bill before there was even a bill written. They were calling it socialism before there was one item printed on this piece of paper here telling us what was on this bill.

That's not what the American people want. The American people want us to sit down, work together--no one is going to get everything they want--and pass something and move it forward that's going to help the American people, that's going to allow us to meet our moral obligation to protect the American people, to protect those kids who are being denied because of a preexisting condition, to protect those seniors who fall into the doughnut hole, to protect those families who get denied because of a preexisting condition, to protect those families who hit a lifetime cap and get thrown out on their own.

This is what this is about--to help empower thousands of small businesses who've got the anchor around their neck because they get 20, 30, 40 percent increases in health care. That's what this bill is about. It's about protecting our citizens, it's about empowering our citizens, it's about making our citizens freer than they are today when they're trapped in this ungodly health insurance system that hurts many of them. We can't stand by and stick our finger up in the air and see which way the wind is blowing and allow millions of people to go get hurt, and then 30, 40, 50 years from now go sit on the rocking chair. Our children are going to ask us what we did when we were in Congress. What did you do to move the country forward? And we're going to say what? We failed. We didn't muster up the courage to make the tough votes. We didn't have the ability to look through the clouds and the smoke and the mirrors, look past the bogeymen that have been created on this bill.

I love it. I love how these arguments have just fallen apart, from death panels, now abortion. They're saying everything is publicly funded abortion here. And 600 Catholic hospitals are endorsing the bill. Now how do you say that this is public funding for abortion when 600 Catholic hospitals have endorsed this piece of legislation? So our friends on the other side need to go to all these 600 hospitals and all the sisters that are there, intimately involved in the health care of their patients, and all of the Catholic administrators of all of these hospitals and say, You're pro-abortion. Good luck having that argument. It's a phony argument that's being created for politics, just like the death panels were, just like the illegal immigrants were going to be covered under this bill. All of those issues have been demagogued in this House and across this country to try to scare legislators and the American people. And the dust is going to settle, and we're going to be able to look back on this vote.

I look forward, Madam Speaker--I will tell you this--I look forward to the debate in the fall discussing with the American people exactly what is in this bill. I look forward to talking to my Chamber of Commerce, my friends in small business, that they're going to get a 35 percent tax credit, and they're going to be able to go into this exchange and negotiate with a bunch of other small business people, thousands, to have some bargaining power to reduce their health insurance costs. I look forward to going into a debate saying, You know what was in this health care bill? We made sure that no insurance company could deny any child because they have a preexisting condition. No insurance company could deny a citizen of this country because they have a preexisting condition. That our seniors are going to get more prescription drug coverage. That our citizens, when they hit a catastrophic health event in their life, that there won't be any lifetime caps or limits to how much they can be covered. Madam Speaker, that is what this health care debate is about.

No matter how many times our friends on the other side try to say they want to work with us, they have been given the opportunity to sit down and work. And they say they're for a lot of these things but, again, already in committee, peeling out the votes, closing the prescription drug hole in the Budget Committee, 15 Republicans voted ``no,'' we don't want to close the doughnut hole. Protecting Americans from insurance caps, banning annual and lifetime limits on health care coverage. This is the vote. That's all the vote was on. Fifteen Republicans from the Budget Committee voted ``no,'' we don't want to protect Americans from the caps and ban annual lifetime limits. Holding health insurance companies accountable, 15 Republicans said, No, we don't want to hold them accountable. Bringing down the cost of insurance, providing a tax credit to small businesses, 15 Republicans voted ``no'' for a tax credit for small business because their consultants and pollsters told them they couldn't let this bill pass.

So out of 15 Republicans on each one of these votes, a majority of the Republicans on all of these votes, out of the 15, voted ``no,'' we don't want to do it. In some instances, it was close to all of the 15.

Madam Speaker, we have an opportunity here to make history. But that's not why we're doing it. We're doing it because this government, from its inception, this government from its inception has had a moral mission; a moral mission to protect and empower its citizens. And when an industry and their unsavory business practices are hurting the American people, we have a moral obligation to intervene. And we have a moral obligation to empower by making sure that our citizens are free to go in and have expanded choice, that they are free from an insurance company saying, You're off the rolls now because you got sick. You're empowered because you can be healthy and get access to care and you can experience the liberty that this country has provided--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's what this bill is about, and I look forward to having an opportunity to continue to advocate for it.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the opportunity here to respond to some of the criticisms that have been made here, unjust as they seem to be to me, and try to straighten the record out just a little bit.

It is our belief on this side of the aisle that the United States Government and the government of many of our States have a moral mission to protect our citizens, a moral mission to empower our citizens, and a moral mission to improve the lives of many of our citizens. The issue of health care reform to us on this side of the aisle is a moral issue, and it is an economic issue.

When we see throughout our country the level of abuse that has been put upon the people of this country through the insurance system, that, my friends, that, Mr. Speaker, is a moral issue. Nobody is saying that this health care reform bill is a perfect bill. Nobody says that it is going to be a panacea, that it is going to fix all of our problems in this country. But this is a major step forward for our country. And we have as a country a moral obligation to stand up between what the insurance industry is doing to the American people, somebody has to intervene. And there is nobody left because average people who are in Ohio or Iowa or some of these other States have no recourse. They cannot battle the insurance industry.

This has been going on for years and years and years, where the insurance industry kicks people off the rolls when they need coverage or when they get sick, when they deny people coverage because they have a preexisting condition; and so they therefore can't get any insurance at all. And they have created a system here over the past few years, past 5, 10 years where we see 20, 30, 40, 50 percent increases in health care costs for individuals and small businesses, and large businesses in many instances and the government.

So we have a situation where we are that far from addressing one of the great moral issues of our time. And we are that far from addressing an economic issue that will continue to strangle the economy of the United States of America if we fail to act.

Now, I think it is very convenient for our friends on the other side of the aisle and those in the insurance industry to say let's start again. Let's start all over. Let's start from scratch. Well, if the insurance industry wants to go back and revoke 10 years of increases that they have bestowed upon the American people, if they want to start over, then maybe we will start over. If they want to eliminate all of the increases that they put on the American people, eliminate them all. Let's go back to 1995 or 1994 rates, or even just cost of living from 1994 or 1995 when we tried to do this the last time. Why don't the insurance companies start over, Mr. Speaker, and go back and erase their increases that they put on the American people. Then we may consider starting over.

Now, for those people, Mr. Speaker, who have been listening to this debate, they need to recognize that maybe this process isn't pretty, and maybe we could have done a better job explaining what is going on. And many people, and our friends on the other side were talking about polls, and at the same time would lament the fact that we are governing by polls.

So when you look at what has happened over the course of the past few years and what has happened to average people--I want to find the poll that we had here when you pull out the issues from the poll. So the general consensus is, do you want the health care? And they hear on the news, Mr. Speaker, about different things that are going on and they say, well, it doesn't sound like such a good idea.

But then when you pull out specific provisions of this bill, of this health care reform proposal, most of those issues, most of those reforms poll at 60, 70, or 80 percent support.

Are you for getting rid of preexisting conditions and allowing insurance companies to not cover you because you have a preexisting condition? Sixty-seven percent of the American people support that.

Do you support eliminating lifetime caps so that when you get sick and you really need the insurance, you can get it? Sixty to 70 percent of the American people support that.

Do you support not being able to deny every child in the United States of America because of a preexisting condition? Seventy, 80 percent of the American people support that.

Do you support giving small businesses tax credits to cover their workers? Significant support for that.

So we are moving forward with a proposal that addresses the major needs of the American people.

When you ask seniors, are you for closing the doughnut hole? More than a majority of seniors say, Yes, that is something that what we want included in the health reform proposal. And it is included in here. And many of these reforms will go in effect within the next year.

And so when we pass this, Mr. Speaker, and our friends campaign in November about repealing this, they are going to have to go to all the moms and dads in the country and say, No, you know how your child, if they get sick or you want to get insurance, they can't be denied because of a preexisting condition, they want to run a campaign saying, No, we want to repeal that. Our friends on the other side of the aisle, when we say, You can't be denied coverage for a preexisting condition, they are going to want to run a campaign saying, No, we want to repeal that. When we close the doughnut hole and start moving in the direction of fully closing the doughnut hole that the Republican Party put in here when they passed the prescription drug bill that they didn't pay for, we had to borrow money from China to pay for it, and it has a doughnut hole in it, and we attempt to close it, our friends on the other side of the aisle are going to run a campaign in November saying, We want to repeal the closure of the doughnut hole.

Those are the issues that are in here, that are in this reform proposal, and these are the issues that are going to bring some justice to the health care industry in the United States of America.

This isn't about whether the government is going to run health care or the insurance industry is going to run health care. This is about whether doctors can make decisions. And our friends on the other side want to talk about life and liberty. Let's talk about life and liberty. Let's have this debate.

You want to talk about freedom? How free are you when you are sick and you can't afford health insurance? You can't get out of bed to go to work. You have to give up your job because you don't have health insurance. How free are you? I cannot be convinced that the Founders of this great country thought that freedom is somehow the government not protecting individual citizens from underhanded practices from a corporation. I can't believe it.

I believe that the definition of freedom is about being healthy and empowered in 2010 in America. And if there is a corporation or an industry that is limiting your freedom by their underhanded practices, then the government has a moral responsibility to intervene and to protect the individual citizen and protect the rights of the individual citizen. Let's have this debate all day long, Mr. Speaker, telling me some boogie man is being created here that is going to come in to Washington, D.C.

My one friend said nationalizing our bodies. One of our friends on the other side said that this was about nationalizing our bodies. What? Talk about fear mongering, Mr. Speaker. Nationalizing

our bodies? This is about protecting individuals in the United States of America who can't protect themselves, and the government has a moral obligation to do it. If it is a foreign terrorist, moral obligation to do it. If it is crime in the streets and our cities, moral obligation to do it. If it is an unruly industry that has underhanded business practices, moral obligation to stop it. That is what we have here. That is why we are here. That is how this country was founded, to protect the individual freedoms.

To say to small business people, You have to go out into the shark- infested waters to try to get health insurance and have 40, 50, 60 percent increases and do nothing about it because of some warped concept of freedom that is made up, how free is that business person who takes money continually out of wages, out of capital investments into their factories, into their machine shops, into their businesses, into their technology, into training their workers? They are not free to make good business decisions. They probably have all kinds of good ideas about what kind of investments they would rather be making than paying to some health insurance company that doesn't give us value added.

You want to help manufacturing in the United States of America? Help fix some of the health care burdens that our manufacturers are plagued with day in and day out. And how many factories were shuttered because they couldn't make the capital investments because they had to put so much money into health care? How many?

We have seen the decline in manufacturing over the last 10 or 20 years. We have seen stagnant wages over the last 10 or 20 years because businesses had to absorb health care costs while simultaneously trying to compete with China and India and manufacturing all over the globe. And our friends on the other side want to start all over. And they want to tell all these people who are getting denied because they have a preexisting condition we need to start all over and wait another hundred years to do it, or at least another 15 years, the last time someone had the courage like President Clinton had to try to do this.

We have an obligation to fix these problems. We didn't get sent here to take polls. We were sent here to do the right thing. And it is my hope that this week--you know, it was great today. We were in Cleveland with the President. And he was in the middle of his speech, and he said something like, What we need, or, We need, and there was a pause. And a woman shouted out, ``We need courage.''

We need courage. That is what people are feeling. They feel like there's no one there to help them. They get stuck in situations where they don't have anywhere to turn. And imagine the United States Government passing a law that says, when you get sick, you can't get kicked off your insurance.

That is what is in this bill. That is why, when you look at the lists of faith-based organizations who are supporting this bill--Sojourners, Network, Catholic organizations, Evangelicals for Social Action, Jim Wallis at Sojourners, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, former Associate General Secretary for U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. Boston College professors, University of Dayton professors, Marquette University professors. On and on and on and on.

Then, this weekend a huge endorsement for this bill. As my friends on the other side were talking about the abortion issue, 25 pro-life Catholic and evangelical leaders have endorsed this bill, and this weekend the Catholic Hospital Associations endorsed this bill. Do you think the Catholic Hospital Associations of America would endorse this bill if this was a pro-abortion bill? This is the pro-life bill. This may be the most pro-life bill that has passed this House in 20 years.

How do we define life? How many people die too early because they are sick and they can't get the proper care? How many people have a reduced quality of life because they can't get proper health care? Aren't those pro-life issues? They most certainly are. And to have the Catholic Hospital Association endorsing this bill, and then to come out and fearmonger, Mr. Speaker, on the abortion issue is wrong. It is wrong. Twenty-five pro-life Catholic and evangelical leaders, strong, nationally recognized endorsing this bill, because this is a pro-life bill, and we should support it as a pro-life bill.

We talk a lot about freedom, too. How many people in America today are out there locked in a job that they probably don't like all that well, that they probably would rather go work somewhere else or maybe, even better, start their own business? But they can't leave their current employment because they know if they go out into the free market and they try to get their own insurance, that they won't get covered because maybe they have a preexisting condition or maybe their spouse has a preexisting condition or maybe one of their kids has a preexisting condition.

So our friends on the other side say, Start over. Don't do that, don't give that person who got an idea and wants to start a business in America and take a chance--don't help them.

Are we providing the kind of environment for someone to express, have the freedom to express their energy and their talents in America? No. We are limiting it if we don't fix this health care system. We are limiting it. We have a moral obligation as a country to allow each and every individual in this country to express their talents and their skills in this country. We have the opportunity here in the next week or so to make this happen. We have never been so close, extending insurance to 30 million Americans who currently don't have it.

A lot of people say, too, as we talk about this bill that they don't want to pay for these 30 million people. It is important that we recognize that we all are already paying for these people who don't have health insurance.

You see, our friends on the other side--and I sat here and I watched them, and I listened very carefully, and they were picking these fringe issues to try to incite. They were talking about abortion, which, okay, I am sure they believe strongly in that. I do as well. I have a pro- life voting record. But when you have the Catholic Health Association and you have 25 national Catholic and evangelical leaders supporting this bill, it becomes very difficult to scare the American people about that issue.

They don't want to talk about preexisting conditions. They don't want to talk about making sure kids don't get denied. They don't want to talk about tax cuts, tax credits for small businesses to provide health care insurance. Of course not. They don't want to talk about how the Democrats are going to close the doughnut hole. They don't want to talk about how seniors will not have to pay for any preventative care at all in Medicare. They don't want to talk about how this bill is deficit neutral, how it actually reduces the deficit. They don't want to talk about how this bill extends the life span of the Medicare program. They don't want to talk about any of that stuff. And it goes back to the original memo that one of their top pollsters gave them in the spring that said: Do not let Obama pass health care reform. Do not let him. You will be in the minority for a long time. And so they will do anything they can, anything in their power to try to prevent this President from passing health care legislation.

It is good to know, Mr. Speaker, because they are rooting against the President. They are rooting against the President. If the President fails, we all fail. He has extended his hand, taken all of the Republican ideas, put many of them into the health care reform proposal, and there still are Republicans who won't vote for it. Just like in the stimulus package, we had to put $300 billion in tax cuts in the stimulus bill because that is what the Republicans wanted, and we didn't get any Republican votes, because there is no benefit for the Republican side to support the President, to support the American people, because politics has gotten in the way.

So we have all of these issues that are going to go into effect within the year. Within the year small business tax credits, up to 35 percent of premiums, will be immediately available to firms that choose to offer coverage, closing the part D doughnut hole. Immediate help for the uninsured now to create an interim high-risk pool. End

rescissions so insurers can't drop people from coverage when they get sick. No discrimination against children with preexisting conditions. Are you going to vote against that? Go ahead.

Extends coverage for young people up to their 26th birthday, so all the young people in our country will now be able to stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26 years old. So if you want to go to grad school, you will be able to stay on your parents' health insurance. Times are tough now. You may not be able to find work, or at least find work with some decent health care. You can stay on your parents' insurance until you are 26 years old.

Bans lifetime limits on coverage. Bans restrictive annual limits on coverage. Free preventative care under Medicare. This is a reform proposal that we should have passed 30 years ago. Those are the moral issues. But the economic issues are just as profound, just as great.

Small businesses have seen a 126 percent increase over the last 5 or 6 years, and the projections as we move forward are even higher for families and small businesses: Up, up, up, and away will their health care costs go if we do nothing.

And, as we said, they want us to start over. How about the insurance companies start over? How about the insurance companies repeal 10 years of increases and they start over? Maybe that would be fair. Wouldn't that be nice? We want to start all over in this country, come together and figure something out. Repeal 10 years of your health care increases. Free preventative care under all the new health care plans, new independent appeals process. Help for early retirees, which is something that is huge, I know, in Ohio. Creates a temporary reinsurance program until the exchange is available to help offset the cost of expensive health claims for employers that provide health benefits for retirees age 55 to 64. Billions of dollars for community health clinics, and it increases the number of primary care doctors by making huge investments, making sure that we get that done.

The Republicans didn't do anything to address any of these issues for 10 years. Now, all of a sudden, they are late to the game, and they still won't support it. They say, Well, we are for repealing preexisting conditions. They are not going to vote for this bill. We are for tax credits for small businesses. They are not going to vote for this bill. We are for closing the doughnut hole. They are not going to vote for this bill. We are against preexisting conditions, making sure that any child doesn't get denied coverage because of a preexisting condition. They are going to vote against this bill. We are for children allowed to stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26. They are going to vote against this bill.

We're for increased competition. They're going to vote against this bill, because they've been told by the people who guide their political decisions, their pollsters, the cottage industry in Washington that tells political parties what to do, they have been told, Do not let the Democrats succeed in this. And we have asked time and time and time again for their suggestions. The President has taken many of them, implemented them into this bill, and they keep moving the yardstick further and further down because they don't want to support this because their political leadership, their pollsters, their lobbyist friends say we can't do it. We can't let them get a win.

And it's not about the Democrats winning. This is about the people in our districts who are getting hurt; that are getting hurt by the current practices. And when you see the number of faith-based organizations supporting this legislation--Evangelical, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhists, I mean, the spectrum of faith-based organizations in the United States of America are supporting this. And they all say, Is it perfect? No. Of course not. This is a body made of human beings who are flawed and make mistakes. But this is a tremendous step forward in our country--monumental, historic.

I'm proud to be here today. I'm proud to support this bill. I'm going to be even prouder after it passes and we can point to X, Y, and Z, as I am tonight, exactly what is in here and exactly what the benefits are. I'll be honest with you: I'm excited to run a campaign in November talking about this. I want to see the campaign where all of the stuff that I just listed is the debate in the fall. And our friends on the other side and our TEA Party folks who haven't done anything in 10 years to try to address any of these problems are going to want to repeal a ban on preexisting conditions for kids--children; a ban on preexisting conditions for adults, saying that you shouldn't be able to stay on your parents' health insurance until you're 26. They're going to run a campaign saying that we should expand the doughnut hole instead of closing the doughnut hole, which is what we're doing in here. They're going to run a campaign saying that we want to repeal the tax cuts that we have given to small businesses to try to make this happen. We want to repeal the subsidies that people are going to get to help them pay for insurance.

It's going to be a heck of a campaign. And they're going to scream socialism like they have been doing for 7 years. They screamed about it.

This is the same party, Mr. Speaker, that just a few years ago, when I first got in the Congress, the early part of this first decade, wanted to privatize Social Security. You don't hear anybody here saying they want to get rid of Medicare. I remember, we sat on this floor, Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz, Kendrick Meek, and myself. Started when we first got in Congress. The first issue we were addressing was President Bush's idea to privatize Social Security.

Now, imagine a year and a half ago if you had dumped your 401(k) or your Social Security was looking like your 401(k) and you had nothing to draw upon. That's the kind of vision we're getting from the other side of the aisle. We're talking about tax cuts for small businesses and individuals so that employers can provide health care and jobs. That's what this is about. Our friends on the other side did not act. They led to what is happening here today, and we have got the consequences of their inaction that we're forced to deal with today.

We have got a lot of issues to talk about. This is not going to be the last time we're on the floor. We're going to be here all week talking about these issues. But, again, our government has a moral mission, a moral responsibility to protect our citizens and to empower our citizens. This health care reform bill is about protecting our citizens. It's not about government-run; it's not about insurance-run. That's a false debate. This is about making sure that doctors and patients and families make their own health care decisions. That's what this is about.

This is about making sure that seniors have an extended Medicare program by making sure we rid it of waste, fraud, and abuse. This is making sure that our seniors have prescription drug programs. This is making sure that our government protects individuals from the practices of the insurance company, being denied a preexisting condition; that we protect our citizens from, when they get sick, their insurance company says to them, We can't cover you any more. That's what this reform bill is about. And those protections will empower and stimulate and allow the American people to express their talents in the marketplace.

How many business people are going to have more money in their pocket to reinvest back into their business, into the technology, into the capital improvements? How many families are going to have more money to send their kids to college, to go on a family vacation, to make sure their kids can go to graduate school? How many people who are locked into jobs now and fear starting their own business are out there? We don't know. It's a hard thing to quantify. But there are thousands of them. Who's the next Bill Gates who has a spouse that maybe has a preexisting condition so they're stuck in a cubicle somewhere and can't start their own business? How many children in our country have been denied health insurance because they have a preexisting condition? How many people are in a hospital right now, right now, because they didn't get the proper health care that they needed? And so their problems, their issues, their

health concerns got worse and they ended up in the hospital.

We have a moral obligation to step up to bat and to make this happen. This reform bill is a good piece of legislation. And I recognize that there are some outlets, some people who want to maybe not be quite as straightforward with the facts that are presented here in this bill, and they want to touch upon those same issues of abortion and immigration, all the issues that have been addressed in this bill. When you have 25 national pro-life Catholics and Evangelicals organizations endorsing this bill, when you have the Catholic Hospital Association endorsing this bill, you can honestly say that the abortion issue has been taken care of and that this is a pro-life bill. Because the idea of pro-life is very broad and should have a very broad interpretation. Quality of life, shortened life spans, those are pro-life issues. Shortened and reduced quality because they don't have the proper health care, those are pro-life issues.

Freedom to invest in your business, start your own business, those are issues that our Founding Fathers talked about a great deal.

So we do have a moral obligation to pass this piece of legislation. When we pull out all of the parts of this bill, you will see that the American people support this. And the American people want this legislation. Here it is. I will read them real quickly. They would be more likely to support the reform if it has tax credits--these are all issues that are in here--if it has tax credits to small businesses, 73 percent more likely to support; if it has insurance exchanges, 67 percent more likely to support; if you can keep what you have, which is exactly how this is set up, 66 percent more likely to support the reform; if you ban preexisting conditions and denials, 63 percent; Medicaid expansion, 62 percent; dependent coverage through 26 years old, 60 percent; close the Medicare doughnut hole, 60 percent; subsidy assistance to individuals, 57 percent. These are all things that are in the bill. These are all things that are in the bill and are all the reasons why we need to pass it.

This is a basic human rights issue. This will be the most significant pro-life piece of legislation that has passed this House in a long, long time. This will be the most historic piece of legislation that has passed this House in a long, long time.

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 41 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, March 16, 2010, at 10:30 a.m., for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that Representative Eric Paulsen of Minnesota be removed as a cosponsor of

Mr. Speaker, I move that the message of the President be referred to the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union and ordered printed.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 28 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Friday, January 29, 2010, at noon.

Madam Speaker, the Ohio Lawn Care Association recently announced Christopher Guerra, of Highpoint Lawn Service in Stow, as the recipient of its first-ever Ohio Lawn Care Applicator of the Year Award. The new annual award recognized Guerra for his dedication to customer service and 7 years of work experience at Highpoint. He was presented a plaque by OLCA Publicity Committee Chair, Rob Palmer,

Weed Pro, Ltd. at the OLCA annual meeting Dec. 8 during the Ohio Turfgrass Conference & Show.

Guerra was selected from five finalists including: Matt Dixon, Buckeye Ecocare; Fred Hoyt, Custom Lawns; Matt Netzley, Fitzwater Tree & Lawn Care; and Dan Paolini, Weed Man Lake County.

Guerra was nominated by Highpoint President John Prusa, who commended Guerra for his productivity and personal, caring service to a loyal customer base while completing his education and earning a degree from the University of Akron. Several complimentary letters from customers accompanied his nomination.

The Ohio Lawn Care Applicator of the Year Award, sponsored by Dow AgroSciences, is a new award to be presented annually by OLCA. To apply, one had to be a member company of the association and could only be nominated by a company owner, manager or supervisor. Nominees were required to have a state of Ohio applicators license with a minimum of two years experience.

OLCA represents nearly 500 professional lawn care companies throughout Ohio, and is committed to promoting and protecting the lawn care industry in Ohio. For more information about OLCA or the Applicator of the Year Award, call 800-510-5296; email info@OhioLawnCare.org; or visit www.OhioLawnCare.org.