W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. We did.

Mr. AKIN. Let me just toss that number a different way. George Bush's worst debt year was with a Nancy Pelosi Congress, and that was about $400-something billion. I agree with you that was too much debt. And that was '08. You go to '09 with President Obama, and his very first year was $1.4 trillion, three times more than President Bush. And then they want to say, yeah, but it's Bush's fault. Wait a minute.

Mr. AKIN. Well, I'm not exactly sure of that. My understanding was the bill was supposed to be released 24 hours from the day that they're talking about it, and the only thing I'd seen earlier this morning was outlines, and the outlines, of course, the Congressional Budget Office can't score it. And it appears to be very much the same thing as the Senate health care bill is everything we can tell. We've been told that there aren't special deals in it, and yet as we take a look at it, we find that there are. Somebody managed to take a look at the ones that were there before and a lot of them are still there. The Louisiana Purchase is still in it, as I understand.

Mr. AKIN. I yield.

Mr. AKIN. What you just said, Congressman Kingston, I would wish that that were true. I think the American public is concerned about unemployment. Somebody made the comment that unemployment is an important issue, but it really becomes critical when you are the one that is unemployed. Yet my understanding is that this drama, this political drama, is basically rehashing the same old play, which is, here we go again with this health care situation. You made the comment that they had, I think it was a $787 billion, some people called it a stimulus plan.

Mr. AKIN. I do yield.

Mr. AKIN. Madam Speaker, this evening we stand just before a day-- tomorrow--of great political drama. I am trained as an engineer, and not much of an expert on drama or plays, but I have at least one theory about acting in plays and drama, and that is, usually it's very good or very bad. As we take a look at the drama that faces people who will be watching tomorrow, the question tonight is: What drama are they liable to watch? Are they going to watch the Olympics, the last part of the Olympics, which will be very exciting, or the political drama of 6 hours of discussions or debate? I think there will be more drama that will take place tomorrow on the health care bill. Now, we have been talking about this health care bill for more than a year, and the subject has had a tendency to get a little bit stale, but tomorrow is an attempt to revive that discussion. One of the things that is required in good drama is the theme, or the major topic, and the different parts of that drama have to be believable. I think that's one of the things that may make the drama tomorrow more difficult in terms of its success. Let's just talk about what really is believable. The President claimed about a year or so ago--I guess it was in a State of the Union message--that this new health care was going to save money and that it wouldn't cost us a dime. Well, I guess that's true. It's going to cost more like $1 trillion. Is that believable? The President repeatedly said that Republicans had no ideas. Yet, in Baltimore, just a month or two ago, he said, not that the Republicans had no ideas, but that he'd read a good number of the bills that had been introduced by the Republicans. Is that believable? The President also pledged transparency and openness in the whole process of developing a health care bill. What we have seen has been that bills are developed behind closed doors, and for tomorrow, the bill that has been created behind closed doors is going to be revealed only for 24 hours. So is the transparency-openness pledge believable? In Baltimore, the President talked about the fact that he has a lot of economic experts scoring the bill and taking a look at whether it works financially or not, whether or not the different component parts come together and whether or not it achieves the economic results that he wants. Yet, when the Congressional Budget Office, which is supposedly and to a large degree politically neutral, scored the bill, they said that the Republican bill actually reduces premiums by 10 percent while the Democrat bill makes them more expensive. Then there is a question about whether or not the meeting tomorrow, which is attempting to be billed as bipartisan and bipartisanship--does that really make sense? Because, if you write a bill behind closed doors, unveiling it at the last minute, within 24 hours, and then demand that the Republicans agree to it, is that really bipartisanship? I wonder if that is believable. The President promised us that the bill that he was going to present when he was in Baltimore would include tort reform. Yet the bill that we have seen did the exact opposite. The States that had already enacted tort reform were forbidden from using those tort reform laws. So, in effect, it would reverse tort reform and would go in the exact opposite direction. Is that believable? We were told that the special deals have been taken out. Yet, in a few minutes, we will take a look at those special deals which remain in the bill. Then last of all--and it is the one that I find most amazing--the Republicans are obstructionists. I find that hard to believe how anybody could even repeat that, let alone believe it. I wish it were true. I sorely wish it were true. The Republicans here in this Chamber, my Republican colleagues, are 40 votes short of a majority. There is nothing that we could obstruct if our lives depended on it. The Democrats could lose 20 voters and still pass anything that they choose to pass. So how we could be, as Republicans, obstructionists, again, seems very hard to pass the old sniff test. Now, it seems that the President, in setting up this great drama of 6 hours of televised discussion on health care, has made a major assumption, which is, if people just knew what was in his bill, they would really like it. Probably the opposite is true. What we have seen is our constituents, my constituents, have called in, and they have read portions of these bills. They know what is in the bill. Guess what? They don't like it. In fact, this bill that is being proposed is ugly. It's so ugly it has to sneak up on a glass of water just to get a drink. Well, let's take a look specifically at why it is that we are going to have this great health care political drama tomorrow, and yet we are not really passing the believable test. Let's just take a look to see if anything has really changed at all. First of all, this bill imposes $500 billion in Medicare cuts. That's a whole lot of money. Five hundred billion dollars is going to be taken out of Medicare. The old Democrat bill took $500 billion out of Medicare. The President's new bill takes $500 billion out of Medicare. The Republican alternative takes nothing out of Medicare. Well, nothing seems to have changed here. This bill enacts job-killing tax hikes and government regulations, costing hundreds of billions of dollars. In the old Democrat bill, yes, that was true for it. The President's new plan, which is online, likewise enacts a lot of job-killing tax hikes and government regulations that cost billions of dollars. Yet the Republican alternative does not. It spends $1 trillion on a government takeover of the health care system. This is something that people are really conscious of. This is a government takeover of an entire sector of the U.S. economy--$1 trillion. I think that number is short because it's not counting the unfunded mandates to States. The old Democrat bill does that. The President's new bill does it. The Republican bill does not. So what has changed here? It benefits trial lawyers by failing to enact tort reform. Well, the old Democrat bill did not have any real tort reform in it. In fact, it went the opposite way. The President's new bill is not different. The Republican alternative is the opposite. It protects backroom deals with Washington special interests. We've been told these deals have been taken out, but they've not been taken out. The old bill had those special deals. The new bill does. The Republican bill does not. It puts government bureaucrats in charge of personal health care decisions. This is something a lot of Americans are very concerned with. It's bad enough if some insurance company is getting between you and your doctor, but it's even worse if a government bureaucrat does because, if you don't like the insurance company, you can change companies. You can't change governments. So, again, the new proposal is no different than the Democrat proposal, and the Republicans are not doing that. It breaks President Obama's pledge not to raise taxes on those who make less than $250,000. Well, certainly, the old Democrat bill did raise taxes on people making less than $250,000. The new proposal still taxes people more who make less than $250,000. The Republican proposal does not. It forces individuals to purchase government-approved health insurance. That's something that people are pretty sensitive to--the government's telling you that you must buy health insurance. The old Democrat bill does that. The President's proposal still does it. Republicans reject that idea. It forces employers to choose government- approved health insurance or they are going to have to pay a new tax. So the government is going to tell you what kind of insurance you have got to purchase or you are going to have to pay a new kind of tax. The old Democrat bill did that. What the President is proposing continues to do it. The Republicans don't. So is this great drama that is supposed to take place tomorrow really something new? I'm not so sure that it is in that it seems to follow the same pattern. Now, if we take a look at the proposal, the proposal is still pretty much the same thing. Here is a picture of what this bill looks like. You have got a 2,000-page bill, and it is pretty complicated. To try and read 2,000 pages in 24 hours is quite an undertaking. The only advantage that some of us have is that it's so much like the other proposals that it is not really that different. You don't have to read all 2,000 pages of it to know what's in there. As I mentioned, the President makes an assumption, which is that, if people just understood the bill better--now that's obviously something that he could talk about for 6 hours, I think, if it's that complicated. If people just understood the bill better, they would like it. What I would propose is that the President is mistaken in that regard. What I would like to talk about for just a few minutes are the people who are not going to like this bill when they see what it has got in it, because there are a lot of these groups of Americans, various groups, and I will tell you which groups they are and why they're not going to like this bill. I think, the more that this bill is talked about and the more that people read it and see how it works, what's going to happen is that you're going to see these numbers change. Right now, in the public opinion of health care, 58 percent of voters nationwide oppose the Obama health care reform plan; 58 percent oppose it; 50 percent of voters strongly oppose the plan, and 78 percent of voters expect the plan to cost more than projected. So it's not very popular now. The question is: If they see 6 more hours of drama, are they going to like the plan any more? I would suggest that there are all kinds of groups of people who are not going to like this plan. Let me talk to you about some of those groups of people. The first is a category that I am increasingly putting myself in, and that's the group of people who are older. I just hit 62 years old, so I'm feeling a little bit older, and older people aren't going to like this plan for a couple of reasons: The first reason they won't like it is because of something we mentioned just a minute ago, which is that this is going to take $500 billion out of Medicare. Now, when I was first getting started in politics years ago, the Democrats always accused Republicans of taking money away from Medicare. Yet, ironically, this bill which is being proposed by the President is taking $500 billion out of Medicare. So, if you're an older person, you probably won't like it for that reason. If you are an older person, there is a bigger and more serious reason that you will not like this bill. If you are older, you will go to see the doctor more. If you go to see the doctor more, what this bill is going to do is it is going to harm the quality of American health care. It will harm the quality. This has been the experience of every nation that has had its government take over health care. It has also been the experience of two States--Massachusetts and Tennessee--which have had their State governments try to take over health care. In every one of those experiences, the quality of health care has gone down, and the cost of health care has gone up. So, if you are an older person and if you see the doctor a little bit more, first of all, you're not going to like that great big cut to Medicare. Second of all, the quality of your health care is going to go down. Now let's say, instead of being older, you're young. Certainly you would like the bill if the older people don't like it. No. Wrong. If you're young, you won't like the bill because this bill forces you to pay for government insurance which is written the way the government says you have to buy the insurance. If you don't buy that insurance, you're going to be penalized. You're going to have to pay a penalty. If you are a young person, if you like freedom and if you don't want the government telling you what kind of insurance to buy or if you have to buy insurance, you won't like this bill for those reasons. The next group of people that will probably not like this bill is the group of people who are married. What this bill does to married people is it says, if you're married, you're going to have to pay more money for your health insurance than if you're single. So there is a marriage penalty in this bill. In other words, if you have two individuals who are both making the same amount of money--say you have two individuals making $32,000 a year. If you take a look at what those two single individuals have to pay, because they get all the subsidies under this bill, they are going to have to pay a lot less than the two people, as husband and wife, who are making the same amount of money. Those people will have to pay $2,000 more. So this bill contains, for that example, $2,000 of penalties for people who are married. So, if you're married, you probably won't like this bill. Now, if you happen to fall in the category of being pro-life, or at least if you fall in the category of not wanting government money, your tax money, to pay for abortions, you won't like this bill because the bill that's being proposed is the Senate bill, and it allows in these insurance policies, which are government funded, for people to get abortions through the policies. So there is not a strict and clean line in the bill the way the House version of the bill was passed which says that there is absolutely no using these government policies to do abortions. So if you're pro-life, you will not like the Senate version of this bill, and you will hear people who are involved in the pro-life cause standing and arguing vigorously that the Senate version is unacceptable. Now, if you own a small business, you're not going to like this bill. If you own a small business, this is going to cause you trouble in a number of different ways. First of all, you're going to be taxed a tremendous amount of money to help pay for this whole thing. If you think about small business in America as being people who have 500 employees or less, that is, 80 percent of the jobs in America are small business people, those companies are not going to like this bill, the people that run those companies, because of the fact that it requires those companies, first of all, to pay a great deal of increased taxes to help pay for the trillion-plus-dollar bill in this package, but also it requires those companies to buy the insurance that the government tells them they have to buy, and if even one employee doesn't like it, then there are going to be additional penalties. This is going to cost small businessmen a lot of taxes and a lot of regulations and red tape. If you're a small businessman, you're not going to like this bill. If you're unemployed, you won't like this bill because this bill is going to cost jobs. It will make it harder for you to get your next job. How is it that this bill will make it harder for you to get your job? We'll get into that in a little bit more detail later, but the basic elements of creating jobs in our economy is allowing the small businesses to create the jobs by creating an environment in the small business that makes jobs. How does that happen? Well, one, you don't want to tax the guy that owns the business because you want him to put his money back into the business to expand it, to buy new equipment, to put a new wing on the building in order to create more jobs. This bill does the exact opposite. It buries the small business owner in taxes and red tape and a lot of unknown costs for health care. When you do that, it's going to make the small business less likely to hire people, and, therefore, if you're unemployed, it's going to make it a lot harder to get a job because this is a job-killing proposal. So if you are an unemployed person, this is not something that you want to see passing right away. The people in America who own health insurance are not going to like this bill. If you own health insurance, what this bill is going to do is it's going to charge you more money for your health insurance to help pay for the people who haven't bought any health insurance. So this bill is going to cost you more for the health insurance if you own health insurance. Let's just run through the list of who wouldn't like this bill. If you're older, you won't like the bill. If you're young, you won't like the bill. If you're married, you won't like the bill. If you're pro- life, you won't like the bill. If you're a small business owner, you won't like the bill. And if you're somebody looking to get a job from that small business owner, you still won't like the bill. Then also if you have health insurance, you're not going to like the bill either. So there's a whole lot of people that just naturally when they take a look at what all of this complicated maze means to them, those are all people who aren't going to like this proposal. Is that all there are who won't like the proposal? Oh, no. There are a lot of other people who won't like the proposal as well. Let's take a look at some of the others. If you are concerned about illegal immigration, you won't like the bill because this bill provides no guarantee that illegal immigrants cannot come in and get health care and get the subsidies to health care that will have to be paid for by the American public and all the people who are taxed to pay for this measure. So if you're concerned about illegal immigrants coming and getting a free ride in terms of government-paid-for health care, this bill does not contain the protections. If you're worried about illegal immigrants coming into this country and getting subsidized health care, this bill does that and there is no protection against it. If you're one of 36 States who do not want the Federal Government to mandate that everybody in your State has to buy government-certified health care, if you want the people in your State to have some sovereignty, if you care about State sovereignty and you want the people of your State to make their own decisions how they'll spend their money and you don't want the Federal Government to force the people in your State to pay for insurance, then this bill is something that you don't want. And there are 36 different States, out of 50, 36 States that have legislation that is in the process of moving in those States essentially banning the Federal Government from requiring citizens of those States to have to buy health insurance product. So if you're one of those 36 States where the legislators are saying we don't want the Federal Government butting into our business, telling our citizens that they have to buy insurance, then this is something that you certainly wouldn't want. The other people that might not like this, and this probably goes almost without saying, are people who make a fair amount of money. People who make a fair amount of money are going to be taxed very heavily in a number of different regards to try to help subsidize this new health insurance plan. If you're well-to-do and you don't like huge taxes, then you certainly are not going to like this plan. If you happen to be somebody that's concerned with doing things in a just way, that is, if you're concerned that every State gets the same deal, that there are no special deals in this legislation, you're not going to like it. We've been told that the special deals have been taken out. But, unfortunately, that's not true. Here are some of the special deals in this proposal that are still there: One of them is what they call Louisiana Purchase No. 2. And that is something for, I believe, Mary Landrieu out in Louisiana. The cost is $300 million, and it provides a special assignment for States recovering from a major disaster. It's written just to include this one State, and it's $300 million to add to the State Medicaid program. So that's a $300 million special deal for Louisiana. How about for Connecticut? Yes, there is a special deal for a Connecticut hospital, $100 million, which appears to apply only to some Connecticut hospitals. There's millions of Medicaid dollars for Vermont and Massachusetts, that's $1.1 billion total. It helps with the Medicaid program and gives about $600 million to Vermont; Massachusetts $500 million, for those States. Cash for New Jersey drug companies. New Jersey's getting a deal. The cost is $1 billion for special deals for New Jersey. Extra cash for union health care plans. This is a deal of $5 billion. It says that there's going to be a reinsurance program to defray the medical costs of union members. So that's $5 billion for union member health care costs. Are there other special deals? Yes, in fact, there are. We don't have to pay any Medicare Advantage. Remember how I said this bill is going to cut $500 billion from Medicare. But it won't cut Medicare Advantage for people in Florida. So if you're in Florida, you won't get that Medicare Advantage cut; the other States will. Special funding for coal miners in Montana. Yes, it does. The cost, we're not quite sure what that is, but it's Medicare coverage for workers exposed to environmental health hazards. There is a fee exemption for politically connected insurers, in Michigan apparently. Higher Medicare payments for North Dakota providers. Hawaii hospitals are getting exempt from the cuts. And longshoremen are exempt from tax or health plans. There is a whole series of special deals. So if you don't like special deals for various States that your State doesn't get, you won't like this plan. I think one of the groups, and this is probably not exactly small that doesn't like this plan, would be doctors. Why would that be? Well, what does a doctor do? Why does a doctor become a doctor? Many of them will say that they really wanted to take care of people and help them with their health care. Why, then, would a doctor dislike this plan other than its great complexity? Well, one of the things that's extremely frustrating to doctors, as well as patients, is something that we don't like but has happened, and that is you allow an insurance company to come between a doctor and a patient. I think most people consider that doctor-patient relation-- certainly my Republican colleagues would say if there's anything in health care that should be principally sacred, it would be the fact that the doctor and the patient need to make the final decisions on health care. That's something that we don't want to have disturbed, and if an insurance company is allowed to come between the doctor and the patient, we don't like that. We don't want somebody that's not a doctor getting involved in medical decisions. Unfortunately, in versions of this plan, what you have is you have insurance companies who are allowed to make medical decisions and are not held legally accountable for the outcome of those decisions. That's bad enough, but a doctor particularly won't like this plan because, instead of an insurance company, which you can always change or at least you have some chance to change, you have no chance to change the Federal Government if the Federal Government is the one that is coming between you and your doctor. So if you're a doctor, a lot of doctors do not like this plan. In fact, there have been a dozen different Republican doctors on the floor over the period of the last year talking about the fact that they don't like this plan. They think it's terrible, and that should tell us something. There is another constituent group that does not like the plan. There's another group of people who will not like this plan, I happen to fall into this group, and it's one that you might not think of off the top of your head, and that would be people who have cancer. Why would people who have cancer not like this plan? Well, one of the things that has been done is to take a look at the survival rate in people who have cancer in various countries. What you find in England is the survival rate is much, much lower than the survival rate in America. The survival rate of cancer patients in Canada is lower than the survival rate of cancer patients in America. So if America, then, changes our medical system to be more like England or Canada, we have to assume also that then the survival rate of cancer patients is going to be less. It's going to be harder to try to survive cancer when you have a State-run system doing cancer. So there's cancer patients. The list does seem to be getting a little bit long. And is it really such a good idea on this great drama that's supposed to take place tomorrow, in competition, by the way, with the Olympics, this great political drama, is the assumption really true that if the American people see this bill more closely, they're going to love it more, or is it possible that in this drama, the real villain in the drama is this very bill itself? Is it possible that all of these different groups of Americans really do have it right? Let's run through this again. This is a pretty significant list as I go through it. I would like you to ask yourself, do I fall into that group myself? Is this something that is going to affect me in a bad way? Certainly a great majority of Americans believe it will hurt them, and it is not a bill that they want. But let's take a look at who these people are that wouldn't like it. First of all, if you're old. Then if you're young. If you're married. If you're pro-life. If you're a small business owner. If you're unemployed. If you have health insurance. If you're concerned about illegal immigration, and they are getting health insurance. If you are one of the many States who are concerned with a government mandate that every citizen has to purchase government-certified health care. If you are well-to-do. If you are those who don't like the special deals that some States get and other ones don't get. If you are a doctor, you are not going to like this plan. And if you care about the doctor-patient relationship, you particularly won't like this plan. And if you happen to be a person with cancer, you're not going to like this plan. But then again, you may be dead, so you might not care as much. And then you have other people, leaders who are in State government, governors, legislators, various senators or house members in State government. Why would they not like this plan? Well, here, this is another group that has a pretty good concern; and that is the trillion- dollar bill that has been attached to this plan, that trillion-dollar bill is not the full cost of the plan. A lot of cost is going to be passed down to the various States. So this plan contains unfunded mandates on the various States. Now, a lot of States, because of the recession and the high level of unemployment, their State revenues are very tight. In fact, some of them are in the red. And if we, through this plan, produce something that first of all is going to create more unemployment and going to cost more money to the various States, people who have to manage the State budget, unlike the Federal budget, many States have a balanced budget requirement. And so if you keep adding more costs to those States, they are going to have to cut other things on the State budget in order to pay for this big government-run program. The exact numbers on what unfunded mandates this includes are not entirely known, particularly when a plan is being released and you have 24 hours for different economic experts to look at it. Now, is it possible that the reason that this bill, after it has been put together behind closed doors, is trotted out for only 24 hours, that the reason for that is people really don't want a good economic look at what this is going to cost? I hope that is not the case, but it is very hard in 24 hours for the Congressional Budget Office to come up and say, well, here is what it is really going to cost. And even if you take their best estimates, which I think they try, in the past their estimates of Medicare were way, way off by a factor of two or three or as much as seven times off. Those numbers tend to be much lower than what the real costs of the programs are. So there are a lot of people in various State leaderships that are not going to like this plan. People who do not like red tape. I don't think we need explain that one very much. If you don't like red tape, you are not going to like this. This is a simplified version of a 2,000-page bill. And every one of these new boxes is some government creation to try to make this thing work, because the government is taking over, you have to remember, almost a fifth of the U.S. economy. And when they do that, they have got to create a lot of bureaucrats and boxes and flow charts and all that kind of stuff. If you don't like red tape, you are not going to like this bill. And then people who don't trust the government to run the economy. Well, I think there are a lot of people who think that the government is not proving to be very efficient in the way it runs a lot of things. Even the premise behind this bill is, well, we've got a problem with Medicare, so we're going to take the money out of Medicare, and Medicare isn't working quite right, so therefore what we need to do is to replace Medicare with the government taking everything over. There is something about that logic. If you take a look at the overall finances of the U.S. Government, what you find is it is not a big problem with earmarks, the real big problem is with three entitlement programs which are growing because of the demographics in our country and because of the nature of those entitlement programs. The entitlement programs are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Two of those are medical entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid. Both of those are growing to the point that over time, and people disagree exactly what year it happens, but they bust the entire Federal budget. They grow so big, they balloon so large that you can't derive taxes any more, and they basically shut out all of the money that Congressmen are supposed to spend on different things like defense or all other kinds of government programs. So these things, like a cancer, are growing so big that they threaten to break the Federal budget and the Federal piggy bank. In fact, right now those three programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, have almost gotten to the point where they are taking half of the disposable budget of the country. So now we have got Medicare and Medicaid out of control. And so what are we going to do? Oh, well, we're going to have the government take over all of health care. That doesn't seem to be a credible solution to that problem. This is an article from the New York Times. ``As a result,'' this is talking about this great meeting, this great political drama that is supposed to take place tomorrow, ``Democrats now are considering a plan to use a parliamentary maneuver called budget reconciliation to attach changes to the Senate health care legislation as a budget measure which cannot be filibustered and requires only a simple majority for passage in the Senate.'' Now, does this look like a bipartisan effort to cooperate on health care? I don't think so. What this is is a call by the captain of the ship to go to ramming speed, to take the bill which a majority of Americans do not support and to try to jam it through. Now, there can be a nice political drama tomorrow, but is it really working in a cooperative spirit to go behind closed doors, put together a bill, pop it out within 24 hours, and then demand that the Republicans all go along with it? Is that really working in a bipartisan way or is it really just more of my way or the highway? I will leave that to your decision. But that is what the New York Times, not exactly a conservative oracle, is saying this is the plan, is to take the bill that went through the Senate, which a great majority of Americans do not support, and push it through anyway. This is where the public is now. Fifty-eight percent of voters nationwide oppose this health care reform plan. Will 6 hours of drama tomorrow change that? Is this going to change? Is it really going to be drama, or does it lack credibility? I would suggest that when I take a good look at this, I think people may yawn and say, this sure looks like the same old same old, we haven't seen very much changing, and the Olympics is a whole lot more exciting. As I started by saying, I have observed things about drama and plays. And the things that I have observed are that they tend to be either really good or really bad and boring. And so that is my concern about the high level of drama tomorrow. Now, one of the connections that I think we need to make, and it is something that has been made, is the connection to something that I think is on the minds of Americans maybe more than a government-run health care program, and that is the problem of unemployment. I would like to connect these two because these two do connect together. I see that I am joined by my good friend from Georgia. Jack, were you interested in joining our discussion?

Mr. AKIN. Over $800 billion?

Mr. AKIN. Some of us stood here and said, This is not going to work. I was standing on this floor a year ago and I said, This stimulus plan will not work. It wasn't because some of us were such geniuses. It is because we had learned from Henry Morgenthau back in the 1930s, who stood before the House Ways and Means Committee and said, we tried this idea of excessive government spending, money that we didn't have, and we tried to spend money like mad. This is the guy who was Little Lord Keynes's buddy, he was FDR's Secretary of the Treasury, and he said, it doesn't work. Now, I don't think you had to be a rocket scientist to figure that when you and your family are in trouble economically that what you do is don't go spending money like mad. If spending money was going to give us a good economy, boy, we would have a great economy right now.

Mr. AKIN. Let me just respond to what you're saying because maybe I'm being too pessimistic about this. But let's take a look at the format. The format is we're going to huddle behind closed doors. We're going to produce a bill. You get 24 hours to look at it, and then we want you to come and tell us how much you like it. That doesn't seem to me to be sort of an open the kimono and let's work together as a team. It's more like, if you don't support me, then my way or the highway.

Mr. AKIN. Hospital's in--my understanding is the hospital is in Connecticut; Medicaid dollars, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey; drug companies; extra cash for union health care plans. I have a list of some of these. Montana coal miners. Florida seniors don't have to pay that Medicare Advantage. You know, Medicare's being cut, but you don't if you're a Florida senior. It's not cut there, but in other States it is. If you're a union guy, it's not. But if you aren't, you know. And then there's North Dakota Medicare payments. Hawaii hospitals are exempt from the cuts. And longshoremen. I didn't know about longshoremen. But there are, of course a bunch of these special deals in the program.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Madam Speaker, in accordance with House Republican Conference standards, and Clause 9 of Rule XXI, I submit the following member requests for the Record regarding the conference report on H.R. 3326, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010. Project: Adaptive-Defense HIPPIE (High-speed Internet Protocol Packet Inspection Engine) on a Chip. Account: Department of Defense, Army, RDT&E Legal Name of Requesting Entity: TechGuard Security, LLC Address of Requesting Entity: 743 Spirit 40 Park Drive, Chesterfield, MO 63005 Description of Request: Provide $1,004,000 to enhance the Army's Cyber Security. This project puts the rapid and power-conserving High- speed Internet Protocol Packet Inspection Engine's (HIPPIE) security capability on a silicon chip. This funding will allow for development of a Nano-power supply and a nano-memory capability. It will enhance the coalition warrior and the U.S. Warfighter's communication security and access control through discreet deployment with secure remote- controlled chip-level destruction in the event a device is compromised. This enhanced capability at the chip-level allows for deployment directly into the hands of the warfighter engaged in traditional and irregular warfare. Project: Aircrew Body Armor and Load Carriage Vest System Account: Other Procurement--U.S. Air Force Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Eagle Industries. Address of Requesting Entity: 1000 Biltmore Drive, Fenton, MO 63026 Description of Request: To provide $2,400,000 to issue the Aircrew Body Armor Load Carriage Vest System, an integrated body armor vest system, to aircrew personnel. The system provides fire retardancy and ballistics protection from a wide array of threats including small arms fire, fragmenting shrapnel and spall, while decreasing the heat stress and weight burdens faced by airmen. Currently issued aircrew flight equipment survival vests are not body armor-compatible due to weight, heat, and survivability concerns. Current issue is not fire retardant and fails to meet the present needs of the U.S. Air Force. Of the $3 million, approximately 25 percent is for materials; 25 percent is for labor; and 50 percent is for armor and armor integration. This request is consistent with the intended and authorized purpose of the U.S. Air Force--Other Procurement account. If funded in full, this is a one-time funding request with the goal of the Air Force using internally budgeted funding to continue fielding the system to aircrew personnel. Project: Air Filtrations Systems for Helicopters Account: Department of Defense, Army, Aircraft Modifications Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Aerospace Filtration Systems, Inc. Address of Requesting Entity: 4 Research Park Dr, Suite 200, St. Charles, MO, USA Description of Request: To provide $800,000 to install barrier filtration systems on National Guard aircraft. This request would allow the National Guard to obtain dramatic savings by reducing engine replacements and thus maintenance, keeping overall engine performance from being reduced due to erosion and Foreign Object damage (FOD), and increasing readiness rates of the ARNG fleet. The earmark will address a portion of the ARNG fleet to include: AH-64A APU Barrier Filter--32 Aircraft, AH-64D APU Barrier Filter--48 Aircraft, CH-47 APU Barrier Filter--80 Aircraft, and OH-58A/C Engine Barrier Filter--50 Aircraft. AFS Barrier Filtration Systems capture 99 percent of the dirt and debris that would otherwise enter the engine or APU and cause a significant loss of performance. This prevents engines/APU's from being removed from the aircraft for costly maintenance or overhaul. Engine overhaul costs could cost as much as $300,000 on one engine. By extending the life of the engine/APU up to 11 times, the savings from one installation kit could be as high as $6.6M on one AH-64 helicopter alone. AFS barrier Filters in use by the U.S. Army in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan have been proven extremely effective. These kits have allowed engines to reach TBO and have been a major part of unprecedented readiness rates for the aircraft fleets. Project: Backpack Medical Oxygen System (BMOS) Account: Department of Defense, Air Force, RDT&E Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Essex Cryogenics of Missouri Inc. Address of Requesting Entity: 8007 Chivvis Drive St. Louis, MO 63123- 2395 Description of Request: To provide $800,000 for improving Air Force oxygen generation technology for emergency field medical rescues. With modification, the Backpack Medical Oxygen System (BMOS) is the system that satisfies the USAF Requirement for a small deployable oxygen generator system. This spiral development program for the BMOS system will significantly decrease the time and funds required to field critical capabilities needed today by our warfighters. The U.S. Air Force requirement for oxygen is a minimum of 93 percent pure oxygen at 6 liters per minute for critically injured personnel and the BMOS satisfies that requirement. Project: Hyperspectral Imaging for Improved Force Protection (HYPER- IFP) Account: Department of Defense, Army, RDT&E, (CERDEC, NVESD, Special Projects) Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Clean Earth Technologies, LLC. Address of Requesting Entity: 13378 Lakefront Drive, Earth City, MO, USA Description of Request: To provide $1,600,000 for the Hyper-IFP (Hyper spectral Sensor for Improved Force Protection) Program. The introduction of a Hyper-IFP in FY08 is allowing the detection and recognition of humans (with a near zero false alarm rate) and providing indication of other certain physiological triggers that can indicate that a person is under extreme stress such as contemplating ``bad'' behavior. To date successful development, test and evaluation has been done in the lab, though these systems have not been fully optimized for theatre operation or for costs. The continued funding of Hyper-IFP will operationalize and integrate the knowledge gain in the lab and apply it in a true-fielded application at an affordable cost. The Hyper-IFP system will also be environmentally hardened to allow field deployment and allow integration with other FP sensors in the last quarter of 2009. Hyper-IFP is focused on the missions of Perimeter Security, Suicide Bomb Detection and Urban Route Recon. Utility will be demonstrated through an evaluation in both the Southwest border and contingency mission in Southwest Asia. This effort will require leveraging the current Force Protection sensor suite designs for the missions cites to maintain interoperability. In the end, this request focuses on both achieving data verification, and the delivery of sufficient hardware to validate the Technical Data package for re-procurement as well as demonstrate the system's ability to deploy to DoD/DHS users for the missions described. The Night Vision Electronic Sensors Directorate, Ft. Belvoir Virginia, is very supportive of this project.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Madam Chair, in the next hour we're going to be talking about a subject that has caught the attention of Americans. It's, generally speaking, a boring subject, but now it's not become boring anymore, and that is the problem with the Federal Government overspending, the problem with the budgets that have been proposed, the problem of the financial trajectory of our country and the threat that that trajectory poses. I'd like to step back in time a little bit as a Republican to talk about the fact that over a 12-year period, Republicans had deficit spending in a number of years at about a hundred billion dollars or maybe a little more. If you put that all together over 12 years, you have over a trillion dollar amount of deficit spending. But what we're looking at in 1 year now is over a trillion dollars. In other words, the Democrats are spending more in 1 year than we did in 12 years, or you could say that they're spending enough in 1 month to compensate for every year of the Republicans. Now, the past President was criticized that he overspent; he spent too much money. His biggest deficit was in 2008 with the Pelosi Congress at about $450 billion of excessive spending. Just the number of billion dollars, it's hard for us to recognize how does that relate to something. So let's put it in perspective and take a look at it as a percent of the gross domestic product of our country. The $450 billion deficit with the Pelosi Congress and President Bush, that number would be about 3.1 percent of GDP. That is actually fairly average for many different years and different Presidents. The 2008 deficit was followed by 2009, of course, and it was, again, the Pelosi Congress, but this time the Obama administration. And after all kinds of criticism of the Republicans for spending too much money, the budget was $1.4 trillion of deficit. That is three times worse than the worst year of President Bush. Now we have heard all kinds of complaints that it was the Republicans' fault and all of these kinds of things. And yet the choice to spend that much deficit was still a choice, a choice made by our President and our current Congress under Speaker Pelosi, $1.4 trillion. Now let's connect that, because $1 trillion is an awful lot of money, and it's very hard for us to understand. How does that connect to gross domestic product? Well, it turns out that 9.9 percent of our gross domestic product was in debt. That's almost 10 percent, just under 9. That's the highest level since World War II. That is an incredible level of deficit spending. Now the question in people's minds becomes, okay, I'm not used to thinking in terms of billions and trillions of dollars. So how do we put this in perspective? And what does it mean to just the average citizen on the street? Well, one of the things it means is that we are really pushing the financial solvency of our country. We are getting to the point where we are spending money so rapidly, beyond our means, that we are driving ourselves into a condition of bankruptcy which could cause a massive collapse of our entire economic system. Nobody knows exactly when or what could trigger that kind of event. These are very serious questions we are going to be discussing in the next hour. And I'm thankful to see Congressman Wolf, a very highly respected Congressman from this area. He is also going to share with us something about the situation with this budget and what it means.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. What deal? Transparency?

Mr. AKIN. Let me ask you a question, because I know you are a proud resident of Michigan. I just want to say, speculatively, what would happen if you were the Governor of Michigan and somebody came to you with this health care bill, and the Congressional Budget Office, because it had been carefully written, said it was a $1 trillion bill, but when you looked at it, you said, ``Well it is $1 trillion to the Federal, but it has got unfunded mandates for the State of Michigan''? And you have probably got a balanced budget in some sort of amendment in Michigan. Wouldn't that make you frustrated if we are dumping the real cost of something down onto the States?

Mr. AKIN. That is a huge amount for a State budget.

Mr. AKIN. That is a novel idea.

Mr. AKIN. You know, it was interesting. When we were looking at that No Child Left Behind, it was my first kind of introduction to insider ball in Washington, DC, and the Department of Education. And there were all of these programs in the Department of Education, and each one was funded.

Mr. AKIN. You know, the interesting thing is, as you make government bigger, it makes the citizens smaller. And it's gotten to the point now where that government has got to be trimmed. And I think people are ready to do it. I would like to just say that I appreciate your leadership these years that I've shared in the Congress with you, Congressman Hoekstra, and for the fact that you have consistently, before it was popular, you have always been in this position of trying to deconstruct the unnecessary elements of the Federal Government. And I think that in a sense that you and I have seen a time where more voters are going to think, Boy, I wish there were more Congressmen Hoekstras in the way that they vote and the way they keep taking the tough choices, regardless of political party, to do what is right and send that decisionmaking back to the local citizens. Send that tax dollar, let him keep it in his pocket, and keep the government small.

Mr. AKIN. The Federal Government is tone deaf.

Mr. AKIN. That's what I meant.

Mr. AKIN. I couldn't help thinking about what you are saying and getting me excited a little bit about this. If I were in Missouri, I think it would be a Show Me Progress or something. They call us the Show Me State. And I think one of the ways that would really be pretty interesting and might change the paradigm quite a bit would be if you really want to give bonuses to teachers, why don't you let the parents of the students have a say in how their performance would be? Because I will tell you, if you think back about all of your teachers that you have had, I can't remember too much stuff the teachers taught me, but I can sure remember the people and the characters that I respected because of the way they lived their lives. And there were some that were just really, really treasures. They were like State treasures. They were such wonderful people. And I still remember them to the day. And I think sometimes I am guilty, I should have gone back and thanked them for putting up with a little brat like me. And if the parents have some chance to direct those bonuses, I am sure that would probably politically knock the train off the track. But there is an idea. Because those parents know whether their kids are getting the real stuff or not.

Mr. AKIN. Recall. You know, if you take a look at what the Federal Government was like when it was originally created, as I recall there were really only four laws. One of the laws was against piracy on the high seas. One of the laws was against counterfeiting, because the Federal Government printed the money. There was a law against being a traitor or a spy to your country. All of those laws had in common that it was really a Federal authority, as opposed to something that could be handled by the States. But the States had all the laws that hang him if he steals a horse or whatever the different State laws were. All of your laws almost were at a State level. Where now what has happened is people somehow think that all of the intelligence moved to Washington, D.C., and they have got all of these Federal laws, statute books full. Then you have got all of these bureaucracies full of rules and regulations. Somehow we have got to start taking this place apart and sending that authority to the State level. And with all due respect, gentlemen, a lot could go to the local and the parental level as well.

Mr. AKIN. It came from your and my taxpayers.

Mr. AKIN. Is that current model something that could be changed? Let's say you were to, a State were to basically say hey, we are going to start over again. We are going to do a different approach. Is that the kind of thing a State could really be innovative on, or has the Federal Government just got them locked down?