W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. In defense. So it's not just space. It's also our defense. I yield.

Mr. AKIN. Wait a minute. You are telling me that the ACORN program, the one where we've got people going to jail for voter fraud and all other kinds of strange and weird behavior, registering illegals, registering people that don't exist, turning them out to vote, and even on videotapes, we see them encouraging people to build brothels and to bring in underage illegal immigrants, that organization? You are saying that funding could be instead directed?

Mr. AKIN. I was just going say that you are really, in a sense, making the same case that Congressman Bishop just made; that is, you get some very, very highly trained people, you get the program all set up, it takes years, a whole lot of research to do it, and then you just cut it off at the knees. I do have to move along because I wanted to recognize Mr. Bishop on this point, and I promised I'd get back to Congressman Hensarling. So let me come back to you, but we are getting a little close on time. Congressman Bishop.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 19--On motion to suspend the Rules and Agree, as amended--H. Res. 1003--Expressing Support for the designation of January 16, 2010 as National Influenza Vaccination Week, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 18--On the motion to suspend the rules and agree--H. Res. 1011, Recognizing the importance of cervical health and of detecting cervical cancer during its earliest stages and supporting the goals and ideals of Cervical Health Awareness Month. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 17--On the motion to suspend the rules and agree--H. Res. 990, Expressing support for designation of January 2010 as National Mentoring Month, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 11 on motion to suspend the rules and pass, as amended--H.R. 3538--the Idaho Wilderness Resources Protection Act, had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 10 on motion to suspend the rules and pass, as amended--H.R. 3726--to establish the Castle Nugent National Historic Site on the island of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, as a unit of the National Park System. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, lady, and thank you for your leadership here on the floor. Thank you, Congressman Smith, for your great leadership. I came here really in a way to say thank you. Also to deliberate a little bit on the unique history of great leaders. Every great leader in history has had this in common: that at some point, by faith, hope, and love, they have hung tenaciously to some great enterprise in spite of the apparent hopelessness of that cause. The pilgrims on the beach. Washington at Valley Forge. And yet these great leaders found that God providentially provided relief and help in their time of need, sometimes from very unique quarters. I think of the great threat to lives in America that the socialized medicine bill that we were looking at a day or two ago posed to the cause of life, and of the unique quarter through which God provided relief, the State of Massachusetts. Not something that you would expect politically. And so today I would like to say thank you to the great leaders in America who have had the perseverance to stay with the pro-life cause year in and year out, when times look good and when they looked bad. And so to you I say thank you and God bless you.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. So we've got some solutions. I was just thinking about the voters in all the different States that are frustrated. They may be listening to us even here on the floor of the Congress, and they're thinking, Do they guys get it or not? Why are they talking about these huge Big Government solutions and spending the money that we don't have. I'm not sure some of them aren't ready to declare independence again. I was just thinking, if you're going to write a declaration of independence relative to health care, one of the things you say is, it's not going to add a whole lot of money to the big national debt. That's one thing you've got to pay attention to. It's not going to impose mandates on States or employers or individuals. And it's not going to use taxpayer dollars to fund abortions or illegal immigrants. I think those are all things that have been debated and discussed and people are upset about. It's going to be negotiated, I think, in a free and open format instead of behind closed doors. We're going to reserve that doctor-patient relationship. And we're going to allow freedom, which has worked so well in America for a couple of hundred years, to reign. To actually have some freedom to let people make choices and trust them to make their own choices and then do some of these commonsense solutions that you're talking about to not try to reproduce the failed systems of the Soviet Union or the failed systems of European medicine or Canadian medicine, which are very inefficient and expensive, but rather build on the model of freedom and people's free choices and people making distinctions between what sort of health care they do or don't want and, particularly, allowing doctors to practice medicine without feeling threatened from lawyers or insurance companies or Big Brother looking over their shoulder. If you go to med school and spend a quarter of a million bucks on education, I think I'd rather have your opinion as to what you ought to do to me. I don't mean to rant here, but it seems like we need some sort of statement or declaration or something about some basic principles that Americans believe in. I yield to you, Doctor Roe.

Mr. AKIN. You didn't know what you were in for, did you? It's been a whale of a ride, brother.

Mr. AKIN. He says it's the mother of all unfunded mandates. That says that trillion may be a pretty conservative number.

Mr. AKIN. We've just got about a minute or two. We're going to be followed up by another good friend of mine. We may stay on this topic a little bit. I thought it might be appropriate tonight in the last minute or two to make a tribute to Massachusetts. Now who would have thought Congressman Akin would be making a tribute to Massachusetts? But if you recall our history, Massachusetts used to be the cradle of freedom and innovation in terms of government. It was Massachusetts in 1620 that saw the Pilgrims come. They put together the idea of the first concept of a Republic. A group of free people, under God, selecting their own leadership to preserve their God-given rights. That's a powerful idea that came from Massachusetts. A hundred-fifty years later you had the Massachusetts provincial Congress saying, Resistance to tyranny is your Christian duty. For the last 50 or 100 years it seems like Massachusetts has been sending us the King's people, always wanting more taxes, more government, more government spending, bigger government, and yesterday the people of Massachusetts reverted back to that great heritage of patriotism and freedom and said, We're finally tired of Big Government. It's time we start to look at solving our problems without thinking every solution means more taxes and more Washington, D.C., control. I thank you, gentlemen, that your States have stood for freedom and your constituents have elected you to join us here to stand up for just plain, old basic American principles. I think we're going to get the job done. I think that what happened yesterday was about, from a political point of view, quite a stroke of lightning. I think it should get people's attention. I think the public has spoken. And it's time for us to move on with the ideas that you, Doctor Roe, have been making very clear here. It's not like these things are too complicated. And G.T., same thing. You're from Pennsylvania, representing the people with common sense. These things are not complicated. Define the problem, craft a limited solution that fixes it instead of trying to scrap everything and go to the Big-Government-fixes-all kind of model. I think it's really something that the people of Massachusetts kind of came back to their heritage and to their roots in standing up for the country, as they did so many years ago. When I was a little kid, I lived in Concord and Lexington--actually in Concord, and I saw the place where the Minutemen had stood against the biggest military power in the world. There is a statue that says: ``By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April's breeze unfurled, here once the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world.'' They stood for freedom, and they stood for the basic principles that America has always stood on. And I am sure glad they joined us yesterday in making a statement and a statement that's going to affect this chart right here. Hopefully this chart goes in the dust bin before it ever becomes law. Last word, GT?

Mr. AKIN. And the second one is Tennessee. So you've had personal firsthand of the State government deciding they're going to take over health care. Is that correct?

Mr. AKIN. Doctor, you just made another point. What I'm hearing you say is that the estimate that the CBO has put together of this little treasure here of a trillion dollars, that part of the deal is it's a little more than a trillion, because we're going to do something that's going to make the States pay a chunk of change, too. So we have what's called an unfunded mandate that's going to descend on the States. The trouble is the States don't have the option we do of just busting the budget, because a lot of them have balanced budget amendments. And that's going to be tough. I'd like to go back over to Congressman Thompson from Pennsylvania. Would you like to join us here?

Mr. AKIN. Dr. Roe.

Mr. AKIN. That's a Democrat Governor.

Mr. AKIN. Doctor, you are so eloquent and you said it so smoothly, but I just think we need to underline what you said. What you are saying is you are going to take $500 billion out of Medicare. Now, is this a Republican that is going to raid Medicare?

Mr. AKIN. We have always been accused of raiding Medicare, but we are not the ones doing this, right?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, gentlemen, what you have been outlining here today is, I think, what the American public is eager for. They are eager for people to define specifically what a problem is, and to outline a solution that makes common sense, that isn't going to be that expensive. In fact, the solution should save money. They are going to increase the amount of freedom that consumers have and choices, and improve the quality of health care. That is a way to approach health care. That is to say, we are not going to totally destroy it all; we are going to fix the parts of it that are broken. That is usually the way we approach most legislative questions. And yet, now, for to whatever it is, eight months, we have been running down this track trying to reproduce in America what has never worked in foreign countries very well. I think you could say there are a lot of things we could fix in America. But, on the other hand, if you are the guy that lives in Dubai and you are worth a couple hundred million dollars and you get sick, guess where you want to be treated. You want to come to the good old USA. So why do we want to scrap something that has many aspects? In fact, I would say if you take a look at the American health care system, if you look at what is being provided in care, we are doing pretty darned well. If you are taking a look at how are we paying for that, we have got some problems. So our problems tend to be more in the pay for side than in the quality of the care that is coming out. And each of you gentlemen have demonstrated, I think very articulately, tonight the fact that there are some certain specific things that could be fixed, yet we seem to be just on this--you called it a train wreck--just trying to replace the whole thing with a Big Government solution. And I think it is ironic, almost amusing, and a month or two ago would have been unbelievable, to say that this whole thing may well have been derailed by Massachusetts voting for a Republican for the U.S. Senate. If you said that 2 months ago, people would think you needed to be locked up in a little white straitjacket. They would say there is no chance that something like that could happen. Yet people are starting to pay attention to what is being proposed here, and this, along with a whole series of other incidents and mismanagement, has created a political anomaly. I mean, there wasn't one Republican Congressman in the State of Massachusetts, and yet the State, looking at this kind of thing, along with the tremendous spending that this represents, said, Time out. We are not solving our problems. I appreciate your time.

Mr. AKIN. So we are going to take $500 billion out of Medicare. And what do you think is going to happen? If you take $500 billion out of Medicare, it is going to be harder to provide services for people. But you are not just doing that alone. You are adding more people and taking money out. So now you're sort of compounding the problem. And so the result is you're going to get poorer quality care and you're going to have to pay more money on the side, I suppose. Is that right, Doctor?

Mr. AKIN. And with this bill that is being proposed, the insurance company can second-guess the doctor, and if there is a bad result, they can't be sued. That is one more strike why people don't like this bill. But that is a great point. We have been joined by another colleague of mine, Congressman Thompson. G.T. is here, just a stalwart, free-enterprise guy, and somebody with a whole lot of common sense. I would like to yield some time, if you would like to comment. We are trying to take an overview of what is happening now, after the election yesterday, and where we are in this whole thing of health care and are we still under this model of Big Brother is going to take it all over.

Mr. AKIN. One other point, Doctor. You said you're just a country doctor from Tennessee. But if I remember right, there were two States that did the experiment of essentially government-run health care. One was the great State of Massachusetts, which has now become my fond friend.

Mr. AKIN. And that's certainly what you've been talking about tonight, both of you gentlemen. I understand that my good friend Congressman King is going to be here in just a jiff. He is going to be continuing along the same lines, talking about freedom, talking about the principles that made this country and how those principles can be applied to solving these very practical problems with health care. I will check to see how we are doing on time. Oh, we actually have 2 minutes. So I don't want to cheat anybody. Are there any last comments? Anything that we haven't covered that you want to catch, Dr. Roe or GT? Here is one. We didn't talk about all of the cool features of this policy; but this wheelchair tax, it was kind of stuck in my craw. The idea that you are going to tax a wheelchair, the mental picture of that just doesn't seem to be what we want to do. So we're looking for places to dig for money to pay for this Big Government system. So what are we going to do? We're going to pose a 2.5 percent excise tax on medical devices, which includes wheelchairs, to try to raise some money.

Mr. AKIN. All the complaints.