W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. I was just talking a little bit earlier. Did you serve in the California House as well?

Mr. AKIN. Just think a minute. Let's say that you were the Speaker, Speaker Pelosi, and you had a bill that was going to do these things: one, it's going to take $500 billion from Medicare. So that doesn't mean that your older people in America are going to be too happy with it. Two, it's quite clear that it will provide abortions over time, free abortions for people using taxpayers' money. That doesn't make the pro-life community too happy. So they've got the older people on Medicare, you've got the pro-life people upset. Then if you're a small business person--small business employs about 80 percent of the people in America--they're going to get a huge tax increase to help pay for this government takeover. Well, the small business people aren't going to be too happy with it. Let's see what else you've got. You've got a hundred million people who have insurance policies, and those insurance policies, they're pleased with because they have a good relationship with their doctor. So they're getting good health care currently. And that whole system is going to be completely rewritten. They've been promised they can keep what they have, but they're not going to be able to. So they're not going to be very happy either. When you start putting all of those things together, you're going to have illegal immigrants being able to get free health care on the back of the U.S. taxpayer, you start putting that all together and you're Speaker Pelosi, that's a hard bill to pass. So you've got to do something tricky to get that thing through.

Mr. AKIN. That was another piece of efficiency and government at work, especially when you do things in the midnight hour and try to hide things under the basket that way.

Mr. AKIN. And did that have some ACORN funding in it?

Mr. AKIN. Oh, that was a piece of work.

Mr. AKIN. Doesn't sound radical to me at all. I don't think our constituents, gentleman, would think that's radical that we would have 72 hours at least to look over some proposal before we're going to be voting on it. And yet what we saw in that huge bill--I guess it was 1,300 pages when you put the 300 with the thousand--the biggest tax increase in history. Snap, bam, we passed it right out of the House here.

Mr. AKIN. I thought California was the land of the fruits and the nuts. All of us in Missouri, we kind of worry about California out there. And yet you are so much more sober than the way this institution is.

Mr. AKIN. That raises another question, that the American public has a chance to read the bill. Because what's being proposed by those of us who are Republicans is that we want to make sure that there are 72 hours for people to be able to read something before they pop it up for a vote. You and I sat here on this floor, and we find out that 300 pages of amendments were passed at 3 o'clock in the morning, and the next day we're supposed to vote on a thousand-page bill with 300 pages of amendments. And the usual policy is there's a copy of the bill here in this Chamber. Well, there wasn't any copy of the bill, on that cap-and- tax bill. They were still busy trying to collate the amendments when they were taking the vote. And the American public thinks, hey, maybe it's a good idea if you guys read the bills before you pass them. We have a proposal to allow for 72 hours so people could read the bill.

Mr. AKIN. Here is actually the text of this amendment. This is the Heller amendment, one of our colleagues. Bright fellow. He offers this amendment in committee: In order to utilize the public health insurance option, an individual must have his or her eligibility determined and approved under the income and eligibility verification system--that's this--and the systemic alien verification for entitlements, SAVE programs, under section 11. In other words, what they're saying is if you want to get this free health care from the government--which is going to be very expensive for your free health care--you've got to prove you're here legally. Now, this amendment also was offered in committee. Republicans gave it 15 ``yes'' votes and zero ``noes,'' no one voted against it, and yet the Democrats had 26 people saying, No, we don't want this in the bill. That means, in other words, that there is no enforcement mechanism for these illegals, that they're just going to come in and we're supposed to pick up the tab for all of these other people. In fact, it was interesting to note that this very question was sent to the Congressional Research, which is a nonpartisan group, and they point the same thing out. The President is just flat wrong. It says here, under 3200--that's Speaker Pelosi's bill--health insurance exchange would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option. Does not contain any restrictions on noncitizens, whether legally or illegally present. This is just a bunch of researchers who read the bill. Which is, of course, when you've got a thousand-page bill and all of this--but that's what they came up with. You've given us a number of examples: One, it's not going to add a dime to the deficit. We know that's not true because you offered the amendment. And then the other one is that you get to keep your doctor and you get to keep your insurance. And then there's this thing that it's not going to fund illegals. I can see why the American public would be upset because they're getting very conflicted information.

Mr. AKIN. Well, there's a poison pill.

Mr. AKIN. Just to reclaim my time for a minute, this is the President. I've got the actual flip of his quote on that subject: ``There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.'' Now, that's pretty plain what the President said, but is it true?

Mr. AKIN. The amendment that I just mentioned a moment ago--which I think to me, it's personally scary--and this is a medical doctor, and what he's saying in this bill is nothing in this section shall be construed to allow any Federal employee or political appointee--that is a bureaucrat--no bureaucrat can dictate how you and the doctor, how that medicine is going to be delivered. In other words, the doctor and the patient make the decisions. And again, just like your amendment, this thing goes down in flames on a straight party-line vote. How can you stand there and vote that you want bureaucrats to ration health care? I don't understand it. But I do understand why Americans would be strenuously opposed to this.

Mr. AKIN. That is really a good question. And the thing that's disturbing for my good friend from California, the thing that's disturbing is that you're not the only guy that's offered amendments in committee on this bill.

Mr. AKIN. I am kind of scratching my head because every year we've got a problem that Medicare, they keep trying to automatically ratchet down how much we're spending on it, and then they don't pay the doctors anything, and the doctors are not going to take anybody in Medicare anymore. So we quick-quick do a patch. I know you have really been keeping an eye on the numbers here, and we very much appreciate your leadership. The people of California did a good job of sending you here. But how in the world--you're a good numbers man--how in the world are we going to cut $500 billion out of Medicare and not expect to feel that somehow?

Mr. AKIN. My understanding that was $500 billion--isn't that close to half of that trillion--is going to come out of Medicare.

Mr. AKIN. I guess that doesn't help us do much in terms of the unemployment. So a piece of it is going to be we're going to tax small business. My understanding is, though, that some of this is going to come out of the hide of people that are on Medicare.

Mr. AKIN. Let's take a look at the logic of that. If we increase taxes on small business, they have less money to invest. Small businesses create 80 percent, or 79 percent of the new jobs in our country. We've got unemployment now, not at 8 but 9- something percent. And so what we're going to do is we're going to tax small businesses, which is going to make it even harder for them to put in new pieces of equipment or new processes to hire new people, so we're going to kill jobs even more by going to this socialized medicine.

Mr. AKIN. So now we're going to increase your taxes, right? Is that what you're saying? We're going to increase the tax on small business, is that right, what we're doing?

Mr. AKIN. They don't believe that's going to happen. How are they going to pay for this whole thing, anyway? The Congressional Budget Office says it's a trillion-dollar bill for this basically having the government take over all of this health care, and, of course, that's just for openers.

Mr. AKIN. Congressman McClintock from California simply taking what the President said, offering it as an amendment, and in a straight party-line vote, it was defeated. Does that leave you with any comfort that we're not going to add a dime to the deficit?

Mr. AKIN. And that was your amendment then?

Mr. AKIN. Let me just highlight what you said then. What you're saying was the President said this is not going to add a dime to the deficit or that he wouldn't support it.

Mr. AKIN. So you basically just took the President's words and just put an amendment to say, okay, we're going to hold your feet to the fire. You said it's not going to add one dime to the deficit so we're going to put an amendment on the bill----

Mr. AKIN. A trillion dollars won't add a dime to the deficit? That is a stretch.

Mr. AKIN. And that's not even including the biggest tax hike in the history of our country passed by the House that means every time you flip your light switch on you're going to pay taxes on that.