W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. So the first thing we are seeing is once more the Federal Government is getting their fingers into everything, and in this case, they are basically taking over student loans. But they started with the idea that we are just going to help the students get a lower interest rate. That was the toe in the door, the nose of the camel under the tent, to the point where now 60, 70, if this bill were to pass the Senate, where you have the government now in the student loan business. Now, let's fast forward. How does that parallel our concern on health care? Well, our concern is you put a public option in and the government starts with that. It seems like just a little thing. Then pretty soon you say, well, every insurance policy in the country has to be the same as the government's, which is what the legislation says. And pretty soon, guess what? You have one provider, the Federal Government, and the government has now taken over all of the health care. I yield to my good friend, the Congressman from Georgia, who has a distinguished record here in the House but also is a medical doctor, which we don't hold against him. I would just be delighted to recognize my good friend, Dr. Gingrey.

Mr. AKIN. Here is the interesting thing, though. If you went for a direct loan from the Federal Government, you got a lower interest rate on your loan, so you would think, shoot, everybody is going to go for that kind of loan, and, in fact 20 percent did, and the other 70-some did not. They paid more money in interest. Why? Because the loan was administered through the private sector. And the private sector was so much easier to deal with, they were willing to pay more in interest just not to have to deal with the Federal Government on it. So what we did last week, then, was to basically eliminate, and there were some people that weren't federally insured at all and they were just totally private. So 20 percent of the market was just private. You had not quite 20 percent that was just straight Federal Government, and then you had in between the sector of private money with a guarantee from the Federal Government. So we have taken that huge sector in the middle and gotten rid of that so now the government runs 80 percent or so of the student loans; is that right?

Mr. AKIN. The deal is the government makes a loan to some student, you're going to go to college. The kid goes to college, doesn't repay the loan, and the government and the taxpayer has to then pick up the tab?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, was that the government Direct Loan Program always had problems?

Mr. AKIN. Speaking directly on that point, and I appreciate your going there because that is something that I thought was very interesting. In the context of our health care debate, something that happened here last week on the floor, and people should be paying big attention to this, and it seems like it is an unrelated subject but it is not at all, and that is the student loan situation. We are fortunate to have Congresswoman Foxx who was literally involved in the middle of that situation. I would like to explain the history of the student loan program and how that connects to this concept, because one of the huge debates here, aside from the cost of the thing, is the question of whether there should be a government insurance plan included. The Democrats are about 50/50 divided on that point. The Republicans are not at all divided. We think no, absolutely not. It is a deal breaker. We do not want the government getting into the insurance business. So why would we be concerned? Well, because where that is going to lead. Let's go over and take a look at what happens in student loans and how that then relates to health care. I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, therefore, following your line of reasoning, if you keep taxing the privates more and more, they are going to get smaller. And when that gets smaller, your base of collecting those tax revenues gets smaller, and you have more and more people who are subsidized who are absorbing the resource, and pretty soon you are in a death spiral. Is that your point?

Mr. AKIN. It isn't just my memory. There is an expression that everybody is entitled to their opinion, but there is only one set of facts. And the facts are that it was in the range of $250 billion or so, and many of us who are conservatives would say that was too much. But still, it is not in the range of a trillion, or $3.6 trillion, which we are burning with all of these programs. Here is another chart that I think people are vaguely aware of. President Bush, before, went where you are not supposed to go politically and said to the American public, Medicare and Social Security are broken. And maybe people beat him up for that, but in general Americans realize Social Security and Medicare, these programs are broken, partly because they weren't designed right to begin with and partly because of the demographic shift and all of those of us who are baby boomers and all of that. But here is a chart on the expansion of Medicare and Social Security. My question is, if we can't manage Medicare and Social Security, and those costs are going up to this point where you have this dotted line. You have Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security added together absorb the entire budget. There is no money for the arts, no money for public radio, and no money for defense or anything else, just those three programs. It totally gobbles up about the maximum you can get, because if you raise taxes more, you get less in because you kill the economy. So is it reasonable when you have the experience of Medicare and Medicaid expanding the way they are, the solution to this is obviously the government being more involved? Somehow, that doesn't pass the sniff test. I yield to Dr. Fleming.

Mr. AKIN. That isn't true, is it?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I would like to ask my friends here, and here is the specific statement made by the President. And I think it is helpful, you take the specific statements and you take a look at them and say: Does it make sense or does it not? Here is the statement, and what is a rational analysis of this? ``Here is what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future.'' We have heard that we are not going to add a dime to the deficits, and in just 6 months we have scored $3.6 trillion from all of these different programs. You have the Wall Street bailout and the economic stimulus, the SCHIP, the appropriations bill, and this cap-and-tax, which is the biggest tax increase in the history of our country, and for him to say it is not going to add a dime to our deficit. He also promised during the campaign that nobody making less than $250,000 would pay any taxes, and yet this cap-and-tax that we did means that as soon as you flip a light switch, you are starting to pay taxes. Now tell me, do people who flip light switches, do they all make over $250,000? There is a question of credibility when you hear a statement as broad and as general as that. Here is another one: ``Most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system which is full of waste and abuse.'' Every year we are putting a patch on Medicare because the doctors are getting paid so little that they are getting to the point that when somebody walks into their office and says, I'm on Medicare, they say, Sorry, I can't afford to take any more Medicare. So as a doctor, if you keep getting paid less and less for Medicare people, there is going to come a point where the people who have Medicare, they have government insurance, but they don't have government health care because a doctor won't accept the wage. So I guess when we hear this, I don't know if this passes the sniff test.

Mr. AKIN. That is interesting; $500 billion out of Medicare alone. That is a significant number. We are joined by Congresswoman Foxx who has dazzled us down here in the last few years. I think of her as the grandmother of the legislators. It is a delight to have you here.

Mr. AKIN. I have heard politicians going along on this line, and it sounds like to me that there is a line item, or there are three line items, waste, fraud and abuse, and you can just cut the numbers out of those lines. Is that how it works?

Mr. AKIN. $500 billion taken out of Medicare. That is a pretty gutsy move, it seems like to me, to be taking $500 billion out of Medicare. And he is calling that, what his statement was: Most of the plan would be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. I guess he is looking at the waste and abuse would be $500 billion out of Medicare; is that correct?

Mr. AKIN. That is more than the deficit he inherited from the Bush administration. He is going to take that much out of Medicare?

Mr. AKIN. Say that again. How much was gutted from Medicare?

Mr. AKIN. I thank the Speaker and my colleagues for this opportunity to once again take a look at the area of health care, something that has been capturing the attention of Americans and legislators for lo these many weeks, and to take a look at some of the controversy that's developed between one statement and then a different statement and the two don't seem to agree. So what is the real story? And we're going to take a look at a number of those areas today. Various statements that have been made on health care, what the record seems to support, what Congressional Research has to say, people who are reasonably scholarly, take a look at the facts and say, well, what really is going on. I think the first thing, and I think this is something that has caught the attention of Americans, is a concern over the cost of health care. If you bear with me just a minute, I'm going to try to get some charts up here to help illustrate it. Through experience, just history and common sense tells us when the government is trying to do something, there are some side effects. Sometimes it's excessively expensive. Sometimes there is bureaucracy and rationing, inefficient allocation of resources, and degraded quality. If you take a look at various government Departments, you think of things like the Post Office Department, something that's not noted for its efficiency, or the IRS, not noted for its compassion particularly, and the excessive expenses that seem to come up. We established a Department called the Department of Energy. It was originally established to try to make sure that we were not dependent on foreign energy and foreign oil. That Department has grown tremendously, and we have become increasingly dependent on foreign oil. So when we talk about the government, particularly the government injecting itself into a lot of areas, one of the concerns becomes particularly the cost. Now, we were reassured on this point by President Obama when he spoke here in this Chamber not so many weeks ago, and this is part of his speech: ``Most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse.'' Of course, what he's talking about, one of the major places where he's going to get money is from Medicare, which is kind of an interesting thing because in the past it was Republicans who were accused of raiding Medicare. Here President Obama is saying that this can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system and part of the piece of that is going after Medicare. So the question is, Is this something that's going to cost us a lot of money and what is the record of this administration and the government in general in terms of spending? Here we have, from the beginning of this year, the spending pattern of the President and the Democrat leadership. And he complained at the beginning of his speech on health care that he had inherited a trillion dollar deficit, and, in fact, it was $240 billion. And yet here he has in a matter of 6 months or so burned up $3.6 trillion. So this statement that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing system that's currently full of waste, and then he goes on to say ``Here's what you need to know: First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.'' He's not going to add one dime to our deficits either now or in the future, period. Well, $3.6 trillion in debt is a lot of dimes. I don't know how many dimes. They'd probably stack up from here to the Moon for all I know. I'm joined today by some distinguished colleagues and particularly a doctor and a gentleman who has had experience in medicine for a good number of years and somebody who has studied up on this entire system. Congressman Fleming, if you would join us, if you would like to make a comment. I would like you to, first of all, take a look at this question. Is this proposal of the President something that really is not a big deal financially, or is this something that could become extremely expensive to the Federal deficit?

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. And the gentleman from Texas will shoot you if you don't mention his bill.

Mr. AKIN. We would have considered that a little bit radical, wouldn't we?

Mr. AKIN. In fact, we don't even know what the costs are.

Mr. AKIN. Because they are selling the auto insurance to the consumer in a free market. And people who have the most basic, fundamental understanding of what the job of government should be, which is justice, which means people are equal before the law. And yet how can it be equal before the law when one guy gets insurance with pretax dollars, and the other poor guy has to pay with dollars after he has been taxed.

Mr. AKIN. I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. AKIN. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time for a minute, the gentleman raised an interesting point. And I think the President made a stronger case, he said there is one State where there is one insurance player in the market. So his solution is what, so we are going to give you one insurance plan for the whole United States. Now that is an interesting way of looking at the problem. What you are suggesting, gentlemen, is that you take your insurance and sell it across State lines and what you are trying to address what I believe is a problem, that in some markets an insurance company can kind of corner the market and run the prices up. And so what you are talking about is free market competition so you can buy an insurance policy across State lines.

Mr. AKIN. So you have to move to a different house.

Mr. AKIN. So you are maintaining the principle of federalism, the State insurance commissioner still controls and regulates the insurance in their State, but you allow that competition to take place. I suspect, practically speaking, if it were passed, your bill would have its most dramatic effect right near the border areas of the States because there you have a network of providers that people could go to, and I would think that is where the bill would be most effective. I yield to Congressman Bishop.

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate the gentleman from Utah getting perhaps philosophically to the heart of this debate. Really, the question is are we going to go down the path. And if you take a look, there was a nation that we knew very well back just a few years ago, and the nation had this basic operating philosophy: the government will provide you with an education. The government will provide you with a job. The government will provide you with a house. The government will provide you with health care. And we see our own country. And that nation was called the Soviet Union which is now in the dust bin of history. Now we see our Nation providing housing, providing food, providing education, and now we are talking about health care. Now, this is a little different speed, though, because before when someone was hungry, the proposal was give them a food stamp, which I am not sure was very efficient, but it wasn't to federalize every grocery store and every farm in America. This proposal that we are talking about is different. This is saying that we are going to step right in and the government is going to take over one-fifth of the U.S. economy, and that is a pretty tall step to take.