W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. So you have postal service and FEMA. Keep going.

Mr. AKIN. Let's stay on the subject just a little more. Somebody talked about the compassion of the IRS. Do you want the compassion of the IRS in the health care system, or the efficiency of the post office?

Mr. AKIN. Here is one that really frosts me, and nobody has made a big deal about this. In Gulf War I, the CIA came to us and said the Iraqis are 10 or 15 years away from building a nuclear device. We get in there, and they are a year and a half away. So they got it completely wrong. Then we go to Gulf War II and they say they are a year and a half away from building one, and we get in there and they are not even close to it. They have completely missed it both ways. And then you want to trust your body to these guys? Then let's talk about the efficiency of the Energy Department. Do you know why the Department of Energy was created?

Mr. AKIN. To reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to ensure energy independence. And ever since they have been created, which way has the graph been going?

Mr. AKIN. We are joined by the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn).

Mr. AKIN. You were courageous to do that because there were a lot of people who tried to have town hall meetings and their constituents were not very happy about what has gone on down here in the last 6 months. You had at least a sense that you wanted to hear both people's opinion, both sides.

Mr. AKIN. We did a town hall, a lot on health care, and it was very interesting.

Mr. AKIN. We fired the president of General Motors. I still can't get my brain around that. The President of the United States fired the president of General Motors. I never thought I would see that.

Mr. AKIN. Today we are taking over college loans. We are going to basically chase the privates out of that business.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, Congressman Lamborn. I just hit 62, and I have become even more and more painfully aware of the fact that I have to live inside this body. And I think Americans feel that way. When you start talking about, Well, I got some government that's going to take over all of this and there's going to be somebody determining what kind of health care you get, that gets people's attention. Maybe they like the idea. But they want to know how is this going to work. I yield time.

Mr. AKIN. Except there is something that has been proposed by the Speaker of the House. It's her committees. And we have a bill number on it, and there have been amendments made to it. It's been dealt with in committee. He apparently wants the Democrats to vote for that Pelosi plan. So I think, you know, at least a reasonable person is thinking that the President wants the Democrats to advance the plan, which is the 1,000-page bill which is being offered by the Speaker and the committees that are under her authority. That's what we were talking about tonight, because the President makes these assertions, and yet when you take a look at what's in the Pelosi plan, you start to see this disconnect between the two. I think a lot of Americans have gotten that personally involved in this that they have copies of the plan. They're starting to read it, and saying, The President is saying this, the plan is saying this, the President is saying this, the plan is saying that, and that's what I was trying to get at tonight. Here's an example. There are 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. So this is what the President says. If you go to the bill, the bill says this bill is not for illegal immigrants. Okay, that squares with what the President says. But, then, when you look more closely, you find out that in the enforcement section it says, basically, anybody can sign up for the deal. So there's no enforcement to put any teeth at all in this, which then makes you think, Wait a minute. What's the smoke and mirrors? And so there's different ways to test this. One is to offer an amendment. So the Republicans offered this amendment. In order to utilize the public health insurance option, an individual must have his or her eligibility determined and proved under the income and eligibility verification system. This is fancy language of saying you've got to be a U.S. citizen. You have to be here legally. And this, of course, is voted down on a straight party line vote. There were Republicans--15 voted yes. A total of 15. Twenty-six Democrats voted ``no.'' Now this basically would say that not only are we going to say, No, illegal immigrants can't get this, but we're also going to say, Before you get it, you've got to prove your eligibility, and they said ``no.'' Now that leaves some level of confusion, but it clearly leaves the point that the Democrats did not want this amendment in their bill. So this is that disconnect where the President says one thing. And yet, when you start to look at the facts, you go, Oh, my goodness. What other way can you look at this? One of the things we did, there's a Congressional Research Service. We asked them, When you take a look at this bill, will illegal immigrants be able to take advantage of the bill? Now this is a body that's not Republican, not Democrat. They're just a bunch of scholars. Here's the quote from the Congressional Research Service, August 25, 2009, just a couple of weeks ago. Under House Resolution 3200--that is Nancy Pelosi's health care bill--a health insurance exchange would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside of a public option. H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitizens whether legally or illegally present or in the United States temporarily or permanently participating in the exchange. So these people are saying the same things. When our constituents read the bill--bless their heart to wade through all of this stuff--they're saying, It says there's no illegal immigrants. But in fact there's an amendment we offer to make it clear. The amendment is turned down on a party line vote, and there are no teeth in it at all. So there's this disconnect. And I think that's creating a lot of stress out there. I yield to my friend.

Mr. AKIN. I just have to stop you there, gentleman. I think you put your finger on probably one of the biggest question marks going here. This is such a straightforward question, but I think it needs to be repeated. What we're saying is that 80 percent, at least, of Americans have some kind of health insurance. Most of them are reasonably pleased with the health insurance and the doctors they have and the delivery systems. So you've got 80 percent of the people that are okay with it, and yet you're going to basically take all of that and change it in order to take care of what, 5 or 10, depending whether you count illegals or whatever.

Mr. AKIN. Yes.

Mr. AKIN. I think you have brought an exceptionally important point. Unfortunately, our hour has just flown by. I would just like to thank my good friend, Congressman Lamborn, for his expertise and great leadership you've shown here on the floor. I thank my other colleagues for taking part in trying to get through some of these details.

Mr. AKIN. The experience of other countries with nationalizing their health care, has that been an inexpensive experience? My understanding is it's about broke the budget of people that have tried to do this thing. I do know that Massachusetts tried it and Tennessee tried it. And the experience that they had was, it was expensive. Massachusetts' health care costs have gone up like a skyrocket and Tennessee, the doctors just about left the State. The Democrat governor that tried it as a trial project was followed by another Democrat governor who called it an unmitigated disaster. The head of Canada just declared their socialized medical system a complete mess and a disaster also and very expensive.

Mr. AKIN. I was told by some Canadians it's the best health care system in the world as long as you are healthy.

Mr. AKIN. Well, thank you very much, the gentleman from Minnesota, Congressman Kline. I appreciate your staying extra on the floor and helping us with it, a close look, try to take a look at some of the questions.

Mr. AKIN. If I could interrupt a second, what you're talking about is precisely what I wanted to get to tonight because what we've got is a debate over what the facts are, and you're bringing up the question of abortion, which is one of the debates. Here is the direct quote from our President. It says: ``And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up--under our plan, no Federal dollars will be used to fund abortions and Federal conscience laws will remain in place.'' This is what the President says. And now you've made the point that in committee an amendment was offered; is that right, gentleman? I just wanted to lay that groundwork because this is his statement. This is what the President says. Now, what's actually going on in committee, please?

Mr. AKIN. What you're saying is something that you and I, gentleman, take for granted. We live in this world day in and day out, God help us, and in the political world we realize that when a bill is passed, there are armies of people that write the rules and regulations that flesh out what the bill will be. So the question then becomes does this bill make it clear that we won't be using Federal taxpayer money to provide free abortions to people. Now, to me, this is a different question because I have always been pro-life, but to me, it's a different question than the question of abortion. It's a question of the fact that I have constituents who are violently pro-life, violently pro-choice, and they disagree on that point. But the question is are we going to compel all citizens to use their taxpayer dollars to fund abortions. And that's something very upsetting to many people. So the question is does this bill do that. Well, the bill doesn't specifically say anything, does it? So one of the ways to determine whether or not that's a future intent, that that's a little thing you're going to put in later, is to offer an amendment to make it clear just so that nobody will get upset about this issue, make the bill so that people can be more comfortable that there won't be any of this Federal money used for abortions. So when this amendment is put up, what happens? It gets voted down by a great majority of Democrats, right? So that leads you to the conclusion, well, they want to leave the door open for Federal funding for abortions with this bill. You can come to no other conclusion.

Mr. AKIN. Dad, my father, was with Patton.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate your joining us. Congressman Bishop is just a regular powerhouse here in Congress. We are very thankful for your district's sending you up here. Your background in teaching and making ideas straightforward and clear and being precise, that scholarly discipline is dreadfully needed at this hour, particularly when we start talking about these very nebulous kinds of nail-JELL-O-to-the-wall health care bills. I am also joined by a gentleman that I respect greatly. He has been a leader here in Congress and an innovative thinker, Congressman Shadegg from Arizona. I appreciate yielding to you. Let me just say, as we're getting started, though, because you have just come on the floor, what I have tried to do is to say, look, earlier last week when we talked about health care, the President came on this floor, debated and discussed, talked about what he wanted to do with health care, there was quite a lot of concern about what really the facts were. The President made a number of assertions, and what I was trying to do was to go back and forth and say here's the assertion and here's what we know about what the facts are and try to lay that out to make it clear. The President said, first of all, that the bill isn't going to cost hardly anything. It's going to save money. It won't put us in debt or anything. And yet we don't have too much to be confident about other than his tremendous optimism. The next thing that he was saying is that--one of the things he said was there are no abortions in this bill, and yet when an amendment was offered to make it so that there couldn't be any, that was voted down on this great party-line vote. So that is what we are trying to do is to say let's try to get to the heart of what some of these questions were, the costs, the abortion, the immigration, some of these different issues. I yield to my good friend from Arizona.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Wait a minute. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. AKIN. I have always had a deep respect for my congressional friend from Iowa and the fact that you're a small business man, but the way you put that together, I mean, I can see why you're a good businessman. But in your construction business, you tried to stay kind of a little closer within the law, and yet here we're talking about an organization that's paid for with Federal money. Now, what's happened with ACORN, though, is that there have been so many of these kinds of things that all of these community organizations that used to be under ACORN have changed their names--and it doesn't mean they've changed their stripes, but they've changed their names so that when we try to withhold funding from ACORN, all the other community organizers which used to be ACORN, no longer called ACORN, they are still wanting to pull down Federal money to do this wonderful entrepreneurial kind of proposal that you're talking about or many other kinds of schemes along the same lines. And again, I think it suggests it's just one more nail in the coffin that says maybe the Federal Government shouldn't be doing this stuff. Maybe we've gotten our Federal Government just trying to do too many things for too many people. Maybe we better pull back to the idea, as you started, gentleman, with the concept of free enterprise, with the concept of the Federal Government creating a set of laws where everybody is equal before the law, not a setup of special deals, and a place where every American can have the freedom and the risk to chase the dream that God puts in their own heart, to be whatever it is, whether it's a contractor with heavy equipment, as you were, or in the steel business, or working in the computer business with IBM, as I was, that you can chase the dream that's in your own heart without the government doing any special deals, either taking your money or giving you any money.

Mr. AKIN. I have to interrupt just a minute, if the gentleman would yield some time.

Mr. AKIN. Thirty percent of the profits. And that's not even counting health care yet.