Michael Burgess

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I proudly rise today to recognize City Council Member Don Combs of Highland Village, Texas. After eight years of strong leadership and commitment to the community, Don will be retiring from the City Council. Don was first elected to the City Council in May of 2002. He served as Mayor of Highland Village from January to May of 2006 and again as Mayor Pro Tem from May 2009 to May 2010. He served as a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Highland Village Community Center Committee. Don currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Highland Village Community Development Corporation, where he directly helps to promote and implement projects to benefit economic development in the area. He and his wife, Janet, and their family have lived in Highland Village since 1985. Madam Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to commemorate the accomplishments and service of Highland Village City Council Member, Don Combs. I am proud to represent such a devoted community member in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I proudly rise today to recognize Dick Cook and his dedication to the town of Double Oak. On May 17, 2010, after over 17 years of distinguished service, Dick will retire from the City Council. Dick has held many positions throughout the years. He has served as Mayor of Double Oak for 9 years, and also as Mayor Pro-Tem, Deputy Mayor Pro-Tem, Town Treasurer, and City Council Member. If that isn't impressive enough, Dick has also served on the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Adjustment. Dick and his wife Georgette have been residents of Double Oak for 25 years. Not only has he served the town of Double Oak, but he served as an officer in the United States Navy from 1950 to 1981. When Mr. Cook retired, he held the highest rank in the Fleet Reserve, Navy Lieutenant. Madam Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to recognize an outstanding public servant to both his community and the nation, Mr. Dick Cook. It is my honor to represent such a dedicated community member in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Chair, this bill is not funded. It is an authorization bill. It depends upon appropriation. There is no pay-for put forward. It is never going to be appropriated. It is going nowhere. At the very least, let's be honest with ourselves. Save that $12 million for the American taxpayer. Do we really believe that Home Depot, Lowe's, and even your neighborhood hardware stores are not at least going to put signs in the windows that these new Energy Star/Silver Star appliances and retrofits are here and available and that Federal money is available to help you install them in your homes? The fact is that already people are attuned to these giveaways from the Federal Government. Let's not continue to enable these types of programs to waste money from the Federal Treasury when we literally have no money left to spend. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment and a ``no'' vote on the underlying bill. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BURGESS. I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton).

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Chair, this amendment is relatively simple in construct, but the issue is an important one. The issue is cost savings in our country. This amendment would strike the $12 million it has designated for advertising that will be paid for by the Federal Government. Now, let's be honest. Energy efficiency sells itself. If consumers see lower bills, they use less electricity. It is inherently incentivized. The major manufacturers and retailers of the products listed in this bill know how to sell their wares. They have commercials on television, which I see when I'm home in my district every week: You can do it. We can help. They've been doing it for years. The Environmental Protection Agency does not need to spend money on advertising when these retailers are already doing everything they can to tell people about these rebates and to get customers in their stores. They certainly know how to market Energy Star rebates. Why would this be any different? If Members think their constituents aren't aware of the program, they can spread the word on their own, much like we did with Medicare prescription drug benefits and with the D-TV program. They can include it in their e-newsletters; they can post it on Twitter; they can post it on their Facebook pages; and they can mention it during their town halls. Texas had a similar program that dealt with appliances. It was extremely popular. It sold out within the first hour that it was up and running, and this was without spending any amount on State funds to advertise. Let's be honest with what we are doing. We are overspending to the point of bankrupting this country. Now, not only do we want to spend Federal dollars to help people buy water heaters, but we are going to spend taxpayer money to help the stores advertise to sell those same water heaters to those same people. In this bill, under the Silver Star program, the $12 million for advertising could be put to other purposes. For example, it could provide 8,000 extra rebates for attic insulation, 96,000 rebates for new energy-efficient doors, 48,000 extra rebates for new natural gas tanks, 240,000 extra rebates for storm windows, and 24,000 extra rebates for energy-efficient window film installation. If the goal of this bill is to make America more efficient, let's not begin by wasting $12 million to advertise the program. Let's use it to help more Americans buy energy-efficient products. It's a no-brainer. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I come to the floor tonight for the leadership hour on our side to talk more about this health care bill that we passed 6 weeks ago, because it was a pretty sweeping piece of legislation. We passed it kind of quickly. A lot of people may not have understood everything that was contained therein or the implications of the things contained therein. So from time to time it is worthwhile to study a little bit about what we did and how we got there and maybe why it was done, and, if anything, a look at what is ahead over the horizon for the people of this country as they begin to adjust to life with this bill. Let me just say at the outset that I did not vote for this bill. I do not approve of this bill. The process was flawed. In fact, the process was absolutely toxic to this House, to the United States Congress--in fact, to the country at large. Never before has a piece of legislation this sweeping and with this sweeping in scope and its impact on the daily lives of the American people, never before has a bill this large passed with only the support of one side of the aisle. In fact, never has a bill like this passed that did not at least have some measure of popular support. But the bill passed with a great deal of difficulty because it did lack popular support from the American people. Now, 6 weeks after the passage of this bill and the bill signing ceremony down in the East Wing of the White House, now 6 weeks later, if anything, opposition to this bill has hardened. For that reason, I believe this bill ultimately will have to be repealed, ripped out root and branch, and then get on about doing the things that people told us they wanted us to do. Had we bothered to listen during the summer town halls of August of 2009, perhaps we could have delivered something meaningful for the American people. Instead, we decided to push again with a very partisan agenda. And let's be honest, Madam Speaker, the only thing that was bipartisan about this bill was the opposition, because, indeed, at the end of the evening, when we passed this bill, you had some 35 or 36 Democrats join 178 Republicans in voting against this bill. There was no bipartisan support for this bill either in the House or over in the other body. In fact, the bipartisan nature of this bill was the opposition. The American people are now subscribed to that notion as well. What is ahead for us? Well, there are some court challenges that attorneys general in various States--I think the last count, it was 20 or 21 States--have said that they are going to register challenges to this bill. That is a significant number. I suspect there will be more over time. The concept of negating the bill through a Supreme Court challenge is one that is far from certain, but it is certainly worth the effort that the attorneys general across the country are putting forward because, again, the bill, at its very heart, is so flawed and so toxic. If you go back and look at the things that led up to the passage of this bill 6 weeks ago, you really have to go into last year and deep into last year to find where the roots of the problem lay. It almost goes back to a year ago last February, with the passage of the stimulus bill. The stimulus bill famously passed without any Republican support. All of the pundits and commentators around the town were absolutely astounded that not a single Republican would vote for the stimulus package. But it was in those negotiations, such as they were, the meetings that occurred down in the Cabinet Room at the White House, where the Minority Whip, Eric Cantor, tried to bring some ideas to the table about what this stimulus ought to look like and what the Republican position was on the stimulus bill. And it was, Wait, not so fast. We won. We won the election. What you all say here doesn't matter. It was really that comment that set the tone for balance of 2009. Now, there were opportunities where both sides could have come together on some aspects of what ultimately was included in the health care reform bill. I will admit those opportunities were few and far between, but they did exist. Indeed, even individuals such as myself, so-called backbenchers, reached out to the other side, both to the transition team and to the Democratic leadership of my committee, and said, Look, health care is important to me. I didn't give up a 25-year medical career to sit on the sidelines while you guys did this. Let's talk about the areas where there perhaps can be some common ground. But those offers were never seriously entertained by the other side. They knew what they wanted in their health care bill and they wrote them exactly as they wanted them. Now, we finally got a chance to see the health care bill about the middle of July last year. It came over the transom late one night with a note attached to it that said, Read fast. We're going to mark it up in committee in a day or two. Indeed, that's just exactly what happened. Now, Madam Speaker, I ask you to think back to a piece of legislation not that many years ago, the Clean Air Act, which passed in the early 1990s; sweeping legislation that changed things for a lot of people in this country. Arguably, there were good things in the bill. Arguably, there were things that were contentious in the bill. But there was, I'm told, in our committee, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, an 8- month markup on this bill. Legitimately, members of the committee hated each other at the end of that markup, but it was important. It was important for people to see the process. It was important for people to understand that both sides did play a role in crafting this very, very complex piece of legislation, and the proof has been that, over time, the bill has delivered on what it was intended to do. Indeed, arguably, the Clean Air Act has improved the quality of air in many locations around the country, and the effects were significant as far as businesses were concerned, but not crippling, and people were able to make adjustments to the legislation after it was passed. And, arguably, it has been a difficult but good process for the American people. Now, that is an example of how things can work. It wasn't easy. It took months and months and months to do it, but ultimately it did have support from both sides of the aisle. Contrast that to the health care bill. The three committees that worked on this bill--my committee, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, also the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on Education and Labor, those three House committees worked on this bill. We actually had, by comparison, a lengthy markup in Energy and Commerce. We had 8 days of markup. Now, 4 of those days we were in recess subject to the call of the chair because the chairman of the committee was trying to get his Blue Dogs in line after he lost an amendment vote early in the process. But, nevertheless, we did have 8 days in committee to work on the bill. The other two committees had 24 hours, 24 hours to work on this bill. At the time it seemed like a big bill--it was 1,000 pages along. That's a big bill. It got bigger when it came back to the House in the fall and then got bigger still after it left the Senate. But, nevertheless, last July, the bill was 1,000 pages long. And to work through and mark up a 1,000-page bill probably was going to take longer than 4 working days--which is what we got in our committee--but it darn sure was going to take longer than 24 hours, which was the length of time that it was allotted in Ways and Means and the Committee on Education and Labor. The bill was amended in the committee work this summer by all three committees. Interestingly enough, some of those amendments were Republican amendments. Interestingly enough, after the bill was wrapped up, after the work was wrapped up in the committee process, the bill left the committee and went over to the Speaker's office. There it grew from 1,000 pages to 2,000 pages. But significantly, while the bill was doubling in size, it was shedding pages that were the past amendments that were bipartisan at the committee level. Most of the amendments that were passed in the committee never saw the light of day when the bill came to the full House floor last fall, even though the bill was substantially larger, largely because of input from folks down at the White House who worked hard with the Speaker's office for several months to get a compromise package that they could bring to the floor to get passed. But most of those Republican amendments were, in fact, deemed to be excessive and expendable and, indeed, they somehow lost out along the way. Now, one of the things that was really striking during the course of the year and several months that we worked on this bill was just about 1 year ago. There were six groups that met down at the White House along with members of the administration to talk about things that they might do to get a health care bill passed. So in an effort to show good will toward the new administration, America's Health Insurance Plans, the Pharmaceutical Management Association, PhRMA, my AMA, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, Medical Device Manufacturers, and the Service Employees International Union all met down at the White House and decided that there were things that they could bring to the table and give up as far as financing of this complex health care bill. I will never forget: They went into the Rose Garden and had a huge press conference where they described $2 trillion in savings that had been agreed to by these different six groups, $2 trillion in savings over 10 years in things that were going to be given up, and this was going to allow the House to pass or the Congress to pass a health care bill because now everyone's on the same page and everyone's working together. There's just one problem: No one from the administration ever communicated to at least those of us in the rank-and-file on the legislative end what was contained within those bargains, what was contained within those deals. In fact, beginning in September, when I began to question and ask, can we see what those deals were? Can we see the copies of the emails that were exchanged? Can we see the notes or the minutes that were transcribed during those meetings when all of these agreements were made to produce those $2 trillion in savings? And we didn't write anything down. Now, Madam Speaker, I ask you, $2 trillion in savings, which was on the table--at least according to the President and the White House in May and June of last year--and no one wrote down a single word as to what those deals were? And the problem is, it kept surfacing. As we would deal with the bill in our committee and while they would deal with the bill over in the Senate, from time to time something would come up and they would say, oh, no, wait, you can't tax the hospitals for this because that wasn't part of the deal. Well, what was part of the deal? And why can't we know what was agreed to down at the White House so we can at least, if nothing else, even if we don't agree with what happened, but so we can at least work around the deals that were crafted down at the White House? One night it was particularly stunning. Senator McCain, over in the Senate, wanted to introduce an amendment that would have allowed for reimportation of prescription drugs. Now, that is not a concept that I support. I think there are real safety issues surrounding reimportation, but the Senator should have the right to offer his amendment and argue the merits of his amendment. People on the other side should have the ability to argue the merits of their case and then have the vote and make the decision. But to stop Senator McCain in the middle of his discussion and say, wait a minute, you can't do that because we had a deal, well, people recognize that's just not right, that's not the way things should be done. It was particularly galling because the President, when he was running, when he was campaigning for the highest office in the land, repeatedly said that this was going to be a different process, his would be a different presidency, he would bring people together. It was going to be the age of postpartisanship and people with good ideas would be welcomed and everyone would be around a table. And it would be transparent. It would be covered on C-SPAN so everyone would be aware of who was on the side of the American people and who was on the side of the special interests. This was the promise that was made to the American people during the course of a presidential campaign. And I recognize that sometimes things are said on the campaign trail, and I recognize that sometimes a promise is made that becomes very, very problematic or difficult to deliver, but this was such a central part of the argument. Let me quote to you from what the President said when he was a candidate for office. He said, quoting now, ``That's what I'll do, bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together and broadcasting those negotiations on C- SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process.'' Well, that's exactly right. Remember a few minutes ago I said that part of the difficulty in passing this bill was it never enjoyed popular support. It's a big bill, there's some tough concepts contained within this bill. It's not something that people are just going to embrace unless you bring them along and educate them as part of the process. But although it was promised that that would happen, that, unfortunately, never came into being. In fact, after getting frustrated with being stonewalled by the White House in September and through the fall, in December I introduced in our committee what's called a Resolution of Inquiry. A Resolution of Inquiry means that after it's filed, the committee, after a certain number of days, is required to bring it up and have a legislative hearing on the resolution. If it passes, obviously the requests go down to the White House. Now, Chairman Waxman felt that, in fairness, some of the things for which I was asking would be protected by executive privilege, and not wanting to be in a protracted fight that might well have resulted in an affirmation of executive privilege, he still recognized that as a member of the committee, as a member of the legislative branch of government I should have access, that other committee members should have access to some of the things we were requesting. So about 6 of the 11 things I requested, the chairman said that's reasonable, you should have those things. And he and Ranking Member Joe Barton sent a letter down to the White House counsel and said we would like for you to produce this information for the committee and for the Congressman who's filed the Resolution of Inquiry because we feel this is information that should be available. Now, unfortunately, while the White House may argue that they complied with that request, all we have ever gotten have been press releases and reprints of Web pages, never the depth of the documents that was asked for in the Resolution of Inquiry. We are continuing to push that, but here we are now in the early part of May--again, the meetings were held 1 year ago in May and June of 2009, the initial request went out in September, the Resolution of Inquiry was filed in December, it was brought up in committee at the end of January, and clearly this thing has moved with glacial speed. But tonight, Madam Speaker, I want to reassure you and Members of the House of Representatives--and, in fact, the White House--that I am going to be tenacious on this, I'm going to be relentless. We do need to see that information; it should be made available to the legislative body. And please understand, my beef here is not with the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, PhRMA, the insurance companies, or anyone else. Certainly, they have the right and the obligation to go down and negotiate and make arguments in favor of their position and the clients that they represent. I have no problem with that. Where I have the problem is this all being done in secret, all being done behind closed doors, no paper trail to trace and hold anyone accountable. And yet, when we get to the work of writing the legislation, not so fast, we have a deal, you can't do that, we have a deal. Members of the legislative body should have access to the same information that members of the administration had access. Now, this bill passed in March, but it was the bill that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, not the bill we passed out of committee in July, not the bill that doubled in size and came back to the House in late October and then was passed in early November. Those aren't the bills that we now talk about. There were some interesting things in those bills--a lot of bad, a little bit of good--but those aren't the bills that are actually the point of discussion because when the Senate took up its health care bill, it decided to do something different from what the House had done. And that's okay, the Senate is a legislative body in its own right, and they certainly have the obligation and it is correct for them to do their work the way they see fit. And under normal circumstances, the House bill and the Senate bill--if in fact they're different--would be joined together in some type of conference process, and I'm sure that's what everyone over on the Senate side thought would happen, but in reality what occurred was the Senate picked up a bill that had already been passed by the House, H.R. 3590. If you'll remember, famously, that was the health care bill number. Now, that was a bill that the House passed 1 year ago in the late summer or early fall of 2009. It was a housing bill when we passed it on this side. We passed it and sent it over to the Senate to await further work on a housing bill. But it was picked up on the Senate side, the housing language was all stripped out of the bill, and the empty shell then became the vehicle for inserting the health care language. And that's exactly what occurred between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2009. But the important part of this is, it was a bill that had already passed the House. And when it passed the Senate, all that was necessary to do, it didn't have to come back to a conference committee, you didn't have to iron out any differences, you simply could bring it back to the floor of the House of Representatives, ask the question as was asked here late in the night of March 20th, ask the question, Will the House now concur with the Senate amendment to H.R. 3590? And that amendment of course switched it from a housing bill to a major sweeping piece of health care legislation over 2,700 pages long. But the House did agree to the Senate amendment, and as a consequence, that bill left the House of Representatives late that Sunday night, zipped the quick trip down Pennsylvania Avenue and was signed into law on Tuesday, and could move just that quickly because of the nature of how the bill was constructed and how the bill came to be in the Senate and how it was passed in the Senate. This became important because, deep down inside, I don't think Members of the other body, as they put this health care bill together on Christmas Eve, I don't know that they had in the uppermost part of their mind, how do we get the very best health care policy written and included in this bill? They were more thinking about an arithmetic problem that faced them: How do we get a bill that will get a ``yes'' vote from 60 Senators so that we can cut off debate and pass this bill and get out of town before Christmas? And oh, by the way, a big snowstorm was bearing down on Washington on Christmas Eve and there was a lot of anxiety in the other body, a lot of reason to want to get things done and get things wrapped up for the end of the year and then come back and smooth out any rough edges and put things together because, after all, we always go to conference on these things. And even if we decided not to go to conference, we would what's called ``preconference,'' where things would just be decided and the two bills put together and a finished product could then be passed by both bodies. But when Massachusetts held a special election and the Senate seat that had been held for years and years and years by a Democrat was now suddenly won by a Republican, the whole 60-vote majority thing was kind of called into question and it was not certain that the Senate would have the 60 votes necessary to cut off debate because the person who won that race on the Republican side in the special Senate election had campaigned on the notion that he would not be the 60th vote to push this health care bill across the finish line, this health care bill that many Americans had looked at and rejected. So a Senate race was held and won by someone who said don't count on me to be your 60th vote to get this thing passed. So now we've got an entirely different equation and an entirely different arithmetic problem here on Capitol Hill. You've got a Senate- passed bill, you've got a House-passed bill. They are vastly different. But the leaders on both sides said, you know, I just don't know that we can get this done in a conference committee. Now, it was also a big uphill climb to get Democrats on the House side to agree to vote in favor of the Senate health care bill. And with good reason. The House had worked long and hard on its health care product. And although I didn't agree with the policy and I didn't agree with the legislation as written, it was still a far better product. It had nowhere near the number of drafting errors, outright mistakes, and earmarks in it that the Senate bill did. So the Senate bill was thrown together quickly. And on top of that, it was just riddled with errors. Who wants to put their name next to a ``yes'' vote for a product like that when we got a health care bill on the House side that while it might not be perfect, and certainly I didn't support it, still the product itself you could argue was a much more evolved product than what had come out of the other body. But the arithmetic problem was what it was. And it was felt that the only way to get a health care bill passed in this first session of the first term of President Obama was to pick up and pass the Senate bill. I will always remember being on a radio show the Wednesday morning after that special election in Massachusetts, where the question was posed, ``Do you think that the Democrats have enough votes on their side to simply pass the Senate bill?'' And I said, ``No, I do not.'' And someone broke into the radio show and said the Speaker of the House has just asserted that she does not have the votes to pass this bill on the House side. And I concurred. I said I think that's exactly right. This bill contains so many errors that no one is going to be willing to put their name to it. But over the 6 weeks that ensued since that time, there were multiple discussions that resulted in a number of people on the Democratic side of the aisle who had originally been a firm ``no'' on the Senate bill beginning to waver and then saying, ``well, maybe,'' and then ultimately they ended up being a ``yes'' vote for the bill. And just by the barest of margins they did get an affirmative answer to the question, ``Will the House now concur with the Senate amendment to H.R. 3590?'' Now, drafting errors. The bill H.R. 3590 is replete with drafting errors. We are likely going to be encountering problems in the drafting of this now law for years and years and years to come. Members of Congress were surprised to find in some of the published reports in the little newspapers that circulate up here in the Hill that in the days following the passage of the bill we had actually canceled our own health insurance and the health insurance for our staff because the way the bill was drawn, the way the bill was drafted was that Members of Congress and their staff will be required to buy their insurance in one of the State exchanges. The problem is that the State exchanges are not actually set up until 2014. So as it stands right now, although a health insurance premium is still deducted every month, right now it's not clear, if indeed with the bill having been signed into law and that being one of the things that was going to take effect immediately, just what the practical effect of that is. And oh, by the way, and just a little ironic twist to that, members of the committee staff are exempt from that, members of leadership staff are exempt from that requirement that they buy insurance on the State exchanges, members and staff of the administration down at the White House are exempt from that requirement, as are the political appointees at the Federal agencies. So, again, it does seem somewhat ironic that the principal people involved in drafting this legislation, that would be committee staff, leadership staff, staff from the White House, and staff from the political appointee side of the Federal agencies, all of those groups, which were essentially the ones that wrote this legislation, exempted themselves from this requirement that they buy insurance in the State exchanges. Members of Congress and their personal staff are going to be required to do that. Again, this is something that is certainly fixable at some point. It is simply going to require the will to do so. You do hope that no one gets into trouble before that fix can occur. And of course it's very difficult to generate much sympathy with the American people, who feel that Congress probably shouldn't be covered by insurance when so many people are uninsured in the country anyway. And as a consequence, that now is a talking point that Members of Congress do have because we did say, ``If it's good enough for the American people, it's good enough for us as well.'' Another part of the bill that's not widely known, but it is significant, there has been a phenomenon in recent years of what are known as physician-owned hospitals. And there are some Members of Congress who do not like the concept of a physician-owned hospital because they feel it is an inherent conflict of interest. On the other hand, I will tell you that no one knows better how a hospital ought to run and what a well-run hospital looks like than the physician who uses the hospital every day of his or her working life. And I will also tell you there is nothing quite like the pride of ownership in wanting to deliver a first class product for your patients. Physicians who are in an ownership position of facilities, as long as there are some parameters that are followed, physicians who are owners of those facilities want their facilities to be the best in the area because that's the way doctors generally are. We are intensely competitive, and we always want to be first, and we always want to do things for our patients that are first class. But written into the bill is language that although it will allow the continued existence of physician-owned hospitals that were in existence on the day the bill was signed into law, it does not allow for the expansion of these facilities. So no new beds after March 20. But you have some situations, and I have one back in the district that I represent in north Texas, in fact I just went to the ribbon cutting on Friday for this beautiful new medical facility for the people in Flower Mound, Texas, and they are justifiably proud of this new facility that was inaugurated at the end of last week, but here is the problem. Although the hospital, because it was far enough along in the development process at the beginning of the year when all the bills were being written and passed, because it was far enough along, it is allowed to be licensed. But because of the very explicit language in the bill, it can be licensed for no more beds than those that were in operation on March 20, the day the bill was signed into law. Well, as the hospital was still just shy of completion on that date and had no operating beds, they are now stuck with a situation where they have a hospital which has a license and a Medicare number, but is licensed for zero beds because no beds were in operation on the day the bill was signed into law. Again, that is one of those problems that can be fixed. It is a technical correction. But it does require recognition by the Federal agency, Health and Human Services, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as tying up a good deal of staff time and a good deal of time on the staff of the medical company that operates the hospital to try to get everyone on the same page with this and get this problem ironed out. Because at least for right now they feel like they have been left with a fairly difficult position in that they are open and generating bills to pay, but they have no way of generating the income to pay those bills. The actuary for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services produced a report just after the health care bill was signed into law. We are all familiar with the arguments that were going on as the bill was being debated. The Congressional Budget Office said that the bill was going to cost just under $1 trillion over 10 years' time. In fact, there was the very often repeated line that the bill was going to save over $100 billion in the first 10 years of its existence because of savings that were going to occur from Medicare. Now, the Congressional Budget Office does work for the Congress of the United States. The actuary for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services actually works for the Federal agency. The actuary over at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services actually had a different read on the cost of this bill and on the likely savings generated from this bill. According to some news accounts, the health care report generated by the actuary at Health and Human Services was given to Secretary Sebelius more than a week before the health care vote. If that is true, then officials within the Obama administration, perhaps even the President, himself, continued to sell their plan as a cost reducer when they knew that costs would actually rise under the plan. According to the report: The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote, said an HHS source, which is actually the point of having a review like this, wouldn't you think? Well, that is exactly right. If you've got information that significantly impacts the cost or the savings of a piece of legislation like this, yes, it does seem reasonable to make that information available prior to the vote because it might influence whether or not the vote actually was in favor or opposed. Many people were concerned about the cost of this bill, but they were reassured by statements by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, by the President, and by the majority leader that the bill's costs were under control and, in fact, that the bill was delivering a cost savings. Imagine the surprise when the actuary produced a report that said, in actuality, the bill will cost significantly more than what the Congressional Budget Office outlined and that, in fact, the purported savings in the bill will not materialize. Now, we have had a lot of discussion on the effect of this bill on both large and small businesses. Small businesses are, obviously, concerned about the effects of the fines that they might be required to pay if they either do not provide health insurance or if too many of their employees seek subsidies in the State exchanges, because then the Federal Government will come in with a fine for those businesses. I think of entry-level-type positions that may be affected by the additional cost burden put in place by putting these fines on these relatively small employers. I have heard from a number of small employers in my district. Primarily, these are people who employ individuals at small restaurants and at fast-food franchises. Again, we are talking about entry-level-type jobs that may now be reduced in number because of the overall increased cost that is going to come about as a result of the fines that might be levied if too many of their employees seek subsidies under the State exchanges. Additionally, you have the effect on large businesses. Large businesses may, in fact, look at this through an entirely different lens: Okay. We are providing health benefits to our employees now. It costs a lot. The costs are going up every year. The Senate and House of Representatives just passed this large health care bill, but it did nothing to contain costs. Rather, it added additional requirements to what type of insurance I am to provide my employees. So, in looking on the balance sheet at the cost of insurance, it is many, many millions or, perhaps, billions of dollars for a large employer, and the cost of the fines is significantly, significantly less than that cost of insurance. You hope that employers will do the right thing and will say, Well, it's still important for my employees to have this employer-sponsored insurance; but in order to maintain whatever sort of competitive edge or margin a business is required to maintain, not every employer may feel that way. One company may say, Look, I can offload a lot of cost by just simply paying the fine for not having insurance for my employees, which is a significant shift in dollars and, in fairness, a significant savings to the employer's bottom line. An employer can offload the cost of relatively expensive employer-sponsored insurance and can now just pay the fine and let the company's employees compete for insurance policies in the State exchanges as those are set up. This is not going to happen overnight. A lot of these things won't be occurring until 2013 or 2014, but it is important for people to be aware of the types of changes that are pending out there. Perhaps there will be some room for modifying some of these things. Perhaps there will be a way to remove some of the more onerous things that are facing us in this bill. Perhaps there will even be a way to remove the bill, itself, and to get back to fixing those things that need to be fixed in the first place. You also had members of the business community--the large employers-- telling Members of Congress and leadership on my committee, Look, be careful because we are going to incur some significant costs from what you're doing in this bill. It may be necessary, and it may affect our bottom line. You did have companies restate projected earnings shortly after the bill was passed. The chairman of my committee was upset by this and said these companies are just doing this to embarrass the President at the time of the bill signing, so he sent out the word that all of these CEOs from these companies who had restated their earnings would get the opportunity to come to our committee and to tell us all about why they thought it was necessary to restate earnings on what should have been a national day of exultation when the President signed the health care bill. Instead, they were putting out press releases about the fact that they were going to have to restate earnings. It turns out that the restatement of earnings was because of requirements from the Securities and Exchange Commission, requirements which primarily said, if a company is going to have a significant change from what it had previously published as its earnings projections, it is obligated to be public with those and to tell people what the restated earnings are and why they are restated. So, in fact, the heads of these companies were just simply doing what they were required to do under Federal law with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a consequence, when that was explained to the committee, this hearing that was to occur on April 21 was postponed, and it was postponed indefinitely but not before the word sort of went out: Don't you dare cross this administration because, if you do, you may get to come to our Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on the Committee of Energy and Commerce and explain your actions to members of the committee and to the American people at large because, of course, these proceedings are transparent and are covered by C-SPAN. The health care costs are likely to go up significantly for large employers. Remember, there is a separate new tax on medical devices. Medtronic warned that new taxes on its products could result in layoffs of 1,000 workers. Their accounting also estimated there would be thousands of other layoffs and consumer cost increases in the ancillary businesses--perhaps in the hospitals, perhaps in the centers that provide those types of devices. Those taxes are going to be levied, but it's not likely that those taxes are going to come out of the CEOs' salaries. It is not likely they are going to come out of the lobbyists' salaries. It is more likely that they are going to come out of the costs to the consumers of those medical devices, and many of those costs will just simply have to be borne by the hospital or doctor's office. The way things work in the medical world is, if you have a contract with an insurance company to provide a type of service, you will not be able to go back and append, Oh, by the way, I've been asked to pay this 2.8 percent tax on every syringe I use and on every class 2 or class 3 medical device that I use in my office, surgery center, or hospital. That tax will likely, just simply, come out of the bottom line of that physician's office, of that hospital, or of that surgery center. There are a couple of things which I think are just worth talking about. There have been some statements, some affirmations, that have been made about the health care law that was signed in March of this year. Over and over again, we heard the assertion, If you like your plan, you can keep it. Well, I think, every day, as more and more is found out about what this bill actually means as it is implemented, that statement becomes less and less true. I rather suspect, by 2014, when the full implementation of this bill is occurring, that statement will be nothing more than a distant memory. Over and over again, we hear, To avoid additional costs and regulations, employers may consider exiting the employer health market and consider sending employees to the exchange, which is just as I was discussing a few minutes ago. Larger companies are looking at this and saying there are going to be significant costs with continuing to provide this insurance. When Congress passed the law, they did nothing to hold down the cost of health care, nothing to hold down the cost of insurance, and what they have done instead is complicate things, and we can now get out of it by paying a fine, which in the long run may be a great deal cheaper to pay that fine or tax or whatever you want to call it and let our employees find their insurance in the State exchanges. The other affirmation that's been made that again is being found to be less and less accurate is that this health care law will lower costs. And I think we have already talked about this and I think we see it over and over again that employers are already likely to pass new costs on to their employees. Health care coverage may go up in cost due to shifting of increased taxes and fees from the provider and insurance industries to the employers' employees. So that is, again, another one of the cost shifts that are likely to occur under this law and gives lie to the statement that this law will lower health care costs. In fact, the only place where this law lowers costs is by rationing care in Medicare, and as a consequence, people are going to be less satisfied with the cost containment measures that have been put forth. There is an unelected, unaccountable body, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which was created in this law, that is going to be convened to give recommendations to Congress as to how to hold down the costs of Medicare. And again these are likely to come in the form of pure cuts to Medicare. Congress will then have the responsibility to vote those packages of cuts up or down. We will not be able to modify, amend, or append those discussions. It will simply be an up-or-down vote. Historically, Congress, when given those opportunities, has declined to cut costs in those areas. Witness the physician fee schedule that comes up every--it used to be every year or two; now it comes up every few months. And Congress invariably stays those cuts that were to be enacted, and as a consequence, there is no holding down of health care costs. Nothing was intrinsically built into the bill itself or the law itself that would intrinsically work to lower costs other than cuts that will be forthcoming through this Independent Payment Advisory Board. And it's extremely problematic, number one, if any of those cuts will ever be, in fact, ratified by Congress, and if they are, I think people will find that that is something that they really didn't count on and really didn't plan on. And then the third area where the information that was put forward as the bill was being discussed, that this health care law would improve coverage, in fact, the increased taxes and regulation will lead to dropped coverage and benefits, and, again, we've already discussed that in some detail. But those are some of the things that were marketed as truths. And I don't remember how many times I heard, ``If you like what you have, you can keep it.'' But, again, I think that phrase will be found to be inoperative as the effects of this bill become more and more apparent. What's ahead? What's down the road? This was a very long bill, a very complicated bill. Is the work finished now that Congress has taken its final vote and sent it down to the White House for the signing ceremony? Is the work finished on this bill or are there still parts that have to be worked out? And the answer is the work is just beginning on the second chapter of this bill. And I would encourage people who have an interest in this, a Web site that I maintain that just simply deals with health care policy, healthcaucus.org. We had a forum today talking about what's ahead with some of the rulemaking and the proposed rules that are going to be coming forward out of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and although today we were talking about those rules as it affects the health information technology sector, the same concepts are important as we begin to get further and further down the road at the agency level with this health care bill. Over a year ago when we passed the stimulus bill, the information technology language was included in the stimulus bill. They spent the last year writing the policy and the rules and regulations that will cover the rollout of the health information technology funding as it becomes available, and what we found in January was the rule that was proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in many ways was so inflexible. All 23 benchmarks had to be met simultaneously, and it's just not the way the world works, and very few people were going to be able to do that. So for the bill to function as intended, that is, provide additional funding for hospitals and doctors' offices to get this newer technology up and running sooner, to sort of jump-start it, if you will, the net effect of the rulemaking that was released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in January was that, in fact, it was so draconian that very few hospitals and providers were actually going to be able to take advantage of it. So the intent of the bill that was passed as part of the stimulus bill to get this information technology up and running and reward early adopters and encourage people to come along and get these things set up in their offices, it's going to be so difficult to comply with the rule that many people will look at that and say it's just not worth the effort. You can keep the additional funding that you were offering, but I simply cannot go there with my practice or my business. Well, we are getting some--at least the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is willing to listen to what we have to say. Two hundred and forty-eight Members of this House, both Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services that said, please, let's try to work on this and get a more flexible and workable product out there into the hands of people. And the reason this is important is because this is one simple little rule and perhaps the first one to come out of--really not the health care bill, because it came out of the stimulus bill, but it's kind of a harbinger of things to come. There is a flood of regulations, I mean a flood of regulations and rulemaking that is going to happen over at the levels of the Federal agencies. Health and Human Services to be sure. Its subset, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which only just recently announced their designated head of that agency, has been without a political appointee at its head since Inauguration Day. So now we have a name that has been offered up by the administration, but that individual still has to go through the Senate confirmation process, and it's anyone's guess as to how soon Dr. Berwick will be seated as the new head, the new administrator, over at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In the meantime deadlines are coming literally at the speed of light over at the Federal agency. Let me just give you an example of that. Part of the bill, part of the law, that was signed by the President was that the Secretary of Health and Human Services was required to publish on its Web site by last Friday a list of all of the authorities provided to the Secretary under the overhaul of the law, and that is section 1552. And what the agency did, rather than go through the bill and compile that list, as they were required to do by law, what it appears that they have done is just simply reprinted the table of contents from the bill, H.R. 3590. They just simply reprinted the table of contents from the bill. Now, you can go to the Web site of Health and Human Services and look at this document for yourself. It's 18 pages of relatively small type of all of the requirements of the Secretary that are to be performed under this law. Although at this point it does appear to be simply a reprint of the table of contents, it does give you a sense of how daunting this task is ahead for the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Section 1003, ensuring that consumers get values for their dollars; section 1002, health insurance consumer information; section 1004, the effective dates; section 1102, reinsurance for early retirees; section 1103, immediate information that allows consumers to identify affordable coverage options; section 1105, the effective date of same. This thing goes on and on for 17 or 18 pages, and if anyone is interested, I do encourage you to go to the Web site for the Department of Health and Human Services and have a look at this for yourself. Don't just take my word for it. Now, an even larger and more daunting document is that prepared by the minority staff on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and this is available at the Committee on Energy and Commerce, up on the Web site. You do have to click on the minority side to see this, but it is the health law implementation timeline. This document, again, relatively small font, but it is 53 pages in length and goes through in painstaking detail what is going to happen sequentially as a consequence of passing this bill and signing it into law 6 weeks ago. They start out in 2009, the events that were to occur prior to the date of enactment, things that affect Medicaid, Medicare, Indian Health Service, and then concludes way down the road in 2020, January 1, 2020, the Medicaid start date for States to pay 10 percent of the cost for providing health care coverage through Medicaid to people made newly eligible under the bill. The Federal taxpayer pays the remainder of the cost. A lot of information is contained therein, and for people who have an interest in what the implementation of this bill is going to look like, people who have an interest of what the timeline looks like, people who have special concerns about, hey, I think there is something in that bill to help me, but I'm not sure when it kicks in or when it starts, I encourage you to go to the Web site and look at the bill. If you decide to print it out, do bear in mind there are over 50 pages that are going to churn out of your printer after you click the print selection on the file. But I think it is important that people become familiar with this. Again, we passed that bill 6 weeks ago. That does not end our participation, the agency's participation, the White House's participation, and certainly doesn't end the impact on literally every American alive today and those who will be born in the generation to come. They will all be affected by things that are going to be happening, particularly things that are going to be happening at the agency level, Health and Human Services, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The Office of Personnel Management, a very small Federal agency that most people have never heard about, but the Office of Personnel Management is essentially going to set up the public insurance, which is going to become the de facto public option, which many people thought was not even included in the Senate bill, except it turns out that it probably was. And it won't be called a public option, it will be called a nonprofit under the exchange set up at the Federal level. But, nevertheless, the intent and the effect is identical to what was being talked about last summer as the public option. Well, that is going to be administered through a small Federal agency, most people have never heard of it, the Office of Personnel Management. And the Internal Revenue Service, for crying out loud, is going to have a role to play in the implementation of this legislation. How are people going to be made to buy insurance? How is a mandate going to be enforced? Well, it will be up to the tender mercies of the Internal Revenue Service to figure that out. Now, it may not be as draconian as putting someone in jail for nonpayment of taxes, but it certainly could be garnishment of a refund check that someone thought that they were getting because they had overpaid their Federal income taxes during the year. But if they don't have proof of insurance, that may be something that the IRS will not be returning to them, but will be using to offset the cost of providing them insurance in the exchange, because we will have the individual mandate, unless the Supreme Court agrees with the 20 or 21 Attorneys General across the country and says that provision is unconstitutional. I think one of the big travesties in the passage of this bill, we do have a problem already in Medicare. We have a problem with funding Medicare. We do have unfunded liabilities. One of the big problems we have in Medicare is that patients arriving into Medicare, patients who are on Medicare and change location and try to find a physician who takes Medicare, are finding it increasingly difficult to get a physician to take on their care or their case. The problem has been historically over the years we have decided that one of the ways that we can save money in the Medicare system is to ratchet down reimbursement rates for providers. That has happened, and there is an automatic formula that requires that to happen every year. Right now, doctors are facing what is called a funding cliff of a little over 20 percent reduction in their reimbursement rates. That will kick in the end of May. We have done some stopgap things. We go right up to the edge and a little bit beyond, and then we do something at the last minute to keep them from going over the falls into the abyss. But right now the abyss does exist, and it is very real, and it is the end of May. There is another bill that would fix things for a little bit longer, to the end of October. But that is right before election day, and who wants their doctor to take a 20 percent reduction right before election day? These are things that we have historically punted, and we did when our side was in control as well. There was a real opportunity to fix this in this bill, and for whatever reason, for whatever reason, the Democratic leadership and indeed the American Medical Association decided to take a pass on that. There is a lot more that is contained in this bill. I will be back to the floor from time to time to talk about it over the coming year or two or three or four or five, however long it takes. Again, remember, the principle behind this is to kill this bill, root it out, rip it out, repeal the bill, and then get on to fixing the things we should have fixed in the first place.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, American business owners, large and small, have been telling the majority in this body for months that these health care bills were flawed and there is going to be a cost. There's going to be a cost in money--a lot of it--and a cost in jobs. AT&T had to restate earnings, lowering their earnings projections to $1 billion for the first quarter; John Deere & Co. $150 million, and it goes on and on. The National Federation of Independent Business have said that the complicated and restrictive tax credits included in the bill actually help no one. And paperwork and increases in Medicare costs will cost small businesses millions of dollars and, in fact, cost the country millions of jobs. Democrats claim that because of this new law, small businesses will no longer have to choose between hiring new employees and offering health insurance. Well, that's fantasy, and we all recognize that. Right now, small businesses across the country are making the decision that right now is not the time to hire. There is simply too much uncertainty that is created by this bill. It should be no surprise that this bill will cost American companies millions of dollars. It will cost Americans millions of jobs. But Democrats express shock and disbelief when businesses, large and small, say the bill will cost them millions. That is just simply an inconvenient truth.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I was going to agree with the gentleman that The Washington Post is not likely to be found in the Rush Limbaugh stack of stuff that he uses on his radio program everyday. But the freedom argument is one that is so important. Under the Medicaid provisions, as I understand and read the bill that was passed by this House, individuals who earn at or below 133 percent of the Federal poverty level, if they are not covered by any other insurance, since they are going to be required to have insurance, will, in fact, be required to have Medicaid. They will not be allowed to purchase insurance in the exchange, as other Americans will. They will simply be placed into the Medicaid program. That, too, is unprecedented. In any of the social entitlements that we have had in the past, never had we required someone by virtue of their income level to be within a certain Federal aid program. The implications of that are startling and may well go far beyond the boundaries of where they exist today with the passage of this law. It may be a much more startling recession or receding of freedom than we have seen in this country. Really, it would be unprecedented the loss of freedom that will accompany this bill. I will yield back to the gentleman because I know time is short, but that is an extremely important point that the gentleman just made.

Mr. BURGESS. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I must say, it's humbling for a simple country doctor as I to come down here and talk constitutional issues with the great constitutional scholars of our time.

Mr. BURGESS. Judge, you mentioned something that is so important. So many people are concerned about what they see happening. And I see by one of the posters that you have there that almost 45 percent of the United States population, or State attorneys general representing almost 45 percent of the population, now are suing over the constitutionality of these health care mandates. Remember, all of that has happened within a 4-week time span of us passing this very flawed piece of legislation. There's no way to know what the next 4 weeks will bring; but certainly as more and more people evaluate this, as more and more people dissect through that very flawed product that was passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve, and then we just, for whatever reason, picked up and agreed to it over here in the House the end of March. As more and more people look at that and see the drafting errors and see the inconsistencies that are contained within that legislation, I believe that that number will in fact become much higher by the time we get to Memorial Day. It will grow in numbers through the month of June. By the time we get to Independence Day, I've got to believe that that number, there is going to be a startling percentage of the United States population that is now against this bill. The problem with this bill is it never enjoyed popular support. People want to criticize Republicans for being obstructionists in this process but, honestly, they did not need a single Republican vote. They have a 40-majority vote on the Democratic side. This was all an internal argument on the Democratic side with getting this darned thing passed. As a consequence of not having popular support, they had to coerce, cajole, threaten, and malign Members on their own side in order to get the votes necessary to pass this. Now, right after it passed, Judge Carter and I were part of a press conference, and our attorney general, Greg Abbott, was one of the first attorneys general to step forward and say, Under the commerce clause, I don't think you can do this. He wrote a very powerful letter to our two Senators earlier in the year. And I just wanted to quote a couple of paragraphs from this thoughtful and lengthy letter that Greg Abbott wrote to our Senators. He writes, ``The individual mandate is constitutionally suspect because it does not fall within any of these categories. The mandate provision of H.R. 3590 attempts to regulate a nonactivity.'' Let me just stop for a second. ``Attempts to regulate a nonactivity.'' Are there any other nonactivities we do during the course of the day that we're willing to give over the regulation of those nonactivities to the Federal Government? I think the judge and the minority made the point. Of course there are not. Continuing to quote from the letter, ``The legislation actually imposes a financial penalty upon Americans who choose not to engage in interstate commerce--because they choose not to enter into a contract for health insurance.'' Quoting further, ``In other words, the proposed mandate would compel nearly every American to engage in commerce by forcing them to purchase insurance, and then use that coerced transaction as a basis for claiming authority under the commerce clause.'' Continuing to quote from Greg Abbott's letter, ``Congress' own independent, nonpartisan research agency, the Congressional Research Service, expressed doubts about the commerce clause's applicability in a report that was issued last July: `Despite the breadth of powers that have been exercised under the commerce clause, it is unclear whether the clause would provide a solid constitutional foundation for legislation containing a requirement to have health insurance. It may be argued that the mandate goes beyond the bounds of the commerce clause.' '' And then finally just to conclude from Greg Abbott's letter, ``If there are to be any limitations on the Federal Government''--let me just underscore that ``any'' one more time. ``If there are to be any limitations on the Federal Government, then `commerce' cannot be construed to cover every possible human activity under the sun-- including mere human existence. The act of doing absolutely nothing does not constitute an act of `commerce' that Congress is authorized to regulate.'' A very powerful letter by the attorney general, issued last January to our two Senators as the Senate was working through this health care bill. You know, I've been so concerned about this bill that we passed that I wake up in the middle of the night almost every night wondering what the future holds. And Judge, you're so right. In some ways, you kind of get this mental image of this omniscient central planner--albeit a benign and kind and eloquent central planner--moving data points around on a big spreadsheet somewhere. That's what the administration of health care has become in this country. Look at the job that we have turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, another small Federal agency called the Office of Personnel Management, and yes, for crying out loud, the IRS involved in regulating health care. These Federal agencies are now tasked with writing the rules and regulations out of this 2,700-page behemoth that, again, passed the Senate on Christmas Eve as a vehicle to allow the Senators to get out of town ahead of a snowstorm. No one read that darn thing. No one knew that what was in that darn thing. They just passed it so they could get out of town. They always intended to come back and make it better in conference or some other secret coordinated meeting with the White House where they would come up with an amalgamated product, but they didn't do it. They didn't follow through. They just picked up this Senate bill. A lot of people don't understand. The Senate bill actually has a House number. It's H.R. 3590. Now, why would a bill passed by the Senate dealing with health care have a House number? Well, because it began as a House bill. It began over here at the end of last summer as a bill to regulate housing. Charlie Rangel introduced it from the Committee on Ways and Means. It passed the House. I voted against it, for the record, when it was a housing bill. It went over to the Senate and lay fallow for a period of time until the majority leader of the other body decided that they needed a vehicle for this health care reform. They decided not to affix a Senate number to it. The House had passed a bill. They chose not to pick up our House bill that dealt with health care. They picked up our housing bill and amended it. And one of the first amendments was to take the language out of it. So now they have an empty bill, a number, and literally nothing else. They stuck in all of these little special deals that they had to strike. And the question wasn't, What is the best possible health care policy that we could come up with? In fact, if that question had been asked, maybe they would have used Governor Daniel's use of consumer- directed health plans in his State and how he's held down cost. But they didn't do that. They said, What will it take to get your vote? And whatever that answer was was the piece that was inserted in that bill. That's why you've got an amalgam of so many disconnected pieces in this 2,700-page monstrosity that is now H.R. 3590. Once that thing passed to get them out of town on Christmas Eve--and it was literally a Christmas tree that night when they passed it. But once they passed that bill, they all expected to come back to a conference committee or some other vehicle to amend and improve this bill. But when the Senator from Massachusetts was elected as a Republican, it threw a big kink in their plans. They decided the only way to get--and remember, the goal here was not to fix problems that are besetting the American people in our health care system. The goal was to get a bill to sign. The goal was a signing ceremony in the East Wing of the White House. The goal was for the President to sign a bill during his first term. It's almost like they didn't care what was in it. They didn't care what the health care policy was. It can be as bad as you can possibly imagine. The drafting errors can be rampant throughout the entire bill. But we got a signing ceremony, by golly, and no other President of the United States has ever had that achievement before. And now the rest of us are left with this travesty that's called a health care bill. Doctors, nurses, and hospitals and, indeed, even insurance companies, and of course regular American patients are going to have to deal with this for the next several generations. We have to rip this thing out root and branch. One of the ways to do that is for the attorneys general to proceed with their lawsuit and be successful in their lawsuit, which is why I so appreciate the gentleman coming to the floor of the House, making the American people aware of what is going on, why the attorneys general are pursuing this, and maybe, maybe we will get some relief for the American people, and then we can go back and do the things they were asking us to do in the first place--fix the problems, not destroy the system. I will yield back to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. BURGESS. If the gentleman will yield, several of the State senators have written to me, and, in fact, I believe I'm quoting Governor Perry correctly in that it would be a $23 billion cost over the 10 years. We do our budget for a 2-year time period, so for the next five budgets. Now, as the gentleman knows, Texas has not been hit quite as hard as some other States by the recession, but it's still been hit. In the next election, the people who are elected for the next State legislature, for the next State senate are going to have to deal with a budgetary environment that is going to be a great deal tighter than any since probably 2002 or 2003. As a consequence, Governor Perry has tasked all of the various interim Senate committees and House committees to look for 5 percent of savings across the board in the State budget. So they are serious about getting their budget into balance. Of course, by law, they have to do this, and they are looking for every State agency to cut its budget by 5 percent. That's significant when, at the same time, the Federal Government is now saying, because of the increase in Medicare enrollment that you're going to be required to take, the budgetary expansion brought about by this health care bill will be $23 billion over the next 10 years at a time when every other State agency is being constricted. So are we saying that federally mandated health insurance is more important than education of Texas children? Apparently we are. Are we saying that the federally mandated health care entitlement is now more important than State transportation issues or State security issues? Apparently we are. But I know this is a serious problem that is being faced by the State legislators and the State senators, and I have heard from several of them over these past several weeks and the weeks leading up to the passage of this bill. And I know, of course, the Governor has been quite outspoken about the fact that they are going to have to cut their budget at the State level, and I believe every State agency has been asked to come up with 5 percent, a nickel in savings out of every dollar that is spent at the State level. And it's actually not a bad idea for us. If we were to actually do a budget this year--which I'm not sure we are. For whatever reason, the Democratic leadership does not seem to think that's important, even though this country is in financial crisis, to squeeze 5 cents of savings out of every dollar. It's certainly something most Americans understand in running their own business. During times when I ran my medical practice, I would be faced with budgetary shortfalls, and I understood the concept of saving a penny or two or three or four or five out of every dollar you spent. And the Governor has wisely asked his State agencies to do that. We don't seem to be quite so knowledgeable here at the Federal level sometimes. I will yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, 14 months ago this House passed in the stimulus bill a measure that contained $20 billion for information technology relating to health care. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published a rule on January 13 of this year to determine qualifications of what determined a so-called meaningful user and who will be able to receive this funding. Mr. Speaker, this morning I spoke to the American Hospital Association. Our Nation's hospitals are almost unanimous in their dissatisfaction with the rules coming out of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. These rules are misguided, rigid, and in fact unattainable. In fact, a bipartisan group of 248 members of this House of Representatives agreed. Further, instead of incentivizing compliance, these rules punish noncompliance. This undoubtedly gives us an idea of what we can expect with the rulemaking and regulation that will occur at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Health and Human Services, Office of Personnel Management, and, for crying out loud, the Internal Revenue Service as they go through this same process addressing the new health care reform law. This will go on for years, and in fact decades, perhaps even generations. Doctors, hospitals, information technology manufacturers, medical device manufacturers, and all Americans need to stay alert and pay attention to what's coming out of the agencies here in Washington, D.C. Mr. Speaker, I urge all of us to stay involved and active. The stimulus and the reform bill will affect how health care is delivered for generations to come.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I thank the minority leader for allowing me to speak this afternoon during the leadership hour. It is always a significant event to be asked to speak during the leadership hour, and I certainly appreciate the confidence shown in me by the leadership. This afternoon I thought we'd talk a little bit more about the health care bill that was passed by this House last month because it is an important subject and one that continues to cause problems across the country. Almost anyplace you go, people want to ask you questions about, Why did you do this bill, and what does it mean for me, and what can I expect going forward? Mr. Speaker, I know I need to confine my comments to the Chair, and I will do so. But if I were to be able to speak to people directly, I would encourage them to look at a health care policy Web site that my office maintains. It's called the Congressional Health Care Caucus, healthcaucus.org. This Web site chronicles many of the debates and discussions that occurred over the last 14 or 15 months, encapsulating the genesis of this health care bill that was passed last month. And really with the passage of the bill, the health care issue does not go away. We simply move into the second part of what is going to be the health care discussion because after all, even as we speak, just down the hill at the Department of Health and Human Services, they are busily working and hiring people, people who are going to be writing rules, writing regulations, and really dictating the policies that will direct health care in this country not just through election day, not just through election day 2012, but literally through the lives of the next three generations of Americans. So this is an important concept, and people do need to pay attention. As the rules are written over at the Department of Health and Human Services, there will be periods open for comment on that public rulemaking process, and people need to visit Web sites such as healthcaucus.org or the Health and Human Services Web site to familiarize themselves with the rules as they are being written. If you get the mental picture of some central planner moving data points around on a big map or graph, that's probably the right mental image to have right now with where we are with this health care bill. Let's talk just a little bit about how we got to where we did with the passage of the bill. The recognition after the presidential election of 2008 that health care was going to be a big part of the legislative agenda for the President's first term. There was no question about that. And as we worked our way through the year last year, concepts such as cost and coverage started creeping into almost every story that was written about health care. Because it was after Senator Kennedy's committee over in the Senate, that Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, released a Congressional Budget Office score on the bill that they were working on which showed a cost significantly north of $1 trillion over 10 years and coverage numbers of about 13 million additional people being covered, that people said, Oh, my goodness, this costs a lot, and we don't get nearly the coverage that we thought we did. So almost every other health care proposal that came forward after that was subject to that same Congressional Budget Office scrutiny and scoring. And as a consequence, it kind of got an idea of the parameters that were being set. Those parameters were that the bill had to be scored and costing under $1 trillion, and the bill had to score as covering an additional 30 million people. Those were the points on the graph that had to be satisfied at the end of the discussion. So if it were a question of covering everyone who makes under 150 percent of the Federal poverty level under Medicaid, as was the directive from the bill that was passed in the House, if that made the final number too high, then you do what they did in the Senate and say, Well, we're only going to cover people up to 133 percent of the Federal poverty level with Medicaid, and that money that's not spent on covering people with Medicaid at higher income levels, we'll use that for something else. And there was all sorts of jockeying for position that occurred over the months during the debate last year. We passed a bill out of committee on July 31 last summer. The bill was actually supposed to be passed out of committee much earlier and was supposed to come to the floor, and we were supposed to pass the bill on the floor of the House before we went home for the August recess. But because the Speaker of the House decided to take up the climate change bill in June and force the passage of that bill right at the end of June before we went home for the Fourth of July recess, thereby causing many Members to feel some anxiety from their constituents back home over what they had done with this large energy tax that the House just passed, many Members of Congress were reluctant to move with rapidity on the health care bill because they were feeling the push-back from the energy bill that they wondered if maybe we didn't pass this a little too quickly and maybe we should have read the bill and studied and understood what the bill did before we voted on it. So the month of July was kind of a give-and-take. Really most of the discussion was on the Democratic side of the aisle. It did not involve Republicans. But it was moderate Democrats who were concerned about the passage of this bill too quickly. Ultimately, the bill did pass in committee. All of the moderate Democrats on my committee voted in favor of it and ultimately it passed, but it didn't pass until the House had already adjourned for the August recess on July 31. As a consequence, the bill did not come back to the House floor until after the August recess. Most of us know what happened during August. There was a significant amount of anxiety exhibited across the country where people would show up at their Member of Congress or their Senator's town hall meeting during the summer and voice either their support or their rejection of the concept of the health care bills that were being discussed in the House and the Senate, and the feeling was almost uniformly negative against what was being passed at least on the floor of the House. The situation that occurred after the end of the summer town halls, I thought we would come back and, perhaps with a renewed spirit of bipartisanship, realize that we could not do something this large when it was against the will of the American people. I thought we would come back and hit the pause button or the reset button or maybe even the rewind button and go back to committee and rework this bill; but that was not to be. The President of course came and spoke to a joint session of Congress here in the middle of September, speaking right from the podium right there behind me, and talked about how they were going to go forward with their vision of health care reform, and it didn't really matter what people said over August. Americans must have been in some sort of fugue state because they didn't really mean what they were saying when they said they did not like this bill that we, Congress, were going to give them, we, the President, was going to give them. So as a consequence, in December, after the House passed--the House did come back and pass a bill early in November. The bill had grown from 1,000 pages at the end of July to 2,000 pages by early November. It was interesting that the bill had grown in the number of pages because all of the amendments that were made in order during the committee process were all mysteriously stripped from the bill before it came back to the floor; but the bill was much larger. The bill came to the floor and passed by a very narrow vote. And again, the polling done the day of that vote showed that only about one-quarter of Americans actually supported the work we were doing, about another 30 to 40 percent felt that we were doing the wrong thing, and another small but significant percentage said you shouldn't even be doing this right now because your focus should be on creating jobs in the American economy. But we passed the bill. What happened next was really something the likes of which I have never seen before in my short tenure here in Congress. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Senate wrote and produced and passed a health care bill. Now, both Senate committees, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, had worked on different bills through the course of the year; but then they worked on an entirely different bill between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and the ultimate passage of the bill. The bill, interestingly enough, had a House number, it was H.R. 3590. It had a House number because it was a bill the House of Representatives had passed earlier in the year. It wasn't a health care bill when we passed it, but we did pass it on the floor of this House. It was a housing bill, not a health care bill; but that bill was picked up over in the Senate, amended so that all of the housing language was removed and the health care language was inserted. But it wasn't a question of let's get the best possible health care policy and put it in this bill. It was more a question of what will it take to get your vote and we will put that in the bill. That process was so unseemly. The last part of December people were engaged even though they were concerned about the goings-on in their lives for the holidays and the end of the year activities, but they were also concerned about the appearance of votes being bought and sold and people actually coming to a conclusion to vote ``yes'' for the bill because they had gotten some special deal contained within the bill. That process was so flawed that even though the Senate achieved that 60-vote margin on Christmas Eve, the ill will exhibited by the American people continued for weeks after that. Now the bill did pass on Christmas Eve; it was passed early in the day to get Senators out of town ahead of a snowstorm. As a consequence, the bill itself was not ready for prime time. No one, I really believe this, no one in the Senate ever thought that would be the final product. This was, again, simply a placeholder to get the Senators out of town before Christmas and be able to say that they had passed a health care reform bill before the end of the year. Everyone thought we will come back to a conference committee or we will come back to some type of arrangement where we meld the House and Senate products together; maybe it won't be a formal conference committee because we really don't want to include Republicans, but we will still work on trying to get some of the rough edges of this thing knocked off and include some of the House-passed principles as well. Unfortunately for America that never happened because what did happen is the second Tuesday of November an election held way, way up in the State of Massachusetts, where a Republican was elected Senator in a seat that had been held by a Democrat for literally generations, and that happened because the appearance of passing this bill before Christmas Eve appeared so awkward, appeared so unseemly that it looked as if people were buying votes for the bill. The American people pushed back, and even in Massachusetts that was too much to take and Senator Scott Brown was elected. As a consequence of that, it was apparently felt by leadership in the House and the Senate that a conference committee was not a good idea and there would not be the support for this bill on either the floor of the House or the Senate if they were to bring it back requiring the 60- vote margin in the Senate and of course a simple majority in the House. The Speaker of the House at one point was asked could they just pick up and pass the Senate bill in the House and get it down to the President for his signature. The statement then, right after the Massachusetts election, was that the Speaker did not believe she had 100 votes on the floor of the House for the Senate bill. It was significant that the Senate bill had a House bill number. It was significant that the Senate bill, although now it was a health care bill, had passed the House previously because under the rules of Congress if that bill would come back to the House of Representatives with the question asked, Will the House now agree to the amendment made in the Senate on H.R. 3590, and if that answer was ``yes'' by a simple majority, then the bill is passed and it goes down to the White House for signature. Well, ultimately that is exactly what happened. During the remainder of the month of January, all of the month of February, and much of the month of March, the same process occurred over here where Members of Congress on the Democratic side of the aisle were encouraged, cajoled, threatened--whatever--to change their vote or to change their mind and vote for this health care bill. Well, it passed. It passed and was signed into law. It required a significantly sized fix-it bill to be passed within a week because the bill was so flawed it really could not stand on its own. Indeed, there have been multiple things that have been brought to people's attention since that time about problems that existed with the bill, and I rather suspect we are going to continue to find those problems occurring over and over and over again in the next several months. My opinion: this bill should be repealed, and we should actually go back and do what the American people really were asking us to do when they showed up at those town halls in large numbers in the month of August. They did not want us to turn the entire system on its head in order to help the people that legitimately needed to be helped. Yes, we needed to provide some assistance to people with preexisting conditions. Yes, some tort reform would be nice. Is there anything you can do about the cost of health care in this country? But don't take away what is working for 60 to 65 to 68 percent of the American people. That was a message delivered loud and clear in the month of August and has been delivered loud and clear in every poll that has been taken on the subject since that time. The system needed reform; the system did not need to be changed from top to bottom. And yet over the next 8 years that is exactly what we will see, a system that none of us will recognize by the end of 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018--pick your point on the timeline. Currently in my State, the State of Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott is pursuing a court case--and joined with several other States to do so--to argue before the Supreme Court that the bill we passed is unconstitutional. Proponents of the bill, people who think the bill was proper and is constitutional, argue that under the commerce clause of the Constitution this bill will be held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court even though the concept of universal health care is discussed nowhere in the Constitution. The problem with the commerce clause is that we are now, for the first time, requiring a citizen of the United States, merely as a condition of being a citizen of the United States, to buy a good, service or product that they may not want, need, or feel they are able to afford. This is the first time the commerce clause has been invoked to protect the commerce that was essentially coerced by the Congress. So the attorneys general of several States are now pushing that case and are going to argue that before the Supreme Court. One of the shortcomings of the Senate bill, one of the things that wasn't properly thought through, was the provision of what is called a severability clause in the bill. We actually had a severability clause in the House bill that was passed in November, but no such severability clause was included in the Senate bill. Perhaps in their haste, just to get something done before that snowstorm on Christmas Eve, they simply forgot about it. What a severability clause would do is, Congress recognizes that from time to time we will overstep our bounds in the eyes of the courts and the court might strike down a provision in the bill, but the severability clause allows the rest of the bill to stay and be enforced. Without a severability clause, this is now up to the discretion of the court. The court could, if it agreed that the commerce clause could not be invoked to pass this bill, strike down the entire bill, or they might use the discretion of the court to only strike down a portion of the bill that they deemed unconstitutional. That drama has yet to play out, and likely it will during the summer months or fall and we will have to see what occurs with that. But I do support Attorney General Greg Abbott in Texas and many of the other attorneys general across the country who are actively pursuing this course against this bill. What would repeal look like? Could Congress in fact repeal a bill that had passed and been signed into law by the President? The answer is yes, and there is actually precedent for that. In 1989, some people will remember the name Dan Rostenkowski. He was the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee--a Democratic chairman from the State of Illinois, coincidentally--and passed the Catastrophic Health Care Act. This was the Catastrophic Health Care Act for senior citizens. The bill was actually passed in a bipartisan fashion in both the House and the Senate. It was thought that people wanted this, but in fact it's one of the problems that you have when you get out in front of the American people and give them things that they don't necessarily want that actually cost them money. What happened with the Catastrophic Care Act was the pushback was so intense and so immediate that when Congress came back into session, they quickly decided that perhaps the world could live without the Catastrophic Care Act and they repealed it. Now, this bill was passed in the final months of the Ronald Reagan administration; it was signed by President Reagan. The repeal was signed by President George Herbert Walker Bush. But the concept of repeal of a bad health care entitlement law is one that certainly has been exercised within the lifetimes of many of us who are serving in this body today. Since the passage of this bill in March, support across the country has diminished, opposition has increased; and, again, that is likely to continue as the bill will become more and more unpopular as people dig into it and look into the provisions of the bill. One of the other things that is working against the concept of this bill was the absolutely poisonous process that led to its passage and its signing. Back in May or June of last year, six stakeholders met down at the White House to talk about health care reform. Now, there is nothing wrong with that. That is perfectly proper that perhaps the people who represent the doctors, the hospitals, the drug manufacturers, the device manufacturers, America's health insurance, and representatives from the Service Employees International Union met down at the White House to talk about health care reform. In a very well publicized photo op that occurred after those meetings, the President came out before the cameras and said that he had agreement from the six parties that were in those meetings that they would save $2 trillion over the next 10 years in the delivery of health care. Well, I simply asked for the notes of those meetings, the agreements that were agreed to in those meetings so that we, as the legislative body, could evaluate that as we were working on the legislation, the actual law or the bill that would become law here in the House of Representatives. I sent letters to the White House in September. I was rebuffed without any sort of information. Ultimately, in December, I filed what's called a resolution of inquiry with my committee, the Committee on Energy and Commerce. This resolution of inquiry was brought up before the committee on, interestingly, the same day that the President delivered the State of the Union Address in January. The resolution of inquiry was not going to pass because, obviously, on a party line, the Democrats are in charge, and they can strike down almost anything they want. Yet the chairman of my committee consented to allow me to request of the White House six of the 11 things that we had asked for in the resolution. He said some of the information is right and proper and should go to the gentleman from Texas should he request that information. So we re-requested the information. Essentially, all we have received from the White House are copies of press releases and copies of Web pages that were reproduced for us, but there has been nothing regarding anything that was written down, nothing regarding any arrangements that were made or any deals that were made; there has been nothing regarding any email exchanges that occurred resulting in the savings of $2 trillion. Now, I will admit to sometimes being relatively naive, but it seems to me that, if you're going to agree to a $2 trillion deal, someone, at least on the back of an envelope somewhere, is going to kind of keep a tally of what those numbers are--someone is going to write something down--but the White House would have us believe that, no, there has been nothing written down. Is it significant? I submit that it is. There were several points that came up during the debate of the bill, both in the House and in the Senate, where an amendment would be offered and where the discussion then would suddenly end with, Well, that wasn't part of the deal. In December, Senator McCain had an amendment over in the Senate about drug reimportation. I don't agree with drug reimportation. I actually think that is a bad idea, but I do think Senator McCain should have had the ability to submit his amendment, to debate his amendment and to have it pass or fail on the merits of the amendment. In no way should he have not been allowed to offer that amendment because of a secret deal that was made down at the White House with the drug manufacturers, but that is exactly what happened. He was stopped from offering the amendment by his committee chairman, who said, That's not part of the deal that we have. Another area is where the hospitals were going to be taxed as part of the pay-for within the bill. They said, Wait. That wasn't part of our deal. Well, the deal may be fine, the deal may be proper, but we as legislators should at least be privy to those decisions that were made down at the White House. We should at least have the information about what was agreed to and on whose behalf those agreements were made. We never got that information, and to this day, I still await some response from the White House. Significantly, during the Presidential campaign, when he was a candidate, President Obama said, and I'm quoting here: ``And that's what I'll do, bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors but bringing all parties together and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process.'' I couldn't agree more. Yes, you've got to enlist the American people when you're doing something this broad and this sweeping, but they never bothered to do that. Yes, you do need to open those meetings up. C-SPAN can sometimes be a trifle boring when you watch us for too long at a time, but it's important. It's a window to the world that people have on the legislative process. So, when the President made that pledge no less than eight times during the campaign, it struck a chord with people; it resonated with people. If my Representative is involved in those meetings, I'd like to see where he stands. The President would make this point: Does the Representative stand on the side of the drug companies or does he stand on the side of the people? Does the Senator stand with the insurance companies or does he stand with America's patients? They are important concepts to know. Unfortunately, we have not yet had the ability to know what those deals were. I've got to believe that this is such an important point that people got this when it was offered to them: Look, we'll make it an open and transparent process. You can watch it on television if you don't get too bored, but it will be your choice. You can watch it on television. I think people picked up on that notion. Honestly, this is one of those where, yeah, people can say things during a campaign that they actually can't deliver on after the election is over. That happens all the time. I understand that. But this is a ``read my lips'' moment. This is a ``read my lips: no new taxes'' moment. The President promised that all of these negotiations would be up for purview, covered on C-SPAN, that you would be able to watch, and that you would be able to make the decision as to whether this process was a good one or a bad one. Again, unfortunately, to date, that has not happened. I do hope that the White House does at some point get us that information. Now, one of the things that I heard over and over again during the summer, during the town halls, is that, really and truly, if you're going to hold prices down in the delivery of medical care, you're going to have to do something in the realm of liability reform. I understand this because, in my home State of Texas, we, in fact, passed significant liability reform back in 2003, and that has made Texas now one of the more favored places to practice medicine. There have been doctors who have fled other parts of the country and who have moved to Texas. In fact, one of the bigger criticisms in Texas right now is that it takes the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners too long to process an application because their backlog is so significant, but it is a far cry from where we were in 2002 when we were, in fact, labeled as one of the States in crisis in the medical liability crisis. Now, during the 8 years since that bill passed as a State bill, Texas has licensed over 15,000 new physicians. It is important. Texas is a big State, and there are lots of open areas in Texas. Since the passage of that law back in 2003, 125 Texas counties have added at least one high-risk specialist. That's like half of the counties in Texas, and there are 224 counties in Texas. That's over half of the counties in Texas that have added one high-risk specialist. My home county of Denton County is one of those. Tarrant County, another county I represent, also is one of those. We heard stories in 2002-2003, all over the State, of people who were closing their medical practices--radiologists, perinatologists, doctors who take care of the sickest of the sick pregnant moms with the sickest of the sick newborn babies. They simply could not get liability insurance because their risk was too great. Their risk was too high. They were leaving the State. The State paid for their education in State-supported schools, the State supported them during their residency training, but the State could not offer them a place to practice because they could not afford liability premiums in the State. So, since that bill has passed, 125 Texas counties have added at least one high-risk specialist. Again, Texas is a big State. It's not hard to believe, especially in some of the less populated areas out in West Texas, that a person might live many, many miles from a physician, but since the passage of this law, now 99.7 percent of Texans live within 20 miles of a physician. That is a staggering success story with the number of doctors who have moved into the State and who are practicing. Yes, some are practicing in urban areas, but many are practicing in rural areas, in rural areas that previously did not have emergency room doctors and that previously did not have obstetricians but that now do, and that is critical for access to care in the State of Texas. We've talked about this health care bill, and we've talked about access to insurance, but really, when you need health care, you're not so much interested in an insurance policy; you're more interested in do you have a doctor there to see you when you're sick. There are 82 Texas counties that have seen a net gain in emergency medicine physicians, including 43 medically underserved counties and 29 counties that are partially medically underserved. There are 33 rural counties that have seen a net gain in ER doctors, including 26 counties that previously had none. There are 26 counties that previously did not have emergency room doctors which now have emergency room doctors in the State of Texas. Such has been the effect of medical liability reform. In my field of obstetrics, Texas saw a net loss of 14 obstetricians in the 2 years preceding reform. And you might say, Texas is a big State, and 14 is not that many; so, hey, you can deal with that sort of loss. But since the State passed the law, they've experienced a net gain of 192 obstetricians, and 26 rural counties have added OB docs, including in 10 counties that previously had none. I mean that's a big deal. When you have a family member in labor who is looking for a place to have her baby, it is important to have the care there when you need it. There are 12 rural Texas counties that have added an orthopedic surgeon, including in seven counties that previously had none. Again, that's a significant fact, particularly in areas of rural Texas where the drive might be quite long if you're dealing with an injured loved one and are trying to find orthopedic care. Charity care rendered by Texas hospitals has increased by 24 percent, resulting in almost $600 million in free care to Texas patients since the passage of that liability reform law in 2003. Texas physicians have saved almost $600 million in liability insurance premiums, which is a significant savings that has allowed more doctors to stay in practice. The Texas law has been so successful that I introduced legislation into Congress that was modeled after the Texas law. It is H.R. 1468, the Medical Justice Act. I offered this in the form of an amendment when we marked up our health care bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee last summer. It was rejected first on a technicality and then along a party-line vote. If we're going to ask our doctors to be our partners in this brave new world of health care we've constructed, the very least we can do is give them some stability in their practices. That stability would be in the form of some relief from the problems that they face with medical liability. Another problem that is faced by our Nation's doctors, which is one of the reasons we are very likely to face a significant doctor shortage--and again, in spite of the fact that we passed a health insurance bill, if we do not have doctors to see those patients, then it is not going to do much good that we passed that bill. When passing this sweeping health care reform bill, it would have been the ideal time to talk about things like physician workforce and how we train doctors and how we pay for that training, but we chose to omit most of that thinking from this bill. Another problem that we face on almost a recurring basis here in Congress is the fact that Medicare, by formula, ratchets down reimbursements to physicians year over year over year. In fact, this year, the number was to go down over 20 percent. Last week, we passed a very small bill that extended that deadline to the end of May, so doctors got a little bit of a reprieve, and patients got a little bit of continued access to their physicians. I will have to tell you, as a practicing physician, that is a significant event when a major payor like Medicare comes in and says, We're going to be paying you 20 percent less next month for the work that you do for us. It is a difficult problem to fix, it is an expensive problem to fix, but it is one that just simply must be done, not just because it's the right thing for doctors, but because, if we do not have doctors who commit to staying in practice and taking care of our Medicare patients, then patient access is going to be a critical problem. We will all stand up here and talk about how we want our patients, our Medicare patients, to have only the best and quality care, but it's very, very difficult to guarantee them quality care when we can't even assure them of a doctor at the other end of the phone line when they need one. Now, in the health care bill that we passed, primary care physicians do get a little bit of a boost in payments for Medicaid, but that is short- lived, and there are still going to be significant disparities between payments of primary care and specialty care. Medicare and Medicaid rates for primary care services will increase for primary care but only for a very short period of time. We are very famous in Congress for doing this. We'll say, We're going to take care of you. We're going to actually pay you what you think you're worth for the next 18, 20 or 24 months. These things are called funding cliffs. Sure enough, there is a big funding cliff in the health care bill that was passed, and doctors will face falling off that funding cliff now in a little less than 2 years' time. Fixing the Medicare payment formula, fixing the so-called SGR formula, is going to be a tough lift. The House did pass a bill last fall. Unfortunately, it was a bill that had already been rejected by the Senate, so I'm not quite sure why we brought it up and voted on it on the House side, but we did. It was a bad bill. It didn't really fix the problem, but it was the only opportunity to pass a Medicare fix, or an SGR fix, or a doc fix, during the calendar year 2009. So I voted in favor of it even though the bill, itself, was a dreadful product. Surely, we can do a much better job. Now, I have an SGR reform bill, H.R. 3693, Ensuring the Future Physician Workforce Act, and I would encourage Members of Congress to look at that. This is going to come back again and again and again. We passed a short-term extension. We now have solidified physician payment through the month of May, but beginning June 1 or 6 or some date early in June, that 20 percent funding cliff will still be out there, and we are going to have to take care of that. I rather suspect, this being an election year, we're not going to do anything large to fix this problem. We should, but I do rather suspect that we will do something that punts it down the road until after the next election. It's a shame. It's a shame, because when we're doing something as big as this fundamental health care reform that we did, it seems like this is exactly the type of problem that you would like to take care of. Again, what do we hear from our folks when we go home and talk to them about health care? Well, I'll tell you what, Congressman. One of my biggest problems is trying to find a doctor who will take Medicare. If seniors change locations, if they move from one town to the next, if they leave their towns when they retire and move to be closer to their grandchildren, they are very likely going to experience difficulty and delays in finding doctors who are taking new Medicare patients. Because of what we in the United States Congress do to physicians year in and year out, it has become so cumbersome to find physicians who will take new Medicare patients that it has become a critical access issue for our seniors. Let me just talk briefly, because it is important, one of the mistakes that was made in the bill, one of the problems that emerged after the bill was passed and signed, and most people in the country are not going to shed too many tears about this, but Members of Congress actually lost their health insurance after the passage of this bill. Or actually the way it's written, Members of Congress will now be required to buy their insurance through the insurance exchange just as every other American will be required to do beginning in the year 2014. The exchanges are not going to be set up until 2014, but Members of Congress, as of the signing of this bill, are required to buy their health insurance through the exchange. So we are now asked to buy insurance in a nonexistent exchange, and that is going to make it difficult. Our staff do fall into the same category; so I am getting many questions from staff saying, Well, they're still taking a health insurance premium out of my paycheck, but am I really insured or not? And there is some confusion and it needs to be cleaned up. Again, most Americans are not going to shed too many tears about Members of Congress being confused about their health insurance coverage. They're going to say, Welcome to my world. But interestingly enough, the people who wrote this bill, and that would be committee staff, administration, staff from the White House, leadership staff, the people who actually wrote this bill--and make no mistake about it. Certainly no Republican was involved in writing this bill. Most Democrats were not involved in writing this bill. In fact, I will submit to you House Democrats especially were excluded from this process. So who writes a bill like this? Well, it is tenured and long- term committee staff, leadership staff. Yes, the White House was out here big time while the bill was being hammered out during the latter part of December and the first part of January. All of those people who actually wrote the bill are exempt from that. So there is one little simple fix-it bill, H.R. 4951, that would also require committee staff, leadership staff, members of the administration, political appointees at the Federal agencies to also be covered under the exchange the same as Members of Congress. Now, again, the problem is that we're required to be covered under the exchange. The exchange is not up and running until 2014; so it remains to be seen how that will work out. But the irony of Congress voting itself out of health insurance because they didn't understand the bill that came over from the Senate on Christmas Eve is just simply too important to ignore. One of the last things that I do want to cover this afternoon is yesterday my committee, the Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, was going to have a hearing on America's business that had released information that they were going to change their earnings projections because of issues that occurred after the passage of the health care bill. So you see here, and this actually should be a minus sign in front of all these numbers, a company like AT&T was going to have to write down a billion dollars in charges because of changes to their accounting that was now going to occur as a result of our passing the health care bill. Well, when these companies released the press releases that they were restating projected earnings because of what the health care bill had done, John Deere was going to have write down $150 million; 3M Company had to write down, again, that should be a negative $90 million. When that occurred, the chairman of my committee, Mr. Waxman, said, This is not right. These companies are simply doing this to embarrass the Congress and embarrass the President. They need to come before our committee and be held accountable for why they would release this type of information on a day that was otherwise a day of great national joy when the President was signing the health care bill. Well, the companies responded that they were simply performing under requirements like the Securities and Exchange Commission. Their earnings were going to be affected by the passage of this bill, and they were required to restate earnings based upon that information. And maybe they didn't need to release it on that particular day, but certainly that information needed to be made public. And, indeed, many of these same companies had contacted members of the committee staff and let them know this in advance of actually releasing the information. Now, interestingly enough, when it came to light that the heads of these companies stated, Well, we're just simply doing what you told us we had to do under the rules provided us by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the committee decided to postpone indefinitely that hearing. But it was troubling. It was troubling because here we have a rather significant subcommittee in the United States House of Representatives, a rather significant subcommittee that can issue subpoenas if it wants. It does take testimony under oath. This is generally not an exercise that a company CEO will look forward with great relish to come before our committee and have to answer questions. And some of us saw that as actually an intimidation tactic: Don't you dare complain about what we have done with this health care bill or we can make your life miserable if you do. Health care costs are going to take a toll on United States profits, corporate profits, according to estimates by a benefits consulting firm, Towers Watson. Medtronic, a medical device maker, warned that new taxes on its products could result in about a thousand workers being laid off. Their accounting also estimated that there will be thousands of layoffs and consumer-related costs. If you came out against this bill, if you dared to speak out against this bill, the message was loud and clear to corporate America: We're going to call you in. We're going to question you under oath. We are likely to embarrass you in a public forum. So don't you dare complain. But one of the things that I have heard over and over from both large and small business back home is this health care bill is going to have a profound, a significant, and a deleterious effect on just simply conducting a business. More than one small business in my community has come back to me and said, As I run the numbers, as I look at what happens to me through the year 2014 and the requirements that will be upon me, it is very likely that my bottom line will go negative and stay negative as far as I can see unless I don't expand or I don't hire. In fact, the succinct message that the United States Congress has sent to small and medium-sized business across the country in every State of the Union is don't hire right now. Don't hire right now until you know what is going to be required of you, Mr. or Mrs. Employer. We are likely going to change the way your business works, again, in a very profound and significant way. Now, I also sit on the Joint Economic Committee, which is a House and Senate committee. The first Friday morning of every month, whether we're voting on the floor of the House or not, we need to be in town to receive a report from the Department of Labor. And that report is the employment report for the preceding month. It comes out the first Friday of every month. Usually those numbers are released at about 8:30 in the morning, and our committee convenes at 9:00 or 9:30 to hear from the head of the Department of Labor as to what the employment statistics look like. I joined that committee in January of 2009. We have never had, never had in the 15 months that I have been in the committee, a good news report. In fact, one of my constituents back home said I'm bringing such bad luck to the committee, maybe I ought to consider some other assignment. But the fact remains if we keep doing things in Congress, in the House and the Senate, in the legislative branch, if we keep doing things that send a loud and clear message to small business, medium-sized business don't hire right now, we're not going to see the type of employment recovery that we all feel that the economy is capable of. Look, whether you believe in bailouts or stimulus or not, everyone knows that the United States economy is too vibrant not to recover. There is almost no way that the United States Congress or the White House, regardless of who occupies these chairs or who is down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue--there is almost no way that the Congress or the White House can keep the American economy indefinitely suppressed. But we can really lengthen the pain, and that is one of the things that we're doing right now. The uncertainty we have created with health care costs, the uncertainty we have created with energy costs, the uncertainty that we are creating with this financial services bill that is now being argued over in the Senate, small business, medium-sized business is looking at what is going on in Washington right now and saying, I may need help but I don't think so. I will either pay a little overtime or just rachet back some of the expansion I was doing. Yet every person who runs for office, and you can take this to the bank, is at some point going to stand up on a stump or a chair and give a speech to a chamber or rotary club back home and say small business is the engine that drives our economy. And that's exactly true. If I have one small business at home that might be looking at picking up one or two additional people but says, Right now is not the time and I am not going to do that, okay, that's only one or two jobs. Could that have a profound effect on the larger economy? You bet. You bet. When you take that one or two job growth that's not occurring in that business and extrapolate it across the broader economy for businesses of that size, that has a significant, a significant deleterious effect on the growth of jobs and the economy. And yet it is the unemployment numbers that are really the depressive part of what is happening in the economy right now. Yes, Wall Street might look a great deal better than it did last year. Maybe some other numbers, the gross domestic output, may look better than it did last year. But the numbers of unemployed, the numbers of long-term unemployed, the numbers of young people unemployed, the numbers of minorities unemployed, those numbers are what people are having to deal with every day. That's either them or their friends and neighbors, and that's what they see every day. And until we address the problems with employment, no one in this country is going to believe that we really have the appropriate handle on the economy or the economic direction of the country. Again, I believe the economy will recover in spite of the United States Congress, in spite of the White House. It almost always does. But we can certainly make that recovery much more difficult and much more painful and perhaps suppress it longer than it would be otherwise suppressed by our activities here in the House of Representatives. Suffice it to say, as we wrap this up, I believe this health care bill to be a fiscal disaster. It is going to increase the deficit. I don't care what anyone else says. It's $582 billion over the first 10 years, and likely as not, over the second 10 years those numbers even become more startling. You look at how the bill is constructed. You've got 10 years of taxes paying for 6 years of benefits. Is it any great surprise that the next decade, which is 10 years of taxes and 10 years of benefits, that that deficit is not likely to increase? We also have a problem that the bill double counts Social Security payroll tax revenues, a budgetary gimmick that made the bottom-line number look great. Again, remember the parameters that we were working with? You have got to have the top number less than $1 trillion. You have got to have the coverage number over 30 million people. Move those points around on a chessboard however you want, but those are the parameters with which you have to work. So if you double count income from Social Security payroll taxes, if you double count the money from the Medicare cuts, of course your bottom line is going to look better. We also did something in this bill that's called the CLASS Act. Most people are not aware of it. It's thought of as a long-term care supplemental insurance, but the reality is it's a Three-card Monte. For a $50-a-month cost, a beneficiary may receive $50 a day in additional long-term care costs for a long-term care hospital. Well, most of us know that $50 a day is not going to cover your stay in a long-term care hospital. Most of us know that the numbers on that equation really don't work out. But what happens is since you have so many people just joining the program at the front end, during the first years you actually run a surplus, but then you get to the outyears and you run a significant deficit. The CLASS Act was literally a financial manipulation that was introduced at the last minute, not to provide people long-term care insurance. If we really wanted to do something with long-term care insurance, we'd make it tax deductible. We'd make it a tax credit. We would make it so you could pay for it out of your health savings account. If we really wanted to help people get long-term care insurance, there are ways to do it. The CLASS Act wasn't it. What the CLASS Act was, was some fancy bookkeeping, some manipulation of the books. Collect a lot of premiums up front. You don't start paying benefits for several years. So that will score as a savings, score as a revenue raiser during the first 10 years of this budgetary cycle, but in the outyears it does nothing but explode the budget. Again, in my home State of Texas, it's estimated that this bill is going to cost the State of Texas almost $25 billion in additional funding for Medicaid, and additionally there are going to be cuts to the safety net hospitals, so-called disproportionate share cuts. Other dates of significance in 2011, the drug makers face an annual fee of $2.5 billion. Now, many people say, wait a minute, the drug companies make too much money anyway so, yeah, hit them with a $2.5 billion charge beginning in 2011. Maybe they should be paying a little bit more. But think about it for a minute. That $2.5 billion, where is that going to come from in the pharmaceutical manufacturing world? Is it going to come from the CEOs' salary? Is it going to come from the lobbyists' salary? I think you know the answer to that. Those dollars are going to come from increased costs to the end user, the patient, you and me. In 2011 medical device manufacturers are going to be charged an additional fee. It goes up to $2 billion per year. Again, that's not going to be paid by the CEO of one of these Boston companies that is a medical device manufacturer. That money is going to be paid by the patient who receives that defibrillator or that artificial hip, that vein filter for preventing blood clots. Those are the people who are going to actually be paying that fee, not the companies themselves. There's a health insurance provider fee, $2 billion in 2011, and it goes up from then. Again, that money is not going to be taken from the CEOs' salary, from the private insurance companies in this country. Whether they are for profit or not for profit, that money is not coming out of the CEOs' salary or the lobbyist money. That money is coming out of the ratepayers' hide. There's going to be a tax on wages that will increase to 2.35 percent. In 2013 there will be a new tax on unearned income on dividends and interest, almost 4 percent. In 2013 the excise tax of 2.9 percent is imposed on the sale of medical devices. Now, these are class two and class three medical devices in your doctor's office or hospital. So class one devices like Band-Aids, tongue depressors, those won't be taxed. But class two devices, and what are some examples of class two devices, syringe and needle, those are going to be taxed in your doctor's office. Now, in your doctor's office they can't charge you that 2.9 percent tax that they have to pay on the tax on that syringe because that's a contractual amount between the insurance company, the patient, and the doctor. That's very difficult for a doctor's office to pass that charge along, so actually doctors are going to bear the brunt of that. Hospitals too are likely to bear the brunt of that. Since their arrangements are contractual with insurance companies, they're unlikely to be able to pass that cost along. Other types of medical devices, type two devices--interestingly enough, I'd like to say everything from lasers to leeches will be taxed in your doctor's office. Employers with more than 50 employees must pay a fine of up to $3,000 if employees receive tax credits to purchase insurance. So that's where a lot of the small and medium-sized business is really concerned and the arbitrary placement of those numbers, why is it 50 employees, why not 55? Why not 45? Simply because they had to pick a number and start somewhere. So if there's a small business back home that has 48 employees, but they've got so much work, as the economy recovers, that maybe they'd be fixing to add five jobs, they're not going to do it. Let's stay under 50 employees. Our life will be a lot easier under this health care bill. At least let's wait. At least let's wait until we see what's going to happen. What's up next? Well, let me say it again: I favor repeal of this bill. Rip it out, root and branch, and get it gone, and then come back and fix the things that people told us they wanted fix. But what we are going to see next is just down the street at the Department of Health and Human Services; another Federal agency called the Office of Personnel Management, OPM; the Internal Revenue Service. They're writing the rules and regulations that are going to dictate how this legislation, how it now turns into the rules and regulations that govern what happens in your doctor's office or hospital and essentially dictates what happens in your life when you intersect with the American health care system. This will take some time. This is not something that is going to occur overnight. Right now the hiring is in process, so, yeah, maybe the administration can say we're adding a bunch of new jobs over at the Department of Health and Human Services and IRS. But most of us would just as soon that those IRS agents weren't hired because they generally are not there to make our lives go smoother and easier. Office of Personnel Management, that's an interesting phenomenon. Many people will recall that when the Senate passed their health care bill, Senator Lieberman said, I won't vote for a health care bill that has a public option within it. And yet we have a bill that, in fact, does have a public option. And it's not called a public option straight up, but it is a public option, sure enough. States are required to set up State exchanges. People will be required to buy their insurance in the exchange. Some people will have those costs subsidized; some will not. Well, what if a State does not set up an exchange? Can the Federal Government force it to set up an exchange? And the answer is no. The Federal Government will set up a national exchange for those States where no State exchange exists. Within that national exchange, under the law, it is required that there be one insurance company that is a for-profit company and one that is a not-for-profit. These insurance companies, if no company signs up to do this duty, that exercise is then taken over by the Office of Personnel Management. So a nonprofit insurance company administered by the Office of Personnel Management begins to look a lot like what was discussed last July and August as the public option. It, in fact, will be a de facto public option within a very short period of time. So those who opposed the bill and said I couldn't support a bill that had a public option, but now that the public option is out of it, I'm okay, I can support the bill, guess what? They got a public option. Let me just conclude by saying this was not a bipartisan bill. The opposition to this bill was bipartisan. You had almost 40 Democrats and every Republican who said, we don't want this bill. Interestingly enough, part of the story that is yet to be told is the effect of this bill on what happens early in November, later this year. In USA Today, the little newspaper that comes out nationally, earlier this week there was an article about the number of physicians who have filed and are running races for Congress. It will be unprecedented numbers. I think the actual number of doctors, Republican doctors who have filed for congressional races, is just a little over 30, 32. There are many more waiting in the wings. Some States have much later primaries. That number will likely go higher. Not every doctor will win their primary, unfortunately. Not every doctor will win their congressional race. But I think it's safe to say that the next Congress, the 112th Congress, when it convenes next January, is likely to have more physicians within that Congress than anytime in the previous hundred years. This bill has had a profound effect on how Americans think about their health care and how they think about their relationship with their government. Is a government that is bigger better for the individual or worse? Many people are now having that internal discussion or that discussion around the dinner table that never would have thought about that in years past. But now it has become an important issue. This next November will be a seminal time in American politics and American governance going forward. It will dictate whether this bill continues to exist and exert control over the people's lives, continues to take money out of the lives of productive citizens, or whether this bill is turned back, and then the Congress gets down to the serious work of correcting the problems that people told us they wanted us to correct and we ignored them consistently through the fall and through the winter. I think it says something that the opinion of Congress right now are in the low double digits. Any doctor who's willing to run for Congress, and I can tell you this from some personal experience, doctors actually enjoy a fairly high approval rating. It's in the high seventies. You come to Congress, it goes into the low teens. It is a significant step to run for Congress for physicians. And yet doctors across the country are willing to give up their peace of mind and their livelihood to come to the aid of their country in its hour of need.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I reserve my time.

Mr. BURGESS. I will yield myself my remaining time. I want to thank Representative Carnahan for the recognition and echo his call to other Members of this Congress to join the MS Caucus. This caucus does real work. We provide information. We provide conference calls. We provide educational time with either Members or staff, and it is a worthwhile endeavor. While there is no cure for multiple sclerosis as it stands today, the treatment has evolved significantly. In my 25 years of medical practice, I saw a significant evolution. Although I was not the primary caregiver for multiple sclerosis patients in my general OB-GYN practice, I did have many patients who did suffer from that illness and, as a consequence, over the course of my professional lifetime, did see the treatment evolve from one that was essentially palliative to one that was more targeted towards the disease itself or targeted towards the damages the disease inflicts upon the central nervous system. So I do encourage both sides of the aisle to join this caucus. It is an important endeavor. Again, I want to thank everyone who has participated today. We've heard today that multiple sclerosis is a chronic, often disabling disease, but today, new treatments and advances in research are starting to give new hope to people affected by the disease, but more must be done to understand the course of this illness. Most people with MS learn to cope. They learn to cope with the disease and to lead satisfactory, productive lives, but they do want answers. We recently capped off MS Week 2010 on March 8-14, and now prepare for World MS Day on May 26. Texas, my home State, is getting into the act with the BP MS 150, which is a 180-mile journey from Houston to Austin. This event is a 2- day fundraising cycling ride organized by the Lone Star Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. That is the largest event of its kind in north Texas. This year's ride just took place this past weekend. In 2009, this event raised more than $17 million for research for MS, and the fundraising goal for this year is $18 million, with contributions still being tallied. But the Lone Star Chapter of the National MS Society is on its way to reaching this ambitious goal. And this was the 5th year of MS Awareness Week. The Multiple Sclerosis Caucus is a bipartisan group of 127 Representatives and 23 Senators who are in full support of this resolution. But we can do more. In fact, we will be looking to have an MS briefing for Members and their staff sometime in June, and I hope many Members will be able to attend. And, in addition, I urge everyone who supports this resolution to cosponsor H.R. 1362, to create a National MS Registry. This bill has over 150 cosponsors, and I urge my colleagues on the Energy and Commerce Committee to take up this resolution because it is an important amount of work that needs to be done. And with all of the focus nowadays on genomic medicine, this registry is going to become increasingly important. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentlelady from California (Mrs. Capps) for her recognition. As cochairman of the Congressional MS Caucus, I rise today in support of House Resolution 1116, supporting the goals and ideals of Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week from March 8 through March 14. The goal of this annual event is to raise awareness of this disease for individuals and their families who are impacted by this illness. Every hour in the United States, someone new is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It is a chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system. Over 400,000 Americans are living with MS, and approximately 2\1/2\ million people are affected worldwide. These patients suffer a variety of symptoms which can vary from person to person and, indeed, may vary within a particular patient during the course of the disease. Among the symptoms are impaired vision, muscle weakness, problems with coordination and balance, numbness, memory problems and, in the most severe cases, which, fortunately, is rare, the disease is fatal. Even the milder cases of multiple sclerosis create daily changes for patients by impairing speech, the ability to write, the ability to walk. Despite the debilitating effects, the cause of multiple sclerosis is unknown. There is yet no laboratory test that is available that definitively establishes the diagnosis and, of course, there is no cure. Treatments, however, have improved markedly over the last 20 to 30 years, and that is the reason we should applaud the work of the Multiple Sclerosis Coalition, an affiliation of MS organizations dedicated to the enhancement of the quality of life for those affected by this disease, which recognizes and celebrates this special week that we designate as Multiple Sclerosis Week. Many Americans know a person living with MS, a mother, father, son or daughter or another family member, or even a colleague. During my brief time in Congress a member of my staff has been diagnosed. I also want to recognize those who struggle with multiple sclerosis every day, the family and friends who support them, the doctors, nurses, researchers and others that care for them and continue to search for a cure. I'd also like to thank Representative Russ Carnahan of Missouri, who's the co-chair of the MS Caucus, and Representative Barbara Lee of California who are sponsoring this resolution with me. I encourage all of my colleagues to vote in favor of the resolution. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we were to have a hearing in my Committee on Energy and Commerce about the companies in the United States that restated their earnings as a result of us passing the misguided health care bill last month. These companies were performing under requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission and under the Federal Accounting Standards Board. Some of the restatement of earnings you see here on this poster, the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce thought that these restatement of earnings were simply done to embarrass the President on the signing of the bill. In fact, this was a loophole that was closed by a Senator on Christmas Eve and the loophole was to undo the Federal Government and these companies partnering together in order to prevent retirees from losing prescription drug benefits. It was a win-win situation for the employer and for the retiree. Unfortunately, there are many things like this in this health care bill that are going to be coming forward. This hearing was canceled after it was pointed out to the chairman that in fact these companies were just simply restating earnings as they were required to do under the law. But many of the other provisions in this bill are going to be coming out over the next several months. We're just now entering into phase B, the rulemaking part, over at Health and Human Services. It behooves this Congress to exercise its oversight authority over the Department of Health and Human Services as these rules are written.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I thank the Speaker for the recognition. I thank the leadership on my side for allowing me to talk this hour. Mr. Speaker, it is April 15. It is the day that we file our taxes, or in some cases we submit a request for an extension. In the interest of full disclosure, I did submit a request for an extension, not because-- well, I will tell you, when I was practicing medicine when I was a physician, my taxes were a great deal more complicated than they are today. But even today it is difficult to keep up with all of those various pieces of paper that you must collect after a year's worth of living and deliver to your accountant in order that they may accurately and correctly assess your taxes. That is one of the things that has always bothered me. It is one thing to pay taxes. The previous gentleman said it's one of our obligations for living in a free society; I don't dispute that--I may dispute the level at which he wants to see us taxed--but at the same time, I don't see why it always has to be so hard. I would like to give people another option, and that's what I want to talk about this evening, Mr. Speaker. But, actually, first, I do need to talk a little bit about what we just heard over the past hour because it was a wonderful story; but, Mr. Speaker, maybe if we're going to tell stories we ought to start out with, ``Once upon a time'' and end up with, ``And they lived happily ever after.'' The gentleman was quite correct in quoting a poll that said only 12 percent of Americans believe that President Obama has cut taxes. But what do you think is the reason for that? Maybe it's because in the last 15 months taxes in this country have increased by $670 billion and counting, according to the Committee on Ways and Means. Many of these tax hikes include taxes on people whom the President said during his campaign for the Presidency that people would not see a tax increase. And what are some of those? Well, the previous gentleman alluded to the fact that we just passed and the President just signed a massive health care bill. But, really, if we were honest in our discussion about that bill, we would call it a massive tax increase bill because honestly that's what it was. It didn't really have that much to do with health care, but it sure had a lot to do with taxes. There is going to be a new tax on individuals who don't purchase government-approved insurance. And guess what? That tax will fall on Americans, some Americans who earn less than $200,000 a year, violating the pledge made by President Obama when he was campaigning for the highest office in the land. Now, for most people that's not a great surprise because there were so many promises made that were not kept during that campaign. Oh, remember things like, I'm going to take public financing for my Presidential campaign. Remember the great transparency hoax that was played upon the American people: oh, sure, we'll create a health care bill and I'll have everybody in around a big table and we'll invite C- SPAN in so you can see who's standing with the special interests and who's standing with the American people. Well, guess what? You didn't get to do that, did you, because that was another promise that wasn't kept. Well, promises to not raise taxes on Americans earning less than $200,000 a year unfortunately were one of the first casualties of this administration, and the sad thing is it continues to be a casualty of this administration. What about the new tax on employers who fail to fully comply with the government health insurance mandates? That might fall on some people who earn less than $200,000 a year. It's not going to happen for a couple of years because they did stretch some of these things out in the health care bill; but what about the 40 percent excise tax on some health plans that cost over a certain amount of money? That's the health care plan that costs over a certain amount of money, but it may belong to someone who earns under $200,000 a year or a married couple that earns under $250,000 a year. What about the ban on the purchase of some over-the-counter drugs for people who happen to have a health savings account or a health reimbursement account? What about the increase in Medicare tax on wages and self-employment income and the imposition of a 3.8 surtax on certain investment income for individuals who earn over certain amounts of money? These are significant changes that occurred in our Tax Code, but they were passed in a health care bill. That's why you didn't know about them; they were hidden in this bill that we passed last month. Now, for some people, not for all, but for some people with high medical expenses, there is a threshold that has to be met. Your medical expenses have to be more than 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income before those expenses are tax deductible. Now, to be sure, if someone's medical expenses are over 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income, that's an individual who spent a good deal of money on medical care that year. You would think that we wouldn't want to punish that person further, but in fact that's just what we did in this health care bill. We raised that threshold to 10 percent. So that means people who have a lot of medical expenses will now have to spend 10 percent of their adjusted gross income before they can begin to deduct those expenses from their income tax. We've imposed a new $2,500 cap on people who contribute to their own flexible spending accounts. There is going to be a new annual tax on some health insurance policies. There's going to be a new tax on some pharmaceuticals; some of those taxes will fall on people who earn under $200,000 a year. How about this? A new excise tax on medical devices, a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices. These are class 2 and class 3 devices as defined by the Food and Drug Administration. So, okay, tongue depressors and Band-Aids will not be taxed, but syringes will be. Well, who's going to pay that tax on the syringes? Well, in all likelihood in that instance it is going to be the doctor in the doctor's office because doctors have very little way of passing charges onto the patient because most of their arrangements are contractual with insurance companies or with Medicare and Medicaid, and they're not going to pay the tax. It will be difficult to pass the charge onto the patient because those charges are capped. So, actually, that will be the physician's office that gets to pay those taxes. In fact, Mr. Speaker, everything from lasers to leaches are taxed under this new excise tax that's coming on certain medical devices. What if you earn under $200,000 a year and happen to go to a tanning salon? Well, guess what? A 10 percent tax on that activity for you even though you earn under $200,000 a year. And there will be a new tax on some self-insured health plans; and, yes, some of those may fall on people who earn under $200,000 a year. There will be new penalties for nonqualified health savings account distributions. Now, people shouldn't take money out of their health savings accounts unless it's for a health expenditure; but rather than just having that money then convert to taxable income, there is actually going to be a double penalty on those types of purchases. And the list goes on. The other gentleman did this, so I'll do the same thing. As you can see, there is a significant amount of writing on this page of paper. No, you can't read it from your distance, but I did read many of the things that are contained on this page. And get this, get this: all of these additional taxes, and what did we hear the other day? Someone floated the notion of a value-added tax, a VAT tax, as a way to deal with the deficit and some of the increase in Federal spending that's going to occur as a consequence of this health care bill that we passed. We heard it a couple of times last spring when we first started talking about this health care bill. Some people came on the Sunday shows and talked about--some people from the administration came on the Sunday shows and talked about a value-added tax, and then all of that talk was tamped down pretty quickly when that trial balloon was met with so much disfavor. But now that the bill has passed, maybe we will need that VAT tax in order to pay for it. That will be a tax increase on some individuals who earn under $200,000 a year. There is no question that unless this Congress takes some action before the end of the year--and quite honestly, I don't know where the time and energy will come for this Congress to do this, but the tax policies that were enacted in 2001 and 2003 expire at the end of this year. Many of those tax policies will affect people who earn under $200,000 a year. The expiration of a tax policy means we revert to tax levels that were present in 2001. Guess what? That's going to be a tax increase on some people who earn under $200,000 a year. And what are we going to do about the inheritance tax, the appropriately named ``death tax''? We haven't even talked about that. That is one of those other things that will have to be tackled before the end of the year. Time is running out. It's an election year. People aren't willing to do difficult things during an election year, so it becomes problematic as to whether or not those things will be fixed. Mr. Speaker, it's often said that there is nothing certain in this life except death and taxes. And I will tell you from the standpoint of a physician that sometimes death is less complicated than our tax system. Let me just give you an example here. Most of us are familiar with the name Sam Rayburn because, after all, that's who the Rayburn Building is named for. Sam Rayburn was, in fact, my Congressman when I was a small child in the north and northeast Texas area. He served for a long time. When he first came to Congress back in 1913, he was part of a Congress that enacted the Federal income tax. Back in 1913, it was a bill by standards in those days, it was 400 pages. But look what's happened over time. By the end of the Second World War, it was 8,200 pages; by the time a man landed on the Moon it was 16,500 pages. In 1979, when Ronald Reagan won his second term, it was 26,300 pages. When the Republicans took control of Congress, it was over 40,000 pages. In 2004, 60,000 pages. And here we are today, 2010, and it is 71,684 pages long. That's a lot of Tax Code for people to keep up with. And as the complexity has increased, the cost for individuals to comply with their obligations under the Tax Code has increased as well. And why has this happened? Whose fingerprints are all over all of these pages of the Tax Code? Well, it's the fingerprints of people here in the House of Representatives because under the Constitution all revenue bills have to originate with the House of Representatives. The Committee on Ways and Means is charged with that tough duty and, as a consequence of trying to appease one constituency or punish another, we've added pages and pages and pages of complexity to the Tax Code. I dare say in various committees today there have been proposals discussed that would either punish or reward American citizens because, in trying to drive a certain type of behavior--maybe towards green jobs or renewable energy as we did in our Committee on Energy and Commerce today--we're going to drive things in a direction where we want the social transformation to occur, and we're going to do that with the Tax Code. Any time we want to punish a special interest group or reward a stakeholder, we add a new credit or a new law to the Tax Code. The result is a Federal law that is literally fraught with opportunities for avoiding taxes. There are loopholes within the law that people will try to exploit, and some will do it quite successfully. For everyone who exploits a loophole and avoids taxes, some other honest American is going to have to make up that difference or is going to be added to the deficit, and that honest American's children or grandchildren are going to pick up the difference. So, these are things that are not done without consequence and that are not done without penalty. Now, think of this: The Internal Revenue Service for fiscal year 2010, the current fiscal year, was appropriated an amount of money of almost $12 billion--$11.6 billion, so almost $12 billion--to administer the activities of that Federal agency. What is a comparable amount? Well, I'll tell you that is more than what this country spent in defending itself with the missile defense program. Arguably, as to what may become our first line of defense against a rogue state or a nation that means us ill, we spent more on administering the Internal Revenue Service. Guess what? That is only going to increase under the health care bill that passed out of this House a mere 3 or 4 weeks ago. In fact, within the health care bill, there are provisions for hiring--I do not remember the number exactly, but I think it was over 16,000 new agents for the Internal Revenue Service. We didn't really do much for hiring or for training new doctors or new nurses, but we did add a ton of new IRS agents to administer and to force the new Tax Code changes that were incorporated into that bill. As a consequence, you may have to go to H&R Block for your prenatal care. The current Tax Code is a significant burden on all Americans. We spend billions of hours and billions of dollars complying, and that doesn't even count the billions of hours that we spend complaining about the Tax Code. The average taxpayer loses about 30 percent of his or her income to Federal, State, and local taxes. That is a greater share of income than is spent on food, clothing, and housing combined. According to the National Taxpayers Union, in 2009, American families and businesses spent almost 8 billion hours complying with the Tax Code. That is 8 billion hours that they weren't spending with their families or engaged in some productive activity. The cost of all of that time spent on complying with the Tax Code is estimated in excess of $110 billion. In addition to the lost time, last year, Americans paid nearly $30 billion for help in preparing their taxes, using either software programs or tax preparation professionals. That is a little more than $200 for the average taxpayer in the course of the year. Per person, that $200 to comply with the Tax Code doesn't sound like a great deal, but we are in a recession, Mr. Speaker. Americans are struggling to make ends meet. Who wants to be in favor of making Americans waste money that they can ill afford? The National Taxpayer Union estimates the cost for Federal tax compliance by corporations was nearly $160 billion, which was 54 percent of the corporate income tax collected in fiscal year 2008. In other words, we are spending just as much to comply with the Tax Code but are collecting half as much. The time and money should be spent by families and businesses who are growing the economy and creating jobs. I mean, after all, what is the one thing the American people want us to do this year? They really weren't so interested in health care. They were interested in national defense, but it still falls pretty low on the scale. The one thing they want us to do is to create a climate, to create an atmosphere, where small businesses feel comfortable about creating jobs and about adding employees. That's our number one charge this year--to grow the economy and to create jobs. It's so simple. I wonder why we can't remember that. A Gallup Poll out today, Tax Day 2010, shows that 63 percent of Americans believe their taxes will increase in the next 12 months. Again, 63 percent believe their taxes will increase in the next 12 months. That's right. They're not buying that stuff that President Obama cut their taxes, because, as we know, he did not. Only 4 percent expect a change that will reduce their taxes. The tax climate is unsteady and unpredictable for Americans. In addition to not being right, that instability is one of the things that is responsible for the very poor showing we have had with job creation in the last 15 months. Now, this is some polling done by a group called American Solutions. It is from last year, but I think it is still apropos to the discussion at hand. Sixty-nine percent of people think that the Federal income tax system is unfair; 70 percent favor tax incentives for companies that keep their headquarters in the U.S. That is not a surprising figure, but look at this: 82 percent of Americans think the option of a single-rate system would give taxpayers the convenience of filing their taxes with just a single sheet of paper. That's 82 percent. As Ronald Reagan used to say, those 80 percent issues are ones that he likes to get behind. The fact is, if the system were fair and simple, you probably wouldn't have such a high number of people thinking it's unfair. The fact is, if the system were fair and simple, you wouldn't have those billions of dollars spent in tax compliance. It would be pretty straightforward. Now, I talked a little bit about it with that opening list that I went through; but again, it is important to sort of underscore some of the changes that people are going to see this year, not 4 years from now but this year, as a result of the health care bill that was passed last month. Beginning January 1, 2012, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, ObamaCare will limit the medical expense deduction, which will raise taxes by $15 billion over 10 years. Under current law, if out-of-pocket medical expenses, including health insurance premiums and medical procedures, are not covered by health insurance and if they exceed 7\1/2\ percent of adjusted gross income, these expenses are fully deductible, but it will increase to 10 percent under the bill that we passed. Some of the most expensive and comprehensive health insurance plans don't cover some high-cost medical procedures, such as in vitro fertilization where the cost for the procedure and for the prescription drugs can run as high as $20,000 per treatment cycle, and some families can have multiple cycles within a year. Those are the people who are going to be hit by this change from 7\1/2\ percent of adjusted gross income to 10 percent on most Americans. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates this new limit will affect 14 million taxpayers--or 14.8 million taxpayers, 14.7 of whom will earn less than $200,000 a year at the time that it is put into effect. There are some things I would like to point out which Steve Forbes wrote in a book a couple of years ago, in a book on the flat tax. It's called the ``Flat Tax Revolution.'' It's probably still available on Amazon. There are some interesting facts that he relates in the book of how Washington really just doesn't get it when they write tax law. Quoting from the book, in 1989, Senator Bob Packwood requested a revenue forecast from Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation on a hypothetical tax increase, raising the top rate to 100 percent on incomes over $200,000. So, just as a study, just as an exercise, let's just see what their projection is if we just take all income, every scrap of income, away from people who earn over $200,000. The Joint Committee on Taxation responded by forecasting increased revenues of $204 billion in 1990-- and again, these figures are somewhat old--$204 billion in 1990 and increased revenues of $299 billion in 1993. Essentially, the Joint Committee on Taxation predicted that people would continue to work even if the government taxed them out of every penny they earned. It doesn't sound like they're living in the real world, does it? If you take every penny that people earn, why are they going to set their alarm clocks and go to work the next day? It's likely not going to happen. A second point that they quoted in the book is that the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the 1986 corporate tax rate increase would raise government revenues from $89 billion to $101 billion. So this is over $10 billion because of the increase in the corporate tax rate. Yet what actually happened is that corporations altered business practices, and revenues decreased to $84 billion. So, instead of getting an additional $10 billion, they actually scored $5 billion less than they would have had they left the tax rate alone. It's tough because Americans get that. They understand that. If you tell the average American, Hey, next year, your taxes are going to be 100 percent of everything you earn, they're going to say, Fine, I'm not going to work. See ya. When we think about it, in our committees here in Congress, we say, Well, if you tax everybody at 100 percent, yeah, you're going to bring in some additional revenues. In fact, it will be significantly increased next year and the year after that. Well, that's nonsense. That's not taking into account fundamental human behavior. If you take away everything from people, they're not going to show up for work the next day. Now, we know what works when it comes to changing the Tax Code. We got a glimpse of it in Ronald Reagan's administration when he cut the taxes in half in 1986. As a result of that reform, the economy grew; revenues increased, and jobs were created. Nina Olson, in writing in 2007 the National Taxpayer Advocate, talked about simplifying the Tax Code as one of her recommendations, and I'm quoting here: The complexity of the code increases the likelihood that honest taxpayers will make inadvertent mistakes. It creates opportunities for taxpayers to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and makes it difficult for the Internal Revenue Service to administer the tax system. Simplifying the tax law could improve the audit process and allow less of a taxpayer burden. Well, what a phenomenal idea, simplifying the tax law. Now, who could be against that? In 1981, there was a simple concept put forth by Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka. This was revisited in 1995, 15 years ago, by my predecessor in this body, who was former Majority Leader Dick Armey, and most recently in the book that Steve Forbes published on the ``Flat Tax Revolution.'' All of those authors were calling for the same type of tax reform in our Tax Code--that it be flatter, fairer, and more simple. So what would it look like if we were to do something like that, flatten the tax and broaden the base? Okay. I want everyone to close their eyes and visualize that shoe box or that suitcase full of receipts you took down to your accountant, and then visualize the sheets of paper you're going to get back from your accountant that you're going to have to file unless you file online. What if it were a great deal more straightforward? What if it were a great deal simpler? That blueprint would be the flat tax. In fact, there has been legislation that was introduced early last year--H.R. 1040 for the individuals who want to look it up on Thomas. H.R. 1040 allows for a person to opt into a single-rate tax system, to opt into a flat tax. Why would you have it as an optional? Why would you have it as an opt-in? Well, we have created this Tax Code, remember, of many, many thousands, tens of thousands of pages, and we've done that to drive behavior in a certain way. So one of the things you wouldn't want to do is change things suddenly. After all, we've encouraged people to comply or to live these very complicated tax lives in order to get the benefits of the tax system. You can't very well just say, well, we're going to change everything overnight, but we could allow people to opt in to a single-rate system. I, for one, would gladly do that. Even if it meant I paid more taxes, I would gladly do that and give up that shoe box full of receipts that I've got to sit down and go through every year with my accountant. Now, a lot of people are concerned about the home mortgage deduction on things like a flat tax, but if it's an optional flat tax, then you make the decision. You know, the home mortgage deduction in some markets doesn't really amount to as much as it does in other markets. In some areas in Texas, the home mortgage deduction really may be as little as $1,000 a year in real dollars saved by itemizing and going through that exercise with your taxes. In other markets, where real estate prices are quite, quite high--and there are still some of those markets in this country--then it may be prudent to continue with taking that mortgage deduction. Let's give people the option. Let's give them the choice. If someone has constructed their finances around being in the IRS code, fine. They may stay there. Yet, if someone wants the freedom to get out from beneath that code, we ought to allow them the freedom to do so. We ought to trust Americans to be able to make up their own minds on what would work best for them. Well, how would this form work? It's really pretty simple. Yes, you are going to need a little personal information. I know the sensitivities to that with the census right now, but some personal information so that the taxes can be properly allocated to the proper individual. Income on one line: wages, tips, compensation. But this does exclude interest, dividends, and capital gains. Interest and dividends would be taxed at the point of origin, not at the point that they are received by the individual. Personal exemptions. This form was drawn up a couple of years ago. These numbers, in fact, depending upon how incomes have grown, may change a little bit. But essentially the first $36,000 for a family of four would be exempt from income taxes. Married, filing jointly, $25,580. Single head of household, $16,330. Number of dependents multiplied by $5,510. Add those all up. Taxable income, line 1, all income; minus deductions, line 3; line 4, calculate the tax; multiply line 4 by .19; taxes already withheld, subtract that, get a refund or the taxes you owe. What did that take? Thirty seconds? Forty-five seconds? I read fast. The print was large. How different is that from what you just went through with your accountant? How different is that from what you have been doing with the Tax Code? If we gave the people the option of simplifying their lives or continuing the Tax Code, I think that over time you would see so many people leave the Code and opt for a simplified system as their lives became more simple, and you would no longer have the need for this great behemoth of an agency we now know as the IRS. It would just simply be a collection, a clearinghouse, for receiving these forms and tallying up the bills. Now, I went through some of the calculations on the number of hours, the number of dollars. There is no way to calculate, no way to calculate, the hours of stress that the current IRS Code imposes on average, law-abiding Americans. It's impossible to calculate or quantify the number of migraine headaches or tension headaches that are caused by trying to keep up with the IRS forms. One of the things that people tell me repetitively is, yes, they want to save money where they can, but one of the things they really want is they want some time back in their lives. How important would that be to give that time that is now devoted to compiling and going through check stubs at the end of the year and keeping receipts and keeping up and chasing papers all over the house and trying to run down expenses that you didn't keep up with and now you're trying to go back and recreate those trails--how about giving all that time back to Americans who would prefer to be under a flat tax? You really do eliminate the special preferences. No double taxation of interest and dividends. This bill creates a single-rate structure. No taxes on dividends. No taxes on savings. We are told all our lives we have got to save money, and how insulting is that when passbook savings rates are extremely low but, on top of that, you have got to pay 25, 30 percent of that in income taxes? It erodes the incentive for saving. I will give you an example. When I was in the practice of medicine, I thought at one time I need to keep 3 months of what it would cost me to run my practice. I need to keep 3 months in cash where I could get to it quickly if I needed to in order to keep the wolf from the door, if things weren't going well financially. So I did that, and I got through the year, and everything went okay. And what I found was I was paying the business tax then on that money that I had kept in the business, and when that money was eventually distributed to the partners, the doctors, it was taxed again. So we were doubly taxed on that money. I didn't do that very long because there's no reason to do that. Tax the money only one time when it's distributed to the partners. Otherwise, there's no reason to keep the money in the business and have to pay taxes on it twice, once when you earn it and once when it's distributed. But the behavior behind wanting to keep 3 months of operating income, operating capital available to me, that was a good concept. It that was a sound concept. But the Tax Code punished me for doing that. The Tax Code punished me for sound thinking. The Tax Code punished me for being reasonable. Now, doing the tax via a flat tax would also remove the Clinton tax on Social Security earnings. And one of the things that really got me thinking about the flat tax when Congressman Armey wrote the book in 1995 and introduced the legislation, the tax year 1993, just out of pure serendipity, out of pure coincidence, Bill Clinton's first year in office as President of the United States, he and I earned about the same amount of money. I think I earned just a little bit more, but I may have had a better year. Of course, the President's income tax filing and the amount of income taxes the President paid were public knowledge. That was printed in a story in the newspaper. So I did a very simple calculation. His salary was X. This was the amount of money he had paid in taxes. So what percentage of his salary did he end up paying in taxes? And the number was within a percentage point or two of around 20, 21 percent. I did the same for my taxes, and I paid 31 percent. So that led me to a conclusion that there was within our Tax Code the Clinton paradox. Why should two people who earn essentially the same amount of dollars pay a substantially different tax rate? A flat tax would make a great deal more sense. There would be no reward for perhaps a questionable deduction from your income tax; and, at the same time, we could give people back a significant amount of their time and energy during the course of the year with keeping up with receipts and that quality time that we all spend with our accountant every year. So I credit President Clinton with making me a believer in the concept of a flat tax, because it really came home at that point. What would happen with a flat tax? You think savings would increase if we stopped punishing people for saving money? It might. Businesses also would be taxed at a flat 19 percent with deductions for goods and services, materials, wages, salaries, and pensions and the purchase of capital equipment, structures, and land. And those capital outlays would be immediately expensed. We saw the power of that in 2003 when the tax policy of 2003 was enacted. You know, in 2003, a lot of people don't remember it now but we were having trouble with the unemployment rate being high. I think it was up to 6 or 7 percent. And it was a terrible thing that it was that high, and President Bush was to blame for this, and we really needed to hold him accountable for this high unemployment rate. So, okay, he did something about it. He did something about it with a change in the Tax Code, and that was passed in May of 2003. It was a contentious vote when it happened. But after it passed, by July of 2003, job creation started on an upward trajectory; and really, until September of 2008, every quarter there was an increase in the number of jobs created in this country. We have got to create between 120,000 and 150,000 jobs every month in this country just to keep up with people that are entering the workforce. So that was an extremely important change in the Tax Code, and one of the things it did was it allowed for immediate expensing of capital outlays rather than a long depreciation schedule in businesses, that the cap on capital outlays was increased significantly, from $10,000 to $30,000. The result was businesses did go out and make that capital investment, did improve their businesses; and, as a consequence, the tax receipts really increased. Jobs increased. And it appeared to me that that was a sound way to go about dealing with a downturn in the economy. And, Mr. Speaker, I frankly do not understand, do not understand why we will not undertake similar policies today with our unemployment hovering around 10 percent. And one of the most pernicious aspects of that is young people just completing their education are ending up in the ranks of the unemployed and they are losing those early productive years, which may have a deleterious effect on the remainder of their productive lifetime. It seems like almost any group with whom you speak, regardless of the age demographic, the beginning of the working years in the late teens and early 20s, the pre-retirement age, or those in between, everyone is having difficulty. Every one of those demographic groups is having trouble finding work. And, as a consequence, we are creating what may well turn out to be a longitudinal problem that, should we take the time to solve it now, would really be to our great benefit. The long-term unemployment numbers are startlingly high. The unemployment numbers for minorities are startlingly high. The unemployment numbers for people who are in their late teens and early 20s are startlingly high. Why wouldn't we consider something that worked as recently as 8 or 9 short years ago? In fact, those policies are going to expire, and we may well make things worse rather than better. One of the things that I do want to address, and we heard this in the last hour, on Tax Day 2010, are you better off this Tax Day? The little cartoon here says, ``I'm sorry, sir, but you can't claim Citibank, Goldman Sachs, AIG, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, and Chrysler as dependents.'' So are you better off this Tax Day? You answer the question. There is an option that we could take to fundamentally transform the tax system in this country, and it would be liberating for individuals and businesses alike. Fundamental tax reform in this country is something the American people are crying for. Eighty percent, according to the American Solutions Study from a year or two ago, want us to do something about that. Through both Democratic and Republican majorities, we have talked about it, but we haven't taken that work on. President Bush convened a tax panel during his second term. The result of that was disappointing. The recommendations were all over the place, and no one really proposed legislation as a consequence of that tax reform panel. It is incumbent upon this Congress, the next Congress. Regardless of which party is in the majority, it is incumbent upon them to come to some realistic conclusions about simplifying the Tax Code. For too long we have put this burden on our citizens in order to get them to comply with what the previous speaker said was our obligation for living in a free society, and that is the payment of income taxes. For too long we have made that too difficult. We have made that too onerous. And, as a consequence, we have had a deleterious effect on our economy. Right now, our economy is suffering. We would do people a great service by simplifying the Tax Code, unleashing the power of the American economy. Look, this economy is too vibrant to keep down for too long. Even the United States Congress is not capable of keeping this economy suppressed. The economy will recover. But the recovery will be more robust and more prolonged if we will create a sensible tax policy to go along with that recovery.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I thank the gentleman for the recognition. You know, it's ironic, isn't it? Two days ago a bill was signed that is going to fundamentally change the way health care is delivered in this country for the next three generations, and 48 hours later we are back on the floor of this House trying to fix the problems in this bill because, Mr. Speaker, we all know when the Senate passed this bill Christmas Eve, they didn't intend for this bill to become law. This was never the vehicle that was intended to be passed through this House. This was a bill that was passed to get the Senate out of town before a snowstorm on Christmas Eve. They always planned to come back and fix it in conference, but because of an election in Massachusetts those plans went by the wayside. The Speaker of the House said in January, I don't have a hundred Members who will vote for this bill and yet, somehow, the line being the shortest distance between two points, we ended up passing this bill on Sunday night when we hoped, we hoped the American people were not looking at us. But we did pass it, and now we have got to come back tonight and fix the problems. We will be back next week. We will be back the week after that. This bill is going to require significant fixes, probably for the remainder of my lifetime on this Earth. This was probably the worst product we could have put out there for the American people. And what about the insurance companies, their stock prices going up? Of course they went up. They got everything they wanted. What did they want when this year started? They wanted an individual mandate and no public option. Guess what, ladies and gentlemen, that's exactly what they got. Who is standing on the side of the insurance companies? Who is standing on the side of the people? I think you have got that wrong. What about PhRMA? They got everything they want. Yeah, you can close the doughnut hole but you have got to buy brand-name drugs, and, oh, yeah, you can't import drugs from overseas. They got exactly what they want and their stock prices have gone up this week. Let's not kid ourselves about who is fooling who here. I have asked for the White House to give me information on these special deals that were cut down at the White House, but we can't get that information. We get copies of press releases; we get copies of Web pages. The White House has no interest in being transparent in this process because they have so much to hide about this bill. This is a bad bill for America, it's a bad bill for medicine, it's a bad bill for patients. We should do the right thing, come back and try to fix these problems in a real way. And don't tell me Republicans didn't try, weren't there to help. I reached out my hand to the transition team and got it slapped. I reached out my hand to my committee chairman and got it slapped. We were there and ready to work, but you weren't interested in working with us. What was the bipartisan nature of this bill? We'll throw it over the transom on July 15. Read it quick, because we've got a markup in full committee the next day. This bill was never intended to pass this House. The Senate passed this bill as a last-ditch effort on Christmas Eve to get out of town. And what have we done? What have we done? We delivered this bill as the law of the land to the American people, and they are correctly outraged by what they see. You know, you had some experience back in 1988 or 1989; you passed a very bad catastrophic care bill. Seniors across this country said this will not stand. The former chairman of the Ways and Means got run out of his town hall. And we had to repeal that bill. I think we should follow that same trajectory here.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, on behalf of myself and Congresswoman Kay Granger, I rise today in memory of Brendan Beck, a casualty of the tragic earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 12, 2010. As a civil engineer, Brendan had traveled to Haiti to help the U.S. Agency for International Development to begin a project analyzing the infrastructure of Northern Haiti. After studying engineering at the University of Florida, he went on to join the Peace Corps, where he served in the African nation of Mali. His adventurous spirit led him to travel the world, where he was able to utilize his knowledge of engineering to transform underprivileged nations. Brendan was always quick to lend a helping hand to those in need. Brendan tragically lost his life in the collapse of the Hotel Montana. While helping study the infrastructure of Northern Haiti, Brendan was forced to make a stop in Port-au-Prince due to weather. He checked into the Hotel Montana hours before the earthquake struck. After receiving the devastating news, Sally Baldwin, Brendan's mother, visited Washington, DC to share Brendan's story, and encouraged us to continue supporting the efforts of the recovery teams. She asked for search and rescue support to be specifically targeted at the site of the Hotel Montana. Brendan's family was notified on February 15, 2010, 34 days after the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, that Brendan had been found. Although his family was extremely grateful to have him returned, they were devastated they lost such an incredible son. His family and friends have expressed their grief in the loss of a son, brother and friend, whose fervor for life was indescribable. Madam Speaker, it is with great honor that we rise today to honor the memory of Brendan Beck. Brendan exemplified the qualities of a model citizen, and I am proud to represent such an outstanding individual in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I proudly rise today to congratulate Jordan Malone of Denton, Texas. Jordan is one of our nation's athletes who competed in the XXI Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Jordan, as a member of Team USA, helped the men's 5000m relay capture bronze in short track speed skating. The Vancouver Games was Jordan's Olympic debut, and the bronze he won for speed skating at Pacific Coliseum on the night of February 26, 2010, was his first Olympic medal. Jordan is a dedicated athlete who has accomplished great things in his career as a speed skater. Jordan is currently the only short track skater in the U.S. to compete in all five of the past World Championship events. He has won five gold medals, two silver medals, and eight bronze medals. Madam Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to celebrate the accomplishments of one of our nation's finest athletes, Jordan Malone. I am proud to represent such a dedicated athlete in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I proudly rise today in memory of one of our nation's bravest and finest men, who gave his life protecting our nation and its citizens--Army Specialist Lawrence Lee Aldrich of Fort Worth, Texas. Spc. Aldrich was killed on May 6, 1968, fighting in the Vietnam War, and after more than 40 years, he has finally been reunited with his family and loved ones. Spc. Aldrich was a fearless young man who joined the Army in 1967. Those who served alongside him remember him as brave and selfless. He gave his life for this country and should be honored for upholding the high standards we have set for our Armed Forces. On the day Spc. Aldrich was killed, he was serving as a member of a search-and-clear mission in Binh Dinh Province, in what was then South Vietnam. He was last seen with two other Americans engaged in a battle with enemy forces while manning an M-60 machine gun position. An air strike was called in, but one of the bombs inadvertently landed on Spc. Aldrich's position, killing the three soldiers. Members of his unit later recovered the remains of the two other men, but Aldrich could not be found. Spc. Aldrich is one of 58,000 soldiers' names that appear on the Vietnam Memorial. His family's greatest wish was to have his body returned. Although his parents have passed on, his siblings know that this would have made them extremely happy. Madam Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to honor the memory of Spc. Lawrence Lee Aldrich for his bravery and courage while defending and protecting our nation during the Vietnam War. I am proud to represent such outstanding soldiers from my district, and the nation as a whole, in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize and congratulate St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Fort Worth, Texas, as they celebrate 102 years of Christian Service. St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest black church in the Stop Six Area of Fort Worth. From its humble beginnings, where services were held in a tent, the church has served its community with passion. Their commitment to outreach has allowed them to influence not only those in their community, but throughout the country. As this congregation continues to grow under their dedicated leadership, there is no doubt it will maintain its long-standing reputation of service and devotion to those in Fort Worth's Stop Six Area. To commemorate their 102 years of services, St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church is having a Church Anniversary Celebration. The celebration began on January 10th and will end on April 25th, the anniversary of the church's beginnings. Madam Speaker, St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church is a shining light in Fort Worth, Texas. I am extremely proud to represent Reverend Damon Blakeley and the entire church congregation in the 26th Congressional District of Texas. Their service to the community is valued and appreciated, and I look forward to watching the church continue to grow, and observing the positive impact they will continue to have in North Texas.