Michael Burgess

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I was criticized on a news show earlier today referring to this exercise as a 6-hour photo op. Probably I would fall into the category as a ``plummet.'' Isn't it interesting that, yes, premiums for the average family may increase for 10 to 12 percent, but that's okay. Instead of an apple, you get an orange, so you're coming out better in the deal. Now, yesterday, in our Committee on Oversight and Investigations, we hauled in Anthem Insurance Company in California. And Anthem, to their great discredit, chose right now as a time to increase their premiums, and they have become the whipping boy and the poster child. And I will concede, I think they raised their premiums too fast. They were tone deaf. Their highest premium increase was 39 percent. Their average was 25 percent. Twenty-five percent. Okay, that seems high, but the President's already said 12 percent. Yeah, that's okay because you get an orange instead of an apple, so after all, you're good in that transaction. So I guess if Anthem wanted to raise their rates, they probably should have stayed at that 12 percent rate. They would have been right in line with the President of the United States. They could have raised their rates and all been happy about the transaction. Instead, they overshot. They hit an average rate of 25 percent and, as a consequence, found themselves sworn in under oath in our committee having to absorb the ordeal that we put people through when they come before our committee.

Mr. BURGESS. I thank the gentleman for his work on these issues. I thank him for always being willing to be involved in these. These are tough problems. These are complex problems. You know, the activity today, I referred to it earlier today on a radio show as the Blair House project, not to be confused with the Blair Witch project. There were times when it did seem to be that there probably were some spells being cast. The other thing that really had to strike you in watching the discussion today is that there are fundamental differences as to the role in government, fundamental differences as to the involvement in government. You know you can't help but be struck. Here we've worked on this concept now for 13 months. The President was sworn in the 20th of January of last year. Here we are at the end of February, and still no bill is across the finish line. Boy, I thought it would have happened much, much more quickly. In fact, had the energy that was put into the stimulus bill been put into a health care bill, in all likelihood they could have passed whatever they wanted in February of last year. Instead, they chose to work on the stimulus first and then cap-and- trade and then gradually, gradually, gradually, their capital bled away to where they did not have the votes necessary on their side to pass one of these bills. And this is the fundamental problem that is happening with the President's plans and the Democrats' bills in the House and the Senate right now is they do not enjoy popular support. Pick your number: 56, 58, 75 percent of the American people who do not support this 2,000- page monstrosity that literally required bribes to bring Senators down to the well to pass this bill Christmas Eve. The American people saw that and they rejected it. They might trust us--I am not sure that they will--but they might trust us to work on some of these individual concepts one at a time. But at the very end of the summit today, the President decried incrementalism and said we have to be bold and we have to move forward with a large bill. Why? Why do we have to do that? The programs to deal with preexisting conditions would involve risk pools to be sure. Reinsurance options for States, yes, it's going to require some Federal subsidy. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated $25 billion over 10 years. They may be a little bit light on that, but still we're nowhere near a number like a trillion dollars, which is scaring Americans to death. We could provide some help in that market. The States could provide some help in that market. We could ask our partners in the insurance industry to voluntarily or by law cap their premiums at some level so that the person who was in this market did not find the costs so daunting that they simply gave up and did not get insurance. Now, all of these great programs that the President and the Speaker talk about that they're going to give to the American people at no charge, none of these programs start for at least 4 years. Now look, here we are 13 months into a new administration and the administrator at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is not there. He hasn't even been appointed, much less confirmed by the Senate. That is the individual who is going to be responsible for taking this 2,700 pages of legislation that we give them and turning the legislation into rules and the Federal rulemaking process. That is going to be an enormously difficult task. It is going to take 4 years to work through all of that and impugn all of the legislative intent and make those Federal rules and leave the rulemaking period open long enough so that people can comment on it. That is an enormous task. It's not going to happen overnight. So the people that come to us and say, My premium's going up too much, I want you to take it over, they're not getting anything for at least 4 years. Now, in the meantime, what if we took an approach--and, in fact, it was an approach that was talked about by Senator McCain in the fall campaign of 2008. What if we took the approach of we're going to take existing risk pools of the States--34 States have already created. We're going to emulate the best practices of the best States. We're going to allow for some reinsurance options if companies are willing to take on higher-risk individuals so that no individual insurance company is tasked with too much in the way of financial loss, and we're going to cover this group of individuals. I heard it over and over and over and over again this summer at town halls, Stop what you're doing. We don't want you to destroy the system that is working well for 65 or 75 percent of the country. We want you to concentrate on those individuals who, through no fault of their own, have suffered a tough medical diagnosis, have lost their job and employer-sponsored insurance, couldn't keep up with the COBRA payments and now find themselves having fallen into that dreaded category of uninsured with a preexisting condition. While we're at it, we might look at the COBRA system. COBRA was placed as a protection to help people who had employer-sponsored insurance but they lose their job. So employer-sponsored insurance means the employer generally pays about two-thirds of the premium; the employee pays about one-third of the premium. When you lose your job, you can't continue that insurance. But in all likelihood, your employer is not going to pay their two-thirds any longer because you're no longer their employee. But for 18 months, you can pick up the whole premium and pay that with a small administrative charge--I think it's 102 percent of the premium--and you can continue your insurance for 18 months and not fall into the category of uninsured. And if you have a preexisting condition, you continue to be covered at that cost. But that's a tall order for someone who just lost their job to continue to carry that degree of premium. What if we allowed people-- instead of you had to keep that same insurance your employer provided you, what if we allowed them into a lower-cost, high-deductible plan for those 18 months and still preserved their insurability during that time, so that when they found employment, they would not fall into that same category again. Or they might even decide to continue that high- deductible policy with a lower premium and continue to have the protection of health insurance without falling into a preexisting category. But we never really worked on those issues. We just decided we were going to do this big bill, and it was going to have mandates, and it was going to have a public option, and this is the way it was going to be. But to tell you the truth, for 4 years there is no help. There is taxes. For 4 years there is the immediate Medicare cuts, but the benefits don't start until year 4 or 5 or possibly even 6. We don't even know how long it's going to take to set up those programs. And again, we don't even have the administrator at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The President needs to nominate one. The Senate will then have to confirm them. We may still be months away from filling that very important bureaucratic job over at the Department of Health and Human Services. I'll yield back to my friend from Pennsylvania

Mr. BURGESS. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, we have had quite a day here in Washington, D.C., in your Nation's capital. The 6\1/2\ hour health care summit that was held down at the Blair House right adjacent to the White House has mercifully concluded. And as the saying goes up in Washington, everything's been said, everyone has said it, so it was time to go home. But for those who haven't had quite enough discussion about health care today, maybe we can spend just a little while longer talking about some of the things that we heard today and some of the things that we maybe perhaps didn't hear today. One of the things that I do want to stress, we heard several times in the past several weeks that the Republicans don't have ideas. In fact, that was one of the admonitions of the President on starting this summit was that the Republicans didn't have ideas, and he wanted to in fact show the country that the Republicans were devoid of ideas. But nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, we saw today abundant Republican ideas. Some may say there are too many Republican ideas, too many to fit in one room. I wanted to spend a few minutes tonight talking about some of those ideas on our side. I have a Web site, Mr. Speaker, that is devoted entirely to health care policy. It is from the Congressional Health Care Caucus. The Web address is www.healthcaucus.org. And under the Health Caucus Web site, under the Issues tab, I think it is the second heading, is a Prescription for Health Care Reform. Anyone is free to go to that site and click on the Prescription for Health Care Reform, follow the links, and they will be taken to a one-page description of nine different bullet points on health care reform. In fact, there is even a little segment to record comments if someone would like to leave their ideas or their thoughts on the paper. Or if someone thinks of other things that might in fact be included, we welcome those comments on the Web site. I am just going to briefly go through this list, and then I have got some other observations that I want to make on the summit that occurred today. And we will be joined from time to time by other Members of Congress, and I want to give them an opportunity to speak. But under the Prescription for Health Care Reform, certainly everything I heard this summer was, we don't want a 1,000-page bill. People really didn't want a 2,000-page bill after we came back and revamped it after the summertime. But what did people want Congress to do on health care? There are people who have legitimate concerns that the system is not functioning in an optimum fashion. We do have great health care here in America, but there are distributional issues. The employer-sponsored insurance system does work well for the 60 to 70 percent of the population that is therein covered, but in fact there are problems for people who are outside the employer-sponsored insurance system, and there are certainly problems that all of us face with the advancing cost and complexity of health care. So just running down the list, insurance reform that would include limitations on insurance companies excluding people for preexisting conditions, and guaranteeing access to insurance. Now, one of the fundamental differences on the Republican and Democratic approach to this is that the Democrats want to have, and the President wants to have, a mandate. That is, you are required to buy a product, an insurance product. It is interesting because during the campaign in 2008, President Obama, when he was a presidential candidate, actually moved away from mandates. Candidate Hillary Clinton during her candidacy was in favor of mandates. Barack Obama was less enthusiastic about mandates. He did feel that there should be a mandate for children. We don't hear much discussion about that anymore. In fact, I don't think I heard that during the 6\1/2\ hours of debate today. But mandates really have no place in a free society. There's some argument as to whether or not it would even be constitutional for the Federal Government to require someone to purchase an insurance product that they might not want. So there are legislative products out there. And this is the point I want to make. When people say, oh, we can't start all over, this would be too taxing. There are a couple of bills out there that I would encourage, Mr. Speaker, people to look at. H.R. 4019, a bill introduced by Nathan Deal of Georgia; H.R. 4020, a bill introduced by myself. Those two bills, taken in conjunction, would go a long way towards eliminating the problems with preexisting conditions. Another bill to address the tax fairness or the tax inequity that exist in the health insurance market today introduced by John Shadegg, H.R. 3218, the Improving Health Care for All Americans Act, that would allow the same benefits, no matter where you get your insurance, whether it's through employer-sponsored insurance or in the individual market, the same benefits should accrue to an individual as accrue to a business. Medical liability reform. Texas and California have taken big strides in medical liability reform. So why do I care? If Texas has fixed their problem with medical liability, why would I care about that? Well, I care because the cost of defensive medicine is significant. And since the Federal Government is the purchaser of about 50 percent of all the health care in this country, the costs of defensive medicine that drive up the price of Medicare and Medicaid, those costs need to be brought back under control, and medical liability reform is a way to do that. Portability. Allowing patients to shop for health insurance across State lines, again, a bill introduced by Mr. Shadegg is H.R. 3217, the Health Choice Act. To back up for just a moment to medical liability reform, H.R. 1468, the Medical Justice Act. We're about to bump up against an important deadline on Sunday night, and that is the expiration of the prevention of a reduction in payment to doctors who take care of Medicare patients. We go through this time and time again. It is time for Congress to fix the physician payment reform, and H.R. 3693 would do just that. Do we need to be worried about if there are going to be doctors there to see us when we get sick in the future? I think that is a concern, and I think that is something where Congress might play a role. Doctors to care for America's patients, the Physician Work Force Enhancement Act, H.R. 914. People ought to be able to know what the cost is when they go to the doctor or the hospital. How about a bill for ensuring price transparency? H.R. 2249, the Health Care Price Transparency Promotion Act. Prevention and wellness programs, we all agree, during the hearings this summer, the individuals that come in who worked at Safeway and talked about how health promotion and wellness was saving them money, firms like Allegiant in Omaha, Nebraska, brought in great stories about how they had involved their employees in living healthier lifestyles and reaped the benefits from lowered insurance costs. An odd thing about the way we do things at the Federal Government, we're actually going to have to change the HIPAA laws, the privacy laws, a little bit in order to have this type of legislation be passed. But that's certainly within the purview of Congress and within the ability of Congress to do that. But prevention and wellness programs, although I do not have the bill number attached to this, we had several amendments in committee and in the Rules Committee leading up to the passage of the Democrats' bill this fall that dealt with prevention and wellness. The legislative language is written. It is not in bill form right now because it would require a simultaneous modification of the HIPAA laws in order to allow that to happen. And finally, I mentioned before, mandates. No place in a free society. And this is one of the fundamental differences between the President and myself. He wants to force everyone to buy an insurance policy. He said that's the only way to bring costs down. I would submit that if the insurance companies know you have to buy their product, their prices are not likely to go down. In fact, if you're required to buy their product under the penalty of law, with the IRS as the enforcer, it is very likely that the cost will go up because no one wants to run afoul of the Internal Revenue Service. And then we make insurance companies lazy. Why bother to compete with a better product? Why try to create a program that people actually want? You've got to buy it anyway. The government's going to force you, you're going to buy my product, I don't even have to make it something that you want, and I can charge you more for it. Mandates make insurance companies lazy. We actually have a model for what works in this endeavor, and that is when the Medicare part D program rolled out, then Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mark McClellan, required, out of six classes of pharmaceuticals, there were six protected classes of drugs. Within each class, an insurance company had to offer two choices, and using that as the parameter, the companies did produce the plans that people wanted. The product, part D, has been very popular. Ninety-two percent of seniors now have credible drug coverage under Medicare because of the flexibility and the desirability of these programs. The cost came in way under budget, and 92 to 94 percent of seniors are satisfied or very satisfied with their prescription drug coverage, so a program that indeed worked. And the whole emphasis was to make this look more like insurance and less like an entitlement. Creating products people want is a better way to go about getting meaningful change in the insurance market than giving the insurance companies a license to steal, which is what a mandate would be, in my opinion. I have some other observations on the day's activities, but I wanted to yield such time as he may consume to my good friend from Pennsylvania, Mr. G.T. Thompson, who in a former life was a health care administrator. I know it's odd that a doctor and a health care administrator would get along, but the two of us do get along very well. G.T., I will yield to you such time as you may consume.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. After months, I was denied my request, no reason given for the denial. I can hardly believe that on an issue as critical and crucial as this I would not be allowed access. I believe strongly that for me to vote on something as important as the Intelligence Authorization Act I should have access to every bit of information. Finally, on the shooting at Fort Hood, I asked to have attendance at the briefing that was being given. But because a business meeting had to occur before I would be granted permission and none was scheduled, I simply could not attend. Madam Chair, this bill has problems on many, many levels, but it is impossible for me to vote in the affirmative given the restrictions on activities of members of the minority from this committee.

Mr. BURGESS. I thank the ranking member for yielding. This is a very unfortunate bill, and I think this side of the aisle has sufficiently laid out abundant reasons why it should be sent to the committee and fixed. The intelligence community is too important to our national security to allow a bill with as many concerns as this one to pass. However, I am here also to discuss what I see as a fatal flaw in the way information is disseminated to Members of the House who are not committee members. Nothing is more critical to the role each of us plays in representing our districts and this country than for us to have every relevant piece of information available to us prior to casting an important vote-- certainly prior to casting a vote on one updating the authorizations for the way our government gathers intelligence. Yet many Members of this House have been denied access to key pieces of information simply by virtue of the fact that they do not sit on the Intelligence Committee. I recognize that membership on any given committee in this Chamber means that one is given access to matters in a special capacity. I respect that. I would even say that dividing up responsibilities is critical in achieving everything in a body as large as this one, but not being a member of the committee should not translate into having access to nothing that falls under the jurisdiction of this committee. Certainly, there are some pieces of information that are so important, of such importance to national security, that every Member of this body, should they so desire, should have access. Last summer, the story broke about photographs alleging detainee abuse at Guantanamo. I formally requested, through the Intelligence Committee, access to these photos. I assumed it would be a simple request. In 2005, similar photos at Abu Ghraib were made readily available to every Member of this House by the same committee under the leadership of then-Chairman Hoekstra. This time, after months of no response, I was informed that the committee did not retain the photos and could not or would not allow nonmembers of the Intelligence Committee access. At the same time as my request to view these photos, I requested to review the classified CIA Inspector General report titled ``Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities.''

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. When I heard what you were doing, I wanted to come down here and talk. You know, a week ago we heard from the President here in the House of Representatives, and he talked about this recession that he inherited. Okay, it's almost as if no President has ever had to deal with a recession before. I don't know about you, but 20 years ago, we had a pretty bad recession where I lived in north Texas. In fact, I remember it very well because--I'm a doctor--the medical group that I was in was under such stress from this recession that it splintered apart, broke up. I found myself on January 1, 1990, beginning a whole new venture as a solo practitioner in obstetrics and gynecology in my town. And quite honestly, I wondered how I would make it. The recession was rough. We didn't have anyone coming down from Washington with a big bag of dollar bills saying, You guys doing all right? You need some more cash? We'll be glad to front it to you. At that time, the bad actors were the savings and loans that had imploded. But real estate markets had fallen, energy prices had fallen, and Texas was certainly upon hard times. The reason this came to mind was the story recently about the number of people in the administration who worked in a private sector job, and the number is astonishingly low. It's in the mid-single digits. No wonder when this administration looks around for solutions, their tendency is not to go to people who have actually done things in the past that have been creative and successful and created new jobs. In February of 2000, I had ended my first month in this new medical venture, and I didn't have any money. I couldn't take any money home certainly because I didn't have any money, and I had nurses on my payroll that were depending upon me. Their families were depending upon me. It was a tough time. It was hard to borrow money. I went down to the bank and borrowed $12,000 to meet payroll for that 2-week interval. The banker was not kind to me. He charged me 14 percent interest.

Mr. BURGESS. No, my bailout was my friendly banker who said----

Mr. BURGESS. For a 6-month loan.

Mr. BURGESS. It was $12,000 to meet--I realize here that $12,000 doesn't even calibrate as budget dust with what we do. But $12,000 was an enormous sum of money to me at the time. I'm not going to be able to take a paycheck home, but I had to be able to pay my employees. No money was coming across the counter because I'm an OB/GYN. You've got to wait a few months before the delivery occurs, and you get paid for the work. I was so scared--

Mr. BURGESS. Correct. I was so scared about what the future held for me. I did some mental calculations, and if it cost me $25,000 a month just to pay my employees, what is my world going to look like in June? I'm borrowing for operational expenses, and I have got no way to really catch up that slack. Well, to make a very long story abbreviated, money did start coming in over the counter. That was the last money that I ever had to borrow. But boy, I'll tell you what, when we come down here and we talk about this budget, I remember just how I felt those days. How was I going home to face my family? No paycheck. You talk about tightening your belt, there just wasn't a belt to tighten. We didn't have anything. I knew I had to continue to perform for my patients because I was obligated to do that. I knew I had to continue to perform for my employees because I was obligated to do that. I didn't ask any questions. I didn't whine about it. I went down and did what I had to do, which was borrow $12,000, and it scared me to death. It scared me to death. And we're going to borrow $1.9 trillion tomorrow just to meet our debt obligations for the next, what, 14 months? Are you kidding me? And the problem is, we've got an administration where no one has ever worked in the private sector. No one's ever had to go down and borrow that money, put their name on the line. No one's ever signed a paycheck on the front. All of their paychecks are signed on the back. That's our problem. Their natural tendency is to look for the government to get bigger because that's where the solutions come from. No, the solutions come from the private sector, the small business entrepreneur, the doctor, the cardiologist, the saddlemaker, air conditioner repairman. That's what has made this country great. That's where the recovery of our economy lies, and we are fixing to kill the goose that laid the golden egg with this massive debt. What's going to happen when we have to monetize $1.9 trillion? What's going to happen to the interest rates? I paid 14 percent in February of 1990. You know what, that might look like a pretty good deal 10 years hence when we get to monetizing.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I thank the Speaker for the recognition. Well, Mr. Speaker, here we are at the end of another workday on Capitol Hill. It's a snowy night outside in the Nation's Capitol, and we are having a conversation, you and I, here on the House floor. I will do most of the talking, but I know that my remarks must be addressed to the Chair, and they certainly are addressed to the Chair. But, Mr. Speaker, both you and I know that people can listen in on our conversation because the cameras of C-SPAN are here in the Chamber. And although they don't record the faces and presence of everyone else on both sides of the aisle who are here in the Chamber, they do record what we say here and they do record the conversation that goes on between us. And people across the country, whether it be late at night, as it is here on the east coast, or very early in the evening, as it is in the Mountain States or on the west coast, the people across the country have an opportunity to tune in and see what is happening on the floor of the people's House in their Nation's Capital. It almost seems like it's always been that way, but it hasn't. March 19, 1979--if I've done my research correctly--was the first broadcast of the proceedings from the floor of the House. So not quite 30 years ago. In fact, we'll have the 30-year anniversary here in just a few weeks--I suspect that will be a big celebration--of the C-SPAN cameras coming to cover the activities of the House. Yes, the other body as well. They cover the high-level meetings that go on here on Capitol Hill and, of course, meetings that are of importance in State legislatures across the country. It is the public service access channel for all things government, and people of my generation, people who came of age during the Nixon administration and the Watergate years and the excesses of some of those activities, people of my generation equate C-SPAN with good governance. C-SPAN is sort of like the rainbow after the rainstorm which is the promise that we will never have to go through that again because C-SPAN is there, and C-SPAN will keep the lights on and C-SPAN will keep the sunshine in on the legislative process. And if what we are doing here in the people's House is not to the people's liking, they shall be aware of it, and they shall be able to register their displeasure and change some of our faces if they can't change our hearts, such as the ideal in the American democracy. So C-SPAN is important. C-SPAN is equivalent with good governance. C- SPAN is equivalent with open governance. And that's why many of us, toward the end of the year, all of the things that were happening in the end of December and the beginning of January, were somewhat taken aback by the fact that Brian Lamb, the chief executive officer of C- SPAN, wrote a letter to the White House and said, Hey, let's bring the cameras in to all of these health care negotiations that are going on in the Capitol and the White House and points in between. We'll provide the camera. You provide the discussion, and the American people can tune in, if they like, and see if they like what they see or not. Of course, Mr. Lamb's invitation was declined by both the White House and the Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate, and the cameras stayed off and the deals were done in the dark. And as a consequence, arguably, that's one of the reasons why the health care bill still languishes out there somewhere. No one really is sure what its health or state is today. I submit to you that despite the effects of the election in Massachusetts 2 weeks ago, one of the main drivers of the lack of success was the lack of transparency during that debate and during that process. It has been a year full of twists and turns as we watched how health care policy has risen and fallen and risen again and then fallen again through the course of many twists and turns this past year, but C-SPAN should have been there. In fact, we were promised that C-SPAN would be there. We weren't promised it once or twice or three times. We were promised over and over again. And we weren't promised that C-SPAN would be there by myself, Mr. Speaker, or yourself, Mr. Speaker. We were promised that C-SPAN would be in the room by the person who was then the candidate for the highest elected office in the land, who ultimately won that office and was inaugurated just a little over a year ago. Barack Obama repeatedly said that he would invite the C-SPAN cameras into the room. We'll have everyone around a big table; everyone will get to see who's on whose side, and who's on the side of the special interests, and who's on the side of the people because C-SPAN will be there and C-SPAN will report dispassionately, and people will be able to make up their own minds; the ultimate we report, you decide scenario. But it didn't happen that way. And as a consequence, whether you liked the health care legislation or didn't like the health care legislation, as a consequence, right now its fate is very, very much in limbo. What I wanted to do tonight was just sort of take us through some of the history that has gone on over this past year. I want to talk specifically about something that happened in my committee, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, last week on Wednesday when we heard a resolution of inquiry in the committee, and what the result of that hearing was and what people can actually look to next. But interwoven through this entire process is the fact that the whole reason we're having this discussion is because the lights were turned off, the cameras were silenced, and the American people could not participate, if they so chose, in at least the observation of the debate, in the observation of the deal-making, if you will, that occurred in both the House and the Senate and the White House as this bill worked its way through the process. So it's no wonder that people were skeptical of this bill last summer. We heard about that in the summer town halls. It's no wonder that people were skeptical of this bill as it came through the House in November and then the Senate on Christmas Eve. And then it's no wonder that people continued to be skeptical as it worked its way ultimately to the nondecision that it has achieved today. So here we have the quote from Brian Lamb on December 30, 2009, the CEO of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb sent a letter to the Congressional leadership requesting that they ``open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage because the legislation will affect the lives of every single American.'' I would just add to that every single American for the next three generations at least, so far-reaching was the scope of the legislation to be considered. You know, several years ago, long before I was in any way active in politics, the first President Bush, the 41st President of the United States, made a very famous statement that perhaps he came to regret afterwards, which was ``Read my lips--no new taxes.'' That one quote was replayed over and over and over again, and it may have at least participated in the event that cost the 41st president a second term in office. And we had the situation this past 2 years, while the current President was running where he repeatedly made statements about his commitment to transparency, about a new way of governing and, oh, by the way, we'll throw the doors and the window open, invite the C-SPAN cameras in, and you'll all be able to see what has transpired. Going back on that word, I submit, will be every bit as significant as the ``read my lips'' quote has become. Well, let's go through a few of these, because, again, they are important. While the theme, thematically they're all very similar, there are differences. The first one, this is January 2008 at the Democratic debate: ``Not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so 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.'' January 2008 the Democratic Debate. The second quotation on this board: ``These negotiations will be on C-SPAN. The public will be a part of the conversation and will see the choices that are being made.'' January 2008, to an editorial board at the San Francisco Chronicle. Important concepts that the then-presidential candidate and now President discussed at those venues, important concepts that he emphasized multiple times during the runup to the Presidential election. The third quote in our series: ``I respect what the Clintons tried to do in 1993 in moving health reform forward. But they made one really big mistake, and that is, they took all their people and all their experts into a room and then they closed the door. We will work on this process publicly. It will be on C-SPAN. It will be streaming over the Net.'' November 14, 2008, in a Google question-and-answer. This was after the actual presidential election had been won by Mr. Obama that this quote was made. You know, I stop for an observation here for a moment. I was a physician in practice in 1993 and 1994 when the Clintons very famously took everyone, the 500 folks, behind closed doors and made all these deals. It was kind of a little bit of levity around the doctors' lounge that one day a doctor would be elected President of the United States and bring 500 other doctors into a room and lock them all together and help figure out a way that we could figure out how much to pay lawyers in the future. Okay. That's my attempt at humor for the night, Mr. Speaker. Number 4: ``We'll have these negotiations televised on C-SPAN so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.'' August 8, 2008, Virginia town hall. This is probably one, of all of the series of quotes, this is one of the most important, because, again, the presidential candidate was saying, Look, these negotiations are going to be going on. You're going to have people around the table, Members of Congress, Senators, and yes, the special interests will be there. In this case, the drug companies were mentioned. In this case the insurance companies were mentioned. There are other special interest groups of course, unions that negotiate through competitive bidding, negotiate insurance contracts, they might have an interest. An organization like the American Association of Retired Persons that sells insurance, they might have an interest around the table. But nevertheless, the special interests will be there because, after all, this is Washington, D.C., and the very least that the people should ask is that the cameras be turned on and the event be filmed so that they can watch it as it occurs, or they can refer back to it after the fact. Many of these videos, of course, would have been captured in perpetuity up on YouTube or some other site, so the American people would have had an ability to look in there and gauge for themselves, hey, is my Senator really arguing more on behalf of the people of his or her State, or are they arguing more on behalf of the drug company or the insurance company, medical device company or the labor union? We didn't get that chance. It was promised to us but not delivered. Number 5: ``But here's the thing. We're going to do all these negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people will be able to watch these negotiations.'' March 1, 2008, State of Ohio, town hall. Number 6: ``We will have a public process for forming this plan. It will be televised on C-SPAN. I can't guarantee you that it will be exciting, so that not everyone will be watching, but it will be transparent and it will be accountable to the American people.'' November 27, 2007, Keene Sentinel. Number 7. ``I want the negotiations to take place on C-SPAN.'' May 2008, Saint Petersburg Times. Number 8, ``I'll put forward my plan. But what I'll say is, `look, if you've got better ideas, I'm happy to listen to them.' But all this will have to be done on C-SPAN in front of the public.'' April 25, 2008, Indiana town hall. What a great idea, Mr. President. I simply could not agree with you more. Well, Mr. Speaker, as it turns out, in May of last year, May the 11th, the White House engaged in a major stakeholder meeting at the beginning of this health reform debate. The attendees at the White House in May were the Advanced Medical Technology Association, the American Medical Association, America's Health Insurance Plans, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the American Hospital Association, the Service Employees International Union. Now, each of these individuals was there because, number one, they provide a service to the American people and they have a very strong interest in the process going forward of what was going to happen with health care reform. So I don't fault any of these groups to responding to the call of the White House. Hey, will you come down here and talk to us as we get this process started because we don't want to leave anyone not included in this process? So I think the fact that these six groups showed up down at the White House, I think that's fine. That's what the process was supposed to be about. Now, when these participants emerged from the meeting, an agreement was announced that they would work to decrease by 1\1/2\ percentage points the annual health care spending growth rate, saving upwards of $2 trillion over 10 years time. Since then, however, questions, questions that I have submitted, questions that others have submitted to the White House as to how this would be accomplished have simply been left unanswered. Now, whatever happened down at the White House last May, call them gentlemen's agreements, backroom negotiations, power politics, we know that they happened. What none of us in this Chamber and none of us in the other body know is what was agreed to. Along the way I started to read and hear reports in the press about amendments being rejected in committee hearings and markups because of previously agreed-to deals. Now, in the other body, in the Senate Finance Committee's markup, Senator Nelson of Florida introduced an amendment regarding drug prices. The Senator from Delaware, Senator Carper, arguing against that amendment said, whether you like PHARMA or not, we have a deal. We have a deal. Well, what deal? Who has a deal? Where was the deal made, and who was it made with? Secondly, in the same markup, the Finance Committee endorsed a commission to slow Medicare spending. Now, I may not agree with the principle involved in that, but nevertheless, let's have this debate out in the open and let it win or lose on its merits. But in that same markup in the Senate Finance Committee they endorsed a commission to slow Medicare spending. However, the bill had to be rescored and rewritten, had to go back to the Congressional Budget Office to be rescored to exclude hospitals because, according to Congress Daily, ``They already negotiated a cost cutting agreement'' with the White House. They had a deal. They had a deal. What deal? Who made that deal? Under whose authority was that deal made? Number three, Senators Dorgan and McCain introduced a floor amendment on prescription drug reimportation in December. According to The Hill, the newspaper that's circulated up here in the Capitol, according to The Hill, ``A deal between the White House and the pharmaceutical industry held up and helped defeat the amendment.'' What deal? With who? On whose authority was this deal made? Now, for all my affection for Senator McCain, I disagree with him about reimportation. But at the same time, let's have that debate. Let's have that debate and let the people hear what the pros and cons are, but let's not carve up a deal behind closed doors. Even though my position arguably won in that exchange, that doesn't make me feel any better that some sort of deal was cut behind closed doors that then would not allow reimportation to be included or considered in the process. You know, Mr. Speaker, here's the frustration: as a Member of Congress, the press seems to know more about these deals and this process than any of us in this body or the other body. The press knows more about this stuff than we do. Now, while the Democratic majority was pushing a health reform bill through both Chambers of Congress and Members were expected to debate these far-reaching bills, real deals were being cut down at the White House; the real deals were being cut down in the Speaker's Office or over in the Majority leader's office with ample input by the White House, I might add, but all behind closed doors and very few people in the room besides a few select Members of the House and the Senate, of course the people from the White House, and of course respective staff members from those offices. But none of us who were elected by the good and long-suffering people of the United States of America to represent their interests, none of us were included in that process on either side. Now, I am saying this as a Republican. We're in the minority, okay. We lost the last election. Maybe we don't deserve a place at the table. What about Democrats? Shouldn't Democrats who are freshman, Democrats who've been here four terms, five terms, six terms, shouldn't they have at least had the opportunity to at least know what was going on in those deals? To the best any of us know, no one from either side, outside of a few select persons in Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate and, of course, the White House, was involved in those negotiations. They clearly circumvented the legislative process. Now, the six groups that I referenced early in this discussion, while they were meeting at the White House, our very own Committee on Energy and Commerce was marking up what at the time was called H.R. 3200, which was the original health care bill that went through all three committees of jurisdiction of the House, a 1,000-page bill--eventually got a lot longer--but that's another story. But while we were marking this up, this stuff was going on down at the White House. And, again, none of us knew any of these things. Now, how could our markup be viewed with any integrity if the real deals were being cut at the White House? And I'll tell you something else--and this is particularly, particularly troubling--we worked on that bill in good faith in committee. I submitted I can't tell you how many amendments. I prepared 50. A lot of my amendments were shot down along party lines. Okay. I get that. That's what the deal about partisan makeup is. That's why elections are important; and, Mr. Speaker, I hope people pay attention to that fact. But I did get some amendments accepted, and some of those passed on a voice vote where there was no objection from the other side. One in particular was a bill that took part of the old concept of the patient bill of rights from the late 1990s that if we're going to have a public option insurance company, patients should at least have the opportunity for internal and external review, that is, a review board from inside the insurance company or one outside the insurance company if they don't like the insurance that was rendered. So internal and external review was a very important part of what was called the patient bill of rights legislation. Charlie Norwood from Georgia was the principle author of that concept along with John Dingell, who's the chairman emeritus on our committee. So clearly a bipartisan concept from within our committee. I submitted an amendment that essentially embodied that internal/ external review. It was accepted by the committee unanimously, and Mr. Dingell and I both spoke on it in committee; and it seemed like, well, if nothing else, Charlie Norwood's legacy will be enclosed in this bill in the form of this amendment. But we passed that bill out of committee July 31. We went home for our summer recess. We had the summer town halls, which are another story in and of themselves. Many people may remember some of the excitement around the country when the health care town halls were going on this summer. Then we come back in September and most of October, and then we get a new copy of the bill. It's now 2,000 pages. You say, Well, it's 2,000 pages because you added a lot of amendments in committee. Yeah. But guess what? Those amendments were gone. They were struck from the bill. No discussion. No one called me up and said, Hey, look, we're sorry, but your amendment that you offered in committee kind of conflicts with some other language in the bill. We've got to take it out. No discussion as to what occurred, and that amendment was removed from the bill. It wasn't just me. It wasn't just a personal vendetta against a relatively junior Member from Texas. Mr. Walden, who was going to be on the floor with me tonight, the ranking member of the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce, had amendments that he had gotten into the bill, and those were struck at the same time. And you have to ask yourself, well, why would you strike an amendment on internal and external review? What's the purpose? Who gains there? Was there one of those six groups that were down at the White House that didn't like the language of the bill so they had to get it out of there? Was there someone in the Speaker's Office or on the Speaker's staff who had a problem with the fact that that language was in there? Was it perhaps a lingering bit of friction between the former chairman of the committee and the Speaker? No one knows. No one knows. All we're left with is to fantasize about what might have caused that relatively innocuous amendment to be stricken from the bill. And, again, it wasn't just my amendment. Other amendments were stricken from the bill, too, and was it because they crossed some line with some of the deals that were struck with this group of six individuals down at the White House? Now, after months of frustration with working on the bill through committee and getting amendments in and having them struck, I sent a letter to the White House in September, and I requested full disclosure on what had happened to those meetings in May and June specifically to the following areas: number one, a list of all agreements entered into in writing or in principle between any and all individuals associated with the White House and any and all individuals, groups, associations, companies, or entities who are stakeholders in health care reform, as well as the nature, sum, and substance of the agreements; Number two, the name of any and all individuals associated with the White House who participated in the decision-making process during these negotiations and the names and dates and titles of meetings that they participated in regarding negotiations with the aforementioned entities in question one. So we wanted to know who was there, and we wanted to know who negotiated and what the parameters of those negotiations were, who in the White House had the clout and the authority to make these decisions. And then, number three, the names of any and all individuals, groups, associations, companies, or entities who requested a meeting with the White House regarding health care reform who were denied a meeting. So who were the stakeholders who were locked out of these meetings? We had six different groups around the table. Were there others who wished to be there but were not permitted? A question we just simply don't know how to answer today. I noted in my letter that during the Democratic Presidential primary debate on January 31, 2008, then-candidate Obama said, That's what I will do in 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. You know what? I agree with the President on that part. Part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process. And can there be any doubt, can there be any doubt after watching the anxiety in this country in August during the summer town halls, after watching the gubernatorial returns in November from New Jersey and Virginia and then 2 weeks ago the senatorial returns from Massachusetts, can there be any doubt that they failed to enlist the American people in this process? And as a consequence--as a consequence--the American people have said and keep saying, No, we don't want this health care bill, we don't trust a 1,000-page bill; we really don't trust 2,000-page bills and 2,700-page bills are simply out of the question. You guys never read it. You wouldn't take this insurance yourself. No way are we going to accept this. And underneath it all, underlying it all, is the fact the American people were shut out of the room during the process after they had been promised a front row aisle seat to the proceedings on C-SPAN. Now, I sent that letter to the White House in September. Answering my letter would have been the chance for the White House to prove to America that this actually was a good campaign promise and they really were for transparency down at the White House. But I didn't get an answer. December 16, this House was rapidly trying to wrap up its business. The Weather Channel was forecasting a huge snowstorm for that weekend. Everyone in the House of Representatives wanted to get out of here and to their district. They didn't want to be stuck here in the Nation's Capital for a single day more than necessary, and we were rapidly wrapping up our work. And on December 16 I introduced a resolution, House Resolution 983 for people who want to look it up at home, because it became clear to me that the White House had no intention of responding to my letter. So I introduced a bill, which was a resolution of inquiry. Now, this is a kind of an uncommon parliamentary tool. It's very powerful, puts some power in the hands of the minority. We don't have many tools at our disposal, and we don't have many tools that are very powerful at our disposal; but, realistically, it was my only option. I had no place else to go because I had been rebuffed by the White House. I have been rebuffed in committee. I had been rebuffed at the Speaker's Office. I had nowhere else to go. So to me it was very important that the details of any negotiations made behind closed doors be made public for all to see: the integrity of the process, literally the integrity of the whole health care reform effort, the whole health care reform legislation, the integrity of the whole health care reform legislation is in fact at stake. Now, President Obama promised to run the most transparent and open administration in history, and his decision to sequester, his decision to hoard, his decision to hide and obscure this information from Congress and from the American people is, in fact, indefensible. Now, on January 26, just last week, I got a letter from the White House. Months of silence. One hundred and nineteen days from the date I sent the letter, right before the scheduled markup of the resolution of inquiry, I did receive a response from the White House. The response was 81 pages long. There was a two-page letter from White House counsel Robert Bauer. There were 24 pages printed off the White House Web site. Anybody can go get them and print them off. There is a thank-you letter from the President to the six groups for showing up on May 11. There were some blog posts. There were some speech transcripts. There were some press releases, 18 pages of already- published White House visitor logs, 36 pages of print-offs from Web sites of the six groups. And you know, Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to finally get a response from the White House; but, you know, it wasn't what we were asking for in the resolution of inquiry, and it's not the information needed to really understand the scope of the agreements that were entered into. Now think about it for a minute. You have these six very powerful groups--AdvaMed, Pharma, AMA, American Hospital Association, the Service Employee International Union, all meeting down at the White House coming up with proposals to shave $2 trillion off health care expenses over the next 10 years, $2 trillion and no one wrote anything down. Mr. Speaker, do you believe that? That strains credulity, doesn't it? $2 trillion in deals and just a handshake? Just a wink and a nod? Nothing written down? Nothing on paper? Mr. Speaker, would you make a deal like that? More importantly, Mr. Speaker, would you ask the American people to accept a deal like that? Well, last week on January 27, the Energy and Commerce Committee began a markup of the resolution of inquiry. The markup was called not by me but by the chairman of the committee because the committee had to consider this resolution, and if the committee failed to consider the resolution, it automatically becomes a privileged resolution: we come directly to floor of the House. Now, in fact, Henry Waxman, Chairman Waxman, the chairman of my committee, a Democrat on the other side of most issues, agreed to help. He agreed to help me. He agreed to help Ranking Member Barton get answers, not to everything I submitted, but to six out of the ten things that I had requested. It certainly showed a step in the right direction. In fact, it was the first positive step toward getting any sort of sunlight onto these deals that were cut down at the White House. So the committee will soon send a letter to the White House signed by Chairman Waxman and Ranking Member Barton of the full committee asking for more information. What that information will comprise, number one, a list of all agreements entered into in writing as well as the details, including the sum and substance, of all deals and agreements; number two, the names of any individuals, groups, associations, or companies that attended meetings at the White House regarding health care; the name of the administration officials who attended the meetings on health care in the White House. As part of the release of visitor logs, we know who brings people into the White House. We just now want to know who met with the person who was being allowed in. The time and date of such health care meetings, and who, from the administration and from the outside groups was in attendance; written materials memorializing any agreements made during the meetings with administration officials and provided to outside participants; finally, number six, any paper or electronic communication, including emails in the possession of the Secretary of Health and Human Services or the staff of Health and Human Services, between HHS and the health industry in regard to health reform negotiations or the White House deals. That's what I will get. I asked for more than I actually will receive. What I will not get are written notes made by a stenographer or other note-taker of meetings with White House officials and/or outside groups memorializing discussions or agreements; number two, I will not get written material summarizing negotiations or agreements made with administration officials and outside groups and possessed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services or other officials within the Department of Health and Human Services; I will not get written material memorializing discussions between the President, his senior advisers and those in attendance written for the President and not provided to outside groups; and number four, I will not get internal emails within Health and Human Services and all agencies regarding the possible implementation of policies discussed at White House meetings in regard to health reform. So those are some significant omissions. But the six things will be requested of the White House by the chairman, and for that we are very grateful. Of course, the White House will assert, if any of these other four had been included in that list, the White House would assert executive privilege and it likely would lead to a court fight, and likely the White House's assertion of executive privilege would be upheld. But I will say one thing. It has certainly shown me some of the items that, in fact, I should be allowed to see occur because they are communications at the level of the Federal agency. Internal communications of the White House and internal communications between the President's advisers are not, are not going to be made available because that's White House executive privilege. We've had the interposition of multiple czars this past year. Well, every Presidential administration has had czars. We've certainly seen a great number of those positions now come into being, and because of the position of the White House czar, those emails between the health care czar and the President's Chief of Staff, for example, the health care czar and anyone else in the President's inner circle, those emails are protected under executive privilege, so having the czar in the White House is another way of helping to keep that information from public view. Information that comes from the Secretary of Health and Human Services through the Federal agency, that information is information that I was allowed to request. But information from the health care czar to the White House Chief of Staff is information that I will not receive. And that is a shame because I really believe that within those communications, within those communications is really where these deals would occur. But at least with the six things that are going to be allowed, at least with getting that information out into the open, certainly provides some additional places for, if the press is at all curious about this--they may not be, they have been relatively incurious about many of these aspects through the course of this last year. But if there is any curiosity on the part of the fourth estate, this will perhaps give them some direction to go into where they might inquire further to get additional information. It's an honest attempt to understand the deals that were made. I'm a member of the American Medical Association. I pay my dues every year. I have to admit I was somewhat surprised when the AMA agreed to endorse the bill when it included none, none, zero, none of their top priorities. It didn't include anything about tort reform in the bill. It didn't include anything about SGR or physician payment reform. It didn't include anything about the ability of physicians to get together and negotiate price. None of that was included in the bills that we saw, and yet the AMA endorsed H.R. 3200 before it ever got to our committee for a markup. What was in it for them? Why would they do this when their top issues were not included in the bill? That is something as an AMA member, not as a Member of Congress necessarily, but as an AMA member, I would like to know. Last Monday, the President said: I didn't make a bunch of deals. Now, this claim contradicts everything that has been reported. If he didn't, somebody did. Who did? And again, on whose behalf and under what authority? There is nothing inherently wrong with the President engaging in such an important topic or encouraging groups to act in the best interest of the public. There is nothing wrong with the groups acting in their own self-interest or the self-interest of the members of their industry. But we don't know if the deals struck were in the best interest of the public. We don't know if the deals that were sealed were the best deals for the American people. The American people certainly don't know because they were completely shut out of the process. Now, these questions will linger over my Committee of Energy and Commerce and the Senate Finance Committee. Indeed, this very House will have the specter of those questions lingering until we fill in its history. And it's really as simple as that. So my resolution of inquiry last week was simply to fill in a few of those pages in the historical record which otherwise are going to be lost to the sands of time. Let me reiterate, this is not about the groups included in the resolution. I know there are plenty of people on both sides who like to beat up on any number of people who are part of the six groups. There are people who like to beat up on unions. There are people who like to beat up on drug companies. This isn't about--this isn't about any of the people who responded to the President's call and went down to the White House that day to work for, arguably, what would be a good thing in reforming some aspects of our Nation's health care system. The problem is that the American people didn't get to see what it was they had on the table, what the offers were, what the counteroffers were, what wasn't offered, and who agreed to what, who was on the side of the people and who was on the side of the special interests. As the President said, we didn't get to see that. As it stands now, I asked, I want to know what the White House negotiated, with whom, and on what terms. I want to know how those deals influenced the legislative process. Certainly, there were several times where we bumped up against it. Certainly, the Senate Finance Committee did, and they were told, Hold on, you can't do that. We've got a deal. But did it also influence the legislative process when my amendments and Greg Walden's amendments were stripped out of the committee-passed bill and were stripped out of the Speaker's office never to see the light of day? So was that part of the legislative process influenced by those deals? We will never know if we don't get that information. And I want to know why a President who committed himself to transparency feels really no need to heed requests for transparency by the committee; why the President who ran on transparency feels no need to heed a request for documents by an elected Member of Congress, why they think it is okay to just simply not respond to a letter, ignore it, and we hope it goes away. Now, last week, the President, on one of the interviews, said that his lack of transparency was ``a mistake.'' If true, if he feels it is a mistake, he can correct the mistake. It's not too late. He can correct the mistake by turning over the information requested, and, in fact, turning over all of the information, saying, Do you know what? We are not going to hide behind executive privilege here. If there is an e-mail between my Chief of Staff and the health care czar that you think is important, we're willing to let you see that as well. We're willing to let the American people see that, because we have nothing to hide. If they don't do that, what are we left to surmise? That they've got something to hide. And what would they have to hide? I don't know. Here the fantasy can become worse than the reality. It would be better for the White House to provide this information. Again, the truth, the truth will, in all likelihood, be much less significant than what each of us will be left to imagine on our own if we are not provided that information. Now, to fully understand the policy choices going forward, we need to know what took place at the White House last year. I can't say it enough. I can't say it in enough different ways. The American people expect us to act in their interest rather than protect the business interests of those currying favor in Washington. We hear that all the time. In fact, we hear this President say that lobbyists won't have any access to his administration, and then we have secret deals with six groups that play a big role, a big role, in the cost of delivering health care in this country, and we don't get to see that. If any member of those six groups down at the White House sought protections or made unreciprocated concessions to Washington politicians, I think the American people deserve to know. The American people would likely want to know that information. These negotiations may have produced consensus on policy changes that are proper and needed, but we will never be certain until the facts are known. And if the facts aren't known, then the reality is not known. And if the reality is not known, then the fantasy becomes the reality, the worst excess that you could imagine is probably what happened; otherwise, they would open the books and tell us. Now, I will just leave you with the same thought one last time about the promises made during the Presidential campaign and after about how this process would be an open process, how this process would be an inclusive process, and inclusive not just to Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, which it has not been, but an inclusive process that would include the American people; because, after all, these decisions on health care, yeah, they're tough, yeah, there are going to be likely some winners and losers in whatever is finally crafted by the House and Senate, but it's going to affect the delivery of health care. It's going to affect the life of every doctor, nurse, hospital administrator, every mother, father, child, every husband, wife, every citizen of the United States, not just next year, not just the year after that, and not just the year after that, but for the next three generations; how health care is delivered in the country, who gets what, who pays for it, when it's administered, who can't get what they need. All of that is going to be governed by language in this legislation. And if there were outside influences on crafting that language in this legislation, we need to know about that because, otherwise, we don't know the questions to ask. We don't know whether to embrace or reject the legislation, because we simply don't know who, what, and where was involved in the process. And as a consequence, it makes it impossible, literally impossible, to evaluate the worth of this legislation. So here we sit, on Groundhog Day, sort of revisiting what happened over the last year with health care reform. On February 2 of 2010, the passage of a comprehensive health care bill looks as unlikely as at any time in our history past of this Congress. A year ago, it looked like a certainty. Today, it looks extremely problematic. And what is the one thing that could have given us a better bill, given us a better process, given people some reason to be behind this legislation that Congress is considering? The one thing that could have happened that didn't was opening the process up, turning on the C-SPAN cameras, inviting them in to that big conference table in the Speaker's office or that big conference table in the majority leader's office over in the Senate, or that big conference table down in the Cabinet room at the White House. Turn those cameras on, let the American people see who was around that table, who was willing to talk, who was willing to give, who was only willing to get. That would bring powerful information to provide to the American people. The President could have recruited, could have recruited from the American people, folks who like this legislation who would then ask for it. But, instead, they pushed everyone away, pushed them away from the table, turned off the camera, turned off the lights. ``Don't look at the man behind the curtain. We know what is best for you. This bill will be good for you. Trust us. You will like this bill once we get it passed.'' Well, that is nonsense. The American people know that is nonsense. Turn on the lights, turn on C-SPAN, let the people in, and let's give this bill the full public airing that it has deserved.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise today in support of H. Res. 1003, supporting the designation of January 10 through January 16 as National Influenza Vaccination Week. I would like to thank the numerous associations and health professionals for their work in this regard. The National Influenza Vaccination Week is an important opportunity to encourage those vulnerable to seasonal flu and those vulnerable to H1N1 to avail themselves of a vaccination. Although there has been a major decrease in the number of cases of H1N1, those who have not been vaccinated should consider how important it is to protect not only themselves, but the health of their family, their community, and of course their own well-being. Currently, there are well over 130,000 doses of the H1N1 vaccine available, and we are told that there is more coming every day. For those wondering where they can get more information about the seasonal flu vaccines and the H1N1, they can visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's www.flu.gov Web site. Again, I want to thank all of the health professionals for their efforts to lower the impact of the illness this flu season. I stand in support of this legislation, and urge my colleagues to join me. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. You know, it is just about 10 months ago that we first began to hear about this novel strain of flu that was coming across the border from Mexico. My home State of Texas was affected severely early on. And it is amazing that within such a short period of time the virus was identified, isolated, the genetic sequence was known, and then a vaccination was developed, tested, found to be safe, and delivered into the hands of Americans shortly after the commencement of the school year this year. We did lose many individuals to this illness, and for that we are sorry. But I would also stress that because of the efforts of the men and women who worked at the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, all the practitioners across this country who provided information and timely vaccination, the effect of this epidemic was significantly blunted over what it might have been. Those early telephone calls, those early conference calls in March and April of last year were nothing short of startling and alarming. I do urge people to avail themselves of this vaccine before this flu season is over.

Mr. BURGESS. I have no other speakers on my side, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor and remember Monique Pegues, who departed this life Friday, January 22, 2010. Ms. Pegues was a devoted Christian, wife, daughter, mother, sister and friend who left an indelible mark on each person in which she came in contact. She led an accomplished life that was exhibited to others through her love of God, family and career. Ms. Pegues was an active member of First St John Baptist Church and a 1994 honors graduate of my alma mater, the University of North Texas at Denton. As a respected colleague, she was chosen by her peers to represent them as President to the DFW Chapter of the Women's Transportation Seminar (WTS) and as Chairperson to the North Central Texas Regional Certification Agency (NCTRCA). Ms. Pegues was also a member of several other organizations, such as Leadership Fort Worth and Toastmasters International. She also volunteered with Meals on Wheels, Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the Salvation Army. In strong recognition of her many accomplishments, Ms. Pegues was recognized in 2009 as part of Mass Transit's exclusive national list of ``Top 40, Under 40''. Emboldened with a can-do spirit, professional demeanor and reserved confidence, Ms. Pegues quickly assimilated through the ranks of the Fort Worth Transportation Authority (The ``T'') to become the organization's Director of Governmental Relations. In this capacity, she developed effective long-lasting relationships with key elected officials and staffers here on ``The Hill'' in Washington, DC and in the Capitol in Austin, and was instrumental as a change-agent as evidenced through her highly-navigated role as liaison to various local, state, and federal governing jurisdictions. Ms. Pegues was a compassionate person with a never-ceasing love for the Fort Worth community in which she grew up and then chose to give back to by becoming a public administrator. Yet for all her public accomplishments, her private persona as a devoted wife to Calvin, and mother to three young sons Cortlin, Colin and Carrington, who together were her focal point and source of pride, served as the most important and dedicated role in which she attributed her joy, admiration and love. Madam Speaker, today I rise and join the Fort Worth community in honoring the exemplary life, legacy and achievements of Monique Pegues as an affirmation to the many contributions she bestowed upon all who knew her.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I wish to thank the chairman of the Subcommittee on Health of the Energy and Commerce Committee for bringing this important piece of legislation to the floor. And I am a cosponsor of H. Res. 1011, sponsored by Representative Deborah Halvorson from the State of Illinois. This month, January, is national Cervical Health Awareness Month, and it is important, it is fitting that we highlight the educational efforts that have been made to increase early detection of cervical cancer. Almost half of the women that are diagnosed with this life- threatening disease are between the ages of 35 and 55. They actually fall into two populations. In one population, the disease is relatively slow to evolve. Obviously, in this group, the detection of precancerous and pre-invasive changes allows for treatment of this disease to be relatively straightforward. But there is a second population, fortunately a much smaller population, where the disease behaves with sometimes frightening speed. The disease can be so aggressive as to go from a normal test to an actual invasive cancer within a year's time, and it is this group of individuals where these tests may, in fact, be life-saving. That is why it is so important that we highlight the awareness of cervical health. The month of January is more than half over. But the need for cervical cancer awareness and education should continue throughout the entire year. Awareness is the leading cause in the annual decline in deaths from cervical disease. The survival rate of individuals who have cervical cancer is 96 to 99 percent when detected in the early stages versus only a 15 to 20 percent survival rate when cervical cancer is diagnosed after it has spread beyond the confines of the cervix. It is because of successful programs that encourage early diagnosis, such as national Cervical Health Awareness Month, that Americans can lead full and active lives. By supporting the observance of national Cervical Health Awareness Month, we have the opportunity to encourage women to educate themselves about this disease and about the screening methods that are available to them. Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to support this resolution. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. As a fellow in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists before I came to Congress, I recognize the importance of Cervical Health Awareness Month. And yes, while we are focusing on testing today, the gentlelady is quite correct in that newer tests, newer methods, newer abilities to prevent this disease from happening are occurring even as we speak. Certainly to the health care community out there that has done such a great job at providing information to their patients, providing early detection and treatment to their patients, we owe a debt of gratitude. The work is not yet done, and I again encourage passage of this legislation.

Mr. BURGESS. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, today I rise to congratulate Rada Mihalcea. Dr. Mihalcea is an engineering researcher from the University of North Texas who will be honored by the White House on January 13, 2010, for her groundbreaking research on understanding the meaning of text and her exemplary commitment to education and community service. Dr. Mihalcea serves as an Associate Professor for computer science and engineering at UNT, which is located in Denton, Texas. She is among 100 university researchers nationwide who will receive the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. This is one of the highest honors a scientist can receive in the United States. Dr. Mihalcea's research focuses on finding a way to combine several different monolingual and multilingual lexical resources and integrating them into educational applications. Such applications could be useful in assisting Spanish-speaking individuals understand English texts by providing simpler synonyms or translations into English. This innovation is expected to make a huge impact on the local community and the Nation once successfully implemented. Dr. Mihalcea will be the first professor from any university in the Dallas/Fort Worth Area to receive the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. She was nominated by the National Science Foundation, who also awarded her the CAREER Award in 2008 for her work. Madam Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today and congratulate Dr. Rada Mihalcea, a recipient of a 2010 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, and thank her for her outstanding academic achievements and continuing dedication to the University of North Texas. It is an honor to represent Dr. Mihalcea and the University of North Texas in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Anita Thetford of Hurst, Texas. After twenty-nine years of dedicated service, she will be retiring from her current post for the City of Hurst. Anita has devoted her time to the City of Hurst since December 1980, and has since held designations as Certified Governmental Finance Officer and Registered Tax Assessor and Collector. For the past 19 years, she has served her community as the Director of Finance and has provided expert guidance in the financial arena during her tenure. Under her leadership, the City of Hurst has earned the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for 19 consecutive years and is one of only five cities in the United States and Canada to receive a rating of ``Especially Notable'' in three budget award categories for a single year. Anita's efforts are known to have maintained the City of Hurst's financial ratings, earned lower bond interests ratings and reduced property tax rates. This has bolstered Hurst's growth of new and existing businesses. Anita graduated cum laude from the University of North Texas with a bachelor's degree in business administration. She has also earned her Associates degree through Tarrant County Community College. Currently, Anita is completing a Master of Arts in Christian Education and Childhood Ministry from Dallas Baptist University. Anita has been a member of the Government Finance Officers Association of Texas for the past 27 years. She has served the association as President, Board Newsletter Committee Liaison, Ethics Committee member, Texas Municipal League Board Representative, North Texas Representative, and Newsletter Committee Chair. She also received the prestigious Outstanding Service Award and was recognized as Outstanding Finance Officer in 1998. As a member of the Rotary Club of Hurst-Euless-Bedford, she has served as the Treasurer, Secretary, Vice President, and President. She was also awarded the Outstanding Service award for this organization in 1999 and was named Rotarian of the year during 2005-2006. Anita has received many awards based on her knowledge, merit, commitment and integrity as a public servant and humanitarian. Madam Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today and recognize Anita Thetford for her years of dedication and selfless service to the City of Hurst. I am proud to represent her and the City of Hurst in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Yes.

Mr. BURGESS. Well, and the good news is that this is information that we need as legislators, the American people need to see to make up their minds as to whether or not this is good legislation or not. We have a tool at our disposal. The tool is called a resolution of inquiry. And a resolution of inquiry can be filed at the committee level. And a resolution of inquiry has to be, after it is filed, has to be dealt with in 14 legislative days. I filed a resolution of inquiry for these documents down at the White House, that were arrived at down at the White House in May and June. I filed a resolution of inquiry right as we left December 17. The resolution is H. Res. 983 for anyone who might want to look that up on Thomas. And our Committee on Energy and Commerce will have 14 legislative days to deal with this. Now, my expectation is that the committee will simply quash it. That may be, but at the same time I feel it is our obligation, as dutiful members of the minority, to bring to the American people some of these discrepancies. Now, part of the good news there is when I filed this, an article that was written in The Hill the day that we left town in December talked about this Resolution of Inquiry and had some interesting quotes from our chairman, Henry Waxman, on the resolution. And quoting from an article by Molly Hooper in The Hill on December 17, Mr. Waxman said, ``If there are such documents, Burgess should get them. I don't know if there are such documents. I think some of the things he wants are not written down, and different people have different ideas of what was agreed,'' Waxman told The Hill on Wednesday before Congress adjourned. I don't know either whether anything was written down, but the Resolution of Inquiry is there for a reason. I have been informed by House legislative counsel that they cannot recall having done a Resolution of Inquiry on a health care subcommittee, but this is important. This is important stuff. So this is one more tool at our disposal. The committee has to act on it. Probably it will mature sometime in early February. We are working so few days in January, the 15 legislative days likely will take us into February. It will either be forwarded from the committee to the floor of the House or it will be quashed in committee, which is what I expect will happen. But nevertheless, it is one of those things that we should be talking about because it is our obligation to bring some of these things to the floor on this discussion. Before anyone criticizes me by saying, ``Well, why didn't you speak up when George Bush had a meeting with energy executives?'' for one thing, I wasn't here when then-President Bush convened that meeting. But I don't recall President Bush in his campaign saying, ``Energy is so important that I will bring all the leaders in energy into the White House and I will open it up to C-SPAN.'' I don't recall him saying that. He never promised to open it up to C-SPAN. Now, President Obama, when he was running, had referenced the Clinton administration and some of the missteps when they attempted to take over health care and the 500 people who were locked in a room to produce a bill. He thought that was wrong. He thought that was a problem that the bill had because it was conceived in secret, and it should have been conceived in the full openness of sunlight in the legislative process. I agree with that. I, for one, am looking forward to the day that we elect a President who has the courage to stand up and say to the American people that he is going to put 500 doctors in a room and make them come up with a way to pay lawyers and he's not going to let them out until they come up with something. I would like to see that happen. I do thank the gentleman for bringing this issue up. It's an important issue, and I know there are other people who wish to speak on it. I yield back to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue much as we have done over this past hour, talking about this same issue, the health care bill that is now before the House and Senate, even though none of us have seen the finished product, and what has happened on the issue of transparency over these past several weeks since the House adjourned in the middle of December. I am going to talk a little bit more about the resolution of inquiry because I believe that is an important tool that is available to the minority Members of the House. And I think it is a tool that we need to use, a tool that we need to exercise in order to get the American people the information that they are going to need to make up their minds about this bill. If time permits, we will talk a little bit about some of the structural issues, some of the procedural issues that still are yet to occur if this bill indeed passes and is signed into law: What are the ramifications thereof? When will things happen? What will occur at the level of the Federal agency at the Department of Health and Human Services? But I thought, first, it might be useful just to do a brief recap of where we have been this past year. As most of us know, it has been not quite a year since the inauguration took place here in January of 2009, a historic day. A record number of people came and stood to watch the inauguration and to hear the speeches that occurred that day. We had a very spirited campaign during the fall. We had the appearance, for the first time, of some rather stark economic news that hit the headlines and perhaps dictated some of the course of the campaign, and certainly dictated some of the course of the very early legislative process in this body. I will tell you, as someone who watched the campaign of 2008 for President, as someone who watched that very closely and was very interested in the health care policy aspects of that campaign, I was, frankly, surprised. When the campaign came to a conclusion and the votes were counted and the President won, I was surprised that there was not a bill that was almost ready to come to either the Senate Finance Committee or one of the committees of jurisdiction on the House side. I rather expected that to be the Senate Finance Committee, because in October of 2008, Senator Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, convened several stakeholders over in the Library of Congress in the Members' briefing room there, had a day-long session, and took testimony and began, for all the world, to look like he was crafting a health care bill; produced a white paper shortly thereafter that, for all the world, looked like it was going to be a health care bill. So after the election, I thought that we would see, relatively quickly, the introduction of at least some draft language as to what this health care bill was going to--what form it was going to take now that the election was over. We all remember the election. Senator McCain had his ideas on health care. We might come back to those in just a moment, because some of that, we are back to the future now with some of those same tax issues that are now being raised by the Democrats as a means to pay for the Democratic health care bill. They are talking about using some of the same procedures that Senator McCain was talking about during the fall of 2008. So that is a little bit of irony, when they spent so much money blasting the Presidential candidate on the Republican side over his approach to health care. But we heard President Obama's approach. He said there was going to be a mandate to cover children. He said there was not going to be an employer mandate nor would there be an individual mandate, but that anyone who didn't have insurance would be able to have insurance just as good as a Member of Congress under a program like the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program. So those were the issues that were discussed and the platform that the President produced during the campaign. Then we had the election. I again was surprised that no bill came forward. I thought perhaps that Christmas of 2008 we might see from perhaps one of the Senators or from someone on the House side, again, at least a draft or an outline or some structure of what this bill was ultimately going to resemble. Then everyone came back to town for the swearing in in early January of 2009. We stayed around for the inauguration. Three weeks later, the inauguration occurred. And I thought, well, very quickly now we will see some structure on the health care bill. Now, arguably, there was a great deal of difficulty with the economy. The stock market was in free-fall in those days shortly after the inauguration, and there was a sense of urgency to do something about the economy. I think the wrong decisions were made in February. But, in all honesty, I think the wrong decisions were made in September and October of 2008, when President Bush put forward the economic stabilization plan and Secretary Paulson, then-Secretary of the Treasury, put forward the economic stabilization plan that they proposed in late September of 2008. I thought those ideas were wrong. I thought the stimulus bill was wrong in February. In fact, when you look back over this year and you look at the expenditure of political capital on that stimulus bill, had the health care bill been ready to go, had there been anything more than just rhetoric during the campaign, and had there actually been legislative language laid down or at least legislative principles developed from which legislative language could be developed; if we had taken that health care bill up in February, because of the enormous popularity that the President enjoyed in those early days after the inauguration, I think that the President could have pretty much gotten whatever he wanted during those early days. But the decision was made, for whatever reason, not to do that, but to go forward with the stimulus; and that is the legislation that came out of February. We also had a bit of a disconnect with the nomination for the Cabinet Secretary position for Health and Human Services and the name originally put forward. In fact, that individual had cleared through the Senate committees that were necessary to confirm that individual. But then, for problems that no one could have foreseen, that individual withdrew his name from consideration, and we went for several months without an agency head at Health and Human Services. And I think you can see during that interval that the agency did suffer from not having anyone at the helm at that point of that organization, because, obviously, Secretary Leavitt left upon the completion of the Bush Presidency, and there was no name at that point even to be confirmed by the Senate. So it was problematic that there was not a Cabinet Secretary named for Health and Human Services. And I think, in fairness, that did cause some of the delay on the health care front. We had, of course, as will always happen during the course of our legislative year here, we had things that happened around the world, things that happened in this country. We had a novel flu, H1N1, that came on the scene that took a lot of attention and time and discussion. We still had problems with the economy. No bill was produced during all this time. Now, when the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee met in June for the first time, they began to hear and began to mark up a bill in the Senate committee. And that was really the first glimpse that the American people had of what this new administration and what this new Congress was going to do as far as health care policy, and it was startling. It was a startling revelation because the cost and coverage numbers that came out of the Congressional Budget Office were some of those first passes through the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the other body, some of the cost and coverage numbers were quite startling. The cost was quite high, the coverage numbers were quite low, still leaving many people in this country uninsured; and there was quite a scramble to try to adjust things, try to pull the costs down and try to bring the coverage numbers up. In fact, we saw that evolve over the next several months, not just in June, as the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee dealt with the bill, but on into the summer when the three committees in the House who have jurisdiction over the bill, as they dealt with the bill, and then finally the Senate Finance Committee for the last part of the bill. We saw quite a bit of maneuvering and some magic numbers occurred. We have got to keep the cost under $1 trillion. I think $900 billion is where everyone generally agrees they want to keep that number. And if you exclude people who are in the country without the benefit of a Social Security number, we have got to insure in excess of 90 percent, perhaps 93 or 94 percent. Bearing in mind that 85 percent are insured today, we want to get that number up to 90, 92, 93 percent for that cost of nearly $1 trillion over 10 years. So there was a lot of maneuvering around cost and coverage. Cost and coverage really hadn't been a discussion during the campaign of 2008. Cost and coverage really wasn't a discussion around the time of the inauguration. But cost and coverage really stole the show during the summertime. Now, that was complicated because we had just gone through a terribly, terribly difficult budgetary process in the House and in the Senate, and the deficit numbers were higher than anyone ever thought possible, that anyone thought that they would ever see in their lifetime. So we were already dealing with a budget that was literally bursting at the seams, and then we found a $1 trillion price tag on this bill that came out of the Senate. And then, for reasons that I just simply cannot explain, the leadership of the House of Representatives decided in June, while all this drama was unfolding with the Senate, Well, we will just do the cap-and-trade bill. We will just do this energy bill and raise taxes on energy, and maybe that will help us offset some of the cost of this health care bill. It was the darnedest thing I had ever seen. We had marked up a bill in committee. It seemed pretty terrible to my observation during the committee process, but nevertheless we marked up a bill that was voted out of committee, and then it just lay there for about a month. It was like no one wanted to touch it. People were stepping around it. No one wanted to actually address this cap-and- trade bill. Then, suddenly, it was brought to life, brought back from the dead, literally, and passed within less than a week's time here on the House floor. And we passed it late in the day right before we left for the 4th of July recess. After the news shows and the news cycle was over for that weekend, we passed that cap-and-trade bill. I remember walking out of this House. It was a scant number of votes. There really were not a lot of the excess votes that the Speaker had for that cap-and-trade bill. And I remember walking out of here, and this was not a good feeling of what the House just did. I have got to tell you, when I got home to my district on Saturday morning, just 12 hours later, the people in my district were up in arms about what the House had done. Even though I had voted against the cap- and-trade bill, there was a lot of anxiety and, in fact, anger in my district because I hadn't stopped this legislative travesty from coming forward. And what in the world did Congress think it was doing with passing this type of energy tax when the country was faced with this severe a recession? We just had a summer before where gasoline prices had gone through the roof. We perhaps got a little bit of relief there, but it was only because the economy had faltered, but at least energy prices were down. And, now, you are going to raise taxes on energy to put us right back where we were the year before? I don't think so. So a lot of Members came back here from that July recess significantly set back by what their constituents had told them during the recess over the July 4th weekend. You can just imagine, Mr. Speaker, walking in your 4th of July parade. You are somewhere behind the American Legion, in front of the Cub Scouts. And as you are walking down Main Street in one of the cities in your district, people are yelling at you from the side about this bill that you passed. And nobody read the bill. That had been over the news. And people were yelling: Next time, read the bill, and even adding adjectives to those exhortations. So many Members of Congress came back a little bit shaken by what they had encountered in their districts because of some of the actions that Congress had taken. People thought nobody would notice about us passing a cap-and-trade bill late on a Friday afternoon or late on a Friday night right before a holiday break, but the American people were engaged. The American people were paying attention. And as a consequence, as we worked our way through July, remember, the big scheme or the big plan was that we were going to take this bill up in the three House committees, my committee of Energy and Commerce, the Committee on Ways and Means, Committee on Education and Labor. Those three committees were going to take up identical bills, work through them, pass them out of their committees, and then we were going to bring the health care bill to the House floor, vote on it right before the August recess, was the plan, and then we would all go home for the August recess having passed this massive health care bill. Well, it didn't work out like that. Now, the time for the markup in committees was significantly condensed. Although, no, we're not supposed to talk about process too much, I will tell you this is the type of legislation that really, yeah, it's going to take months. My understanding is--I was not here in 1990 when the Clean Air Act was passed, but it was my understanding it was a months-long markup process in Energy and Commerce. That's the way it should be. This is complicated legislation. It's going to affect a lot of aspects and a lot of people's lives. There really was not a reason to rush this through unless you didn't want anybody to know what you were doing. And that's the impression that the American people got from this Congress, that we were trying to do it fast so we could sneak something through before anyone really realized what had happened to them, just as we did with cap-and-trade. But because we did it with cap-and-trade, the American people said, Aha, not so fast, and you saw Members begin to waver. And they wavered just enough so that the bill did not pass out of all three committees until we were right up against the August recess. The bill passed out of my Committee of Energy and Commerce, which was the final of the three committees to mark the bill up. I think we got more time than any of the other committees. Some just had a single day, a 24-hour period, to mark up this complex and complicated legislation. We had at least had several days, though there were several of those days that we didn't actually work while the Democratic leadership tried to fine-tune the bill and take some of the rough spots out of it. But we did have at least a period of time in our committee to read the bill, become familiar with it, and then it passed. One of the myths that I should dispel is that the Republicans were not involved in the process. Republicans have been involved in the process from day one. Number one, I was involved in the campaign in 2008. I talked to the transition team right after the election and said, Health care is going to be important this year. I know something about that. I would like to be consulted as you write this legislation. I went to my chairman with the same comments. I didn't give up a 25- year medical career to sit on the sidelines while Congress deals with a bill that affects most of my friends back home who are physicians. No. I wanted to be involved in that process, but we never were. We were never asked. We were never consulted. We were vilified along the way that we had no ideas and that we would not offer ideas. I had 50 amendments--50 amendments that I offered in committee, in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Now, some of them were great amendments, some of them were relatively modest amendments, but every one designed to improve what I thought was a bad bill. Now, it was still likely to be a bad bill at the end of the process, I was likely to vote against it, but at least it would be a better bad bill as it came out of committee than it would have been had there been no input. Now, in fairness, the committee did ultimately accept several of my amendments, and several of my amendments were put in the House bill as we passed it out of committee July 31. Unfortunately, those all left the bill some time after that when the bill went to the Speaker's office to be rewritten. But I appreciate the fact that the committee was able to or was willing to accept at least a few Republican ideas. Then the bill goes to the Speaker's office. A great deal of mystery surrounding it. Where is the health care bill? No one knows. No one knows what's going to happen to it. Are we going to get it the first of October, are we going to get it the middle of October? Remember, the President came right here to the House of Representatives and spoke to a joint session. It had the Senate and the House, both sides. You may remember there was some excitement that night because of some debate that occurred on the floor during the President's speech. But the President said, I welcome ideas from both sides. I want Republicans to offer ideas. But when we offered ideas, the sound of crickets chirping. The President said during July that, You know what, I'll invite any Republican Member to come down to the White House and go through this bill line by line so they will understand what I'm trying to do. I said, Great, Mr. President. Fired a letter off. Made a call down to the White House. That was around the time of the famous beer summit that you might remember. I said, I don't drink beer, but I'll bring Diet Coke if that will help pass the time. But I would appreciate the opportunity of going through this bill line by line. Again, never heard a word. Did see something quoted indirectly in one of the newspapers on the Hill that the White House really was not interested in speaking with me on that subject. The President then offered during that speech in the middle of September, the President said, I will sit down with anyone. It's interesting. The President will sit down with Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez without preconditions, but he's not sure about congressional Republicans. But that night at least he said, I'll sit down and meet and talk with congressional Republicans about this bill. Again, great many ideas to offer, Mr. President. I even produced a summary of the 50 amendments that I'd introduced in committee, many of the health care bills that I'd introduced during the course of this year, and said, Let's talk about some of these ideas down at the White House. Again, no answer back for that. In October, kept trying to get information out of my committee chairman--the Subcommittee on Ways and Means--Mr. Stark, my subcommittee chairman, Mr. Pallone. When can we see a bill? We're going to get this bill and we're going to take some time to read it and understand it. When can we see this bill? Well, you'll have plenty of time. Don't worry about that. It will be coming along at some point. Maybe it's too complicated to read before we vote on it. That bill left our committee July 31, in excess of a thousand pages. We went home to our August town halls during the summer and people didn't like a thousand-page bill changing their health care. They said, Members of Congress won't read it. You won't accept the insurance for yourself, so we don't want it either. A thousand-page bill upset people. That was actually a revelation for me during the summer. I thought the Republicans ought to have their own bill to counteract the Democratic bill, but, in fact, what people were telling me is, We'd like to see you do something specifically with preexisting conditions. I'd like to see some specifics on increasing competition by being able to buy across State lines. We'd like to see something specific about holding down health care costs by offering some sensible liability reform, which we don't see in this bill. These were the things that the American people wanted us to see. Perhaps you might even argue that seven small bills might have been better than one large bill. What happened next was after that bill left our committee at a thousand-plus pages, it went over to the Speaker's office, and then in secret, with the White House participating, no Republicans, and I submit no back-bench Democrats were involved in that process either, the bill comes out at the end of October, the first of November, and it's 2,000 pages. Well, if a thousand-page bill upset people some, a 2,000-page bill really upset them. As a consequence, we heard from our constituents. In my office, the phones were ringing off the hook day and night, calls almost uniformly against whatever was going to happen next in the House with the passage of this bill. As people learned more about the bill, they got more and more uncomfortable about it. What occurred next was we passed this bill on the floor of the House late on a Saturday night after we'd been kept up here all week and all weekend to pass this bill. It passed by a slim, slim number of votes. In fact, just a few votes changing one way or the other and the bill would not have passed. It was interesting that the Cable News Network, CNN, produced a poll the morning that we voted on the bill. And I don't remember the precise numbers, but it was approximately 26 percent of the American people liked the bill the way it was and wanted us to pass it just the way it was. A larger number, perhaps 35 percent, wanted major changes in the bill before it was passed. A similar number, about 25 percent, felt that Congress shouldn't even be doing this, that we were overstepping our authority by even working on health care. And then a smaller number was simply disinterested. So you had 26 percent of the American people thought we were doing the right thing that day when we passed that bill. So it's no great surprise that after that bill passed that, again, many Members have heard from their constituents and, again, there's a great deal of angst and anxiety out there in the country over what has happened. But, undaunted, they picked it up in the Senate and let's go forward. Let's get this bill done. And you heard it discussed in the last hour. I've told people now for several weeks what we're doing up here has really nothing to do with health care. When's the last time you heard anyone talk about a vaccination rate, or when's the last time you heard anyone talk about something to reduce hospital-acquired infections? No, we're not talking about that. We're talking about how many Medicaid dollars do we need to give away in Louisiana in order to secure a Senate vote. It's an arithmetic equation. The first one to 60 wins. And, as it turns out, the Senate majority leader and the Senate Democrats have 60 votes, and they were able to collar in every one of those and pass the bill right before they left on Christmas Eve. So Santa Claus may have put coal in the stocking of many Americans who were expecting something worthwhile to come out of the House and Senate this year, but he left the Senate floor on Christmas Eve and now is our first blush back in the Chambers to deal with the aftermath. Now what has caused all the flap since then is normal process is the House passes a bill, Senate passes a bill. There's going to be differences. The House is a different structure than the Senate. The House has a 2-year term. There are more of us in the House. We tend to be a little more rough-and-tumble than the gentlemanly arena over in the Senate, but that's the way the Founders designed it. So there's always likely to be some differences between the House and the Senate bill. That's not a problem. The House and the Senate have a way of reconciling that. They get the two together and let's call a conference committee. Conferees are appointed by the Democrats in the House, the Republicans in the House, the Democrats in the Senate, Republicans in the Senate. The conference committee meets and works out the differences. It might pass on a party-line vote. Of course, there are more Democrats on the conference committee than Republicans but, hey, they won the election, and that's what elections are all about. But the conference committee is not going to happen because--it's not going to happen because this debate now has become an internal debate on the Democratic Party. We will continue to be blamed on the Republican side for obstructing this bill, but please understand there is nothing that we can do. We lack the numbers to stop this bill-- supermajority in the House, a 60-vote majority in the Senate. All the Republicans can stay together and the bill still passes because we just simply do not have the numbers. The arguments that are going on right now are arguments entirely within the Democratic conference. And it is a conference committee, if you will, of the Democratic conference where they're trying to work out the difference the Democrats have with Democrats over the bill, and ignore the Republicans--blame them, to be sure, because they're useful to blame as being obstructionists, but realistically no Republican is obstructing or slowing down this bill. We can't. We would like to, but we can't. Now, actually, there is perhaps something that might happen. We talked a little bit earlier about sometimes events that happen, change things here in the Chambers, events that happen out of the country. There is going to be a special Senate election in one of the States in the next week's time. In fact, a week from today there's going to be an election from the Senate. If that Senate seat were to change from Democrat to Republican, that would shift the balance from 60 Democrats to 59 Democrats. I'm sorry, 58 Democrats and two Independents that vote with the Democrats for a functional 60-vote majority in the Senate. But they could lose one of their votes. What happens then? Can we rush this bill through before that new Senator can be sworn in to stop things? I don't know. It will be interesting to see what the plans are, what people try to do. But that could be a game changer that no one would have anticipated a month ago as we left out of these Chambers, that a Senate seat that has historically been in Democratic hands for years and years and years could possibly change. But such is the angst of the American people over what they've seen us do. And because we've done so much of it, so much of it in secret in the Speaker's suite of offices, again, with the heavy hand of the White House applied at all times; the Majority leader's office over in the Senate, with the heavy hand of the White House applied at all times, why shouldn't--okay, fine, lock the Republicans out. We lost the election. Maybe we deserved to be locked out, but don't lock the American people out. Which kind of brings us back to the issue of C-SPAN and Brian Lamb's letter to the President. We have all heard. We saw on the news shows a couple days ago. We saw the multiple clips that were up on various Web sites of the President during the campaign saying over and over, I want this process to be open. I want the ideas to be brought in. I just ask that we do this out in the open, around a big table. Bring the C-SPAN cameras in so all can see. If your Member of Congress would rather stand with the special interests than stand with the American people, I want you to see that. Mr. President, I think you got it right. I want to see that. That's the reason I filed the resolution of inquiry. Because if a Member of Congress is going to stand with a special interest--and not all special interests are Republican special interests, bear in mind. Some of them may be a union special interest on the Democratic side. We heard another discussion tonight by the AARP. Who knows where the special interests are? The American people know, and the American people need to be able to watch that and make those decisions for themselves. This is a big deal. The first President Bush, during the campaign for President, famously said that the Democrats are going to come to me with tears in their eyes and say, Raise our taxes. And he said that I'll turn to them and say, read my lips, no new taxes. And then he walked back from that pledge, and it cost him. It cost him in the next election. It cost a lot of credibility on the Republican side for a President to walk back on that pledge. So if you have a President who said that this is going to be such an open and aboveboard process that I'll put the cameras in the room, you'll be able to see which Members of Congress are aligning with the American people and which Members of Congress are aligning with the special interests, who's taking up for the insurance companies, who's taking up for the drug companies, who's taking up for the unions, who's taking up for this special interest group or that special interest group? You will be able to see that on C-SPAN, and the President has now walked back from that pledge. In fact, his press secretary wouldn't even openly acknowledge that they were walking back from that pledge. Well, let's stop and think for a minute. What is the symbolism of C- SPAN to the American people? People are watching tonight on C-SPAN. C- SPAN is like a window into Congress. It's impartial. It doesn't have an editorial objective. It doesn't come with an agenda. Sometimes it can be frighteningly boring, but at the same time, it is what the American people have identified as their way to keep an eye on Congress. My predecessor, the former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, when he was deciding to run for Congress that first time back in 1983 or 1984, said that he watched the proceedings on C-SPAN, and it troubled him, and he thought he could do better. You know what? The same thing applies to me. I watched C-SPAN from labor and delivery on the little television that the hospital provided. And I would see things happen, like the House vote on an increased expansion of the debt limit, and I would get frustrated and upset. C- SPAN has been a way to invite the American people back into the people's House, and that has been an important aspect of what has happened with C-SPAN. But think back for just a minute. Why did C-SPAN happen? It wasn't just something that got created on the eighth day because they were running out of things to do. C-SPAN happened because of Watergate. C-SPAN happened because the Watergate hearings that were held were covered by 24-hour continuous, live television coverage. Television executives said, Nobody is going to watch that stuff. That's so boring, no one's going to watch that. It's like watching your grass grow, watching your grass die in wintertime. But people watched, and they were fascinated by the process. As a consequence, the C-SPAN cameras then came on, and they have not been turned off from Watergate until this day. And the American people get that. C-SPAN is synonymous with good government and good governance. So if you're not proud enough of your work to put it up there on C- SPAN, what have you got to hide? Why have we developed the major House legislation completely in secret? Why have we developed the major Senate legislation--which now, by the way, is up to 2,700 pages. Why have we developed that completely in secret? I say the White House was involved. We all know that people from the White House were here in the Capitol building the days that those bills were worked on. But since we couldn't watch it on C-SPAN, we don't know who from the White House was sitting in, what they were saying, whether they were simply standing there with their arms folded, or were they participating? Were they part of the give-and-take, Hey, if do you this, we'll do this. We'll try to help you with this. We'll try to protect you here. We don't know because none of that, none of that has been available to the American people. But the American people do get this. C-SPAN is good government. C-SPAN is good governance. C-SPAN is sunshine on the process. Sure, there's a value in opacity. Anyone can tell you that. But if you're able to kind of get, you know, some of the guys together in secret and kind of work things out amongst yourselves, and then you come to the House floor and say, Well, here's what we think the American people want. No, it's what these guys decide by themselves behind closed doors. Nobody wants that. Republicans lost the majority because the then minority leader Nancy Pelosi said that the Republicans were crafting bills in secret with the special interest groups, writing the legislation. Well, guess what, folks: Nothing's changed. It's just different special interest groups today than perhaps there were 5, 6 or 7 years ago. The way to ensure that this process is fair and above board is to keep the cameras on, not to include the Republicans in the room. I think we should be in the room, by the way. But that's not necessarily the key to the transparency. The key is to let the American people in the room if they choose to do so. If they're uninterested, if there are other things going on, if there are football playoffs, Final Four, beauty pageants, and the American people are not interested and don't want to watch the goings-on on C-SPAN, so be it. They had the opportunity. They chose to do other things. No one to blame but themselves if they don't like the final product. But at least they had the option of turning on that channel and watching the proceedings. Our committee hearings, our committee markup was covered on C-SPAN hour after hour after hour, and many of us would sit there and write in little Twitter messages about what was going on now in the committee process. And the three people who are interested in what I send out on a Twitter feed were grateful to get that little bit of information, that little kernel of information. Then they go turn on C-SPAN and say, Yeah, sure enough they're talking about community organizers in health clinics now. Well, the American people ought to have that option, and the fact that they don't, the fact that we will not give it to them then raises the question in their minds, What do we have to hide? You've got a big bill, now 2,700 pages. We don't think you're reading it. We don't think you'll take the insurance that it produces for yourself, for your families. Why should we be satisfied about what you're doing to--we heard it quoted earlier--one-sixth of the American economy? Why should we be satisfied that you're going to change the health care arrangement that 85 percent of the country says they are either satisfied or very satisfied with? Why are we going to change that arrangement simply to bestow additional political power on a select group of Members of Congress and Senators? Because remember, this bill has nothing to do with health care any longer. If you don't believe me, watch-- oh, you can't watch, that's right. But remember what happened over on the Senate side. This wasn't about how do we improve outcomes. This was, how do we get the outcome we want, which is to pass this bill? There is something wrong with the process when you say, We can't let you read it. We can't wait. We've got to do it in a hurry. And oh, by the way, the benefits that are going to come to you off of this bill actually start in 2014. Your taxes will start next week. The American people get that. That's a problem. It's a 2,700-page bill--or at least the one that they passed on the Senate floor was. Goodness knows what it will look like. Whatever happens to it, it's going to be a big bill. There is going to be a lot of legislative language. Well, what happens to legislative language after the bill becomes law? The President signs it down at the White House, a big signing ceremony. People from all over gathered around him, a great day is had by all, a wonderful photo op. What happens then to this signed piece of legislation, this public law that has now been created through this very flawed process? Well, it goes over to the Federal agency, the Department of Health and Human Services. And there the rules and regulations are written that will dictate what happens in health care to everyone in the country. Those rules will be written, and they'll be written in secret as well. To be sure, there will be a notice of proposed rulemaking. There will be thousands and thousands and thousands of pages generated in the Federal Register of this notice of proposed rulemaking and the rules and regulations that come out of this 2,700 page bill. I would submit that those rules and regulations will probably number in the tens of thousands of pages once it gets through the goings-on over at Health and Human Services. But here is something that's kind of strange about all of that. One of the big arbiters of those decisions is an individual who is in charge of a part of the agency of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS we call it. CMS has an administrator. The administrator at CMS is going to be the one in charge of writing a lot of those rules and regulations. Well, now, who is the administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services? Let's stop and think for a minute. Well, there isn't one because a year into this administration, no name has been put forward to the Senate for confirmation for the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And yet we're in a rush to get this bill passed. We've got to get this thing done. Time's a wasting. People are hurting. We're going to pass this legislation. It's going to go over there to an empty auditorium until that position is filled. It's not the Senate that is blocking a Presidential nomination. Don't fall for that. There has been no name put forward in a year's time. Now, do you think there's going to be a fight over that nomination over in the Senate? Yeah. I'll bet there is because that individual is going to hold a tremendous amount of power with a 2,700-page bill that affects every jot and tittle of how medicine is practiced in this country. Yeah. There is going to be a pretty big fight over in the Senate, and there should be because it is going to be a very, very powerful position. So we certainly don't want to rush someone through like we've seen with some of the other Federal agency heads in this past year and have someone in that job who doesn't fit the bill. We want someone who is competent. We want somebody maybe who has run an integrated delivery system at some point along the line. We want someone who has some experience in dealing with not just the creation of health care policy but the actual delivery side, putting the meat on the bones, if I can use that analogy, someone who has actually worked in the trenches in health care. I think that would be an enormously important first step. But again, we don't even know who that individual is at this point. Since the acting administrator left at the end of the Bush administration, it has basically been filled by agency personnel who are career bureaucrats, and their ability to deal with a 2,700-page bill is anyone's guess. I'm not being critical of the Department of Health and Human Services. That's just the way it is. Right now you've got people who are acting in that capacity, but they are not direct Presidential appointees. So there is not that accountability. There has not been advice and consent from the Senate, as is required under the Constitution for a Presidential appointment. This is not a czar, after all. This is an actual administrator of one of the agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. So there are a lot of moving parts yet to happen. Now we've seen this bill have more than its share of near-death experiences. Maybe it would be the best thing if one of those near- death experiences actually stuck and forced us to go back and craft something that would actually be useful for the American people. Now I'm not talking about delaying. Remember, it's 2014 before any of these good and great and wonderful programs are going to come to a town near you. There is no urgency about implementing any of the great things that have been talked about in conjunction with this bill. They are going to languish by the wayside. So since we have that gift of time, why not try to get it right? Because I will tell you this: I've heard people say, Well, let them pass their bill, and then perhaps the Republicans can fix it and repeal the parts they don't like. No, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like that. Once you start collecting taxes from people for a yet- to-be received benefit at some point in the future, it becomes very, very difficult to roll that back. We have a lot of discussion in this House of Representatives about what are the right things to do with Medicare in the future. And goodness knows that any one of us might do things a little bit differently in setting up the Medicare system if we could roll the clock back to 1965 and start over, but we can't. We have what we have with that program. And it becomes--as you've heard over and over again on the floor of this House--it becomes very, very difficult then to take big chunks of it away. We are going to take $500 billion out of Medicare. That's going to hurt some people. It is not going to be without pain for some people to do that. There are going to be constituencies that are benefited, and some that are upset. Such is the nature of doing those types of things. Well, you can just imagine if you have the whole health care bill and now you are trying to do that kind of major surgery on that bill after the fact, it is going to be very, very painful, indeed. So I would submit that as many near-death experiences that this bill has had and as many times as it has been resuscitated literally off the floor of the House and brought back to life, perhaps we would all be better off if one of these times this bill did not survive, and we went back and tried to do the right thing. Again, I enumerated those a moment ago. What I heard repetitively in the town halls I did this summer and this fall: we are scared of what you are doing. We don't think that you are competent to do the things you have said you are going to do, but we would like to see something done about people who, through no fault of their own, lose employer-sponsored insurance, have had a tough medical diagnosis and now find that they are frozen out of the insurance market, they are on the outside looking in, and it becomes very difficult for them to get back into a condition of insurance. We would like to see some of the protections that are out there for the ERISA-administered plans, we would like to see those out in the individual market. And we would like to see more flexibility for COBRA plans, for people who lose their job and then lose their employer- sponsored insurance; and, oh, under COBRA, you can keep it for 18 months but you have to pay not just your premium but the two-thirds that the employer was kicking in during the time of your employment. And guess what, you have just lost your job so that is a very difficult payment to maintain. I know, I saw patients with this when I was in practice. But we could do things to allow more flexibility within the COBRA plan so that it didn't have to be an identical insurance plan that person carried under COBRA. It could be a plan that had perhaps a benefits package that was more in keeping with what that person could afford at that time. But we don't know; we have never had that discussion. We have never had a hearing or a discussion on that. We have never had an opportunity to have a give and take between the right and the left over what that might look like. Preexisting conditions, we talk about things like risk pools and reinsurance. Maybe there is a way to do that. The CBO scored one proposal that cost $25 billion over 10 years. Well, that is expensive; but it is a whole lot less than $1 trillion. If that is the main problem the American people want to see fixed, why not work on that. Perhaps there is some place we can get that $25 billion without adding to the deficit. Maybe that would be a legitimate use for some of the moneys in the Medicare slush fund, but we don't know because we never tried. We never had the hearing, and we never seriously addressed how do we do anything other than take it all over, which is what we have done with this bill. Liability, the Congressional Budget Office has said there is $50 billion of savings over 10 years or more. Some people say that is a drop in the bucket with health care costs. Maybe so, but it is a start. And it is a pretty big drop, and it is one that we can ill afford to just ignore. Why don't we have those discussions, and why don't we have those hearings. Why don't we do the right thing for the American people and not just continue to protect a special interest group who may have a significant interest in keeping the liability laws the way that they are. We have had some big changes down in Texas, and it has improved things for people. It has brought more practicing physicians into the State. It gets a lot of criticism because prices and costs have not come down, but that does take time. A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step, and you have got to take that first step, which is liability reform, before you are ever going to get any of those other benefits. But, indeed, costs have come down. The cost of insurance has come down. The number of doctors available for delivering the care has increased, and we all know the laws of supply and demand: if you increase the number of doctors in a community, costs will diminish. People will have more open appointment slots, and they are anxious to fill them. If there is excess capacity to fill in their clinics, they are going to want to fill those appointment slots. So perhaps they are willing to take someone who will pay over time, or perhaps they will offer a discount to get more people in. That's the way things work. Instead, we have this massive government overlay that is going to control every aspect of your doctor's and patient's life, and it has never been tested. We have a system that 85 percent of the American people are satisfied or very satisfied, and we are going to change it all with something no one has ever seen in this country. God help us if they don't like it. Well, we know that they don't like it because they have told us they don't like it. A CNN poll, CNN which generally tends to be very favorable to programs proposed by this President, generally tends to be very favorable to Big Government solutions to social problems, 26 percent of the people polled by CNN said, hey Congress, we like what you are doing, go get them. The other 75 percent said slow down and do things differently or you shouldn't even be working on it at all, or we don't know what you are doing and we don't care. But only 26 percent endorsed the activities of this House of Representatives. And that is consistent with the numbers that you see even tonight that are reported by the various reporting agencies, Web sites and cable news services who report around 55 to 58 percent of the American people don't like what they see us doing with health care. That brings me back to the resolution of inquiry which was filed on December 17. A resolution of inquiry is a tool that the minority has or in fact a Member on the majority has in order to ask for information that they believe is being withheld from them that they need in order to make an informed legislative resolution. It is H. Res. 983, introduced on December 17 just as we left town for the Christmas break. It requires 14 legislative days to mature at which time it must be either voted on in committee or discharged from the committee to the House floor where it becomes then what is called a privileged resolution to ask that that information be delivered. Now, I know we don't have the numbers to pass anything on the Republican side. I know a resolution of inquiry introduced in the Committee on Energy and Commerce, if the chairman wants to simply quash it, he has the votes to do that. He will ask his side to vote with him on voting ``no'' on the resolution of inquiry, and that's where it stays. But I was encouraged by a newspaper article that appeared on the day that the resolution was filed. It appeared in one of the newspapers up here in Washington called The Hill, and in it Chairman Waxman was quoted as saying, and remember this resolution of inquiry was requesting documents from the White House that were produced in meetings last May and June when the White House invited six parties to participate in talks down at the White House. They came up with $2 trillion in savings over 10 years that they were going to then use to pay for this health care bill. Those were representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, an association of American insurance plans, the medical device manufacturers, and the Service Employees International Union. So you had a rather disparate group of individuals representing doctors, insurers, hospitals, medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and union representatives who each brought something to the table to say we can give you this much in savings if you will help us with whatever if there is a problem. We don't know what was offered up by the groups that were meeting at the White House, and we don't know what was offered back by the people in attendance at the White House. Chairman Waxman was quoted as saying: If there are such documents, Burgess should get them, but I don't know if there are such documents. I think some of these things that he wants are not written down, and different people have different ideas of what was agreed. Well, fair enough. Maybe there wasn't anything written down. It is a little hard for me to believe that a $2 trillion agreement would be reached on nothing more than a handshake. But if indeed that is the way it went down, then someone should at least tell me. I sent a letter to the White House September 30 talking about this very issue and asking for specifics as they came out of those meetings and as yet have gotten no answer from the White House. If the answer is, we have no documents, that there never were any documents produced, we did all of this $2 trillion of savings simply on a wink and a nod and a handshake, fine, just tell me that. But at the present time, you are left with situations as developed in the Senate Finance Committee when a tax was suggested on some of the hospital charges and the hospital association said, wait, that wasn't part of our deal. Well, if that wasn't part of the deal, what was the deal? Can you give us some of the details on what was agreed to? Again, as legislators trying to write this legislation so it won't conflict with anything that has been agreed to by the White House, it seems it would make good common sense that they would want to share that with us. I frankly don't understand why that information has not been forthcoming. Now this resolution was introduced on December 17. Sometime likely toward the end of the first week of February or at the beginning of the second week in February, it will have to come to a vote in the committee. We will see what they do with it. Again, the chairman may say, look, nice try, but we are not interested in pursuing that right now and vote it down; or it may come to the floor as a privileged resolution. But at least over that period of time we have the opportunity to talk about this. We have the opportunity to talk about these secret deals that were struck down at the White House, and then it ties in very much with the story that everything is going to be up and out in the open on C-SPAN, but we don't want to let the C-SPAN cameras in the room while we craft this final legislative product that is going to deal with health care and how health care is administered in this country for the next two or three generations. That is pretty important, but we are not going to get to see any part of what is going on. The American people understand that C-SPAN is sunshine. C-SPAN represents good government. C-SPAN was the foil that the American people had against the excesses of a Presidential administration that overstepped its bounds and brought us the spectacle of Watergate and the crumbling of a Presidency. C-SPAN is the preventive medicine that keeps that from happening again in the future. The first President Bush went back on a pledge he made in the campaign. He made it one time, and he was dealt with very severely by the American people and did not win a second term as President. And many people feel that going back on that pledge of no new taxes, and it wasn't so much the fact that he raised taxes, it was that he raised taxes after he told us he wouldn't. Now we have a President who said it will be out in the open, trust me. You will be able to see it. If your Member of Congress is standing with the insurance companies instead of you, you will know that. Well, guess what, now you don't. I will tell you since there are no Republicans in the room, there are no Republicans standing with the special interests as this health care bill is being written because we are not allowed in the room and we are not allowed to be part of the process. But we don't know what Democrats are defending the insurance companies or the unions. We don't know what Democrats are defending the pharmaceutical manufacturers. And we don't know what Democrats are defending the doctors, if indeed any actually are. We don't know because we are shut out of the process. Not just us as Republicans, but us as the American people. And that is what is so inflammatory about what has happened this past week here in Washington, D.C. So a lot has occurred since the House and the Senate went out just before Christmas. We are now back in town. We are told we have an artificial time frame of doing this before the State of the Union address, though it appears that the State of the Union address is a little bit fluid because we don't want to schedule it on top of the season's start of a new television series, so some give-and-take about when that actual address is to be scheduled. I thought it was the end of January. It's now sometime in February. We do have a big Senate election, and people would do wise to tune into that and be aware of what is happening in a part of this country where a Senate seat that has been safely in Democratic hands for two or three generations may in fact change hands a week from tonight. How long will it take to get that new Senator sworn in? How long will it take to get that new Senator to town so they will be able to vote on this very important health care legislation? Will it take longer if that is no longer a reliable ``yes'' vote but becomes a problematic ``no'' vote? Will there be an attempt to run out the clock or stretch out the clock so that we don't seat that new Senator? I think the American people need to pay attention to that because all of those things are an integral part of this process that we call ``health care reform'' that is now playing out in its final chapter here on the floor of the House and the Senate. Mr. Speaker, you've been very generous with the time, and I'm going to yield back the balance of my time. September 30, 2009. President Barack Obama, The White House, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. President, I write you once again on the topic of health care reform. As you know, Democrat leaders in the House of Representatives are currently working to merge the three committee bills. Meanwhile, the two Senate bills are waiting to be merged pending completion of the Senate Finance Committee's mark-up of the Baucus plan. I have closely followed the health care debate for months, making note of actions by all parties involved, including the House, Senate, White House, advocate groups, and the health care industry. These reforms have wide-reaching implications, and you have stressed the importance of conducting business in public so that the American people are aware and involved in the process. In fact, during a Democratic Presidential primary debate on January 31, 2008, you said: ``That's what I will do in 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.'' It has now been over four months since the White House announced numerous deals with major stakeholders in the health care debate to save upwards of $2 trillion in the health care system. Little to no details regarding the negotiations have been released, and recent actions and press reports have reminded me of the importance of openness and transparency throughout the legislative process. Roll Call reports today that negotiators working in the House to merge the three committee bills plan to trim the cost of the legislation by roughly $200 billion. I wonder what programs or services are being cut, who will be affected, and how these cuts are being decided. In the Senate Finance Committee's mark-up, Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla) introduced an amendment regarding drug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. During the debate on the amendment, Senator Tom Carper (D-Del), while arguing against the amendment, said ``Whether you like PhRMA or not, we have a deal,'' referring to the deal PhRMA cut with the White House earlier this year. In addition, within the Senate Finance Committee plan is a commission to slow the growth of Medicare spending, most likely through changes to reimbursement policy. However, hospitals would be exempt from this commission because, according to CongressDaily, ``they already negotiated a cost cutting agreement'' with the White House. Despite your promise to make all health care reform negotiations in public, we still have very few details on what exactly was agreed to during these highly publicized negotiations. In fact, even the stakeholders involved have, at times, seemed at odds with what was actually agreed to. But the one thing we all know is that, through press statements, many deals were made. Unfortunately, even where brief descriptions of policy goals are available, details on achieving these goals are absent, a point made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). I am compelled to ask--how could Congress have done its' due diligence in creating the policy before us without crucial details surrounding these deals? Were the votes we have seen in the Senate Finance Committee as of late a direct result of these backroom negotiations? Will CBO be able to actually score any of these deals to apply those cost savings to legislation? Were these negotiations in the best interests of patients? Having little to no information, I cannot judge. However, this begs even more questions. Is Congress enacting the best policy reforms for Americans, or are certain changes being made or not made because of the negotiations orchestrated by the White House? Will smaller stakeholders suffer more from our policy choices because of what larger groups may have negotiated behind closed doors? Mr. President, I do not write this letter to chide you for engaging in what I consider the most pressing debate before Congress. I applaud you for your leadership in compelling Congress to act. In order to fully understand the policy choices before us, though, we need to know what took place earlier this year during these meetings at the White House. You have made it very clear that you value transparency and have sought to make your Administration stand out in this regard. As a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, so do I. The last thing I would want to see is a formal investigation of these meetings. Thus, I formally request full disclosure by the White House in the following areas regarding all meetings with health care stakeholders occurring earlier this year on the topic of securing an agreement on health reform legislation, efforts to pay for any such legislation, and undertakings to bend the out year cost curve: 1. A list of all agreements entered into, in writing or in principle, between any and all individuals associated with the White House and any and all individuals, groups, associations, companies or entities who are stakeholders in health care reform, as well as the nature, sum and substance of the agreements; and, 2. The name of any and all individuals associated with the White' House who participated in the decision-making process during these negotiations, and the names, dates and titles of meetings they participated in regarding negotiations with the aforementioned entities in question one; and, 3. The names of any and all individuals, groups, associations, companies or entities who requested a meeting with the White House regarding health care reform who were denied a meeting. In our efforts to improve access to health care services, the American people expect us to act in their best interests, rather than protecting business interests of those who are interested in currying favor in Washington, DC. If these health related stakeholders have made concessions to Washington politicians without asking anything in exchange for the patients they serve, Congress and, most importantly, the American public deserve to know. Conversely, if they sought out protections for industry-specific policies, we need to know that as well. We must learn what these negotiations mean for the millions of concerned Americans. How they will be better served, including having affordable health coverage and access to the providers they need? These negotiations may have produced consensus on policy changes that are proper and needed, but Congress will never know for sure that we are acting in our constituents' best interests until all the facts are known. I look forward to the opportunity to speak with you at your earliest convenience on this matter. Should your staff have any questions about this request please contact me or my Legislative Director J.P. Paluskiewicz at my Washington, D.C. office at 202-225-7772. Sincerely, Michael C. Burgess, M.D., Member of Congress.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.