Michael Burgess

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the Trauma Systems and Regionalization of Emergency Care Reauthorization Act, H.R. 648, is identical to H.R. 4080 that passed the House last year unanimously. This legislation has also passed both the subcommittee and the full committee. This support extends back to 1990 when the grant was created and authorized. This reauthorization allows funding for trauma systems development and the regionalization of emergency care. These programs are designed to improve patient outcomes, and they are designed to save lives and cut costs, objectives where I believe there is bipartisan agreement. Trauma systems are organized efforts in a defined geographic area that deliver the full range of care to injured patients. Many members of the subcommittee have trauma systems in their districts or ones nearby that are able to serve their constituents. Regionalizing emergency care allows States to coordinate their resources and helps first responders act faster, leading to lower costs and better outcomes. A study released last year found that patients living near a recently closed trauma facility were 20 percent more likely to die from their injuries. Two years after closure, the likelihood of death increased to 29 percent, emphasizing the importance of these grants. This legislation is broadly supported by medicine, sharing the list of supporting organizations that I previously read on H.R. 647. It is bipartisan. I would stress it has gone through regular order. I want to thank Chairman Upton and Chairman Pitts, as well as Ranking Member Pallone and Ranking Member Green, for their help and support on this legislation. I want to thank the Energy and Commerce staff on both sides of the dais: Clay Alspach, Katie Novaria, as well as Hannah Green, and a special thanks to Adrianna Simonelli, who championed both of these bills as my legislative fellow and who is now working on the committee. Mr. Green and I have worked on these issues literally for years, and I appreciate his continued partnership on this bill. I want to thank his staff, Kristen O'Neill. Finally, I do want to thank J.P. Paluskiewicz, who shepherded this bill through the entire process. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, let me just conclude by strongly urging all Members of the House to vote in favor of this legislation. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 648) to amend title XII of the Public Health Service Act to reauthorize certain trauma care programs, and for other purposes.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 647) to amend title XII of the Public Health Service Act to reauthorize certain trauma care programs, and for other purposes.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials in the Record on the bill.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I come today, of course, to speak on the rule and to encourage passage of the rule and encourage passage of the underlying bill, funding the Department of Homeland Security for the next 21 days. I would remind this body that the House, last month, funded the Department of Homeland Security until the end of the fiscal year, September 30. We have since awaited activity over in the Senate or over in the other body, and that activity, unfortunately, has not been forthcoming. So we are left, again, with a deadline situation; and the House leadership, responsibly, has stepped up to provide temporary funding for the next 21 days. The problem, of course, goes back to November when the House did not want to fund the President's illegal, unlawful amnesty. It turns out a Federal judge in Texas agreed with us here in the House that it was an illegal amnesty. But in reference to the comments just made here on the House floor, here is a pop quiz for everyone. What country is more welcoming than any other country on the face of the Earth? What country allows more people in legally than all other countries combined? Well, that country is the United States of America. Last year, over 1 million individuals were welcomed into this country legally, and it has been so every year that I have been in the Congress for the last 12 years. That is 12 million people, just using simple math. All we ask is that you simply follow existing law. For people who want to say our immigration system is broken, I would submit that what is broken is our enforcement system. You had only to look to the southern border last summer and see the flood of unaccompanied minors coming over--not sneaking across the border, simply walking across the border and turning themselves in--and this country was required to deal with that on an emergent basis. The State of Texas was required to deal with that on an emergent basis. There was a lot of discussion as to why that surge happened. I think there is a link back to the President saying: I am going to suspend enforcement of some of our immigration laws. It sent a message. It sent a message to people: Y'all come. Y'all come. The doors are open. If you get here in time, guess what. You won't have to worry about our laws. That was the wrong message because, as a consequence, States, like my State of Texas, were required to deal with the influx and were required to deal with the increase in social programs that were then called upon to provide those services that had never been budgeted before because they were, by definition, unexpected. I agree that we do have a problem, and the problem is the porosity of the southern border, particularly in the Lower Rio Grande Valley sector in the State of Texas. The former Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, met with the President in Dallas and invited him down to the border to come and see what we are dealing with, and the President refused. Well, many of us have been to the border. Bipartisan trips have been conducted to the border, to the Lower Rio Grande Valley sector. Thank goodness for the men and women who show up there to work every day. Federal, State, and local sheriffs show up to work every day to keep our country safe. And right now, the lion's share of the enforcement on the border, of the protection on the border, is being done by the Texas Department of Safety, the highway patrol. The people who are supposed to be out catching speeders on the freeway are actually in boats on the Rio Grande to enforce our border security because it is national security. Lieutenant Governor Patrick, when he was running for election, said over and over again: The security of the southern border is a Federal responsibility, but it is our problem, as State leaders. So they have stepped up and they have spent money. They have committed money. They have committed people and equipment to that southern border, equipment that should have been pledged by the President of the United States and Department of Homeland Security. Former Governor Perry offered President Obama an opportunity to come to the border to see what the problem was. The President refused. I think that was a mistake. I think the President should have traveled to the southern border. The reality is that many of the Customs and Border Patrol individuals are not even on the border. They are one county in, dealing with the people who have now trekked across some of the most dangerous desert and difficult country around, who have been picked up by Customs and Border Patrol now 40, 50, 80 miles from the southern border. The problem is not solved by the President's executive order. The problem is exacerbated. The President is throwing gasoline on the fire on our southern border, and that needs to stop. Thank goodness a Federal judge recognized that, and at least the process temporarily has been halted. The answer, though, is to enforce existing law, protect and defend our border, as all of us were sworn to do when we took that oath of office. That is the type of reform that is needed.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 70 provides for a rule to consider the full repeal of the flawed and ill-conceived Affordable Care Act. The rule provides for 90 minutes of debate, divided and controlled by the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the Committee on Ways and Means, and the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Further, the rule self-executes the Byrne amendment, which provides for a clean repeal of the entire Affordable Care Act. The rule further provides the minority with one motion to recommit with or without instructions. This approach--a full repeal--will give the House, particularly freshmen from both parties, an opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on the Affordable Care Act. More than just a full repeal, the legislation before us provides for a process whereby the committees of jurisdiction are tasked with coming up with a replacement for the flawed law now being implemented. We know what ideas don't work. Those are the ideas enshrined into law in the Affordable Care Act. Now let's look toward ideas that will work. I do look forward to working with the Energy and Commerce Committee's chairman, Fred Upton, to craft meaningful legislation that will actually help the American people instead of strangle them with more government regulation, which is what the Affordable Care Act actually does. Americans should have the freedom to make their own health care decisions. In March of 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law. It was drafted quickly and behind closed doors. It included secret deals, loopholes, drafting errors, and funding cliffs that allowed Federal agencies to be created without congressional knowledge or oversight. More and more of the Affordable Care Act's supporters are having to admit to the American people that, in their rush to pass a bill, the same people who put their voting cards in the slot and helped the ACA become law didn't actually know what was in the bill. Now people are finding out what is in the bill, and they are upset. So upset are the American people that in every election for the House and Senate since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, more and more Republicans were chosen to replace supporters of the flawed law. Indeed, this past fall, President Obama, in no uncertain terms, declared: Make no mistake, my policies are on the ballot. It is actually one of the few times I have ever agreed with this President. His policies were on the ballot, and the American people soundly rejected them, placing a historic majority of Republicans in the House and taking control of the Senate out of the hands of Harry Reid. The bottom line: the drafting and passage of the Affordable Care Act was not the way to achieve meaningful reform. Many errors occurred through the language. This is why the Supreme Court this spring will be hearing a case that could upend the Affordable Care Act's subsidy structure. This case is entirely the fault of people who drafted and implemented the bill so poorly. With the Supreme Court case looming, this body--this body--must be prepared to work for the American people and stave off the possible chaos which could ensue. The health care system in America needs reform and improvement, but the law that was passed will cost the American taxpayer millions of dollars, will not improve care, nor will it make it more affordable. The bill that this House will vote on puts in place a procedure that will begin the process of crafting a replacement that could truly bring affordable access to health care to all Americans. The so-called Affordable Care Act does not accomplish that goal. We need to start, and start fresh, and we need to address the issues with commonsense improvements that focus on the real issues at hand: creating a health care system that is focused on patients instead of payment, quality instead of quantity, affordability instead of cheapness, and innovation instead of stagnation. The first step is eliminating this bad legislation that simply does not work. That is why, today, I strongly support the repeal of the President's health care law. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), the chairman of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. BURGESS. I generally reserve my enthusiasm for closing.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes for the purpose of a response. First off, when Medicare passed, it was passed with a bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives, and that is a matter of historic record. In fact, that is one of the weaknesses of the President's takeover of health care in this country is that it passed only with Democratic votes in both the House and the Senate on final passage. Mr. Speaker, I also went through the number of times that the President has unilaterally delayed, deferred, or simply dismissed parts of his own law. One of, perhaps, the most troublesome, one of the most curious, is when the President set aside entry into his own preexisting pool in January of 2013, they did that because they were worried that they were going to run out of money in the preexisting fund. But the reality was that for anyone who was hoping to get coverage under the preexisting pool beginning in January-February of 2013, they were told: Sorry. Window closed. Go somewhere else. Then to add further insult to injury, when they couldn't get the Web site up and working at the end of 2013, they actually had to extend coverage in the Federal preexisting pool until March of 2014 so those patients would not be left out in the cold. So the President has been deeply involved in delaying parts and deferring parts and repealing parts of his very own law. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, let me first address the question of process because the Affordable Care Act did pass in the 111th Congress. The Affordable Care Act, as it came to the 111th Congress under then-Speaker Pelosi, was not a bill that had been considered in any of the committees of jurisdiction. H.R. 3590 came to us from the Senate of the United States. Now, in fairness, H.R. 3590 had passed the floor of the House, I believe it was July of 2009; but H.R. 3590, when it passed the floor of the House, was a bill dealing with veterans housing. So it goes over to the Senate to await further work, and to be sure, in the meantime, H.R. 3200 and then a couple of follow-on bills were marked up in committees, and then the Speaker condensed things and introduced her own bill. We heard it on the floor of the House; and, indeed, it passed in November of 2009. Mr. Speaker, that was the end of the line for that bill. No one has seen or heard from it again. My friends on the other side may remember some parts of that bill. What about the Independent Payment Advisory Board? Was that included in the House-passed bill? No, it was not. Well, there was a public option because the Democrats felt very strongly about having a public option. Really, they wanted a single- payer system, so a way to move to a single-payer system was to include the public option, but the public option wasn't in H.R. 3590. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3590, a House-passed bill dealing with veterans housing, went over to the Senate where, sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it was pulled out of Harry Reid's desk and amended. The amendment read ``strike all after the enacting clause and insert.'' All of the housing language was removed, and all of the health care language was inserted. This travesty was passed on Christmas Eve in 2009. A big snowstorm was bearing down on Washington, D.C., Senators wanted to get home to be with their families before the airport closed, and so it was passed in the early hours of Christmas Eve in 2009. Now, shortly after that, Massachusetts had a special election to fill the vacancy that occurred after the unfortunate death of Senator Kennedy. That vacancy was filled for the first time by a Republican from Massachusetts. I think that was really the first time since the Earth cooled, the first time that a Republican had been elected from Massachusetts. The critical point on that was that Harry Reid no longer had 60 votes over in the Senate. Prior to that, he had been pretty much impervious: I have got 60 votes. I am going to do what I want. Democrats can bust a filibuster on anything because they have got 60 votes. After the loss of that 60th vote, H.R. 3590 could not be changed--or at least Harry Reid's assertion was that it could not be changed, and Speaker Pelosi would simply have to pass what he gave her. Now, there was a lot of resistance here on the House to passing--even on the Democratic side--there was a lot of resistance to passing that bill that came over from the Senate because it was not a House product. It had the Independent Payment Advisory Board in it. It didn't have a public option in it. Many of the Democratic Members were reluctant to engage on this. In fact, I think the quote from Speaker Pelosi that day was: I don't have 100 votes for this thing over on the House side. Over the ensuing 3 months, they did convince and cajole enough of their Members to pass this by the slimmest of majorities in the early part of March of 2010, and that leads us to where we are today. Mr. Speaker, it was the 111th Congress that passed this thing. I had 18 amendments to the Affordable Care Act that I dutifully took up to the Rules Committee when we were in the minority and said: Look, I don't like what you are doing, but let's at least keep it from being quite the problem that it is going to be. Every one of those was rejected. I lost on a 9-4 vote. No surprise-- it is the Speaker's committee, she held the votes on the committee, but don't tell me that this was a process of anything other than what was a very flawed and partisan process. Now, several people today have referenced the Founders and the Declaration of Independence. The reality is, Mr. Speaker, we are a country that was founded on the principle of government with the consent of the governed. No one was asking for this thing. No one wanted this thing. Sure, 14 percent of people in this country have been helped, so they like it. Seventeen percent have been hurt, such as myself. I lost my health savings account under the Affordable Care Act. Seventeen percent of the country doesn't like it. Most everyone else feels as if, ``I am basically unaffected, I may have a problem ideologically either pro or con, but I have not been affected.'' Mr. Speaker, I do recommend that people pay attention. The employer mandate actually became effective January 1 of this year. It won't really affect people until next year when medium-sized businesses begin to file their taxes and find that if they have not kept up with all of the laborious reporting requirements and paperwork requirements under the employer mandate, they are going to be in a world of hurt when they file their taxes for calendar year 2015. Mr. Speaker, today's rule provides for the consideration of a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation that the American people have time and again said they do not want. I thank Mr. Byrne for his legislation and for working on this matter. I urge my colleagues to support both the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes for the purpose of response. First off, I don't know. Maybe people weren't paying attention, but the House has passed a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. It awaits action over in the Senate. So if the minority leader is concerned, perhaps she can talk to people in the other body about whether or not it might be a good idea for them to take some action, and that would be the correct way to proceed. The House acts; the Senate acts. I refer people who are unclear on that concept to ``Schoolhouse Rock,'' and it will tell you how a bill becomes law. People talk about the 56th time we have had something on the floor. Obviously, I don't know that I can attest to the accuracy of that count, but what I can attest to the accuracy of is that 11 times the President of the United States has signed into law some action passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate and then subsequently signed by the President--11 times--modifying or changing his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. Probably what is more telling is the 28 times--28 times--that the President has simply set aside part of his law because it wasn't convenient. If the other side wants, I can go through and delineate these one by one. I have, actually, a document prepared by the Galen Institute, and I would refer people to them if they would like to look at this. But really, some of the things that the President himself has set aside--I mean, who can forget, in a blog post, the administration setting aside the employer mandate, the entire employer mandate. Not surprising, because when the President was a candidate and he came down to Texas and debated Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2008, he was against the mandate, and then he was for it. So then he set it aside right before the Fourth of July in 2013. And for people who aren't paying attention, guess what? It actually started January 1 of this year. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Dr. Dan Benishek.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 70 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BURGESS. Yes.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.