Paul Broun

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Madam Speaker, today I rise to commemorate the 220th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights to our U.S. Constitution. Some of our most basic freedoms and governing principles are laid out in this precious document. The amendments listed were meant to protect our individual liberties and our private property. They serve as a constant reminder that our Nation was meant for its citizens to have liberty, with very little government intrusion into their lives. Today's modern government has, sadly, strayed very far away from the vision that our Founding Fathers had when they ratified the Bill of Rights. It seems like every day we lose a little bit more of our freedom to the ideals of Big Government and to the standards of socialism. In Hosea 4:6, God says, ``My people are destroyed from a lack of knowledge.'' We have a tremendous lack of knowledge in this Nation about the principles that our Founding Fathers gave us in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and we are being destroyed because those foundational principles are being eroded day by day here in Congress, by Presidents, and by the Federal court system. Please read the U.S. Constitution. Read the Bill of Rights. Teach them to our children and to our grandchildren so that we can come together and demand a constitutionally limited government, as our Founding Fathers intended. We need to begin to rebuild the principles that have made this Nation the greatest in history, the greatest political experiment in the history of mankind. Those principles are what have made this country so great, so powerful, and so successful; and the only way that we will retain that is if we become knowledgeable and start demanding a constitutionally limited government, as our Founding Fathers meant it. So please read the Constitution. Please read the Bill of Rights. Read what our Founding Fathers said about it. Demand that kind of governance from our elected representatives all across this country, at all levels of government. Our freedom and liberty depend upon it. Thank you. God bless you. God bless America.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. He turned Georgia football games into larger- than-life experiences. He awakened excitement and pinpointed fear in the depths of Dawg fans' souls and shouted out those emotions on radios statewide. His voice will go down in history as the soundtrack of some of the most famous play calls, highlight reels, and moments for UGA that will simply never be forgotten. Whether it was his describing the ``sugar'' falling out of the sky, or begging the Dawgs to hunker down one more last time, Larry Munson had an unmatched ability to find words for feelings that just could not be spoken. To call him an iconic play-by-play announcer for the University of Georgia football team would be a vast understatement. He was a classic city treasure, an Athens legend. And for 42 years, Larry Munson breathed life into the Sanford Stadium and made the Dawgs dance. He was different from all other sportscasters. Larry Munson was very authentic. He always told it like it was, even when he had given up on a red and black win. He didn't care about political correctness, and he wasn't afraid to scream about stepping on Tennessee's face with a hobnailed boot or breaking his chair--his metal, steel chair with a five-inch cushion--when Georgia beat Florida in 1980 and then went on to win the national championship. He loved Georgia football, and Georgia football loved Larry Munson just right back. His memory will live on forever in the body of the Bulldog Nation, in the hearts of all Dawg fans, and will live on between the hedges every game day. On behalf of the United States Congress, here's to you, Larry, one of the best Dawgs that Georgia has ever known. And we'll never forget. We'll miss you greatly, Larry. Go Dawgs. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and celebrate the 100th birthday of one of the 10th Congressional District's most impressive and dedicated constituents, Mr. Fred Birchmore. Renowned for his round-the-world cycling trips, Birchmore has biked tens of thousands of miles worldwide on a one-speed 42-pound Reinhardt that now sits in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. His travels have taken him 25,000 miles across Europe, and through Africa, the far Middle East, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and 2,000 miles along the United States Appalachian Trail. He's traversed deserts, jungles, beaches and warzones, even once crossing paths with Adolf Hitler. Birchmore's adventures on his trusted bike opened his eyes to not only new horizons, but new cultures, peoples, and ways of life that enriched his own in many aspects. Even more than a sportsman, Fred is a decorated World War II war hero, a loving father of four and has been a devoted husband to Willa Deane Birchmore for 72 years now. His eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren know him to be an adventurer, an intellectual, and an all around outstanding man and role model. Birchmore is a graduate of the University of Georgia and was a personal friend of the late Larry Munson. He carried the Olympic Torch under the Arch in the Classic City, takes great pride in his possession of the sword of Colonel Sanford who is the namesake of UGA's Sanford Stadium, and still remains a faithful community servant to Athens- Clarke County today. I am honored to be able to wish Mr. Birchmore a happy 100th birthday on behalf of the United States Congress, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to shed light on a life that has been so filled with adventure, hard work, passion, and love for family, friends, community, and country. Happy Birthday Fred and may you continue to set an example for all those who love and admire you for many more years to come.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. In Hosea 4:6, God says: My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as My priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children. This is a promise from a holy, righteous God who could do nothing else but fulfill that promise. We have to look at this and understand that, in this country, we have a tremendous lack of knowledge about our U.S. Constitution and that we have a tremendous lack of knowledge about the biblical foundations of our Nation and of how our Founding Fathers believed in liberty. We're losing that liberty tremendously because we have a tremendous lack of knowledge. In Psalm 11, God says: If the foundations are destroyed, what are the righteous to do? I believe it's a call to duty to rebuild the foundational principles that are behind liberty. Sworn officers of the United States--in fact, all public servants-- have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic; and for decades, sworn officers of the United States have been violating that oath to uphold and protect our Nation's most precious document, the U.S. Constitution. Domestically, there are many by their actions, either intentionally or unintentionally, who undermine our governing document. Every day, officials, ranging from Federal judges to U.S. Senators to Members of the House to leadership, ignore the original intent of our Founders that was put in the Constitution of the United States. The distortion is so great now that there is little correlation between their words and our actions here in Washington, D.C. This has become the norm for today's body of government, but it was not what the great lawmakers of the past envisioned for America's future. Today, I would like to focus in particular on one clause of the Constitution in which we have seen a dramatic and dangerous distortion of our Founding Fathers' original intent. The Commerce Clause has slowly been eroded by the selfishness of politicians and of the courts alike. Nowadays, it can be carelessly applied to almost any case that expands the size and scope of the Federal Government as it relates to our economy. Today, I want to walk you through time, starting with our Founding Fathers' original intent for the clause and then moving through the years to point out specific cases that have led to the deterioration of the Commerce Clause. We'll end with a modern-day situation that I know everybody in this country is familiar with--that being the constitutionality of ObamaCare. I hope that all of our viewers will stay with me throughout the hour, because it is so important that you help me to educate the rest of your neighbors, your families, your friends on how the Federal Government has spiraled out of control. It's up to the American people--we the people--to demand that Washington gets back to constitutionally limited government as our Founding Fathers intended. We've gotten away from their thoughts; we've gotten away from their intent of our government; and we see the problems that we have today because of that. There are many aspects that have contributed to the overreach of today's government, but the single biggest offender has been the ever- expanding interpretation of the Commerce Clause in article I, section 8 of the Constitution. In fact, as an original intent constitutionalist, I say we should not interpret the Constitution; we must apply the Constitution as it was intended. Article I, section 8 of the Commerce Clause states: To regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes. So what does it mean ``to regulate commerce''? To understand what is meant by the word ``commerce,'' a great place to start is with the Constitution, itself. Article I, section 9 of the document states: No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another, nor shall vessels bound to or from one State be obliged to enter, clear or pay duties in another. What does that mean? ``Commerce'' is between States. Commerce is supposed to go across State lines. That's what ``commerce'' means. The word ``commerce'' was regularly understood by both the Framers of the Constitution and the general public at that time to mean ``trade between States.'' Now, what about the words ``to regulate''? During that period of time, the term ``regulate'' meant ``to make regular,'' not ``to control'' as it is so often used today. It means to make regular, to make it work, to expand commerce--not to control it. To put it in plain words, the original intent of the Commerce Clause was to make that commerce and trade between the States ``normal,'' or ``regular.'' It was designed to promote trade and exchange, not to hinder it with crushing regulations. Moreover, the Framers of the Constitution wanted to make sure that commerce between the States was not limited by taxes or tariffs. Here are some examples of what James Madison and Alexander Hamilton envisioned. In Federalist 45, James Madison wrote: The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. I encourage people to read the Constitution of the United States. The 10th Amendment says, if a power is not specifically given to the Federal Government by the Constitution, then the 18 things in article I, section 8--that begin here and end here in this little booklet, these 18 things--are all the Constitution gives Congress the authority to vote upon--18. That's it. National defense-national security should be the major function of the Federal Government. It's certainly not meant to expand beyond what the Constitution says, as James Madison wrote in Federalist 45. Simply put, Madison was reinforcing the point that the powers of the Federal Government, under the proposed Constitution, should be very limited, while the powers within the States are broad in scope and are more individualized and are extremely broad in character. Again, the commerce clause was not meant to be stretched as thin as it is today, where it can be applied to almost all forms of economic prosperity at both the State as well as the Federal levels. We'll get into more specific examples in just a few minutes. Here is a quote from Alexander Hamilton, one of the Federalists who wanted a strong Federal Government. He wrote in Federalist 11, where he makes the case that the States should have unrestrained economic interaction with each other to, therefore, bolster U.S. productivity and make our exports more desirable to foreign markets: An unrestrained intercourse between the States themselves will advance the trade of each by an interchange of their respective productions, not only for the supply of reciprocal wants at home, but for exportation to foreign markets. The veins of commerce in every part will be replenished, and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. Hamilton felt as though enterprise would have a greater scope from the diversity in the goods of different States. He also felt as though when an industry suffered in one State, it should be able to ask for assistance from other States. Hamilton went on to say: The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation contributes to the activity of foreign commerce. It can be conducted upon much better terms with a large number of materials of a given value than with a small number of materials of the same value; arising from the competitions of trade and from the fluctuations of markets. Particular articles may be in great demand at certain periods, and unsalable at others; but if there be a variety of articles, it can scarcely happen that they should all be at one time in the latter predicament, and on this account the operations of the merchant would be less liable to any considerable obstruction or stagnation. The speculative trader will at once perceive the force of these observations, and will acknowledge that the aggregate balance of the commerce of the United States would bid fair to be much more favorable than that of the thirteen States without union or with partial unions. He is saying this in an argument geared towards a strong union of Federal Government. But what's he saying there? That the commerce of the States in a whole should be considered. So to sum it up, it is without a doubt that the commerce clause was intended to ensure free trade between the States and to ultimately create the most balanced and desirable American products to sell to foreign buyers. Let's take a look at some specific cases that led to the destruction of the commerce clause. In the first case, we are going to examine Gibbons v. Ogden. This was in 1824. It is the first case in which the commerce clause was broadened beyond its original meaning under the Constitution. Here's a little background on the case: The State of New York had passed a law granting two operators, Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton, the exclusive right to operate steamboats within the waters of the State of New York. Operators from outside the State of New York wishing to navigate waters within New York were required to get a special permit in order to do so. Aaron Ogden filed suit, arguing that this State-sponsored monopoly was in opposition to Congress' constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce. In his opinion, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the word ``commerce,'' as found in the Constitution, includes in its definition the transport of goods between States. This ruling is inconsistent with the Framers' intent, as you can see in Federalist 42 when James Madison wrote: To those who do not view the question through the medium of passion or of interest, the desire of the commercial States to collect, in any form, an indirect revenue from their uncommercial neighbors, must appear not less impolitic than it is unfair; since it would stimulate the injured party, by resentment as well as interest, to resort to less convenient channels for their foreign trade. ``Foreign trade,'' commerce opening up between the States, not control within the States, is what he's saying here. Madison went on to equate commerce with what he described as ``intercourse'' between States and wrote that the definition of ``among the States,'' as stated in the Constitution, was quite broad. He wrote: The word ``among'' means intermingled with. A thing which is among others is intermingled with them. Commerce among the States cannot stop at the external boundary line of each State, but may be introduced into the interior. It may very properly be restricted to that commerce which concerns more States than one. As a result, subsequent courts have ruled that Congress has the power to regulate commerce that not only is truly interstate in nature but also commerce which affects more than one State. As Matthew Clemente of FreedomWorks pointed out in a recent series on how the commerce clause relates to the expansion of the Federal Government through health care, this broad interpretation of the commerce clause has resulted in justifications of a number of Federal laws that regulate purely intrastate activities. In the end, the Marshall court struck down New York's law because of its view that Congress, not the States, has the power to control navigation within each State so long as it relates to interstate commerce. And this opened the door for even looser readings of the commerce clause in later cases. So just to quickly recap, in this case the court ruled that Congress has both the power to regulate both commerce that is truly interstate in nature and actions related to commerce which affect more than one State, even if not through one common channel. But the reality is that in the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton repeatedly equates commerce with trade between nations, as we've already seen. He does not ever give it a broader meaning related to activities carried out within each State, which may also affect activities in other States. Let's look at another case. In this one, it's Swift & Co. v. United States in 1905. The case revolved around a number of meat dealers in Chicago that had formed a meat trust in which they agreed not to bet against one another in an effort to control meat prices. At the same time, the members of the trust convinced the railroads to charge them below normal rates to transport their product. The U.S. Government stepped in, attempting to use the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up this trust. Using the open door left by Marshall's expansion of the language of the commerce clause in Swift, the court went a step further and ruled that ``activities involved in the `stream of commerce' were fair game for congressional regulation''--totally against the original intent. In his opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that the elements of the meat trust's scheme were such that it was clear that ``the participants meant to monopolize the meat trade within the State of Illinois.'' Holmes took this observation a step further by saying that while the trust's intention may only have been to create a monopoly within its own State, the trust's ``effect upon commerce among the States is not accidental, secondary, remote, or merely probable.'' He went on to differentiate this case from cases related to manufacturing, stating that ``here, the subject matter is sales, and the very point of the combination is to restrain and monopolize commerce among the States in respect of such sales,'' due to the fact that the meat at issue likely had roots in several different States, not just Illinois, and that its end destination could also have been within a different State, that, in effect, it was affecting the ``stream of commerce.'' Thus, the ruling in Swift had the effect of allowing congressional regulation of actions which could potentially affect commerce in other States--not what actually would affect commerce, but potentially affect commerce in other States--such as the sale of items which could be considered to be within the stream of commerce. Again, a further expansion of the original intent. Again, to recap what this case has shown us, the court ruled that activities involved in the stream of commerce, or potentially could be involved in the stream of commerce, may be regulated by Congress. But in reality, this decision had the effect of allowing Congress to regulate not just actions which could affect more than one State, but also actions which are considered to be within the stream of commerce. As a result, it widens the breadth of issues over which Congress might assert authority under the commerce clause, totally against the original intent. Next in Stafford v. Wallace in 1921, we see Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act in 1921 to create new regulations on meatpackers in response to charges that their practices were unfair, discriminatory, and encouraged the formation of monopolies. In Stafford, the court reaffirmed its decision in Swift that we just talked about, finding that Congress could regulate activities within stockyards--seen as local in nature--because they are a part of a channel of commerce. Writing the decision, Chief Justice William Howard Taft stated that ``the object to be secured by the act is the free and unburdened flow of livestock from the ranges and farms of the West and the Southwest through the great stockyards and slaughtering centers on the borders of that region, and thence in the form of meat products to the consuming cities of the country in the Middle West and East, or, still, as livestock, to the feeding places and fattening farms in the Middle West or East for further preparation for the market.'' And he went on to state that in his opinion any practice which ``unduly and directly'' affects the expenses incurred during the passage of livestock through stockyards is an ``unjust obstruction to that commerce,'' and as a result, Congress has the ability to step in and regulate it. Here the court rules that the commerce clause allows Congress to act if it believes that a local entity is preventing the ``free and unburdened'' flow of a good which could have its roots in multiple States, such as cattle moving to stockyards and to packing plants. But in reality, this simply reaffirmed the Swift decision which allowed Congress to insert itself into any activity that affects more than one State. Then in Wickard v. Filburn, this case threw open the doors, widely opened the doors to allow Congress to regulate any activity that might relate to interstate commerce. I'm sure the Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves if they knew what kind of power the court bestowed on the Federal Government with the decision in this particular case. So let me give you a little background information on this case so you can grasp how ridiculous the court's decision was in this case. Roscoe Filburn was a farmer who was penalized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for harvesting more wheat than he was allotted by a USDA regulation that set quotas for wheat crops. Filburn filed suit, claiming that he was not going to sell the extra wheat, that he was only going to be using it on his own farm for his own family; and, therefore, the Federal Government should not have any say in the matter. Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote in his opinion that ``the commerce power is not confined in its exercise to the regulation of commerce among the States. It extends to those activities interstate which so affect interstate commerce.'' He went on to write, as this poster shows: Even if an activity be local, and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce. In other words, anything could be considered under the commerce clause. Anything could be regulated by Congress. Anything. And that's what we see today. Most recently, in 2005, the court reaffirmed the decision in Wickard v. Filburn in the ruling of Gonzales v. Raich, which shows the court's anti-original intent interpretation of the commerce clause to date. This, I remind you, was just a few years ago in 2005. This is the widest interpretation of the commerce clause, showing that Congress may not even need to show evidence that an action could affect interstate commerce before it is able to regulate it. This case also established that Congress needs only to find that a ``rational basis'' exists for believing that an action could affect interstate commerce in order to regulate it. Again, in this case the court ruled that Congress may regulate any activity which might relate to interstate commerce. How inane. How unconstitutional. The reality is it's just absurd that Congress should have this power under the commerce clause to stop a farmer from using his own crops to feed his own livestock and his own family simply because his doing so may result in his not purchasing wheat from elsewhere within the marketplace. The cases we just discussed show the court's willingness to use the commerce clause to justify congressional regulation on just about any activity which might affect commerce. However, the Rehnquist court broke from this trend and decided two key cases which limited the use of the commerce clause when the regulation was not firmly based on economic activity. I firmly believe that we need to move even more drastically in the direction that the Rehnquist court established. In 1995, U.S. v. Lopez was the first case where a distinction was drawn between using the commerce clause to regulate economic activity and using it to regulate any activity which could potentially impact commerce. Alfonzo Lopez was a high school student who was charged with possessing a firearm on school property under the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. Lopez challenged the act, claiming that the commerce clause does not grant Congress the authority to say where someone may or may not carry a gun. Attorneys for the Federal Government argued that the possession of a gun--and this is just so far out and crazy, it's hard to believe, but this is exactly what they argued--the Federal Government attorneys argued that possession of a gun on school grounds could lead to violent crime--well, the gun doesn't make it lead to violent crime, but that's what they were claiming--and this would increase insurance costs. And it would also deter visitors from coming to the general area, thus dampening the local economy. They also argued that students who fear violence at their schools are more likely to be distracted in the classroom, resulting in a less-educated workforce and an overall weaker national economy. Boy, that's far reaching, but this is what your Federal Government attorneys argued in this case. In his opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote: The possession of a gun in a local school zone is in no sense an economic activity that might substantially affect any sort of interstate commerce. To uphold the government's contentions here, we would have to pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the commerce clause to a general police power. We have seen that over and over where Congress has generated a bigger and bigger Federal criminal justice system under the Commerce Clause when we have absolutely no constitutional authority to do that. Rehnquist went on to say: Congress could regulate any activity that it found was related to the economic productivity of individual citizens: family law, including marriage, divorce and child custody, for example. Under theories, it is difficult to perceive any limitation on Federal power, even in areas such as criminal law enforcement or education where States historically have been sovereign. Thus, if we were to accept the government's arguments, we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate. And he is absolutely correct. He added: Admittedly, some of our prior cases have taken long steps down that road, giving great deference to congressional action, but we decline here to proceed further. The quote on this poster shows Rehnquist admitting how in cases I have already talked to you about, the cases in the past, the Commerce Clause has been stretched very thin and often misapplied. In Lopez, Rehnquist ruled that Congress may not use the Commerce Clause to regulate noneconomic activity, even in cases where it could find a tangential connection between that activity and the health of the economy at large. U.S. v. Morrison, in 2000, built on the findings of Lopez and reaffirmed the Court's opinion that Congress could not reach to the Commerce Clause to regulate activity which only tangentially touched interstate commerce. In 1994, Christy Brzonkala was sexually assaulted by two of her college classmates. She filed suit against them under the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, which provided a Federal civil remedy for ``victims of gender-motivated violence.'' Her classmates argued that Congress had no authority to regulate violence against women under the Commerce Clause. Attorneys for the Federal Government argued that gender-motivated violence, and the fear of such violence, substantially affects interstate commerce. Again writing the opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Rehnquist stated: The Violence Against Women Act is supported by numerous findings regarding the serious impact that gender-motivated violence has on victims and their families. And it certainly does. But the existence of Congressional findings is not sufficient, by itself, to sustain the constitutionality of Commerce Clause legislation. As we stated in Lopez, ``simply because Congress may conclude that a particular activity substantially affects interstate commerce does not necessarily make it so.'' He added: Thus far in our Nation's history our cases have upheld Commerce Clause regulation of intrastate activity only where that activity is economic in nature. In this case, the Court ruled that Congress is not able to use the Commerce Clause to regulate noneconomic behavior. At the same time, the Constitution delegates such regulation to the States as an exercise of the State's police powers, not the Federal Government's, but the police's, the State's police powers. This particular case is just chock full of great quotes, and I'd like to just take a few minutes to read some of them, the first being on this poster. The Constitution requires a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local. Given petitioners' arguments, the concern that we expressed in Lopez that Congress might use the Commerce Clause to completely obliterate the Constitution's distinction between national and local authority seems well founded. The next quote out of that decision reads: If accepted, petitioners' reasoning would allow Congress to regulate any crime as long as the nationwide, aggregated impact of that crime has substantial effects on employment, production, transit, or consumption. He went on to say: Indeed, we can think of no better example of the police power, which the Founding Fathers denied the Federal Government and reposed in the States, than the suppression of violent crime and vindication of its victims. Lastly, Rehnquist closed this case by saying this: If the allegations here are true, no civilized system of justice could fail to provide her a remedy for the conduct, but under our Federal system that remedy must be provided by the State and not by the United States. As you can see through Rehnquist's decisions in these two cases that we just talked about, the Commerce Clause cannot and should not be utilized to expand the police powers of the Federal Government. The crimes in these cases that were treated as Federal crimes should have been handled either by the State or locally. We do not have constitutional authority to create an ever larger Federal criminal justice system. In fact, initially, there were only three Federal felonies: treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. And that is counterfeiting against coinage, money. Now let's come to an issue that is important right now. It's one of the biggest assaults on freedom to date, and one of the worst perversions of the Commerce Clause that I have ever seen. And I'm talking about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare. Using the decisions in Lopez and Morrison, it is clear that Congress lacks the authority to institute the individual mandate set forth in ObamaCare, as well as all the State mandates that are in that law. The individual mandate requires all citizens to have some form of health insurance, whether they want to have it or not. Chief Justice Rehnquist made it clear in Morrison that just because Congress has stated that it has an interest in regulating what kind of health care Americans purchase--or whether they purchase it at all, whether they purchase it or don't purchase it--does not make it so. And it is not a stretch to infer from Rehnquist's decision that he would have also struck down the individual mandate, especially given the fact that he opposed the idea of the Commerce Clause allowing Congress to regulate anything that could have a substantial effect on employment, production, transit, or consumption. In a series of articles written by Matthew Clemente of FreedomWorks, he argues that even in the wildest expansions of the Commerce Clause, the cases all involved an individual or company which was proactively trying to engage in commerce. Here, we see the opposite. Individuals are being told that in order to go about their lives free from penalty, they must purchase a certain product. Folks, this is socialism. This is not freedom and liberty. The argument has never been made that the Federal Government can mandate that all citizens must purchase a certain product. My Democrat colleagues mandated it through this bill, through this law, that the President has demanded, ObamaCare. If Congress wants to promote the purchase of health insurance in a constitutional way, it should pass legislation which is constitutional under the original intent of the Commerce Clause that would allow individuals to buy coverage across State lines. This would adhere to the original intent of the Constitution and would allow people to buy insurance, health insurance, at a much lower price than they can today and would get a whole lot better products. Congresses, Presidents, court judges, every public official in this country swears an oath. I swore the oath when I was sworn into the United States Marine Corps in 1964. I swore the same oath in 2007, when I came and stood behind this podium. In 2007, I swore to that oath, in 2009, and 2011. Every Member of this body swears to uphold and protect the Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic. We have a lot of domestic enemies of the Constitution. A lot of those domestic enemies of the Constitution are wearing black robes and they're sitting on benches in Federal courts all across this land. They have violated their oath of office. Every Member of this body swears to uphold the Constitution. There's violation after violation that occurs right here on this floor. Think about it: if we don't have a solid foundation upon which to build all our laws, all of our society, then we have no foundation at all and the society is going to fall; it's going to fail. As we read in Proverbs, God says: There is a way that seems right in the eyes of man, but its path is the way of death. It's going to be the death of this Nation. I hear colleagues, particularly on the other side, say the Constitution is a living and breathing document; the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is constitutional. And that, my friends, is not factual. The only arbiter of what is constitutional or not is the Constitution and what our Founding Fathers said about it. If we don't restore a constitutionally limited government, we're going to lose our freedom, we're going to lose our liberty. The bright and shining star of liberty that's been over this Nation for over 200 years is upheld by six pillars. The first of those is a constitutionally limited government as our Founding Fathers meant it. The second one is the free enterprise system, uninhibited by taxes and regulation. The third is the rule of law, where everybody, every entity in this country is treated equal under the law. And certainly we're not being treated equally under the law today. The fourth is property rights, where people can own and control their property and government cannot interfere with that ownership. And if it does, if it takes it or devalues it, the Constitution says that they should be appropriately compensated for the loss or the devaluation of that private property. The fifth pillar that holds up that bright and shining star of liberty is the pillar of personal responsibility and accountability. And the middle pillar that holds up the center of the star of liberty is the pillar of morality. In fact, John Adams said our Constitution is written for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the governing of any other. I hear colleagues say, well, you can't legislate morality. They are so wrong. Every law, every piece of legislation, no matter what level of government, is somebody's idea of what's right and what's wrong. Every law is legislating morality. Our Nation was founded on the premises of Biblical truths, on the Judeo-Christian principles that have made this country so great and have given us the liberty that we have as a Nation. But, friends, we are standing right on a precipice. We are staring down into a deep, dark chasm of socialism. And the question is, are we going to be pushed off, are we going to leap off and fall into that deep, dark chasm of socialism, where we're going to lose our freedom and liberty? Or are we going to turn around and march up the hill of liberty and regain for this Nation what our Founding Fathers fought and died and sacrificed so nobly for, that liberty? It's up to us. Right now, today, we are getting the kind of government that the American people have allowed or demanded. We cannot afford to do so anymore. We have to turn around and march up that hill of liberty and reclaim it and start rebuilding those six pillars of liberty that are being eroded. They're being eroded by Democrats and by Republicans, by conservatives and liberals alike. Going back to that first poster I put up here where God talks in Hosea 4:6, He says, ``My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.'' We have a tremendous lack of knowledge of how we've gotten away from the intent of the Constitution. Even lawyers and justices and judges don't have a concept of the original intent of the Constitution. In fact, in most law schools in this country, even in the course of constitutional law they do not teach the Constitution, they do not teach the original intent. They do not teach the principles that have made this country so powerful, so rich, so successful as a political experiment, the greatest of all of human history. What do they teach? They teach case law, where Justices in the Supreme Court have ruled on the constitutionality of a case and have ruled unconstitutionally. They should be removed from office because they're destroying our liberty, they're destroying our freedom. And it's up to the American people to say, no, we're not going to put up with this anymore; we're going to make a change. You see, the most powerful political force in this Nation is embodied in the first three words of the U.S. Constitution: ``We the people.'' We the people can make a difference. I want to remind you of what one U.S. Senator, Everett Dirksen--former U.S. Senator--at one time said. He said when he feels the heat, he sees the light. What he means is if he's heading in one direction and enough of his constituents contact him and say, buster, you're heading in the wrong direction, if enough people contact him, because he's going to stand firm on the principle of his reelection, then he will begin to see the light. There are Members of this body and the one across the way in the U.S. Senate, as well as Presidents and our Presidential candidates, that need to feel the heat. They need to feel the heat of liberty. They need to feel the heat of ``we the people'' that demands that different kind of governance, demands going back to the original intent of the Constitution. Because if we don't, our children and our grandchildren are going to live in a socialistic state such as we see in Cuba and Venezuela, we saw in Communist China and the Soviet Union. We the people have to get up in arms and start building grass fires of grass-root support all over this country for candidates and for Members who are already elected and say we're not going to put up with this anymore. The only arbiter of the constitutionality is the Constitution and what was meant in the Constitution by those who wrote it. Now, I'm asked all the time, Paul, you weren't around then, how do you know what they meant? Our Founding Fathers didn't have video games and TV and the Internet. They wrote. They read. I encourage American citizens all over this country to read, read what our Founding Fathers said about the Constitution. Read what they meant by it. Because if we are destroyed by a lack of knowledge, if you turn that around, think about it, we're not destroyed with knowledge. Then you go on in Hosea 4:6, God says He's going to ignore our children, He's going to reject our children. The future of this Nation depends upon we the people standing firm and saying we're not going to put up with this anymore. We're going to go back to the original intent. We're going to do the hard work of knowing what our Founding Fathers said. We're going to do the hard work of demanding of our elected representatives that they stand by the principles, the foundations that have made this country so great, so powerful, so successful. There are many Members of this body that need to feel the heat. There are many of the people in this body that need to see the door because they don't stand on the Constitution, they don't uphold the oath of office, they don't do what they have promised their constituents and the American people that they're going to do. There are judges all over this country, Federal judges, that need to be impeached and removed from office because they're not upholding the Constitution. They're not defending the Constitution. They're not doing what they promised that they would do. They're violating their oath of office. It has to stop, and the only way we're going to stop it is for we the people to stand up and say, no more. We're not going to elect anybody who's not going to uphold the Constitution in its original intent. We've got to get the hard work done of restoring those six principles, the six principles that have upheld that bright shining star of liberty over this country for so long. And I'm excited because we see grass roots all over this country beginning to rise up. We see a sleeping giant that's beginning to wake up and stretch its arms and legs and beginning to walk. The press calls it the Tea Party. Well, there's not a Tea Party. There are many tea parties. There's FreedomWorks, there's Americans for Prosperity. There are groups, grass-roots groups like the NRA and Gun Owners of America and Right to Work and other groups that believe in the Constitution. We're beginning to see the sleeping giant of we the people waking up. It's time to not only wake up and stretch our arms and legs and to walk, but we've got to run. We've got to do the hard work of re- establishing liberty in this country. We're losing our liberty, friends, and we're going to lose it all. We're standing on that precipice staring down in that deep, dark chasm of socialism. Are we going to allow ourselves to be pushed off by courts, by Congresses, by Presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike? Or are we going to turn around as a people and demand liberty and start marching up that hill of liberty? It's going to be a mountain climb, but we can do it. I'm excited because I see that great sleeping giant, the most powerful political force in America, embodied in those first three words of the U.S. Constitution, We the People. Our Founding Fathers believed in we the people. That's the reason, when they wrote the document they put the letters in such large script, much, much larger, probably four or five times larger than the rest of the text in the document, because we the people is the key, that force of we the people. So the question I have to ask today, Are we going to jump or be forced down into that deep, dark chasm of socialism, or are we going to be a free people? Are we going to demand the liberty? It's up to each and every freedom-loving citizen in this country today to demand a different kind of governance. I believe we can do it, I believe we will do it because we the people love liberty in America. And I'm trusting in we the people to do the right thing and demand constitutional limited government at all levels. God bless you, and God bless America. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. During the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin wrote a speech urging the assembly to begin their morning session with daily prayer. Franklin wrote: I have lived a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-- that God governs in the affairs of men. He went on to say that: Without God's concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we, ourselves, shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. Just as Benjamin Franklin suggested, we must continue to affirm that God has a place in blessing our government, in guiding our lawmakers, and that He has the ability to lead our Nation back to a path of righteousness and prosperity. ``In God We Trust'' has great meaning in our Nation, and we must encourage its display in all public buildings and government institutions. So I urge my colleagues to pass House Concurrent Resolution 13.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Governor Stephen Heard, Captain John Darden, Mammy Kate, Daddy Jack, Captain Dionysus Oliver, and Peter Oliver for their patriotic service accomplished during the American Revolution. Stephen Heard, who served as Governor of Georgia in 1781, Captain John Darden, Captain Dionysus Oliver, and Peter Oliver all fought courageously in the American War of Independence. Mammy Kate and Daddy Jack, who were slaves at the time, played a pivotal role as well. When their master, Heard, was captured at the Battle of Kettle Creek, the British condemned him to die. But on the eve of Heard's execution, Mammy Kate and Daddy Jack rescued him from the British prison at Fort Cornwallis, and for their heroic deeds, Heard awarded them their freedom. All six of these Revolutionary War patriots are buried in what is currently Elbert County, Georgia. On October 15, 2011, the community will honor the memory of these patriots with a grave marking dedication conducted by the Stephen Heard and Kettle Creek Chapters of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Samuel Elbert, Button Gwinnett, and Washington-Wilkes Chapters of the Georgia Society Sons of the American Revolution. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to pay tribute to these six brave heroes, who with countless other patriots, successfully achieved for us American liberty and made way for our nation to stand as a beacon of freedom and hope to the rest of the world.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, 16 years ago, Congress failed to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution by a single Senate vote. Back then, our national debt was about $5 trillion. Today, our debt stands at nearly $15 trillion, and our Democrat leadership is showing no signs of slowing down their outrageous spending. Imagine what the state of the economy could look like if it weren't strapped down by that extra $10 trillion worth of debt. Imagine how much brighter the future of our children and grandchildren could be without the threat of having to repay the money that Washington has wasted. Imagine how mom-and-pop shops could be growing, hiring and expanding if looming tax increases weren't a factor in their business plans. Enough is enough. Missing another opportunity to balance the budget is not a mistake that we can afford to make twice. That's why I authored my balanced budget amendment, so that we can stop the spending and start paying down our debt. I urge all of my colleagues to become cosponsors of my amendment, which is the most conservative and effective approach to balancing the budget.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. A legendary Georgia businessman recently called the Obama administration ``the single biggest impediment to job growth.'' That same man, Mr. Bernie Marcus, also says the business that he founded would have never succeeded if he were trying to start it today. Home Depot, his Georgia-based company, currently has more than 2,200 stores all across the United States. They support more than 300,000 American jobs, and they generated $68 billion in revenue just last year. Now, imagine the impact on our country if companies that start out like Home Depot--which started as an individual store--or other small businesses weren't able to flourish. That is what the Obama administration is trying to do to the American Dream today. By creating a huge bill with ObamaCare and a failed stimulus bill and by piling thousands of new government regulations onto the backs of small businesses, it is no wonder that job creators are afraid to expand and hire new people. And so, after 2\1/2\ years of growing the Federal Government and $4.5 trillion in spending later, the Obama administration has given us another proposal of the same old failed policies. Unfortunately, their latest solution to our 9 percent unemployment rate comes with a price tag of almost a half trillion dollars, money that we just simply do not have. So to pay for the American Jobs Act, as I like to call it ``stimulus part II,'' our Democrat leaders want to hike taxes on families and job creators. We've been down this road before. The stimulus did not work 2 years ago, and it will not work today. Hiking taxes in the middle of a recession will make our economy worse, not better. When will this administration learn that more of the same just simply isn't good enough anymore? Jobs will come when government gets out of the way--by getting rid of ObamaCare, by stopping the reckless spending here in Washington and the threat of higher taxes, and by ending the uncertainty in the marketplace. Congress needs to pass my jobs bill, which would immediately and permanently lower the corporate tax rate to zero, and it will permanently lower the capital gains tax to zero. This will stimulate our small businesses so that they can do what they do best, grow, expand and to thrive. In the words of Mr. Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, ``It's time to stand up and fight.'' The free enterprise system has made this country what it is today, and we must have policy that makes it prosper.

Mr. BROUN

Mr. BROUN. My first job was in Nashville at a theme park, managing a live show that featured barnyard animals playing musical instruments. I'm not making this up. I had a piano playing pig, named Pigarace. I had a duck that played the drum named Bert Bachquack. You can imagine how proud my parents were. I had my embarrassments and my setbacks, but I kept writing. I moved to Los Angeles. I got an opportunity in television. I married. We had two beautiful sons. I had purpose in my life, and I worked like I'd seen my father work, with pride and with passion. I'd won a multi-year contract with a thriving company. I bought an old home and remodeled it; I was promoted to producer. Except for an occasional mishap with my tie, life was sweet. Then the Writer's Guild went out on strike, which caused the company I worked for to void its contract with me. The strike went on forever, and when it was over the company was barely there anymore. I was out of work, my savings were gone. No one would return my phone calls--I'm sure that's never happened where you work. I kept trying, of course. I was always good at trying. But one day I was sitting at my desk and I was staring at nothing, my stomach in a knot, my hands trembling, and I realized I was breaking down, as my father had. I feared I had failed my father, and my mother and my grandmother. And my greatest fear was that I would fail my sons. I was afraid they would see me come apart, as I had seen my father come apart, and it would be something they could never forget. I got down on my knees; I had nowhere else to go. And I prayed a simple prayer. I said ``Lord, all I care about right now are those boys. And maybe they don't need to grow up in a house with a tennis court and a swimming pool. Maybe they need a little house with one bathroom, or no bathrooms at all. Maybe they need to see what a man does when he gets knocked down, the way my father showed me. But I pray, if I go down, let me go down not on my knees, but with my flag flying.'' And I got up and I began to write the words that led to ``Braveheart.'' Great writers like Robert Frost and Jane Austin have said that an ending that does not surprise the writer won't surprise the reader. When I wrote about William Wallace standing on a battle field ready to die for what he believed, I felt it and when I came to the end I wept. Was that moment of prayer the single determining factor in the arc of my whole life? Of course not. My teacher and mentor in college, the great Thomas Langford, of Duke University, once told us in class that no decision in our lives stands alone; the trajectory of all other decisions we've ever made points our direction for the future. Our lives are unfolding stories, they are moving pictures. If we took a freeze frame of Golgotha, on the day that Jesus was crucified, and showed that picture to anyone unfamiliar with the story and asked them to judge who the victor was in that scene, they'd be unlikely to say: ``The one hanging on the cross in the middle.'' It was from that cross that Jesus cried, ``My God! Why have you forsaken me?'' That cry does not amaze me. What does amaze me is that while one of the two thieves hanging on either said of Jesus mocked Him, the other acknowledged the justice of his fate and asked Jesus for help; and Jesus, in the agonies of crucifixion, told him, ``Today you will be with me in Paradise.'' That does more than amaze me. It makes me believe that any power that could enable Jesus to say that, then, could do anything. And it seems to me that Jesus' response is the answer to every prayer that thief never prayed. If God is God, then God knows our prayers whether we pray them or not. So why pray the prayers? To me, it's not because God needs to know my prayers, but because I do. Prayer sifts us like sand. Take any moment of our lives; take this one. Here, in a room resonant with power. Did we come this morning because we want to feel a closeness to power? Do we come before God because what we truly want is to use the ultimate power we imagine God has? Or do we fall to our knees to admit the truth of our weakness--and stand again, in the strength of that truth? Jesus said the truth will set us free, and He said the truth is: God is love. It seems to me that the prayer that comes from Love is the prayer that goes to God. My father once told me a story of a man drowning in the ocean. He cried out, ``Oh God! If you save me, I will spend the rest of my life in serving You!'' A few moments later a boat appeared and he was pulled from the water, and on the way back to shore the man lifted his eyes to heaven and said, Of course You do understand that I meant ``in an advisory capacity.'' But life does not give us the option of Advisory Capacity. Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace that in a battle, one man throwing down his weapon and running away can panic a whole army, and in a panic, one man lifting up the flag and running back toward the enemy can rally a whole army, and no one but God knows what will happen, and when. What if prayer is the way to glimpse God's true intentions--the divine purpose for each of us? I'm no theologian. I'm not looking for logic; I'm only trying to find an understanding for my experience that prayer matters. Does it change the mind of God? I don't know. I can only tell you that it changes me. When I was a boy we sang a hymn called ``Footsteps of Jesus.'' Not everyone grew up as I did. I'm sometimes described as a rarity, a filmmaker who might speak freely about prayer. But really I'm not so unusual. All of us dreamers in Hollywood are keenly aware of the falseness of fame, the fleeting nature of beauty, the illusions of power. And when I pray with or for my friends, my first concern is not whether they follow the footsteps of Jesus, but whether I do. If I've led you to believe my life is any example of righteousness, then maybe you're not familiar with the Tennessee talent for stretching the truth. And even if I could have stolen Mrs. Carter's Bible, I couldn't have kept it. You might own the pages but you don't own the Bible until you've lived it. Some of you here lead nations. Some of you here lead the world. All of us here have one heart inside us, and it is in that one heart where the whole battle is fought. There are as many ways to approach the great questions of life as there are people on the earth. But every one of us must stand alone before all that made us, and all that we have been, and that we might be. And dying in your bed, many years from now, would you not trade all the days from that day to this for one chance, just one chance, to open your heart before God Almighty, and to tell Him, ``I will lose my life, and I will find it by loving in all the ways You lead my heart to love.'' You have a prayer, pray it. Amen. Congressman Miller: Thank you, Randall. Thank you for inspiring all of us. And now it is my honor to introduce my President, our President, the President of the United States of America. We have an expression in Florida that you can walk shoulder to shoulder with someone even if you don't see eye to eye. That's the prayerful spirit in which we gather today. It is the genius of our founders that we have one President at a time and it is the higher genius of the Scriptures that we are to pray for our leaders that we may all lead quiet and peaceable lives. Mr. President, first we thank you for your attendance and the strong support that you have given this event and all of the activities that surround it. I speak for all members of Congress here and for millions across our country and around the world, we pray for you each day as you lead our country. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Barack Obama. President Barack Obama: Thank you so much. To the co- chairs, Jeff and Ann; to all the members of Congress who are here, the distinguished guests who have traveled so far to be here this morning; to Randall for your wonderful stories and powerful prayer; to all who are here providing testimony, thank you so much for having me and Michelle here. We are blessed to be here. I want to begin by just saying a word to Mark Kelly, who's here. We have been praying for Mark's wife, Gabby Giffords, for many days now. But I want Gabby and Mark and their entire family to know that we are with them for the long haul, and God is with them for the long haul. And even as we pray for Gabby in the aftermath of a tragedy here at home, we're also mindful of the violence that we're now seeing in the Middle East, and we pray that this violence in Egypt will end and that the rights and aspirations of the Egyptian people will be realized and that a better day will dawn over Egypt and throughout the world. For almost 60 years going back to President Eisenhower, this gathering has been attended by our President. It's a tradition that I'm proud to uphold, not only as a fellow believer but as an elected leader whose entry into public service was actually through the church. This may come as a surprise, for as some of you know, I did not come from a particularly religious family. My father, who I barely knew-- I only met once for a month in my entire life--was said to be a non-believer throughout his life. My mother, whose parents were Baptist and Methodist, grew up with a certain skepticism about organized religion, and she usually only took me to church on Easter and Christmas-- sometimes. And yet my mother was also one of the most spiritual people that I ever knew. She was somebody who was instinctively guided by the Golden Rule and who nagged me constantly about the homespun values of her Kansas upbringing, values like honesty and hard work and kindness and fair play. And it's because of her that I came to understand the equal worth of all men and all women, and the imperatives of an ethical life and the necessity to act on your beliefs. And it's because of her example and guidance that despite the absence of a formal religious upbringing my earliest inspirations for a life of service ended up being the faith leaders of the civil rights movement. There was, of course, Martin Luther King and the Baptist leaders, the ways in which they helped those who had been subjugated to make a way out of no where, and transform a nation through the force of love. There are also Catholic leaders like Father Theodore Heshburg and Jewish leaders like Rabi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Muslim leaders and Hindu leaders. Their call to fix what was broken in our world, a call routed in faith, is what led me just a few years out of college to sign up as a community organizer for a group of churches on the Southside of Chicago. And it was through that experience working with pastors and laypeople trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace Him as my Lord the Savior. Now, that was over 20 years ago. And like all of us, my faith journey has had its twists and turns. It hasn't always been a straight line. I have thanked God for the joys of parenthood and Michelle's willingness to put up with me. In the wake of failures and disappointments, I have questioned what God had in store for me and have been reminded that God's plans for us may not always match our own short-sided desires. And let me tell you, these past two years, they have deepened my faith. The presidency has a funny way of making a person feel the need to pray. Abe Lincoln said, as many of you know, ``I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I have no place else to go.'' Fortunately, I'm not alone in my prayers. My pastor friends like Joel Hunter and T.D. Jakes come over to the Oval Office every once in a while to pray with me and to pray for the nation. The chapel at Camp David has provided consistent respite for fellowship. The director of our Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership's office, Joshua DuBois, a young minister himself, starts my morning off with meditations from Scripture. Most of all, I've got friends around the country--some who I know, some who I don't know--but I know there are friends who are out there praying for me. One of them is an old friend named Kaye Wilson. In our family we call her Mama Kaye. And she happens to be Malia and Sasha's Godmother. And she has organized prayer circles for me all around the country. She started small with her own Bible study group, but once I started running for President, and she heard what they were saying about me on cable, she felt the need to pray harder. By the time I was elected President, she said, ``I just couldn't keep up on my own. I was having to pray eight, nine times a day just for you.'' So she enlisted help from around the country. It's also comforting to know that people are praying for you who don't always agree with you. Tom Coburn, for example, is here. He is not only a dear friend but also a brother in Christ. We came into the Senate at the same time. Even though we are on opposite sides of a whole bunch of issues, part of what has bound us together is a shared faith, a recognition that we pray to and serve the same God. And I keep praying that God will show him the light and he will vote with me once in a while. It's going to happen, Tom. A ray of light is going to beam down. My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years. All the more so, when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we're being true to our conscience and true to our God. ``Seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.'' As I travel across the country folks often ask me--what is it that I pray for? And like most of you, my prayers sometimes are general: ``Lord, give me the strength to meet the challenges of my office.'' Sometimes they're specific: ``Lord, give me patience as I watch Malia go to her first dance where there will be boys. Lord, have that skirt get longer as she travels to that dance.'' But while I petition God for a whole range of things, there are a few common themes that do occur. The first category of prayer comes out of the urgency of the Old Testament prophets and the Gospel itself. I pray for my ability to help those who are struggling. Christian tradition teaches that one day the world will be turned right side up and everything will return as it should be. But until that day, we're called to work on behalf of a God that shows justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would reduce State and Private Forestry funding by a modest 10 percent, and it would transfer more than $20 million to the Spending Reduction Account. The State and Private Forestry funding sets aside money for international forestry, urban and community forestry, and supports more than 500 million acres of non-Federal forested lands. We are more than $14.3 trillion in debt, and we need to be cutting areas of our budget wherever possible. It is more than reasonable to request a reduction in this program because the Federal Government has no business giving a handout to private forestry landowners in the first place. This funding would be better managed by the State and local levels of government. We are broke, Mr. Chairman, as a Nation. We need to be doing what businesses do when they get overextended. They lower their borrowing level; they try to find out ways to pay off their debt, and then they start cutting expenses. This is a mere 10 percent cut. So I urge my colleagues to think about our massive debt, and I urge them to consider sending part of this program back to the State and local governments. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would revert the Smithsonian funding back to the fiscal year 2008 levels. This is simply asking the Smithsonian to tighten their belts, to pull their weight, just like other agencies and departments within the Federal Government are having to do. Mr. Chairman, this country is broke. We have spent all the money in our bank and then some. We have to prioritize where we can afford to spend money and where we simply cannot afford to. I believe asking the Smithsonian to simply scale back their spending to levels of 2008 is more than reasonable. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would reduce funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities by a mere 10 percent. I have stood up here and offered amendment after amendment trying to highlight areas of our budget that we can afford reasonable cuts. If you add up all of those modest cuts, the Federal Government could end up saving a significant amount of money. We are facing a fiscal crisis in this Nation, a financial fiasco; and if we can't make the cuts that need to be made, this country is going to go into a total economic collapse. Now, if someone's broke, they sell their luxury car and get a more efficient one; they stop eating steak and lobster and eat more hamburger and hot dogs. They turn in their membership to the country club. All those things are beautiful things, nice things, luxury things. We have a lot of luxuries that we've been funding through the Federal Government for a long period of time. But, Mr. Chairman, we can't afford to continue doing so because we are in an economic emergency as a Nation. We are broke. We have unsustainable debt. We have unsustainable debt that's going to cause our children and our grandchildren to live at a lower standard than we live today if we keep this up. Mr. Chairman, in a race a number of years ago, I said Congress was sick; we need a doctor in the House. I'm a medical doctor, and I do addiction medicine. Government needs an intervention for its spending addiction. In addiction medicine we say, if there's no denial, there's no addiction. We've got a tremendous amount of denial about the economic crisis we face in this Nation. We've just simply got to stop the spending. When a business goes under water, it's overextended as the Federal Government is, what does it do? It lowers its borrowing level--if the lender doesn't do that--it starts trying to figure out how to reduce the debt, and then it goes through every aspect of its expenditures and tries to cut expenses all across the board in every area. The Federal Government needs to do the same. And then the business will look at how to raise more revenue. Our Democratic colleagues say that we need to raise revenue by raising taxes, but that will just tax away jobs. We must create jobs here in America. We create jobs in America by getting the tax burden and the regulatory burden off the job creators, the small businesses here in America that are suffering and are suffocating with the burden of over- regulation and taxes. We could create more revenue for the Federal Government, not by raising taxes but by raising taxpayers, and we do that by putting people to work and creating a stronger economy. It's absolutely critical for the future of this Nation. We can't keep going down this road. The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, I've heard all the arguments, and for the Smithsonian Institute and other things that a lot of people think are very beautiful and nice, just like that luxury automobile, but we need to stop it. The future of our Nation depends upon it. I'm fighting for America. I'm fighting for the future of our children and my grandchildren. Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts does not need to be a priority in the midst of these trying times, and I urge my colleagues to support a very simple request to reduce its funding by 10 percent. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, in the midst of all the talk about raising the debt ceiling, I don't hear anyone talking about the most important factor in this equation, our unsustainable National debt. Everyone is focused on raising the debt ceiling, but if we truly want to get our economy back on its feet, we need to begin paying off the debt that President Obama and his predecessors have created. It's obvious that our Democrat leaders in the White House and the Senate care more about making campaign speeches than about the livelihoods of the American people. Liberals want to raise taxes, but of course not until after the elections. And they want to sham us with talks about future cuts that we will never see materialize. It's like one big Ponzi scheme, and they're trying to get the American people to buy into it. We need spending cuts now, and we need to pay down our outrageous debt. I urge both my colleagues and the American people not to fall for these accounting tricks.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1938. I thank my friend, Lee Terry from Nebraska, for taking the lead on this important issue. The Keystone XL pipeline is vital to ensure that the United States is able to meet its demand for oil. Canada is already the single largest source of oil imports for the United States. This pipeline is expected to bring between 830,000 to over 1 million more barrels of Canadian crude to American refineries each and every day, helping to reduce our dependency on oil from unfriendly nations. At a time when unemployment continues to hover near 10 percent, this project is expected to add close to 13,000 new American jobs. Until we are able to maximize our domestic sources of oil, we will have to rely upon imports. Canada is one of our strongest allies and is a stable democracy with a strong free market economy. Canada serves as an example of how we should be exploring and developing our own domestic resources. Again, I thank my friend from Nebraska for working so diligently on this issue. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1938.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey. I appreciate you yielding a few minutes. I wanted to kind of break all this down so that the American people could understand very clearly what we're talking about tonight. I've got a little poster here that shows President Obama's and the Democrats' Medicare solution. This is their Medicare plan. They deny the problem. They deny the problem that the gentleman from Georgia was just talking about with this huge, huge problem, where Medicare is going to go broke in a matter of just a decade. They want to delay any fixes. In fact, Medicare as we know it today exists no longer. ObamaCare took care of that. And they want to destroy it. They will destroy it by letting it go broke. So this is the Democrat Party's health care plan: Deny It, Delay It, and Destroy It by letting it go broke. Just recently, one of the government accounting groups released something that should scare every senior, every taxpayer, and every American. They said that Medicare, within the next couple of decades--that's a lot of zeroes in this; 63 and a lot of zeros. This is the unfunded liability of Medicare over just the next several decades.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, I just tried to make it so that the zeroes didn't confuse folks. The unfunded liability for Medicare is $63 trillion. This is unsustainable. There's no way to take care of this. We need to shore up Medicare. We need to make sure that it's strengthened so that our future generations, not only the senior citizens today, can continue to get Medicare, but the future generations also. Now, what does $63 trillion of unfunded liabilities mean to everybody in this country? I mean, that's too big a number for everybody to really consider. So I broke it down to every family in the United States. Every family's part of this $63 trillion of unfunded liabilities for Medicare, as it exists today, is over $500,000 per family, $500,000 per family of unfunded liabilities for Medicare just in the next several decades. Now, I don't know about most families, but my family can't afford to pay $500,000 and neither can the government.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey. What the American people need to understand is that we need to strengthen Medicare and Social Security for future generations. This picture right here is a picture of my two grandchildren, Tillman and Cile Surratt. I love these two kids greatly. They won't see Medicare, and they're going to see an America that's quite different from the one that we see today if we don't make some major changes, major changes in Medicare and Social Security. If we don't shrink them and make them economically viable for my grandchildren, that are 6 and 7, my grandchildren won't see Medicare. They won't see Social Security. And, in fact, people who are 45 or 50 today won't see Social Security or Medicare if we don't strengthen them, if we don't do the necessary hard work of bringing about those changes to strengthening Medicare and Social Security to make them economically viable. I hear our Democrat colleagues all the time talk about it's the children. I've heard our former Speaker talk about it's about the children so much that I wanted to throw up. But the thing is, when you talk about it's the children and their future, we've got to deal with this debt. We've got to deal with Social Security and Medicare and make them economically viable by strengthening them, by making them so that they're still available when my kids get grown. And we're going down a road right now--this President and the Democrats in the Senate and the Democrats here in the House have a three-word plan. Their plan is a three-word plan for Social Security and Medicare: deny the problem. They're denying it. They're delaying doing anything about it. And they're going to destroy it, because both Medicare and Social Security are going broke if we don't strengthen it, if we don't make it economically viable, if we don't do the necessary hard work that this Congress and Republicans are trying to do. But what do we hear from our colleagues on the other side? Demagoguery and trying to play politics. It's time to stop the politics. It's time to stop playing games. The American people deserve the truth. No more accounting gimmicks. No more playing with numbers. No more double talk, political speak. This is the Democrats' plan--deny it, delay it, destroy it--for Medicare, Social Security and this country economically. We've got to change it, and that's what Republicans are working very hard to do.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank you for yielding just a moment to me because I want to add to that statistic; 15 percent of hospitals, nursing homes, and home health care will close because Medicare pays less under ObamaCare. That's absolutely true. A lot of those hospitals are going to be in rural communities because rural communities are going to be hit the hardest. Right now I'm a primary care doctor. As the gentleman knows, I'm a family doctor. I've done general medicine for almost 40 years now. The American Academy of Family Physicians said right now, today, one in eight family docs will not accept Medicare at all. Only one in three doctors, according to the American Medical Association limits how many Medicare patients that they take. That is a marked rise. Back in 2004, only 6 percent of all doctors limited their Medicare patients. In 2008, it went up to 8 percent. Now it's almost one-third limit the amount of Medicare patients that they see. And one in eight family docs don't take Medicare at all; they can't afford to because of the low reimbursement rates. And IPAB is going to hit those folks that much harder. During our Special Order when we were discussing ObamaCare I made a comment that somebody may have a free health care card in their pocket, but it's going to be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between the States because nobody will take it, and that's exactly where we are headed. So I just wanted to add that.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey. I would certainly like the time. The American people need to understand that the purpose of ObamaCare, the bottom line really was expressed by the President himself when he said he wanted everybody in this country in one pool. What's that mean for everybody? It means socialized medicine. That's what all IPAB and all these cuts and everything is geared to do is to force doctors out of private practice, make them employees of the Federal Government, make patients subject to some bureaucrat here in Washington and tell them what kind of health care they can get. And the Democrats' plan is to deny, to delay, and to destroy Medicare by letting it go broke. But I want to just add, Dr. Gingrey, to your other ``d,'' the demagoguery that we see. I want to give three examples because the facts have really been, by and large, hidden from the American people. AARP did an ad, a new one, talking about all the places where the Feds could cut spending, like treadmills for shrimp--well, I certainly want to cut that out--but instead, Republicans insist on cutting seniors' Medicare. Well, that's not true. AARP and the Democrats want to cut Medicare by destroying it, letting it go broke. An ad put out by the Gender Project, a liberal nonprofit group, shows an elderly woman being heaved off the side of a cliff, with her being in a wheelchair, and asks: Is America beautiful without Medicare? Ask Paul Ryan and his friends in Congress. That is nothing but bald-faced lies, because we are trying to make sure that seniors get, as Dr. Roe said, a promise made, a promise kept. We want to shore up Medicare and Social Security. We want to strengthen Medicare, not destroy it, like the Democrats are going to do. Let me give you a third example, then I will yield back. On the Republican budget, President Obama said in his speech at George Washington University just last month: ``Instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. If that voucher isn't worth enough to buy the insurance that is available in the open marketplace, well, tough luck. You're on your own. Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it.'' President Obama. It's demagoguery. It's lies, bald-faced lies designed to try to scare the American people, particularly senior citizens. We are trying to shore up Medicare. We are trying to strengthen Medicare. We are trying to save Medicare from going broke. But the Reid-Pelosi-Obama ObamaCare is to deny it, to delay it, to destroy it, and to demagogue it.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.