Paul Broun

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is very straightforward. In fact, it's just a small technical correction to the bill. As the bill is written, there are two titles. The first is specific to commercial and passenger vehicles, and the second is to medium-size and heavy duty vehicles. Both sections obviously deal with advanced vehicle technologies, but only one has a reporting requirement, title II. My amendment adds a reporting requirement to title I as well. If enacted, the Secretary of Energy will have to submit an annual report to the relevant congressional committees on the implementation, progress, and long-term goals of this program. This legislation authorizes a large amount of taxpayer dollars to a program that, like every other government program, is susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse. The easiest way to combat that is through diligence and a certain amount of oversight and transparency. My amendment fits both of these requirements. Mr. Chairman, we need to exercise more caution with where taxpayer dollars are being spent. That entails both doing more research about the programs that we are funding before we write and pass legislation as well as exercising our oversight responsibilities after the money has been authorized. This amendment is very simple. The simple technical corrections go directly towards fulfilling the latter objective. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank my friend from California for yielding. Mr. Speaker, Cash for Clunkers has serious problems that are administrative problems. I have dealers in my district in northeast Georgia who probably are going to go bankrupt because of these problems. I hope, as we go forward, that we'll fix these administrative snafus that are in this problem. We're throwing money into another government program that has very serious problems where dealers can't get their money. I have one dealer who has paid out of his pocket for 50 cars but has only gotten money back for one. Now, that dealer, if he doesn't get paid back, is going to have very severe financial problems, and his employees are going to be put out of work if we don't fix this. Certainly, we've sold a lot of cars because of this program, but just throwing money into a program that has tremendous administrative, red tape problems and other problems is not going to be the long-term answer. I hope that the administration will straighten out these administration snafus and will get the money to our dealers, money that they desperately need.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank you, Dr. Cassidy, for yielding. I just wanted to give you a couple of quick stories, one that goes along with Dr. Roe's story. I have a surgical colleague that I was talking to who told me about getting a phone call from a government bureaucrat about a Medicare patient that he had in the hospital. The doctor got the call from the Medicare bureaucrat in Atlanta who said, Doctor, we have reviewed such-and-such a patient that I understand you have in the hospital. Yes. We have reviewed it. She does not meet criteria to be hospitalized, and we want you to discharge her today. The doctor said, Well, have you seen my patient? No. Are you a doctor? No. Are you a nurse? No. So you're just a government bureaucrat, is that correct? Well, I work for CMS. He said, You've not seen my patient at all? No. But you have determined that this patient should not be in the hospital, and you want me to discharge her? That's correct. He said, This patient is extremely ill; and if I discharge her, she is very likely to die. I'm not going to discharge her. The government bureaucrat said, Doctor, you don't understand. We've determined that if you don't discharge this patient today, we're going to fine you $2,000 a day. So the doctor went and talked to the patient's family and the patient. What were they to do? Well, he discharged her. She died that night at home.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. If you would yield just a moment, I would like to point out something. The commerce clause of the Constitution--I'm an original constitutionist, as many people in this House know. In fact, I carry a copy in my pocket. I carry it all the time, even when I'm home doing all sorts of things. I don't take it with me when I go in the shower, but almost. But the commerce clause under its original intent was supposed to do just exactly what you're talking about, Dr. Boozman, is allow interstate commerce across State lines. And what we've done is we've perverted the Constitution in many ways. And this is one way that commerce clause has been perverted tremendously. The commerce clause was supposed to make sure that there would not be a lockbox of goods and services at the State line. It was supposed to facilitate interstate commerce, not to control interstate commerce but to facilitate it. And so we have perverted the Constitution markedly. And this is one good point that the Republicans are pointing out today about trying to give patients the ability to buy the insurance directly from an insurance company across State lines or have these pools with their alumni association. I went to the University of Georgia. We could have a University of Georgia Alumni Association pool. I went to the Medical College at Georgia for medical school. We could have an MCG pool. I'm a Rotarian. We could have a Rotary pool. We could have these huge pools that would help stop some of these problems with portability. It would help solve some of the problems that we have.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Dr. Cassidy if you will yield for a second, to draw a contrast here, too, is this the plan that you were just talking about, Mr. Fleming. A patient or an employee can choose whether they want to purchase their plan through their employer or not; is that correct?

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, in the Democratic plan, they're going to be forced to buy the employer-provided health care insurance or they're going to be taxed at a 2 percent increased tax rate over what they're being taxed today. So their taxes are going to go up by 2 percent. They're going to be forced into that employer-provided health care plan that's going to be dictated--if you'll hold just a second, I want to make one very strong point here that people need to understand. That employer-provided health care plan is going to be dictated by the health care czar panel. It is established on this menagerie of colors and blocks and things.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. So the employers won't have a choice anymore about the plan that they offer their employees, and the employee won't have a choice either. And both of them are going to pay a penalty if they don't do what the Federal Government mandates or dictates to them; is that correct?

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. That's the point I was trying to bring up, too, doctors, if I could speak directly to the American citizens, as I cannot due to the rules here. But if the American citizens understand, the Democratic plan is going to dictate their plan to them. It's all going to be run by government dictation or dictum from Washington, D.C., and this health care czar; whereas, the Republican plan gives the patient and the employer the choice of what they want to do. And that's why I wanted to try to draw that contrast as you were talking. I yield back.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. And the Republican plan allows patients to do that, where the Democratic plan does not.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, not exactly. In fact, I have discharged patients at the time I see them. I don't have that concierge practice where I am prepaid. But actually, I charge less. My practice was a full-time house call practice. I was not working in an office.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Dr. Cassidy, if you don't mind yielding for another moment, let me tell you about something that happened in my medical practice down in rural southwest Georgia. Congress passed CLIA, the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments. I had a fully automated lab in my office where I would do blood sugars, blood counts and things like that. If a patient came in to see me with a red sore throat, running a fever, white patches on the throat, coughing, runny nose, I would do a complete blood count to see if they had a bacterial infection and thus needed antibiotics to treat it. Or if they had a viral infection, they could have the same clinical picture but didn't need the cost or the exposure to the antibiotics. CLIA shut my lab down and every doctor's lab in this country down. Prior to CLIA, I charged $12 for that CBC. It took 5 minutes to do with quality control. After CLIA, I had to send patients across the way to the hospital, it took 2 to 3 hours to get the test and cost $75 for one test. It goes from $12 to $75, and 5 minutes to 3 hours. Now this is how government intrusion into health care markedly drives up the cost.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. This was a Medicare bureaucrat. That's the kind of care that the Democratic plan is going to not only give us more of, but it's going to take it down to lower age groups besides those 65 years of age and older. It's government intrusion into the health care system that has run up the cost tremendously. CBO has already said that the Democratic plan is going to cost more money. It's not going to bring the costs down. Y'all were talking about the cost curve going up. What that means to the people who don't understand, that means it's going to be more costly for the health care system under the Democratic plan than what we have today.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Not our plan but the Democratic plan.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, I thank y'all. I appreciate y'all doing this tonight, and I appreciate your yielding me some time. I think the American people need to know several things about this, and y'all have brought up some very good points. The CBO says that this ObamaCare plan is not going to save money. It says that, in 10 years, we're still going to have almost 20 million people in this country who won't have health insurance. They need to understand that illegal aliens are going to be given free health insurance by the Federal Government. Now, last night I was watching C-SPAN, and one of our Democratic colleagues was just railing on about how illegal aliens will not get ObamaCare. The reality is, in the Energy and Commerce Committee, just today, this morning, one of my Georgian colleagues introduced an amendment to the bill that basically said that you have to look at people's citizenships and confirm whether they're U.S. citizens or not. That was defeated almost on a party-line vote. All of the Republicans voted for the amendment. Most all of the Democrats did not. I think there were one or two who voted with my Republican colleague from Georgia. The amendment was to just affirm that somebody was here legally to get free health insurance. We saw that with SCHIP. When I first came up here during the last Congress, we had numerous debates about SCHIP, and we had fights over giving State Child Health Insurance Programs to illegal aliens. Our Democratic colleagues absolutely fought and won the fight on this issue. People who come are going to be asked a question, Are you an illegal alien? When they say, No, I am not an illegal alien, then they're not going to do anything to check the legality or the truth of that statement. So it's a self- determination by the applicants as to whether they're legal or not. If they say they're not illegal, then they're going to be given free health insurance under this government plan. The other thing that, I think, is extremely important for the American people to understand is that this plan is going to cost American workers a tremendous salary decrease. Plus, it is going to put a lot of American workers out of work. In fact, it has been projected that over 100 million people are going to be forced off of their private insurance. Also, as Dr. Roe was just talking about, it happened in the TennCare. So I've heard a figure of 114 million people who have private insurance today who are going to be forced off their private insurance plans onto this so-called ``public option.'' Well, how does that work? Well, I have businesses in my own district in northeast Georgia that have told me, businessmen and -women, that they'd rather pay the 8 percent tax, the pay-or-play tax. It would cost them less to pay the extra tax and then put their folks, whose insurance they're paying for today, over on the government plan, the socialized medicine/government plan. I saw a video today of Barney Frank, who was questioned about the government option. He said in this video, in his own words, that this is the way to get everybody in this country on a single-payer system. So, as to the claim that our Democratic colleagues put forth, which is, if you have private insurance you can keep it but if you don't then we'll give you a public option, is not factual. They're setting up the game such, as Barney Frank just very blatantly said in this video today--and I think it's on YouTube, and you can go look at it--that this government option is the means to get everybody on one single-payer system provided by the Federal Government, socialized medicine.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Dr. Roe, would you yield for 1 minute? While you're talking about the seniors, I think the seniors need to understand, too, about this ObamaCare plan and understand that it mandates that those seniors have counseling, I think it is, every 5 years. They have to go get counseling every 5 years about dying. This is a government bureaucracy. I'm not sure where it is in your chart there because it's so hard to figure out what all this bureaucracy is that's being placed between the patient and the doctor. Yet one of those bureaucracies is going to every 5 years tell people over 65 years of age, basically, that they have a responsibility to look at how they're going to die and how they're not going to cost the American taxpayer money, is basically what they're going to tell them.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. It does not.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. It does not address tort reform.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, I was just fixing to ask Dr. Boozman to yield so I could tell him a story. Two days ago, I talked to the administrator of one of the major hospitals; it's a regional hospital within my congressional district in northeast Georgia. He was telling me just that day that one of the CAT scan techs, a lady, was up in his office, asking for more help in their CAT scan unit at night. He asked her, Why do you need so much in the way of help there? She said, Because of all the massive amounts of CAT scans that we're running up here through the night which are ordered through the emergency room. They did 10 CAT scans in one night on patients who'd come in. The administrator's question was, How many of those CAT scans were positive? Zero. Not the first one. I've worked full time for part of my career as a director of emergency medicine at Baptist Hospital in Georgia. I've been involved in emergency medicine throughout my medical career, sometimes part time, sometimes no time, when I was just doing family medicine, and other times full time. Particularly doctors in the emergency room are having to do CAT scans on people who come in with all sorts of aches and pains when they really don't need to do those, but they're having to do those CAT scans and MRIs just because somebody might come back later on and sue them for missing a diagnosis.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of the IX, I hereby notify the House of my intention to offer a resolution as a question of the privileges of the House. The form of my resolution is as follows: Whereas the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Broun submitted an amendment to the Committee on Rules to H.R. 3326, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010; Whereas that gentleman's amendment would have required that none of the funds made available in this Act be used to standardize the design of future ground combat uniforms across the military branches; Whereas defense appropriations have typically been used to provide funding for various types of equipment such as uniforms; Whereas the gentleman's amendment complied with all applicable Rules of the House for amendments to appropriations measures and would have been in order under an open amendment process, but regrettably the House Democratic leadership has dramatically and historically reduced the opportunity for open debate on this Floor; and Whereas the Speaker, Ms. Pelosi, the Democratic leadership, and the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, Mr. Obey, prevented the House from voting on the amendment by excluding it from the list of amendments made in order under the rule for the bill: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That H. Res. 685, the rule to accompany H.R. 3326, be amended to allow the gentleman from Georgia's amendment to be considered and voted on in the House.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Chairman, yet again, the Democratic leadership has decided to close down this process. I have submitted an amendment to the Rules Committee to prohibit funding in this bill from being used to standardize ground combat uniforms across the military services. The House version of the defense authorization has language that was slipped in to require one standardized future ground combat uniform for the military to eliminate the uniqueness of the branches. The Marine Corps has stated, ``A standardized ground uniform will negatively impact USMC recruiting, retention, and tactical/operational employment for deploying forces.'' Given the unique and differing missions of each of the branches, I believe that the leadership of each Service should maintain the flexibility to determine what uniform is best-suited for the specific role for its members. I am very disappointed that we have been denied the opportunity to debate my amendment here today. I want to say I'm a strong supporter of H.R. 3326. I am a marine. Once a marine, always a marine. I am also one who believes in a very strong national defense. I believe the Founding Fathers meant for a strong national defense to be the major function of the Federal Government. I applaud this bill, and I applaud the leaders on both sides for bringing this strong bill. I want to say I agree with my colleague, Mr. Gingrey, that I believe very firmly that we need to continue funding the F-22 and the C-17.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to passing a health care bill, leadership insists ``this will happen.'' Speaker Pelosi claims to have the votes to get it passed on this floor. If that's true, Madam Speaker, then show us the bill. If the rhetoric coming from the Democrats is true and if they're planning to steamroll a $1 trillion health care experiment through this body before August, let's see it. Let's debate it. Let's let the Americans see it. The American people deserve to see a bill with plenty of time for an open and honest debate about exactly what is in store for them if this partisan experiment is passed. The American people have seen enough smoke and mirrors about the Washington bureaucrat who will be inserted directly between patients and physicians. They've seen enough smoke and mirrors about how many people will be forced off of their current health care plans. They've seen enough smoke and mirrors about the real cost of this plan. If you have the votes, then clear out the smoke. Show us the bill, and finally give hardworking Americans answers to their questions. Show us the bill, Madam Speaker.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the 50th anniversary of a remarkable radio personality in my district: Mr. Harley Drew. After serving 50 years in radio, ``Handsome Harley Drew'' has established himself as a broadcasting icon in Georgia radio, having distinguished himself in every area of radio broadcasting. At an early age, Harley displayed an aptitude for radio. He was only nine years old when he began to explore electronics and, as a young teen, received his first part-time radio job at WBRO in Waynesboro, Georgia. It was July 1959 when young Harley got his broadcast license; he had been bit by the radio bug. In 1962, he helped put WFNL on the air in Augusta. Two years later, he landed a job at WBBQ as its program director and stayed with the station for the 25 years. Harley has worn many hats over the years-- operations director and later vice president at WBBQ, national program director for the Arrow Communications Group, and general manager at Sunny 105. For the last 16 years, Harley has been with Beasley Broadcast Group, one of Augusta's largest radio broadcasters, where he is currently program director and host of ``Augusta Morning News.'' Thousands wake up each weekday morning in the Central Savannah River Area to the beloved, baritone voice of ``Handsome Harley Drew.'' For three hours in the mornings, he and his co-host, ``The Lovely and Vivacious Mary Liz Nolan'', deliver news of current events to their loyal listeners, culminating in ``The Morning News Coffee Break.'' This 30 minute program touches the lives of thousands of people each morning with an uplifting and informative program to start their day. In May of this year, Harley inspired countless listeners to go to their doctors and undergo tests for heart disease after Harley spent seven weeks recovering from triple-bypass surgery. Harley became aware of his own heart condition when a physician guest on his morning show suggested Harley have a Cardiac Calcium Score. When Harley returned to the airwaves, he did not try to hide his medical history, but instead used the opportunity to bring awareness to this vital issue. Harley Drew is known far and wide for his honesty and integrity in broadcasting. He is a founding board member of The Georgia Radio Hall Of Fame and also serves on the board of the Georgia Association of Broadcasters. He has received numerous awards and is well-respected and loved for the positive impact he has made on the lives of the people in Augusta and beyond. Madam Speaker, I applaud the great work of Harley Drew and congratulate him on celebrating 50 years of broadcasting excellence.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to passing a health care bill that the Democratic leadership insists that this will happen, they claim to currently have the votes to get it passed on this floor. If that's true, Mr. Speaker, then show us the bill. If the rhetoric coming from the other side of the aisle is true and you are planning to steamroll a $1 trillion health care experiment through this body before August, then let's see it. Let us debate it. Let the American people see it. The American people deserve to see the bill with plenty of time for an open and honest debate about what is exactly in store for them if this partisan experiment passes. The American people have seen enough smoke and mirrors about the Washington bureaucrat that will be inserted between them, as a patient, and their physician. They have seen enough smoke and mirrors about how many people will be forced off of their current health care plans. They have seen enough smoke and mirrors about the real cost of this plan. If you have the votes, then let's clear out the smoke, show us the bill, and finally give hardworking Americans answers to their questions.