Diane Black

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, as one of the most outspoken opponents of ObamaCare, I hope that in the coming weeks the Supreme Court strikes down this disastrous piece of legislation. But the fact is no matter what the Supreme Court decides about ObamaCare, it does not change the reality that this law is horrible policy. In just 3 short years, ObamaCare has already resulted in fewer jobs, higher health care costs, and more debt. That's why I have voted more than a dozen times to either defund or repeal ObamaCare since being elected to Congress. For instance, last November, my legislation that closed a loophole in the health care law and saved taxpayers $13 billion was signed into law. Today, the House will vote on legislation to repeal two of the ObamaCare law's most egregious job-killing taxes in this law: one, the medical device manufacturing tax; and, two, the medicine cabinet tax. According to the Joint Tax Committee, the medical device tax increase will take away $29 billion from job creators over the next decade. These higher costs will be passed along to consumers, like veterans with prosthetics and seniors with pacemakers and hip replacements. This bill will also repeal the medicine cabinet tax increase, which prevents owners of health savings accounts, or HSAs, or flexible spending accounts, FSAs, from using these accounts to purchase nonprescription, over-the-counter medications. ObamaCare's limitation on purchasing over-the-counter medications will result in longer wait times for those who truly need the care and will also drive up health care costs. In addition to repealing these disastrous tax hikes, the bill also improves the flexible spending accounts by allowing participants to get back unused FSA dollars, up to $500, as taxable wages in the subsequent year. Under current law, any unused balance goes back to the employer and is lost by the employee. This reform to the FSA accounts rewards, rather than penalizes, consumers for being healthy and saving their money. Before coming to Congress, I worked in health care as a registered nurse for more than 40 years. I have seen firsthand the problems and obstacles patients and health care providers face. But ObamaCare is only serving to exasperate the current problems and creates entirely new problems. Our health care system desperately needs market-based and patient- centered reform, not a government takeover. It is critical that the House continue to fight against ObamaCare until either the Supreme Court overturns the law in its entirety or until we have willing partners in the Senate and in the White House.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, during Floor consideration of H.R. 5325 on June 1, 2012, I mistakenly recorded my vote on roll No. 311 as ``no'' on the question on agreeing to the amendment offered by Mr. McClintock of California. I intended to vote ``yes'', on the McClintock amendment, which sought to reduce the Department of Energy, Energy Programs, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Account by $1,450,960,000 and apply the savings to the spending reduction account. Again, I would like to reiterate my strong support for the McClintock amendment and wish to clearly state for the record that I support the amendment to H.R. 5325 and did not intend to vote against it.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, as one of the most outspoken opponents of ObamaCare, I hope in the upcoming week that the Supreme Court strikes down this disastrous piece of legislation. But the fact is, no matter what the Supreme Court decides about ObamaCare, it does not change the reality that this law is horrible policy. That is why I voted more than two dozen times to either defund or repeal ObamaCare since being elected to Congress. Yesterday, in the House Ways and Means markup, we successfully passed out of committee two bills that would repeal the ObamaCare tax hikes: one, the medical tax device; and, number two, the medicine-cabinet tax. It is clear that the House must continue to fight against ObamaCare until either the Supreme Court overturns this law in its entirety or until we have willing partners in the Senate and the White House.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about an important piece of legislation that I am proud to cosponsor, the No Budget No Pay Act. It says if we, the Members of the House and the Senate, don't adopt a budget and pass all of the appropriations bills by October 1, we don't get paid. The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 requires the Congress complete a budget annually, and for over 1,000 days, we have not done so. The deadlines for the budget and appropriations bills are missed so often that they're meaningless. This kicking the can down the road mentality has got to stop. People are fed up. And, frankly, America cannot afford it anymore. We have to balance our books just like American families do. Our constituents have to perform their job duties to collect a paycheck, and so should we. I urge you to support this commonsense legislation. Not only will it help us get our fiscal house in order, it will help restore trust in this institution.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I'm here tonight to talk about my amendment that would prohibit the Obama administration from filing lawsuits against Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama, and other States over their immigration enforcement laws. In the last 3 years, eight States have adopted immigration enforcement measures to address the illegal alien population in their States. In response, the Department of Justice and Eric Holder have pursued unprecedented lawsuits against these States. Mr. Chairman, there are over 10 million unauthorized aliens in this country, and States must be able to enforce the law if the Federal Government refuses to. And the States should not have to live in fear of Federal retribution for trying to keep their citizens safe. This amendment would deny the Obama administration and Eric Holder funding for these ridiculous lawsuits. And until the Supreme Court decides the case against Arizona's S.B. 1070, Congress must use our power of the purse to stop these political lawsuits and allow states to uphold the law. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Thank you for yielding to me. I want to thank you as a fellow member of Ways and Means and a freshman for bringing us together tonight for this Special Order. This is such an important issue, and the American people really need to hear that there is a choice. There's a choice between a system or a plan that is going to take more money out of the pockets of our hardworking taxpayers or one that's going to put more money in those pockets and make a system that is fairer, flatter, and simpler. As I traveled throughout my district over the last 16 months now, I've continued to hear from my businesses in particular that there's so much uncertainty out there. And I ask them, What is the uncertainty? What is it that's keeping you awake at night that keeps you from growing your business, and as a result of that creating more jobs? Obviously, when people have jobs, they have money in their pocket. And what do they do when they have money in their pocket? They spend that money. And they spend that money to buy other products and services, which means that the economy grows. And what they tell me is there are really three things. One, they feel like they don't know when a new mandate is going to come down, such as the health care. And that's going to cost them money. They also don't know when we're going to put another regulation on them. And many of the businesses are very burdened by regulations that, frankly, those are not the same regulations that you see when they do take their businesses offshore, which means we are just driving them offshore. And the third is the one we're here tonight to talk about, and that is tax. We have heard in a number of our hearings in Ways and Means that all the way from the corporate tax down to the individual tax and the pass-through tax that many of our small businesses use that they are willing to give up those deductions and loopholes that are currently in the Tax Code to get something that is fairer, flatter, and simpler. This Tax Code has not been reformed in 25 years. What it has had is a lot of things that have been added to it. And with everything that's added to it, it only complicates it more. But it does something else. It picks winners and losers. And by having a tax reform that would make things fairer, flatter, and simpler, we wouldn't be picking winners and losers. It is far too complicated. Most of the American people don't realize that the United States has the highest corporate tax in the world as of April 1, when Japan lowered their corporate tax. I don't know that we want to be very proud of this, but we became the country that has the highest corporate income tax. Talk about driving people offshore. So in our tax reform we bring the corporate income tax down to a level that is an average for all of the countries that we do trade with and that we are in competition with, and we bring it down to 25 percent. We do something that makes sense. It's a commonsense reform. Likewise, when we take a look at our other businesses that are not the large businesses that are corporations, but the small businesses--and about 60 percent of the small businesses are pass-through. That means they're in the individual tax system. Am I hearing that we're out of time?

Mrs. BLACK. If I may then just conclude with a couple of words.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a woman of incredible strength and courage, one who has inspired and personally pushed numerous young ladies to achieve beyond their wildest dreams. I am of course talking about the record-setting leader of the Lady Vols basketball team, Pat Head Summitt. Now, I could stand here and read off a list of her stats and accomplishments on the court--and they are many and quite impressive-- but, Madam Speaker, I believe that would miss the true scope of Pat Summitt's impact not only on the sport, but on the lives of her players and so many who have watched her career. While the world saw her impact on the sport, her focus was always on teaching young women about life and using their shared passion of basketball as the tool. Her student athletes were always students first. They left the University of Tennessee equipped for a successful life. She instilled in her players the work ethic she learned on a dairy farm in Henrietta, Tennessee. It was her father's values of determination and hard work and her years of holding her own among the boys in her family that inspired the toughness, the drive to achieve, and the winning attitude. Now the legendary Pat Summitt will inspire countless Americans off the court as she raises awareness in her personal fight against Alzheimer's. One item from her well-known list of the definite dozen is to be a competitor. Those of us that have admired her for years know that she is a true competitor and is ready for the fight.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Thank you, Mr. Leader, for allowing me to be here today. I have spent the last year and a half traveling throughout the Sixth Congressional District that I represent talking to small-, medium-, and large-size businesses. What I have asked them across the board is, what is it that would help you to be able to grow your business. What I hear from them is that there's a lot of uncertainty out there, and they are concerned already about large burdens of increasing taxes, more regulations, more mandates. They really fear what Washington will do to them next. What if we said to small businesses, that really are the engine of our economic growth, that we're going to do something for you instead of to you? What if Washington encouraged growth instead of causing small businesses to live in fear that one more tax might sink them? Over 20 years ago, my family started a small business, and I can tell you that if the conditions were like they are today then we probably would not have taken the risk to put everything on the line and start our small business. That's why I'm supporting Leader Cantor's 20 percent small business tax cut that would allow small business owners to, one, retain more capital; two, invest in their business; and three--this is the key--to hire more workers. In the State of Tennessee, we have over 96,000 small businesses that employ over 1.38 million individuals. In particular, we have 12,000 small women-owned businesses, which have been, until recently, the fastest growing sector of our small business economy. So it's not just a cliche that getting small business growing again is the key to our economic growth; it's a fact.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss H.R. 4134, which I introduced on March 5, 2012. This legislation will curtail a tax abuse involving the mass production of cigarettes through ``roll-your-own'' machines at retail establishments. Currently, so-called ``pipe tobacco'' is taxed at rates dramatically less than ``cigarette tobacco'' and ``roll-your-own tobacco.'' That has had the effect of forming an industry of retailers that put RYO machines in their stores that allow customers to manufacture cigarettes for far less than the cost of name-brand cigarettes. My legislation will require that RYO cigarettes are produced on a level playing field with all other cigarettes. In doing so--and this is very important--H.R. 4134 should be read as applying prospectively only--neither retailers nor consumers of RYO cigarettes before the date of enactment of my legislation should be forced to pay any taxes on cigarettes manufactured in these machines and sold before the date of enactment. I understand that there is litigation pending in this regard brought by the Department of the Treasury. My legislation should end that litigation and settle this issue once and for all. I also want to note that H.R. 4134 is not intended to affect small, hand-operated devices used by customers at home to assemble roll-your- own cigarettes. These small devices, which customers take away from the retail establishment in original packaging and use for personal convenience and not for commercial purposes, have been sold for many decades without giving rise to the tax avoidance abuse my legislation seeks to address. I am very pleased that Senator Max Baucus amended the Senate-passed highway transportation bill with language very similar to my bill. I look forward to working with him and others in order to enact this law, and I urge my colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 4134 in the House of Representatives.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to congratulate my Legislative Director, Brian Lenihan and his wife Keagan, on the birth of their son, Tallon William Lenihan. Tallon William was born at 3:15 p.m. on Monday, April 2, 2012, in Washington, DC. Tallon William Lenihan is nine pounds and one ounce of pride and joy to his loving grandparents, Michael and Marilyn Lenihan of Seminole, Florida, and Barclay and Lorita Resler of McLean, Virginia. I am so excited for this new blessing to the Lenihan family and wish them all the best on their future endeavors.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, in light of this week's Supreme Court arguments on the health care law, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the contrast between our Path to Prosperity budget and the broken promises of that law. As we've heard from so many of my colleagues in the last couple of days, we are on the verge of a debt crisis. I don't think any of us can argue that. And this health care law, with a total price tag of $1.76 trillion, would surely drive us over that cliff faster. Now, that is why, in the Path to Prosperity budget, we repeal the entire health care law, including the very dangerous IPAB, which would slash physician payment rates, forcing doctors to stop seeing Medicare patients. This 15-member, unelected board makes senior care even harder to access and puts bureaucrats between patients and their doctors. Our plan for Medicare offers a choice for seniors, and they deserve a choice. We increase the competition between a guaranteed coverage option--and I want to repeat that, that this is a guaranteed coverage option--and traditional Medicare, and it allows seniors to choose. All of this would lower costs of the program while increasing the quality of care. This is the choice of two futures, both for our health care system and also the prosperity of our Nation. Now, we can continue to go down the path of ObamaCare, where we see $1.76 trillion in spending over 10 years. We also see $525 billion in new taxes, fees, and penalties on families and small businesses. Or, we can repeal this law and put in place policies that increase competition, decrease costs, and ensure that our health care system is patient-focused. We can continue to explode the size and scope of the Federal Government, as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like. If Democrats had their way, their budget would tax more, borrow more, spend more, and waste more of the hardworking taxpayer dollars.

Mrs. BLACK. I find it interesting that last night this Chamber unanimously rejected the President's 2013 budget that would be an absolute fiscal disaster. And yet this budget before us today again doubles down on those failed policies of the past. The American people are sick and tired of Washington's culture of spend, spend, spend because they know there are consequences of living without a budget and spending more than what we take in. What we're doing here today is being honest with the American people. We are here to cut spending, reform programs in order to save them, and we make government smaller and less intrusive.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 146 I was inadvertently detained in a meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.'' Stated against:

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Let's, first of all, start with the simple fact that no one in this room can deny, and that is there are 10,000 baby boomers that are added to the rolls each day. Medicare's exponential growth will cause the program to go bankrupt in 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office and the Medicare and Medicaid trustees have been ringing these alarm bells about Medicare's dwindling finances, and we must act now. Over 46 million Americans rely on Medicare for their health care, and something must be done soon to save this program for future generations. Unfortunately, the President's budget proposal failed to address Medicare's grim future. Instead, what we have on the law books now is a 15-member board that is charged with cutting costs and denying care to our seniors. The Independent Payment Advisory Board established in the health care law would cut physician payment rates, forcing many doctors to stop seeing Medicare patients. This board makes senior care harder to access and puts bureaucrats between the patients and their doctors. Now, it's been said here today there's not another plan. Let me correct that. There is another way. As a matter of fact, there is a bipartisan way. The plan for Medicare that is a bipartisan proposal does three things. It does not make any changes for those at or near retirement, it offers guaranteed coverage options to seniors regardless of their preexisting conditions or health history, and it is financed by a premium-support payment that's adjusted to provide additional financial assistance to those who are low-income and less-healthy seniors, and more wealthy seniors will pay. So the choice is clear: we can continue to stick our heads in the sand and go on with a program that takes away choice for our seniors, limits their care and supports the status quo, or we can improve a plan to save Medicare and provide more choice. For me, the choice is clear.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, I'm here today to commemorate the life of a truly wonderful man, Mr. Danny Thomas, who represents so much that is wonderful about our country. Born to a poor immigrant family, Thomas understood the meaning of hard work from a very young age. He started work at the age of 10 selling newspapers and worked until he moved to Detroit to go into show business. After years of struggling, Thomas achieved unrivaled success with shows like ``Make Room for Daddy,'' the ``Andy Griffith Show,'' and the ``Dick Van Dyke Show.'' It was with this success that Thomas started St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where no child is turned away because of an inability to pay. Since it opened in 1962, St. Jude has saved thousands of lives, helped countless families, and forwarded vital research on childhood cancer and other diseases. This month marks the 50th anniversary of St. Jude, and to commemorate this incredible work done at St. Jude, the U.S. Postal Service is honoring Danny Thomas and St. Jude with a commemorative stamp. I can think of no one and no charity more worthy for this honor than Thomas and St. Jude. His is a story of hard work, success, and giving.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, I am here today to talk about my bill, H.R. 3842, a bill that would prohibit the Obama administration from filing lawsuits against Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama, and other States over their immigration enforcement laws. In the last 3 years, eight States have adopted immigration enforcement measures to address the illegal alien populations in their States. And in response, the Department of Justice and Eric Holder have pursued unprecedented lawsuits against these States. Mr. Speaker, there are over 10 million unauthorized aliens in this country. States must be able to enforce the law if the Federal Government refuses to, and States should not have to live in fear of Federal retribution for trying to keep their citizens safe. My bill, H.R. 3842, would deny the Obama administration and Eric Holder the funding for these meritless lawsuits. Until the Supreme Court decides the case against Arizona's S.B. 1070, Congress must use our power of the purse to stop these political lawsuits and allow States to uphold the law.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act of 2012. This would require the CBO to provide lawmakers with macroeconomic impact analysis for major legislation defined by budgetary impact greater than 0.25 percent of annual GDP. Pretty simple. Current law already requires CBO to provide Congress with the fiscal impact. This bill would require the CBO to give us the economic impact. Now, included in the analysis would be a statement of critical assumptions and also sources of data underlying its estimate, which would provide for maximum transparency. So if there were questions, we would have the information in front of us so that we could ask additional questions and be sure that we had all of the information in order to make an informed decision. This is just another tool in our toolkit, and this will help Congress create policy that affects our economy while creating a pro-job agenda, which is on all of our minds and should be our priority. The more information available to policymakers, the better decisions. There is no panacea in the budget process, but this is one more step in reforming what is a broken process; and we're going to see more information and more bills in the next several weeks talking about this broken process. But this is one more piece to give us one more piece of information.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Chair, I rise today in support of my colleague from Louisiana's legislation repealing this unsustainable budget gimmick created to make the health care law look less expensive. The CLASS Act was a long-term entitlement that was plagued with problems from the very beginning. From day one, concerns were raised about the CLASS program's unsustainable cost structure, and the administration ignored it. I have a chart that was presented to us in our Ways and Means Committee in the markup of this bill, and from the very beginning there were six different occasions, and up until March 20 when it was passed, of experts who said this was unsustainable, and they've already been referenced by prior speakers. Since that time of passage there were four others, including Secretary Sebelius in October of 2011, who also said: ``I do not see a viable path forward for the CLASS implementation.'' This program, again, has been unsustainable from the very beginning. I think what is so sad is we continue to put our head in the sand and make the American people believe that this program is somehow workable. This needs to be removed from our law so we can start again. This is a nonpartisan issue, and we all need to work together in a bipartisan way. As a nurse for over 40 years working with the elderly, I recognize the need for long-term care.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Fixing something for 2 months is not fixing something. It's a Band-Aid and it's bad policy. I've been a nurse for over 40 years, and I'm going to use a medical analogy to illustrate this point. If someone were to come into the emergency room where I'm working with a medical issue and I said to them: I'll give you a choice; we can either fix your problem for 2 months or we can fix your problem for a year, I have no doubt that the patient would choose certainty of 1 year over 2 months. For the past 10 months, I have been visiting individuals and businesses in my district, and what I continually hear from them is uncertainty is hurting them and it's hurting our economy. Now, the House sent a bill to the Senate that contains some certainty, and we get back a 2-month Band-Aid. In this bill, we have certainty for businesses, certainty for doctors, certainty for individual taxpayers, and certainty for our seniors. There is a need for a 2-year extension on the Medicare reimbursement for our doctors to ensure that seniors receive access to care. There is a need for a 1-year payroll holiday for individuals and businesses. As has already been said, the National Payroll Reporting Consortium, which is a nonpartisan group, has expressed concerns to Members of Congress that the 2-month payroll tax holiday passed by the Senate and supported by the President cannot be implemented properly. We also need a 2-year extension or a fix for our unemployment benefits to give certainty to businesses and also to individuals. Mr. Speaker, I am frustrated that the Senate kicked the can down the road one more time for only 2 months after we sent them a bill that was not only bipartisan--yes, a bipartisan bill passed by this House--but also had good job policies. I came back to D.C. yesterday to do something better, a package that creates certainty rather than a 2- month patch.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Thank you, Chairman Herger. Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I am extremely proud that my legislation is part of this very worthy, bipartisan jobs package. Congress can and should work together to find common ground and forward solutions-based legislation like what we are considering right here. Today the House will pass a package that not only creates more certainty for small business, encourages hiring of our Nation's veterans, but is also paid for, thanks to my legislation, that repeals a costly glitch in the health care law. And this is more than deficit neutral. This legislation will save billions of dollars. I've spoken on the floor of the House previously about my cost-saving legislation that is now part of this package. When the Affordable Care Act was passed, few realized that this legislation contained a loophole that would allow middle class Americans to receive Medicaid benefits. The new income formula that determines eligibility for government subsidized health insurance, the Modified Adjusted Gross Income, or MAGI, deviated from other Federal assistance programs, failing to include Social Security benefits as income. Under the health care law, a married couple with an annual income of over $60,000 could qualify to receive Medicaid benefits. Let me put it in more stark terms. Changing the income formula could result in individuals whose incomes are up to 400 percent of the poverty level receiving Medicaid. This is unacceptable. I very strongly believe that it is our duty to ensure that the very scarce Medicaid resources are there for those in most need. Again, let me state that the Affordable Care Act income formula for Medicaid, CHIP, and exchange subsidies deviated from the eligibility requirements for other Federal assistance programs. Supplemental Social Security Income; Supplemental Nutrition Programs, known as food stamps; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; and public housing all include the entire Social Security benefit as income. My legislation, now a part of this package, adds Social Security benefits back into the equation, realigning Medicaid with the other programs and stopping these improper payments before they occur. Closing the loophole in Medicaid will save $13 billion over 10 years according to the Congressional Budget Office. And by adding my legislation into this package that includes the 3 percent withholding repeal and the veterans tax deductions, this package will save vital tax dollars. Madam Speaker, I'd like to take a moment to praise other sections of this bill. And on the heels of Veterans Day, I cannot think of a better time for Congress to step forward and help our veterans get to work. As a wife, mother, and daughter of veterans, I know how important it is that we support those brave men and women who fought for our country.

Mrs. BLACK. I thank the gentleman. I hope that this bipartisan, bicameral veterans legislation is just the beginning of more veterans bills getting passed by Congress. Veterans who return home to us and seek work should be able to find it. With our economic recovery sluggish, at best, my colleague Mr. Herger's 3 percent withholding repeal will go a long way to create more certainty for small business. Taxing business at 3 percent is something we cannot afford. I look forward to this legislation and the entire package being signed into law by the President as soon as possible. We should not have to wait for these commonsense, bipartisan solutions to go into effect.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, I'm here today to talk about jobs. People in the Sixth District of Tennessee are hurting. Our State has currently a 9.8 percent unemployment rate, and we have been at over 9 percent unemployment since February of 2009. Many of my counties are well above the Tennessee average. In Overton County, in the eastern part of my district, their unemployment rate is 10.6 percent; and in Marshall County in the southern part of my district, 13.8 percent of our population is out of work. The President's new slogan on jobs of ``We can't wait'' is an odd choice. Right now, there are 15 House-passed bills sitting on the Senate desk waiting for action. Since day one, I have been working with my colleagues to create certainty in our economy, trying to cut the burdensome red tape and get government out of the way. Throughout our Nation's history, it's been the American entrepreneurial spirit that has pushed us forward. Put simply, government does not create jobs. American small businessowners create jobs. That's why I'm here today to urge Majority Leader Reid and our colleagues in the Senate to pass these 15 jobs that we have created in a bipartisan manner over here in the House. America cannot wait, Mr. Reid. Take up our bills.

Mrs. BLACK

Mrs. BLACK. Sir, we're talking about social benefit programs.