John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. Let me say this. I think it's very interesting because Governor Perry's saying that we've got to cut 5 percent. I say hooray for that. I think that's the right way to go about it. But this bill tells us, we've got to set up--somebody in our State has to help administer this bill. And ultimately, we've got to come up with these pools, regional pools. We are pressuring our States to make this thing work, and our States say, We don't want that thing. And we certainly don't want the expense of doing it at the expense of our taxpayers' dollars because we're trying to tighten our budget. You're right, we are lucky in Texas, fortunate that the economy hasn't hit us as hard. In fact, in my district in recent times, probably the hardest hit we received from this Chamber right here and the one across the way, when the President signed the nationalization of student loans and wiped out 500 jobs in Killeen, Texas. In Killeen, Texas, 500 jobs is a lot of jobs, and 500 jobs in central Texas is a lot of jobs, and that's just the tip of the iceberg of what ill- conceived ideas can do. This one here is a constitutional challenge to our Federal Government and our Supreme Court. I have great confidence that they will accept that challenge, and I am hopeful that they will say, You can't expand the commerce clause to breathing. It just can't go that far. You don't need commerce because you exist. If it is, then I would argue that there are no controls on the Federal Government's ability to do things to impose burdens upon your life. I think that is the real underlying issue here, and it is of great importance. But even more so than that is when we came up with the concept of Medicaid, and Congressman Burgess, he worked under Medicaid as a doctor. He knows what it is. But Medicaid is a contract between the individual States and the Federal Government to come up with a solution for poor people's health care. It was designed for the poor, the underprivileged. And it was designed that the States and the Federal Government, the Federal Government would have the ability to work with the States to put together a contract and the State would provide so much resources and administer the program, and the Federal Government would provide so much resources. This bill, without any input whatsoever not only from the Republicans, no input from the Republicans in the House of Representatives, but no input from the States. They got their contract renegotiated by the Federal Government without their say. Now they have this huge financial and bureaucratic burden that is being placed upon the States by the fact that part of the way they were able to get the solution, all of the people not covered by health care, was to take a big chunk of people and just stick them in Medicaid, and say oh, by the way, States, we decided this is what you're going to do, and you're going to do it. We'll pay our share, maybe, but you've got to pay yours. And you've got to administer the program. I think that some of the States, and I know in the Florida case, they are raising that issue. They are saying: Can you impose this upon the States at this level? I don't know. The main issue is the commerce clause. That is the imposition of burdens not anticipated when the deal was struck. I think that is an important part of everything that we are talking about here. You know, there are people who say oh, that Carter and that bunch, they are a bunch of right wing nuts down there on the floor. They are all upset about this and they call them Socialists. Well, yeah, but did you look at this map? Have you looked at this map? I wouldn't call several areas of this country that is marked in red as bastions of conservatism by any stretch of the imagination, not that they don't have the right to be the State that they are. I am not criticizing them for their beliefs, but this is not some right wing conspiracy out of central Texas, okay; this is a cross-section of the country. The West Coast, represented by Washington State, certainly a progressive State, proud to be a progressive State; we have Pennsylvania over here on the east, and Michigan in the Midwest. This area up here is the heart and soul of the declining auto industry with all of their terrible problems. Everybody at night ought to say a prayer for the people in Michigan right now because they are having the hardest time of anyone in this Union right now. And we need to correct that as best we can. More than that, I would at least submit that The Washington Post is certainly not something that Rush Limbaugh and the boys read and consider their newspaper, but let's see what The Washington Post said on March 21: The individual mandates extends the commerce clause's power beyond economic activity to economic inactivity. That is unprecedented. Congress has used its taxing power to fund Social Security and Medicare. Never before has it used its commerce power to mandate an individual person engaged in an economic transaction with a private company. Regulating the automobile industry by paying cash for clunkers is one thing, making everybody buy a Chevy is quite another. That was in The Washington Post. I would argue and I think they would argue with me it is a liberal newspaper. But this is not a liberal or conservative fight. This is about freedom and liberty and our Constitution. I yield to Congressman Burgess.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, 23 million Americans will still have no health coverage in 2019 after this bill is fully implemented. So with all of the big imposition on the privacy of American citizens, and the big imposition on our government of mandating them that they have to buy a product, and if they do everything that they are supposed to do and if the States can find the money to run the Medicaid problem, and if they can get the various agencies up and functioning and somewhere find the money to pay the salaries to run them, and if we create this bureaucracy, we will still have 23 million Americans that won't have health care coverage. Hmm. If your goal was to cover everybody, you failed. I don't think it is really the goal to cover everybody. I think the goal is to put control of another part of the American economy and Americans' lives in the hands of the Federal Government. That's what I think this is about. And that is what I think it has always been about since we started this discussion. That is why the American people were telling us what we want to talk about is cost. This stuff costs too much. What can you do to get the cost down? There is no cost savings in any of this; there is only cost imposition. So the one thing that I think we have a great shortage of in this town with present company excepted is common sense. But I have great confidence in the average American, whether he be the Wall Street fat cat or the guy working in the grocery store in Round Rock, Texas, they have common sense to know what is good form and what is not good form. I think that is why we are seeing people getting up off the couch and making their voices heard because this doesn't make common sense. This is not the kind of world we signed on to. It is not the kind of world we fought wars for. We have an issue that it seems to grow in intensity as the weeks go by. It is almost the gift that keeps on giving in that there is just more to talk about every week. I, too, like Congressman Burgess, lie awake in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep thinking about what is coming down the road and what we have to do. Many of my colleagues don't believe this, but I understand we are about to have a report come out on this, just as an aside, all of the Members of Congress and all of their office staffs were, on page 157 of this bill, taken out of their health care program and put under the pools. It is a very interesting challenge.

Mr. CARTER. I thank you for yielding, Madam Speaker, and I thank you for this night so that we can get together and talk about something that is still on the minds of almost everybody in the United States because, quite frankly, even though this bill has passed both Houses of Congress and even though it has been signed into law by the President, the overwhelming majority of the people in this country are waking up every day to find out there is something else that nobody knew was in this bill and are finding out about something else that is being imposed upon the States and on the people of this country that nobody knew was going to happen. It's because it was a 2,400-page bill, or something like that, which nobody ever read, and it was voted on and passed when there were people who were responsible for its contents who couldn't tell you what was in it. In fact, I believe the Speaker of this House made a statement: We need to pass this bill so we can learn what's in it. That's kind of when the worrying started in this country. It was when people started hearing those kinds of things from our leadership. So we are now at a point where there has been a lawsuit--and we talked about this. I believe it was last week or the week before last. We talked about the fact that a lawsuit has been filed by the attorneys general of multiple States in this country. Well, this is a growing process. When we last talked, there were 20 States that had joined in this lawsuit, and here we are on April 26, 2010, and we have 22 States. So two more States have joined in this process, and there is at least the possibility that we could add, maybe, another five or 10 States to this lawsuit. So, right now, as it stands right now, it is my understanding--and I can be corrected. I do not claim to be a great historical scholar of the Supreme Court of the United States. I have read cases, which was required by my profession, and I have taken constitutional law in law school. I had great constitutional law debates among my law school colleagues when we were young, would-be lawyers. In my practice of law and as a judge, I've had some periphery of the constitutional requirements that are set out by the Supreme Court, but I don't claim to be an expert on it. I am told that, since the Court started, this is probably the largest single group of States to have filed suit on behalf of their individual States and to have joined together on an issue. Now, I may be wrong about that, and I certainly will be corrected if somebody wants to correct me, but it's close. We've got 50 States in this Union, and 22 of them are already in this lawsuit. So, if we pick up three more States, we'll have half the States in the Union involved in this lawsuit. Even 22 is really kind a mind-boggling number. It also represents 44.56 percent of the population of the United States. So, within these red States that you see on this map here--those dark States as compared to the light States, if anybody is still watching in black and white--that represents almost half the population of this country who are asking the question, and the question is very simple: Does the Constitution grant Congress the power to mandate the coverage that's set out in this bill? Now, that is a big question, but it focuses down to a much narrower issue. There are more issues here, but the most narrow issue is if Congress has the authority to mandate that people who are living within the continental United States must buy certain products, namely, health insurance, from designated sellers of that product, which will mean some insurance company. The issue is that they have to, that they cannot have an option, that they cannot say ``no,'' and that if they say ``no'' that they can be fined under the IRS Code and can be required to pay up to a $2,000 fine for not purchasing health care. There are some ranges in that. The fine can be less, but if it's $1, it's a fine punishing you for not buying a product. Now, the great debate is broadly about the Ninth and 10th Amendments, but it is specifically about the commerce clause as set out in the Constitution of the United States. So every attorney general in every one of the States you see here--and this is a pretty nice cross- section. We've got the east coast, one on the west coast, a whole bunch of southern States, a whole bunch of western States, and a whole bunch of midwestern States which are in this fight, and they are asking a real simple question about the commerce clause. But as I said, it's like we wake up every morning and we have new things to talk about, about this plan. A recent Center for Medicine and Medicare Services has come up with some new findings on this bill. Let's examine these together. I'm glad to have my friend, Mr. Burton here, who is going to join me and we will talk about some of this stuff. Twenty million Americans who currently can't afford health insurance will buy a policy under duress from the threat of fine and IRS action. This is what they found: Four million Americans will still not be able to buy and will be fined $33 billion a year and still not have health insurance. Fourteen million Americans will lose their employer- sponsored health insurance as a direct result of this new law. Twenty- three million Americans will still have no health insurance coverage in 2019 after the bill is fully implemented. And 21 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States will be spent on health care after the law is implemented, which is higher than if Congress had done nothing. So if nothing would have happened, we spent 21 percent of the gross domestic product. So we were sitting here, and the first thing we were told is the reason we need to pass health care is we need to get a cheaper product. I mean, we need to save money. We need to reduce the deficit, reduce the debt. Well, we haven't reduced the spending because it's going to be 21 percent of the gross domestic product, which is larger than it is today, and it's estimated it's larger than it would have been if we hadn't done anything. So these are facts that sort of jar you into reality that we have got a product that every American sitting around the coffee shop tomorrow morning ought to be talking about, that everybody in every office building, on every farm and ranch, and every small business in America ought to be asking questions about what has become the new law of the land. I think the attorneys general of the multiple States in this country, they started asking these countries as the process was going through, and as they discovered nightmare after nightmare after nightmare as it pertains to the States, they started getting rattled and they started to say, This can't be. We can't be imposing this kind of will under the Commerce Clause. So I think it's important that we look at the Ninth and the 10th Amendment and the Commerce Clause, and I'm going to start off, and then we're going to talk about some constitutional law here with my good friend Dan Burton. We're going to see how we figure this. I think everybody out there learned in school we have a Constitution and we have amendments to that Constitution, which are just part of the Constitution. They just came at a different time. And the amendments have a lot to do with individual rights to liberty in this country. And when our Founding Fathers were looking at this project and what they were doing, they were going from sovereign States. The people of Virginia considered themselves--Virginia was a sovereign State. That meant a sovereignty-laden State. And they were meeting in Philadelphia to see how much sovereignty they would surrender and what they would create in the form of a Federal republic. And remember what Benjamin Franklin said when asked as he walked out the door what kind of a government they had created, and he said, A republic, if you can keep it, because it depends upon those who were given that gift to keep that republic, which means it has some basic concepts which our Founding Fathers were ingenious about creating, and one of them was the balance of power, that there would be offsetting power between the three branches of government which would balance out the power so no overwhelming power would lie in any one branch of the government. There are three branches: the executive, which is the President and all the various executive agencies of the government; and then the legislative, which is the House and Senate; and then the judiciary, which is the entire judicial system of the United States, capped off by the Supreme Court of the United States. So when they wrote this, they wrote the Ninth and the 10th Amendments. And the Ninth Amendment says, ``The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others,'' other rights, ``retained by the people.'' Because our Founding Fathers took the position which learned people of that time were debating and putting forth that the rights that are set out in our Bill of Rights and the other rights that are defined in our Constitution are, first and foremost, the rights of the people. Each individual person has those unalienable rights. So when they sat down and they started to put this thing together, they said, now, any rights we didn't talk about still belong to the people. So just because they didn't write it down in the Constitution-- freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and all the ones you learned in school--there are more rights than that because those rights lie with the people. The 10th Amendment says, ``The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution''--the Constitution defined the powers of the United States Government--``nor prohibited by it to the States,'' in other words, aren't specifically set out for the States, ``are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.'' So what they were basically saying is there are powers out there that this Constitution doesn't cover. Now, I think we all know that the Constitution has been an evolving process because the big job of the Supreme Court of the United States is to tell us what things mean when you start applying events to the Constitution. There is a clause in the United States Constitution which is called the Commerce Clause. And it says the U.S. Congress shall have the power ``to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.'' ``Commerce'' is the big word, and the question is, what is commerce? And I think if you went to a business school and talked about commerce, you would find out that they are basically talking about the buying and selling and trading and working with goods and services. It would be pretty much what you're talking about. The economic activity, buying and selling and so forth. Now, a more liberal court started expanding the Commerce Clause slightly, and the one that really kind of threw everybody off was a case where some folks during the Depression were growing wheat in their own backyard. They were grinding that wheat and making it into bread and they were eating the bread. And the question was, is that wheat in commerce? And the court said because it was competing with other wheat that was being ground into flour and made into bread, it was being sold, and therefore it at some point had an effect upon the commerce involving bread and wheat. Even though it was only consumed by the family, they expanded it to say that was commerce. And from that the idea came up, and it was cropped up and was challenged and failed several times in the Supreme Court to be carried that far, was that the Commerce Clause, if you take it that far, it will cover everything. And really this bill that we're talking about, this one right here that we just got the report on, this bill is going to be the ultimate decision of whether the Commerce Clause means ``commerce'' covers everything or not because in this bill, the only thing you have to do to be required to buy health insurance by the government is be alive. If you are a human being and breathing, you have to buy health insurance. If you have it and you get to keep it, then you've got health insurance, but if you don't have it, now it's no option. You have to buy it. Now, the first thing you will hear people say is, yes, but you've got to have insurance to drive an automobile and you have to have it. That's true, but that is insurance that is protecting other people from your negligence or your mistakes as you drive your automobile, and it's an issue for the State in protecting the State because it makes sure that people are able to protect those that they might injure when they use a dangerous weapon. And, by the way, it's kind of interesting that the courts have ruled that an automobile can be used to enhance punishment in a criminal case because it is a deadly weapon. So basically they are insuring against the misuse of the deadly weapon called the automobile. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about you have got to have health insurance whether you're sick or whether you're well. You have got to have it. And if you don't, you have got to pay a fine, and that fine is going to be in the nature of an excess tax. So there's a good place for me to yield to Mr. Burton to talk about how he sees this and what thoughts come to his mind as we look at this really challenging constitutional issue.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, we like to get on the floor of this House and we like to argue our points, and we like to try to couch the facts in such a way that you come to a conclusion that suits our political ends. That happens all the time in the courthouse when lawyers advocate for their clients. It happens here in Congress when folks advocate. There is a commentator, or maybe he wouldn't call himself a commentator, I don't know what he would call himself, who has the thing that says, ``The spin stops here.'' I would argue that the spin really stops in the republican form of government that our Founding Fathers created at the United States Supreme Court. Because at the United States Supreme Court, when they are looking at legislation passed by this body, the United States Supreme Court takes the facts that are presented to them, and they take the law as it exists, and then they look at the law that's being discussed and they discuss it in light of the Constitution of the United States. In reality, all that we do in this Chamber and all that we do in every courthouse in this land to resolve problems either between individuals, between parties, or between States, or in some courts even between nations, all of that spin stops at the United States Constitution. So we have just passed a gargantuan health care bill. So many pages you can hardly lift it even if you are a pretty good, strong, stout guy. And it has so many agencies and so many directions and so many things in it, and we have talked about them ad nauseam in this House. But the bottom line is it comes down to, now, this issue is being brought before the United States Supreme Court, or ultimately will be brought before the United States Supreme Court. And I would not in any form or fashion impose upon the United States Supreme Court my will. And I don't think anybody else in this body would either. But I think we have at least a way to look at this that we need to look at it, and I don't really think we are talking about spin. What we are talking about here is what we think is in violation of that document where the spin stops. Now, this has all been started, initially started with 14 States immediately upon the passage of this bill filing suit to question the constitutionality of the Democrats' health care bill. We now call it ObamaCare by some. This list has expanded into where now 20 States' attorneys general or their representatives have become involved in one lawsuit or another. Nineteen of the States have filed under Florida's lead in Tallahassee under multiple grounds, and Virginia has filed independently in Richmond solely on the constitutionality of the individual mandate. The issue goes far beyond health care. If the commerce clause can be stretched to force individuals to buy health insurance, it will effectively moot the majority of the constitutional restraints on the power of the Federal Government. What does that statement mean when I just said that? Well, if you go back and you read the Federalist Papers, if you study the things that were said about what took place in our constitutional convention which was held to write our Constitution and what the debates were among the representatives of the individual States at that time, the real underlying concern of everyone was the power of government. That's what everybody gathered together to talk about. We need something that manages our situation in America. That's what our Founding Fathers said when the 13 original States, prior 13 original colonies, gathered to discuss what document would we found our sovereignty on. This gets off in philosophical concepts; but just remember that until the creation of the United States, which declared the sovereignty of our Nation, that means the supreme authority in our Nation lies with the people, and that the people would create an instrument which would set out the definitions and the boundaries of that supreme authority that gave the life's blood to our country. That was done because they had just fought a war with a tyrannical nation that had been imposing its will upon our Nation, at that time the people who lived here who ultimately became our Nation. And they were fed up to their eyes with people imposing their will upon them. And they wanted to make sure that when they all agreed to get together and surrender certain things to a government, a centralized government that would govern in some capacity over all the States that created that government, that they would make sure that they were not creating another tyrant. And I think if you read that and the Bill of Rights connected with the original Constitution, you will see that the very first thing they do is say, the government shall not do these things. And then they went on and said, the people have God-defined rights, and here are those rights. And the government's not going to interfere with those rights. And it was the government they were restricting. It was the government they were talking about. And when we set it up, and when we made the great compromise and all the other compromises which it took for these various parties to resolve their differences and create a government, it was all about making sure they weren't creating another tyrant. And I think they succeeded. And I think every American that has ever studied our Constitution is extremely proud of that document and the people who created it, because it did what they set out to do. It made sure that no government, no authority or organized government would be able to impose its will over the will of the American people at that time. Now, this concept has now spread around the world. You know, we love to look at the free nations of the world. But at the time we created the Constitution of the United States, all those friends and allies that we call free nations of the world, they weren't free. And the concept was foreign to them, that the government couldn't impose its will upon the people. It was foreign. Kings did what kings wanted to do. What was it they said in the History of the World, Part 1? It's good to be the king. Well, you know what? It was good to be the king, and that's why we weren't happy with King George, and we fought a war to get rid of him, because he was imposing his will and the Parliament was supporting him in England by imposing his will. So we fought a war. We won. We wrote ourselves a Constitution. It said, we're not creating that kind of government. So what our lawsuit is about is how far do we impose the will of the government over the will of the people? These are basic premises. And it's been in constant debate since the founding of our country. And it has slowly and surely expanded the power and the force and the strength of the Federal Government. But the bottom line is, we start with the premise that Americans did not want a government that imposed unfairly their will upon other people. And these lawsuits which have been filed, and these now 20 Attorneys General that are involved in carrying one or the other lawsuit to the United States Supreme Court, through the court systems, are raising issues that say, we've reached a point in this particular piece of legislation, the Democrats' health care bill, the Obamacare bill, whatever you want to choose to call it, it's being called that way in the papers, one way or the other, it is imposing upon people something it does not have the authority to impose. And really, it's a real simple argument. What this bill does, it says everybody has to buy health insurance, period. End of story. You've got to have coverage. It is required of you. And it sets up massive plans and descriptions and all kinds of things that just will absolutely cause your mind to shrink up like a prune when you start reading it, trying to figure out what all it says. But when it comes down, you cut through all the garbage, you cut through all the spin, you cut through all the arguments, and just what does it do? It says, we're going to set up certain things that insurance has to cover, and then you, American citizen, have to buy that insurance. That's what this bill says. You've got to buy it. And if you're not covered by insurance, either under some massive State plan, which we already have, Medicare, Medicaid and others, if you are not covered there, if you don't have private insurance, you've got to buy private insurance. You've got to go buy it. Now, if you don't buy it, we're going to punish you, and we're going to punish you by, some call it a tax, some call it a fine, but it says we're going to put--you're going to pay this amount of money for not getting insurance. And our Attorneys General of the now 20 States of this country are saying, whoa. Wait a minute. Besides all the burden you're putting upon the States, contrary to the contracts we made on, for instance, Medicaid, which is the plan we have to take care of those people who are literally unable to buy their own insurance, it is designed for the poor and for the needy, and it's a contract between the States and the Federal Government to create a plan that the States administer, that will take care of the poor people of the country. Now, it's been expanded to two times poverty, three times poverty, four times poverty and it goes on. And we've added to it what some call SCHIP, which is expanding it to cover uninsured children. And then some States have even gone so far as to expand uninsured children and their parents under this Federal, supposedly for poverty-stricken people, plan. But the key to what the States are arguing about that plan is, but wait a minute. We made a deal with the Federal Government, and we're partners in this by contract. We agreed that we would administer the plan, we would decide what was best for the citizens of our State, and that's what our Medicaid program would be. And honestly and truly, Medicaid programs across the country differ. The Medicaid program in Texas is different from the Medicaid program in Georgia. In most instances, they're relatively small differences, but they're differences that the States felt fit their people in their State because the States were in charge of administering Medicare. The States have complained about sometimes some standards that this Congress has put on what kind of drugs you can give and what kind of services you will give. And those have been a series of debates, but they haven't broke the contract. But one of the things that these States are arguing in this plan is not only are you mandating that people buy a private product from a private company, an insurance company, but you're punishing them for not doing it. And then you're telling us that already provide a plan to cover a lot of these people that we have to take a massive infusion of new people that wasn't part of the deal. Massive. I'm talking about doubling and tripling some Medicaid budgets for the States. And we're not going to help you out with it. Temporarily, we will help you out with it. We bailed you out with some of the stimulus money in the last year, but that is all going away. But you've got to take care of it. And not only do you have to take care of it, you have to administer that agency, take care of all of these new people we put in there. We're mandating you to do that. And they're saying, Oh, and by the way, while you're at it, this program that we've got that is going to impose that people have to buy a certain insurance policy, we want you to administer that, too. We not only want you to, we're mandating you to do it. So our States are saying, Whoa, time out. That burden's bad enough. But let's get back to the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution. Should government be able to force you to buy something you don't want to buy? Now, you say to yourself, Well, but it's for the good of the general public that we do this. No. It's really because, if you've got a bunch of healthy people and you force healthy people who don't want to buy insurance because they don't figure they're going to have any health care needs for about 10 or 15 years, make them start paying premiums, make them become part of the pool, they won't cost you a dime so they can help pay for the people at the other end that are needing health care. So it's really a great big fancy way of expanding who pays the bill. What it comes down to, what it means to the individual human being that is out there in the country whose only thing that the government could be regulating is his breathing because all he has done to be mandated to buy this policy is being alive. If he was dead, he wouldn't have to buy it. But he is alive. And our Federal Government by this bill is saying, Everybody alive out there, all 50 States and everybody out there, if you're alive, you're buying this product, and you've got to choose to buy it through a pool which will have certain insurance companies that will offer what we have decided those insurance companies will offer, what the Federal Government--this Congress, this President--has decided they have to offer as services under the policy. But you've got the 19-year-old kid out there that says, Wait a minute. I'm 19 years old. I'm bulletproof. I'm healthy as a horse. I can run a 4.4 40. I can bench press 400 pounds. You're telling me I've got to go buy health insurance? Yes. I won't do it. A-ha. You won't do it? Okay. How would you like to cough up 2,000 bucks in extra tax money every year just because you didn't pay it? Well, I wouldn't. Well, that is what we're telling you you've got to do. That is what this bill says. You can couch it in all kinds of formal spin and you can spin it every way you want, but when you cut down to the bottom line, that is what it does. It says you have to buy something. Now, as you're thinking about this, Well, this is not so unreasonable, John. Wait a minute. You know what? I'm a lawyer. I've been a lawyer since 1969. If you count the years, that's a long time. I've been a judge for 20 years. I can make a pretty darn good argument that everybody in this country ought to have a lawyer. In fact, I can make an argument that our world has become so complex that you are at risk for life and limb if you don't have a lawyer to stand up for you and to protect you not only against this Federal Government, but against the imposition of all governments and against the imposition of other entities, other partnerships, corporations, other individual people because everybody is out there just ready to sue you. So you need a lawyer. If the policy of this Nation is that you have to buy a product that was created by this Congress from an individual, from a company, why can't I write a bill that says, Oh, by the way, everybody needs a lawyer, so you have to hire a lawyer or I will create an agency which will farm out all of these lawyers in America that you will--everybody will have a lawyer on your table, and if you don't, it will cost you $2,000 a year for not having a lawyer, because if you don't have one-- especially if you don't have one and you don't have any funds, guess what? We're going to have to provide you with one. Or if you commit a crime and you're indigent, we're going to provide you with one anyway, so we're going to make everybody have a lawyer. I don't think that will get a lot of votes because lawyers aren't very popular, but the concept is the same. The concept is just the same. We're saying to the American people, You have to buy a product from a company. If you don't buy that product, we're going to punish you. We're going to fine you, and it's going to be administered by the IRS with their authorities and rights going forward as IRS agents. It's no different than me and my bill requiring you to hire a lawyer. It's for the good of the Nation for you to have a lawyer. But, hey, I can think of another example which a lot of the newspapers are using. In fact, I believe this one does. This is from The Washington Post. Is Health Care Reform Unconstitutional? Look at the last line of this. They say, Regulating the auto industry or paying cash for clunkers is one thing. Making everyone buy a Chevy is quite another. And that is the real issue that we will switch over to another thing. Right now, as I understand it, we, the Federal Government, along with the labor unions, own 51 percent of General Motors. So, arguably, all of us--because you know you will hear us very gloriously stand up on the floor and say, This House belongs to the people. Well, so you own-- you're not a stockholder, but you, through your tax dollars, own 51 percent of General Motors, or some percent close to that area. Don't hold me to that number, but a whole lot of it. Now, I will come up here and say, You know what? They're still going broke. It's arguably for the good and the best interest of the American people that everybody buy a Chevy. Then we will keep General Motors from going broke. Or a Pontiac or a GMC pickup or whatever General Motors makes. So if the Constitution of the United States requires people to buy a health policy with mandates from the Federal Government as to what that policy will offer and it requires them to buy or they will be fined, why can't I require them to buy a Chevy? Now, once again, I started off saying the buck stops at the United States Supreme Court. The spin stops at the United States Supreme Court. It's down to what those Supreme Court Justices are going to say the Constitution says about can the commerce clause, which is the only logical way any argument can be made that this would be something the government can regulate. It could be regulated under the commerce clause, which says the Federal Government has the right to regulate commerce between States, and commerce interstate between the Federal Government and States, and foreign commerce. Now, the commerce clause has been expanded, and nobody is going to argue with that, and I'm not going to argue with it. But are we willing to say that because I breathe here tonight I'm in commerce? I'm not selling anything. I'm not buying anything. I'm not moving anything in any direction for the purposes of sale or for the purpose of anything to do with the economy or anything to do with commerce. I'm just here, and I'm breathing the air of Washington, D.C. Is that enough to make me in commerce and therefore be able to impose the power of the Federal Government upon my life to make me buy a certain product? Is that a world that our Founders envisioned us getting involved in? I would argue it's not. Is that a world that the American people envision us getting involved in? I would argue it's not. And I would argue, and I think the American people will back me up on this, and I can guarantee you our Twitters and emails are backing me up that say you can't impose upon us things against our will of this nature, we have to buy from a certain company, a certain product. Wouldn't it be great for Dell computers if we said everybody has got to buy a Dell? Wouldn't it be great for some tractor company to say, By the way, even if you only live in an apartment, you need to own a tractor because its in the best interest of America if the tractors do good? At what point can we stop all of this? Those things seem silly, but the real spin and the real buck stops with the decisions that these courageous attorneys general across the country are going forward with, many of them against the will of their Governors because the political fight to stand up for the American people and to say to the United States Supreme Court, we need your help to tell us, are we going to impose the government's will to that extent, that's what I am here to talk about. I am glad to see one of my loyal friends and classmates who, God bless him, he always comes when I am standing down here. I am proud to yield to my friend, Phil Gingrey of Georgia.

Mr. CARTER. It's a good idea, but I don't think we can do it.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you. Just going over this, this is a welcome sign for all. It may not be all the States now because more have joined in. Let's just look real quickly: Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, Idaho, North Dakota, Arizona, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Florida. That's a pretty good gallery of the States, and it's not just one region. It's across the country, and it's because the American people are being affected across the country. Ultimately, the courage of these attorneys general will stand up for every American citizen on this issue, and I commend them, and I congratulate them, and I am looking forward to in some small way if I can work with them, because I think it's an important thing. The gentleman mentioned expert. You know, we say in the legal position an expert is a guy from out of town with a briefcase. I have seen that in the courtroom a lot, and I would have to say I agree with that in some instances. No, we are all in some form experts on the Constitution because we can all stick one in our back pocket and carry it around and we can read it and we can learn what it says. In fact, that's kind of what's going on in the country right now. An awful lot of the people are getting themselves a Constitution and they are reading it. I said, wait a minute, this thing was to restrict government. This doesn't restrict government. One of the arguments is being made, making the ninth and 10th amendment the commerce clause. The commerce clause says the U.S. Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes. The ninth amendment says the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others of the rights retained by the people. Remember, this Constitution starts off by saying, people have certain inalienable rights, rights that cannot be alienated. Granted by God, that's what the Constitution says by divine providence, and among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which means there's more. This Bill of Rights and the Constitution sets forth a lot of those rights, but they're not all the rights. And remember, we go back to what were they starting to do? They were starting to get tyranny off our back; don't let the government impose its will upon us. That's what we started out with when the first Minuteman went to Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill to stand up against the Red Coats. It was because they felt like the government was imposing unfair will upon the individuals in the American colonies. And then the 10th amendment goes on to say, ``The powers not delegated to the United States''--that being the Federal Government-- ``by the Constitution nor prohibited to it by the States are reserved to the States respectfully or to the people.'' So in other words, the rights that they don't deal with here belong to the States. And if the States are not going to be in charge of those rights, then back to the people. This is a hard concept because some people sitting at home and some people in this body are going to say, how do the people have rights that the government is not protecting? Well, they do. In fact, they took up arms once--and some would argue twice--in our Nation's history because of rights that people thought they had as individuals. So this is part of this revolutionary republican society that we created. We created a republic and we were created out of a revolution. So we are fighting a basic argument, a basic constitutional argument that goes forward before the Supreme Court sometime hopefully in an expedited manner. And I agree with my friend, Mr. Gingrey, that expediting this is important for the American people. I guess if there is ever anything written into a bill that turns out to be good news of this bill, it's that it does not get implemented until 2014, which means it kind of gets past a couple of election cycles where it might be an issue before it actually starts happening to us, which gives these Attorneys General the opportunity to carry this through the court system and hopefully to the Supreme Court so the Supreme Court can give us an opinion about this particular health care bill and whether or not we are going to expand the clause that says U.S. Congress can regulate commerce to the point where it can regulate individual activity of human beings to the point where it says you must buy something because it's for the good of you and the good of the Nation even if you don't want to buy it. That is where we are going to go and that is the question they are going to have to answer. It is going to be exciting to see what the conclusion is. I have a tremendous amount of faith in the judicial system. And even though I have many times disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court on issues, I have always--and still to this day by the oath I took, both as a judge and the oath we take as Members of Congress to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Now, that oath says the ultimate sovereignty, we declare it to be the Constitution. I have always had confidence that our Supreme Court, even when I disagreed with them, over the long haul it would all be for the good of the Constitution. I look forward to that opinion that is going to come out of the United States Supreme Court. Tonight I have to cut this a little bit short. We will be back talking about this on other days. So I thank my colleague for joining me, I thank my other colleagues for listening, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this flawed health care bill.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, words that strike fear in the heart of every American are, ``I'm from the Federal Government, and I'm here to help you.'' We have a bill here that people can't read; they are not given the opportunity to understand. We have smoke screens everywhere, backroom deals being made that nobody knows what they are, all from the Federal Government that is here to help you. We are going to take over your health care, take over about one-sixth of the economy, and ``We're from the Federal Government, and we're here to help you.'' By the way, we are even going to push this through the House of Representatives without a vote, so you don't have to worry about whether your Representative stands up for your rights or not. Is this the kind of democracy we want? This is a bad bill. Give us a straight vote, be straight with the American people, and let's let the American people know that that man who says ``We're here to help you'' is not going to get in their back pocket.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. This exhibit right here has a picture actually of the Pentagon right after it was hit. We have this displayed here because in talking about the receiving of medals by our soldiers at Fort Hood and getting the kind of benefits that you get from being in combat, we awarded the people killed and injured by the plane that flew into the Pentagon with exactly those benefits. And I am told by members of the Armed Services Committee that it was done without an act of Congress; although, I will ask for this Congress to act. I have also written a letter to Secretary Gates asking him for the same administrative remedy for these casualties of the war on terror on American soil. We gave it to them. It was a horrendous act. That picture, and other pictures from that time, should be cemented in our memory forever. Whether you kill 3,000 or whether you kill 14 and injure 43, these are still American people who lost their lives at the hands of terrorists in the middle of the war on terror, a war on radical Islamic jihadism. It's time for us to step up to the plate for these people and do this for them.

Mr. CARTER. We are about to run out of time for this evening. Once again, we are talking about the rules we make for ourselves and how we should apply them. I think it is honestly said here that let's don't be so politically correct that we oversee ills that may fall upon our society. That is why we make rules. That is why we have laws and order in our society, so we can protect our citizens, whether they be civilian or in the military. It has been a great evening, and I thank my friends Mr. McCaul and Mr. King for being here to join me in this conversation. I am going to thank the House for allowing me to continue to talk about issues that relate to rules or to the law. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. Let me say as a comment that I have huge respect for General Cone and the outstanding job he did with the situation that happened at Fort Hood. And this is the same man who was preparing to deploy three corps to Afghanistan to start the very serious business of pulling American soldiers out of that combat zone. With that on his plate, this fellow in his lap, I think he did an outstanding job of handling it. And by the way, he still, on time, deployed the third corps to Iraq, and he is right now, today, over there doing our bidding and our job of pulling down, making elections work, and pulling down the forces for the taking out of 50,000-plus soldiers in August. He is a great American and an outstanding soldier. I want to yield to Mr. King from Iowa however much time he wants to take to talk about these issues of radical Islamic jihadism and not letting political correctness silence our mouths.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for his comments. I think the most important thing we ought to do as Americans is be willing to stand up for what is right. And if it means that someone might get their feelings hurt, I don't have a problem with that. I am not for dragnets. I am not for going out and shaking up communities like used to happen in the olden days, older than me anyway. In fact, there used to be a television show called ``Dragnet'' and a radio show called ``Dragnet.'' Those are wrong, and we aren't talking about that. But we are talking about using good intelligence. And if we are going to kill our intelligence and not look at things because we are afraid we are going to hurt somebody's feelings, then we are going to get hit again. And if we get hit again, we are going to be standing around still asking the same questions we are asking here tonight: Why? What happened? Why did this happen? Why didn't we know? As my friend Mr. McCaul had been saying, we had the information to ask the question. Somebody should have asked it. That is the key.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time. Mr. King made the comment about crazy conservatives, so let's look at some crazy conservatives that made the same statements we are asking. I wouldn't classify Time magazine as one of the great conservative magazines of the 21st century, but here is an article from Time magazine asking the same question: ``The Fort Hood Report: Why No Mention of Islam?'' Here is another, I would say, not very conservative organization, The San Francisco Chronicle, asking the same question: ``Political Correctness on Fort Hood at Pentagon'' I think that you cross all boundaries here when you start getting down to the logical things we ought to be doing to fight people trying to kill us. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to say, Daddy says he is crazy, and he may do something crazy. And when you get reports that this guy is out there talking to this guy over in Yemen, these things start to fit together. Maybe you ought to check him when he hits the airport or before he takes off from either Brussels or Amsterdam. Fortunately, he had a misfire and it didn't work. But he could have killed all the people on the airplane, hurt a whole lot of people on the ground in Detroit. Detroit has enough problems right now without having somebody blowing up an airplane over their city, and God bless them.

Mr. CARTER. I will make another argument besides that, and then I'm going to let my good friend Mr. King from Iowa talk a little bit. I would also argue that the way this thing has been treated, I would say with kid gloves, makes the next homegrown terrorist, of which we have seen, what, two or three in the last 2 weeks up here, Jihad Jane and I think there is another one now, Jihad Jenny or somebody, these women who are American citizens who are now promoting jihadist terrorism, and the underwear bomber on Christmas Day. So these people, I think, by looking at the soft kid gloves activity of a murderer on a military base, I think it encourages them to get involved in this stuff. If they have got a screw loose, which most of these people do, I think it just encourages them.

Mr. CARTER. Let me state that many Members of both sides of the aisle have joined in cosponsoring this bill. I think when we get through some of this other business that is taking forever around here we might get down to something like this. I agree with you. This was supposed to be an oversight Congress, and I think in many ways, there is a valid attempt to try to be an oversight Congress. Nothing is more important for oversight than an issue like this, and that is, just what happened and how it happened. And you say, Well, okay, people were killed. It has got bigger ramifications than that. That is what is so hard to understand. This was a man wearing the same uniform of the people he shot. I want to share a story, and I have shared it before on the floor of the House. The day after all this took place, I was at Fort Hood. I was out at Darnall Hospital where there were wounded out there who had been transported both there and all over our district. Our community, from all the way down into Williamson County, Bell County, and Coryell County, the whole surrounding area just united behind the medical community, behind this terrible act and gave the very best medical care available anywhere for these people. I was talking to a nurse, and she said when she was deployed to Afghanistan, she worked in a hospital with Australians. And she got an email from an Australian nurse the morning I visited Fort Hood, which was the day after the shooting, and in that email the lady said, you know, Soldiers in the Australian army are starting to question and asking this question of mental health professionals in our army already today: If the Americans can't trust the people in their uniform, can we trust the people in our uniform? Now, remember, if you're in the military and you're a soldier, we like to say we depend on each other in this place. But when they say they depend on each other, they mean they put their life in the hands of the man behind them and the man on either side of them and the man in front of them, and they in turn have those people's lives in their hands. The military functions by knowing that each can do their job and trusting the other one to do it. And so there is something that strikes in the psyche of a soldier when a fellow soldier publicly executes 13 people and ultimately results in the death of an unborn child, 14 deaths, wearing the same uniform as the people who were shot, and so it strikes to the soul of a soldier. We are doing our very best and I would say doing a good job of overcoming that. These are awfully, awfully talented young men and women in the army, but it's still there. It's still creating distrust, driving a wedge in our military, and, arguably, it's as effective a strike as you can have if you cause folks to distrust. So this has big scope. In truth of fact, what will we think if somebody we trusted to have our backs started shooting people in this place? We would wonder who we could trust.

Mr. CARTER. Yes, I will yield.

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend, Mr. McCaul, for those kind words. And let's look at this exhibit we have got here. Congressman McCaul, you have touched on a lot of these things. But you know, it was said by Mr. Nidal Hasan that he felt that he was being persecuted by people. And I have an old Gulf War colonel who said, You know, the Army must have changed a whole lot since I left the Army, because I never did know any enlisted men that would persecute a major in the United States Army. It makes to sense what he says, that enlisted men were persecuting a major. It makes no sense. But the first question you need to ask yourself is how does a man who has shown the signs of radical Islamic behavior on multiple occasions, who has acted erratically for months before the attack and, I would argue and the evidence will show, actually for years before the attack--in fact, one of our Members of this House has talked to a doctor who went through medical school with him and said he was doing this in medical school, which is long before this period of time. And he promoted radical Islamic views at Walter Reed Hospital. He exchanged emails with this al-Aulaqi character, this radical imam character. How does a guy do those things and get promoted to major? He didn't start out in the Army as a major. He got promoted to major. He got moved down the line. Well, I am going to tell you. And this is only my opinion, but it is based upon some experience I have had in my life. I tried a case one time back in the eighties that involved a nurse. And in our case she was accused of killing a baby while giving it its injections for typhoid-tetanus at a doctor's office and intentionally killing that baby. And there was an awful lot of evidence that while working in an intensive care neonatal unit in San Antonio, a lot of other babies died very mysteriously on her watch. And unless I am mistaken, she got life imprisonment and she is still there. But what is interesting is the system she was working in, when they started seeing unusual behavior, rather than doing something about it for fear of offending someone, they just recommended her for another job. And this pediatrician who was operating in Kerrville had asked whether this nurse would be a good nurse to go to work for them. And she got glowing reports from people who were looking at records and saying something is wrong when this lady is on duty. You ask why would people do that? Well, because people have gotten to where we are so afraid of stepping on somebody's toes or offending someone because of their class, sexual classification, whatever it may be, that we don't just speak the truth. Something smells here. Something's bad. This doesn't make sense. We need to ask questions about this. We can't have a society like this. We have to be able, when we see something that looks wrong, to say that is wrong. That is why I have got a bill that I introduced and will be working on it even further, the Military Whistleblower Protection Act. We have whistleblower protection which is very effective in the United States in many categories. And one of the things that happens in the military is your progress report; how you are doing in your job in the military is very important to whether you are going to be promoted to the next rank. And if you don't get promoted in the military, your days in the military are numbered. So you need to be promoted. Many people fear to speak out in something like this for fear that someone might think they are exhibiting some sort of prejudice or prejudicial behavior which would go on their record and maybe prevent them from being advanced in the military even though everything else says they should be advanced. So they fear speaking out for fear of retribution. And they have made movies about whistleblowers. People know that in our society today the guy that steps up and says something and gets fired because he said it has a protection under the law called the whistleblower act. So I have asked us to look at granting to the Members of Congress the right to create a whistleblower act and doing it to protect our soldiers. So we have got a whistleblower act that basically says that servicemembers can report unusual, bizarre behavior by other members, whether they be equal rank or other rank, without fear of retribution, and especially as it relates to radical Islamic threats, as we saw in this case. Mr. McCaul mentioned one of the things that we need somebody in the Department of Defense to say is that this involved a radical Islamic terrorist event. I have had my differences with Ms. Napolitano, but I will give her credit: when she was asked both in Mr. McCaul's committee and in the Appropriations Subcommittee of Homeland Security, she made the statement that this was a violent Islamic terrorist act that took place at Fort Hood. She had the courage to call it what it is. It is time for the Defense Department to call it what it is, to recognize these were men and women put in harm's way because they were serving in the United States Army in the presence of an enemy combatant with a gun. And that is why they should get the kind of benefits, including medals that should be awarded for heroism, if they deserve them and they earned them. So I commend Secretary Napolitano for being a person who speaks the truth.

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, for the past, about--I don't know--12 to 18 months, I've been coming on the floor of the House and talking about various aspects of the rule of law. The rule of law is the underpinning upon which our society is built. We've talked about this over and over. We've talked about it in terms of ethical issues that pertain to people in this House. We've talked about it in terms of criminal actions. We've talked about it in terms of what's going on with our military. You heard some speakers here tonight raise some issues concerning how we fight wars, rules of engagement. All of these are rules we set for ourselves in some form or fashion. Well, I've also been on this floor talking about the fact that political correctness, in my humble opinion, is becoming so rampant in our society that we forget the ``why'' of what we are doing because we're so afraid of offending someone. I am from central Texas. My district includes the largest military facility, as far as soldiers are concerned, on the face of the globe, Fort Hood, Texas. I think everybody, those of us from central Texas, we know Fort Hood, and when we hear Fort Hood we have a lot of great thoughts about the great soldiers out there, we have great thoughts about the great commanders that serve at Fort Hood, about the awesome accomplishments of the soldiers that have passed through Fort Hood for generations, fighting our Nation's battles on every shore you can imagine and all over this country, dating back to the Civil War. Fort Hood doesn't date back to the Civil War, but Fort Hood is named after a Civil War soldier. We are proud of Fort Hood. But, unfortunately, because of something that happened this year, Fort Hood will also be identified always in the minds of American citizens as a place where a terrorist stabbed people in the back by walking down the line of soldiers and shooting soldiers just standing in line, either checking in from going to war or checking out, getting ready to go to war. They were not armed. They were not doing anything more than what's required of them by the Army to process into or out of the facility. And yet, a man who's now--we call him the accused, but over 200 people witnessed Mr. Hasan go on a shooting rampage, killing soldiers who were doing nothing more than standing in line, or processing another soldier. These were not people that were at war or were armed to defend themselves. Had they been armed to defend themselves, Mr. Hasan wouldn't have gotten over more than maybe one shot before he would have died, because these were professional soldiers who knew exactly how to take care of business. But they were not armed. And, in fact, they were in a safe place. That's the sad thing. They were in a safe place, a place where they should have been safe or where they thought they were safe, and where maybe never again they will think that they are safe because of what happened that day. Now, this was not some terrorist that sneaked into our country. This was a man that had joined the United States Army and, through the goodness of the American citizen and the American taxpayer, received a medical degree with a psychiatric specialty; and all of this was paid for by the United States Army. He did his medical school, his residency, his post-residency training and his residency for psychiatry all while working for the U.S. Army and all paid for by the United States Government. He was an American citizen. And yet homemade jihadism, we're now calling it, and some of that has been in the news this week, caused this man to go out and murder 13 people and one unborn child and wound or injure 43 additional people. There's one soldier right now--I won't mention his name but if he's watching he'll know who I'm talking about--he's sitting in a hospital in South Austin, he was shot multiple times, he's had a plate put in his head and it was rejected and he's going to have another plate put in his head. When I talked to his father, his father said: Two deployments. We prayed and worried our son all the way through two deployments. He came out with not a scratch. He's at home where he should be safe and this animal killed him; almost killed him. He's surviving through his heart being big and being tough and having a family and an Army that supports him. This young man had been so successful in his last deployment that they were sending him to Officer Candidate School. He was not even stationed at Fort Hood. He was just transitioning through there to Officer Candidate School when he was shot. He still hopes to be an officer in the United States Army, and we are very hopeful that he will be, but he's a seriously wounded soldier. But he's going to make it and hopefully he'll get back in the Army that he loves. And this is this domestic terrorist who decided he would take it upon himself to start a fight, right there at Fort Hood. Not a real fight, a one-sided fight, where he was the only guy with a gun. He had two of them. And he got to selectively shoot who he wanted to shoot, and he shot men and women in uniform. I don't know about you, but I think this was just another theater of war, a war that we've been fighting in Iraq and a war that we've been fighting in Afghanistan, against these terrorists who indiscriminately think that they have the right to kill in the name of whatever cause they call it. Some would say they are religious fanatics. Others would say they are jihadists and they have some kind of fanatical following. Whatever it may be. This is who we've been at war with now for 10 or 12 years. And as we were told when it all started, it's going to be a long fight, maybe the longest in the history of the Republic. And it's approaching that now. I think these kids, these young men and women, were killed on the battlefield of Fort Hood, and that's why I've introduced a piece of legislation to have them get the kind of benefits of people who get killed in combat or wounded in combat get, and that is that if there are medals to be awarded, they should get a medal; if they are wounded, they should get a Purple Heart. I've already heard a story of a sergeant who was there with several of his troops. The sergeant was shot four times and as the man lowered the pistol to fire the fifth time, one of his enlisted men, thinking he couldn't take anymore, jumped in between the shooter and the sergeant to protect his sergeant and took the three other rounds that were fired. Had that taken place on the battlefield, I'm sure that would be something that would be heroism in the line of fire, and I think that young man should be awarded something like the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, something like that. I don't know. I'm not saying what medal, but he ought to get a medal for it. And if there are families from this combat experience who either lost a loved one or were injured from this battle at Fort Hood, I think they ought to get the extended combat benefits that we give to our soldiers when we send them into harm's way on a battlefield. And I think the American people, if they heard about that, would think, sure they ought to get that; that this was just another battle. Because, remember, the testimony will be when this trial comes out, because I've talked to a lot of these soldiers that were there, that he was shooting soldiers. If he hit any civilians, it's just because he missed. But he was walking down the line shooting soldiers. He was declaring war on the American soldier. I wanted to talk tonight about Fort Hood and what's going on there, the fact that we've got a report out that doesn't even mention radical jihadists or mention even the name of the shooter, and I'm afraid it was done because somebody was afraid they were going to step on somebody's toes. I've had some tell me they did it because they wanted to protect the prosecution of this man. Being a judge who tried cases in his courtroom for 20 years, including, I believe, five or six capital murder cases, I can assure you that if you can't prove a case with 200 eyewitnesses, you've got a serious problem with your lawyers. So I don't hesitate to say what I think about this thing because I think it was wrong for them not to report accurately who the person was and what he did. I am joined by a good friend of mine who is a former Federal prosecutor, Mike McCaul. He's my friend, my colleague from Texas, my neighbor, right down the road. I'm glad he's come to join us, and I will yield to my friend from Texas whatever time he wishes to consume.

Mr. CARTER

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

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I'm honored to be here. I think some might remember in this body that for the last about year, year and a half, I've been getting up here and talking about the rule of law and how the basic foundation of American society is based upon a set of rules, a set of laws. Without that foundation, that surrender of sovereignty of the American people to pieces of paper that describe how we will behave in this world, we would be an uncivilized Nation and we would not be the great Nation of liberty and freedom that we are today. I've talked about the fact that when we talk about the rule of law, we're not just talking about abiding by the laws of this country. We're talking about abiding by the rules that we set to operate whatever we operate in this country. I'm reminded to tell a story. When my oldest son was, I believe, in the seventh or the eighth grade; he played football. He was the best punter. He was also the center. So the one time he didn't snap the ball was when he was the punter. He punted the ball. He did a pretty good job of it. We played a team--I won't mention where it is, but if he's listening, he'll know what I'm talking about--where the first time he kicked the ball, a guy came through and knocked him flat, and they didn't throw a flag. It's young kids playing and not, I guess, the most professional referees. So he took it and I took it and there was no problem. The second time he punted the ball, somebody came in and knocked him flat again. At this point in time, I was really concerned about it. The third time he punted the ball, somebody came in and knocked him flat again. He turned to the referee as I was climbing the fence, I was so mad, and asked him, What does it take to get a ``roughing the kicker'' call? And he said, In this town, you better just shut up and play the game. My son is now a coach at a major school in Texas, but I would almost assure you that he has never forgotten that person who refused to enforce the rules, and we were just lucky that he didn't get injured because he was a little kid still. He was in the seventh grade. And I have never forgotten it, and most people don't forget when people break rules that they expect to be played by. If their team is playing on Saturday or on Sunday and they see a blatant violation of the rules, most Americans get infuriated by people who violate rules. I take the position--and I think the position is easily defended-- that the United States of America cannot run without the laws that we create both in this body and our State legislatures around the country and those laws that the courts have interpreted correctly. Those things keep us on that foundation of operational procedures that we have that allows us to know that when we do something, we follow the rules, and others are expected to follow the rules, and if they don't follow the rules, we have recourse to make them follow the rules. I have been talking about that for a year. I have been talking about that, about Members of this body that I have said, you know, that there were ethics violations filed against them, that the Ethics Committee needed to resolve those because there were allegations that they had broken the rules. Some of those things have come to fruition, and without any animosity towards anyone, I am glad at least one of those issues has been slightly resolved. But there are others, and it would seem to me that as we talk about and as we look at each other in this body--and all of us are Members and all of us agree to a set of rules when we come here. What's interesting is that in the history of the United States, there are some people that are highly respected by both political parties, by all Americans. I think Abraham Lincoln falls in that category. I think George Washington falls in that category. I believe Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and many, many others of those who are either our Founding Fathers or people who have done such extraordinary things for freedom and for liberty in this country that we remember them, and we remember and we honor what they did. Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules for operation of this House and of the Senate. I take that back. I don't know if he wrote it for the Senate. I know he wrote it for the House. I think he wrote it for both bodies. But whatever that may be, when our Founding Fathers were sitting around on those hot days in the summer trying to put together a constitution, trying to resolve the issues and deciding what kind of functioning government they wanted to have, they had a concept of creating a republic--not a parliamentary democracy but a republic-- where you had a representative form of government, where you had two bodies, the House and the Senate. The House would be the people's House, and it would have the opportunity to change every 2 years. The Senate, at that time, would be appointed by the legislatures of the various States. The Senators would represent States, and they would change after a 6-year term, with alternating terms, so every 2 years a certain body but never all that body would change. And when they looked at how they wanted these two Houses to operate, they set up that this House would be the rapid-solution-to-the-problem House. This House goes and moves, compared to the Senate, at light speed, and it was intended that way by our Founders. They intended it because they wanted the people's business taken care of and addressed first, and they wanted it addressed in an important manner by this House. But they also realized that sometime in the heat of debates that can go on in this place, that level heads needed to calm things down for a bit and ponder it before it's passed so things aren't rushed to judgment and mistakes aren't made. We have the same kind of procedures in the courtroom today. Just, for example, in a capital murder case, we spend an inordinate amount of time and slow things down so that we can try our very best to make sure that mistakes are not being made, because it's life or death, what occurs in that courtroom. So our Founding Fathers wanted our legislation to go to the Senate and give the Senate the ability to slow the process down, take a hard look at each of the elements, and try to come up with a resolution in the Senate that was more philosophical and more pondered than the House. It was intended that way. And for that reason, they set up a means by which the Members of the Senate could do what's called filibuster the Senate. And that means that they can start talking, and one person could hold up the whole operation until everybody agreed to calm down and get certain points resolved at a slower rate. This has evolved, but the rules have been following that various trend and with that concept since the creation by our Founding Fathers. Today, we have a process that takes place over in the Senate which is sort of, if you will--imagine that there is someone standing up talking until you get 60 votes to shut him up. But there is not really somebody standing up and talking. We have a rule called ``cloture,'' and that rule says that until you can vote on an up-or-down vote on any issue in the Senate of the United States, you have to have 60 Members of that body to agree to bring that to the floor of the Senate for a vote. And that's an issue that it should be--if it's not in the minds of all the American people today, it should be in the minds of the American people, because one-sixth of our economy teeters on the verge of change based upon whether or not the Senate rule of cloture will be maintained as a rule which has been in existence and the concept since the founding of the body that is over on the other side of this building. Now, whenever there's a rule, there is always someone who will try to come up with a way to get around the rule. That's human nature. Sometimes people can get around it by breaking the rule, and sometimes people can get around it by adjusting the rule. The rule was adjusted slightly back in, I think it was, 1974, and they came up with a concept called reconciliation. And what they were finding was that in the budgetary process, when you have to reconcile revenues with expenditures to balance your checkbook, balance the budget, whatever you do at your home--don't use the kind of accounting we use around this place. But to make those two things reconcile, they put up the process of reconciliation, which for reconciling those numbers--for reconciling those two numbers to make them work, you could use a reconciliation process if you had put it in the rule prior to the passage of the budget or the addressing of the budget so that you could reconcile the numbers, and it didn't take 60 votes to get that vote. And reconciliation has been used for budgetary and number balancing ever since in a very limited manner. It comes up maybe once or twice a Presidential term for a President, to make sure that when new things are being done in the way of expenditures or taxation or whatever it is, to make things reconciled. Sometimes that's done by reconciliation. But it never was designed to take a whole body and battery of laws and just change the rule to make 51 votes a win in the Senate. It was always intended that that was just for balancing your checkbook and not for creating your job and paying your bills. So, in other words, it wasn't for the big ideas. It was for the little tweaks to make things work. I don't think everybody understands that, but that's what it was for. That's what it's been used for. I have some examples on this page. This was written by a man named John Dalton about the process. It's a good explanation. He points out-- and there may be others, but he has got a list of the names of the bills that have used reconciliation. Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1980 under Jimmy Carter, Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 under Ronald Reagan, Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1982 under Ronald Reagan, Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act 1982 under Reagan, Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Notice the names ``budget,'' ``taxes,'' ``fiscal'' under Reagan. Deficit Reduction Act under Reagan. All of those took place in the eighties. All of those, you hear the word ``budget'' or you hear the word ``tax'' or ``expenditures.'' That's what it was for. Today we have been debating now for over a year President Obama's concept of health care for the United States. I hesitate to say President Obama's bill because, at least to my knowledge, President Obama has never himself, nor the White House, written a bill and presented it to this body for deliberation. So the bill that we're talking about right now--we had a House bill pass this body by one vote, and we had a Senate bill pass the Senate on Christmas Eve. Both of those were contentious, and both of those were hard fought, and both of those barely squeaked by. And normally, because the Senate bill is drastically different from the House bill, those would go to a conference committee where they would work out the differences and try to come up with solutions. That's the normal process for bills in this House. But the normal process doesn't seem to be wanting to go on in this House right now, so we're not going to a conference committee. And the only other alternative would be that either the Senate take the House bill without any changes and pass it, which they said ``no,'' or now that they've passed their bill, they send it over here to the House, and the House has to pass that bill without any changes. And if there are any changes, it's got to go to a conference committee, because you can't change it. You either accept it or you haven't accepted it. If you haven't accepted it, then you've got to reconcile between the House and the Senate bill. The proposal on health care, which is being strong-armed in this House right now is to get this done by Easter, and they're going to do it by strong-arming the elements in this House on the Democratic side of the aisle because the Republicans are not going to vote for this bill, to ask them to give up their conscience--both our liberal Members and our conservative Members--to give up what they stand for and pass the Senate bill, even if they don't agree with it, and then to trust the leadership of this House to put together a reconciliation package that will fix things like abortion, which has nothing to do with anything to do with reconciliation, and do a reconciliation bill to address the issues concerning abortion in this bill, or do a reconciliation bill to address a government option, which is the far left liberals' concept--and you heard it talked about here tonight--of what's missing here in this bill. The leadership here is asking them to not mess with the Senate bill; pass it, even though they don't agree with it. And they don't think it should pass the way it is. Pass it and trust it that it will be changed. And it will be changed through a process which is not for changing these types of life-changing issues, but for tweaking your checkbook, if you will. And that means that we are going to change over 200 years of history in order to get a health care bill passed that, by the best poll out there, 57 percent of the American people don't want. And there are polls that say as many as 60 and 70 percent of the American people don't want this health care bill. They want us to start over and try again. They think we can do better than to create hundreds--not hundreds. That's an exaggeration. Let's get it right-- about 35 or 40 new agencies and bureaus in this country that will have people overseeing everything to do with health care in this Nation and that will put people who operate in Washington, D.C., between you and your doctor in making health care decisions. The American people have said, We don't like it. Tens of thousands of them took to the streets in August and said, Go back and do it right. Both you Democrats and you Republicans, get together. We want to see you work together on this bill, and we want you to come up with the kind of solutions we're looking for that deal with costs, deal with accessibility, deal with preexisting conditions. But they don't have to be in something that nobody--unless they've got a couple of months--can read through and digest and understand. Put it in a series of bills that we can understand as American people. If there is one thing we owe, as Members of this body, is that we owe it to the American people to pass bills that they can read. I mean, it is affecting one-sixth of their lives. One-sixth of their paycheck is going to be hit every time they think about health care. And people are going to be ordered to take health care and mandated with penalties if they don't want to take health care. And there's some people that don't. So it's life-changing. But what I'm talking about today--that's an argument you've heard made for months now--I'm back to where I started. There are rules and there are laws that you run your operation by, and when you start violating, especially laws and rules that go to the basic tenet of the Constitution of this United States, that the Senate is the deliberative body, then you are basically changing not only a sixth of our economy but you're changing the way the government of the United States has operated for over 200 years. That's not the way it ought to be. It shouldn't be that way. And so I would argue that my issue about rule of law goes to the reconciliation process. And yet the leadership of this House, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi; Harry Reid, the majority leader of the Senate; and the President of the United States are all talking about fixing the disputes that are in this House about the Senate health care bill through reconciliation which would then be an abuse of the rules and violate what this country has stood for for over 200 years. Now, what's wrong with that picture? Well, first off, it changes everything that happens in the future. Because if now we can turn over one-sixth of the economy to the government, again a portion of the economy will now be managed by the centrists, if you will, the people who want a central government here in Washington running everything, when they do that, then the next issue that comes before this House, there's no reason for anybody to honor the 60-vote rule in the Senate. There's no reason for anybody to honor it. Once you break it, that affects every human being that lives on this planet, inside the United States, once you fix it and violate the rules to suit yourself against those people, what can we bring before this House that would require that rule ever again? And I think an argument could very well be made that that will be the end of the cloture rule in the Senate. And when you end the cloture rule in the Senate, we'll either go back to the old filibuster or, quite frankly, we'll go back to a different Senate that's not operating the way our Founding Fathers intended it to operate. These are issues that I think as we vote about this, we need to realize that our concept, that we should go by a set of rules and we should operate by that set of rules. To violate those rules, there are consequences. I'm not saying we're going to put anybody in jail. I'm saying the consequences are right now you might have a win. But when you're in the minority, which this 60-vote rule is done to protect the minority, whoever it may be, Democrat or Republican, if you once give up the power to protect the minority, or at least give them a voice, then down the road someone's going to wake up, it's something that breaks their heart to see it passed into law, and there won't be a cloture rule to protect them. Breaking rules has consequences. I don't know if what I'm saying here has any effect on those folks, but I can tell you that, for instance, the health care bill calls for $1 billion in budget savings over a 5- year period of time of deficit spending totaling about, estimated, $8 trillion. This impact is about one one-thousandth of a percent, which indisputably reaches the ``incidental'' definition of budgetary impact under the Byrd rule. Senator Byrd wrote a rule that said you can't use this idea of reconciliation for just incidental effects. There is nothing more incidental than that. When you're talking about $8 trillion versus $1 billion, that's pretty incidental. And yet it is one-sixth of the economy. The reason we have rules is for people to follow the rules. I encourage and I hope and I pray that every one of the American people will now understand, and this is difficult to talk about, and it's not easy for anybody to understand. And if anybody tells you that John Carter's an expert on it, you tell them they don't know what they're talking about. I'm not an expert on it. I'm just here to tell you that I do understand what common sense means and I understand what's right and wrong. And when Thomas Jefferson writes the rules and everybody abides by them for over 200 years of history of the United States and all of a sudden to get your way you decide not to abide by the rules, that's wrong. And I think the American people are going to know it's wrong. And I hope the American people will rise up and say it's wrong. If they can pass it with 60 votes in the Senate, that's the blessing of the American people. That's the way the deal operates. That's playing within the rules. That's following the rules that make the playing field, I consider, level because we all play by those rules. And that's fine. But if you can't, don't play tricks and don't change rules that you're not supposed to change, because if you do, the consequences to the American people are going to be awful. There's a lot of anger in this country right now, and I believe that anger will be increased six-fold or more if they find out, the same bunch of Americans who watch basketball or football or baseball, who know the rules of the game and watch somebody break the rules, they expect a foul to be called, they expect a penalty to be set, they expect a man to be called out or a man to be called safe, they expect the rules to be played by; and if they expect that on the baseball field, the football field and the basketball court, why wouldn't they expect it when people are changing their life? When people are writing rules to change their life, why wouldn't they expect that? Health care reform has been on our plate now for quite a while. Meanwhile, we're losing jobs. We've got issues that we really need to be dealing with about people that are out of work and trying to figure out a way to get them back to work. We've got companies that are confused about the future. By that confusion, they're not willing to make investments either by expanding their businesses or hiring people, so they're just sitting on the sidelines right now and waiting. We've got small businesses that are frightened because they don't know whether they're going to be mandated to do health care or not, or whether they can do what they're doing now or what they need to do, or where they can go to make it better for their employees so maybe I don't want to hire any more employees. We've got millions of people that need a job. And we're happy when only 30 or 40,000 lost a job this month. That's supposed to be happy? I think we should be happy when 30 or 40,000 got a job this month, not when only 40,000 or 30,000 or 20,000 lost. That's not our goal. Our goal is to be able to say, we're happy to announce on the floor of this House that 40,000 people got a job this month. But instead, we've been debating health care. We have been like people who say, I'm going to take my football and go home, demanding the game be played by their rules, not by the rules of the game, and demanding that their way be taken even when the American people tell them they don't want that way. That's what I think this debate is about. I have a whole bunch of posters here that a lot of people went to a lot of work on, and I will go through some of them. Robert Byrd, who's still alive and still working over in the Senate, here is what he said about reconciliation: ``I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform and climate change legislation. Such a proposal would violate the intent and spirit of the budget process and do serious injury to the constitutional role of the Senate. ``As one of the authors of the reconciliation process, I can tell you that reconciliation was intended to adjust revenue and spending levels in order to reduce deficits. It was not designed to create a new climate and energy regime and certainly not to restructure the entire health care system.'' This was said by Senator Robert Byrd, 4/2/09. He was one of the authors of the reconciliation process in 1974. And that's what I've just been telling you. The Senator agrees with what I've just been saying, and I think really important things that we have to be concerned about is what he said about the Constitution: ``serious injury to the constitutional role of the Senate,'' just what I've been talking about with you. Let me point out, all these chairs that you see in this room have somebody that sits in them. They're not assigned seats, we sit where we want to, but we all tend to sit somewhere. Every one of us stands up on the first day of this House and we swear an oath. We raise our right hand and we swear an oath. And the nature of that oath is pretty darn simple. We don't swear to be loyal to our party, Republican or Democrat; we don't swear to be loyal to a man or a Speaker or a majority leader or a President. We swear one thing. We don't swear to provide for everybody and give a free ride to everybody in the country. We swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That's what we swear to. That's our job here. Our job is to make sure that piece of work that created this simple but intricate system of rules that we've all accepted and has caused us all to prosper, our job is to defend that and the President's got the same oath. Our job is not other things; it's preserve what's in the Constitution and the way the Constitution is supposed to operate. Senator Byrd points out as I did, we're looking at something that will be in violation if not of the nature but at least of the spirit of the Constitution of the United States. This is more serious than some people may be thinking about. Here's some stuff about reconciliation: It gives the Congress the ability to change current law to bring spending and revenues in line. Uses numerical targets and not program-specific. Debate is limited to 20 hours, non-germane amendments are not in order, a vote is guaranteed and requires 51 votes to pass rather than 60 as normal. The Byrd rule. Legislation cannot be added to a reconciliation bill if it has a budgetary impact which is merely incidental to the policy components of the provision. As I've told you, the bill that we're talking about is $1 billion versus $8 trillion. That's pretty incidental. Now you may not think so until you realize what a billion is, and then you realize what a trillion is. A trillion is a number that's so hard to understand that if you stacked thousand-dollar bills 4 inches high, they're brand new, they don't have any wrinkles, they perfectly fit together and they're 4 inches high, that's a million dollars. A trillion dollars, 67 miles high. So you can see, that's a whole lot of money we're talking about. A billion to $8 trillion is pretty incidental. Health care reform is not fiscal policy. That means it's not about money. That's what we're talking about. When you change a rule to do something that you can't do, that you shouldn't be doing in the first place, and so you're going to change the rule just to get your way and change the constitutional history of our country, something's real wrong with all that, and something that people ought to think about, because someday somebody might be rolling over you and something you care about by breaking the rules, and I don't think you will be very happy about that, because we are a group of people that play by the rules. Been picking on these two guys for a long time for the last 2 months about tax evasion with no penalties: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Mr. Rangel, who is the former Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. But it is not fair to have spent the time picking on these two guys when this whole House is fixing to break rules that are going to affect everyone sitting in this Chamber, and in fact everyone drawing a breath in this country, and they are going to break rules and change rules and avoid rules. I am almost embarrassed to have picked on these two individuals for the rules that they broke concerning taxes and other things. Although it is the right thing to say, and if they break the rules you ought to talk about it. Well, the Congress is about to break the rules, and we ought to talk about it. Finally, and I am going to quit now, I would hope that everybody realizes that everybody in this Congress wants to make health care work. And they want to make health care work for everybody and give everybody equal opportunity under health care. And there are many people on both sides of the aisle that think we can do better than these 2,000- and 3,000- and 4,000-page bills that seem to hit that table once in a while. And health care is one of them. So I am appealing to my colleagues in the House of Representatives to encourage everybody, when it comes to this important one-sixth of our economy, to play by the rules. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank you for that clarification.

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. CARTER. Yesterday I asked a parliamentary inquiry regarding the effect of a letter from Mr. Rangel to the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, regarding his resignation as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, to wit, the Speaker pro tempore of the House answered that the gentleman from California, Representative Pete Stark, became acting chair of the Committee on Ways and Means immediately by operation of House rule X clause 5. This morning the acting chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, Mr. Stark, submitted a letter to the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, that states, ``I hereby resign as acting chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means.'' That letter to the Speaker was read into today's proceedings. At that time the Speaker pro tempore in accepting the letter stated, ``The resignation is accepted.'' I have a parliamentary inquiry regarding the nature of that resignation. Under this morning's procedure, is Mr. Stark the current chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means?

Mr. CARTER. Further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. CARTER. Under House rules and House Resolution 24, is the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) still a member of the Committee on Ways and Means?