Steve Cohen

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Property taxes.

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, sir. I don't think so. And the tide has been turning. The national polls, which I think are reflective of Tennessee at least on a percentage basis, have shown that it's gone from 10 points up on people that want to repeal this bill to where it's even, as many people for it as against it in this country. There's been a 10-point switch in the last 2 weeks as people have looked at the possibilities of the repeal of the law and seen the benefit. What I thought about, Mr. Garamendi, I was in New York, New York City, about 2 weeks ago, and I went in the Time Warner Building. They had an exhibit there of Salvador Dali; surreal, things looking out of space. Strange, strange pictures and thoughts. It's hard to think of this Congress and the Republican majority that's come in trying to repeal a bill that's going to become as popular, once it gets implemented, as Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare have over the years, that they are so out of touch with America today and its needs and the future. Because while this may seem to be important to the minority, the tail wagging the dog in that party, the tea party that's wagging the dog, saying repeal health care, the fact is down the line, people are going to embrace this bill like they embraced the Great Society's Medicaid and Medicare and the New Deal's Social Security. It's going to be a short-term possible victory but a long-term defeat. And the myopia of the other side, let alone the hypocrisy of some of its members, is hard to fathom. But you can only see it through the eyes of Salvador Dali, because obviously they are Salvador Dali, and they're saying things in a surreal way. The nonpartisan, bipartisan Congressional Budget Office says it's going to save us $230 billion the first decade and $1.2 trillion thereafter, and they say, ``Well, they can have their opinion.'' Those are facts. Those are nonpartisan facts of people we hire to give us the truth. They don't like the truth so they summarily dismiss it. They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie. Just like Goebbels; you say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again. And we've heard it on this floor; government takeover of health care. PolitiFact, nonpartisan, Pulitzer prize-winning, 2009, St. Petersburg Times, said the biggest lie of 2010 was government takeover of health care, because there is no government takeover. It's insurance. I look at my Facebook regularly and I've got some people I communicate with on different issues on Facebook. I respond to them whether they take my side or not, obviously. And one lady has been constantly talking negatively about health care. I responded. She keeps going on with the line that obviously she hears and she's taken as her mantra; and that is that this is a government takeover of health care. Well, she's drunken the Kool-Aid, and that's just not true. We heard in August 2009 that there were death panels and killing grandmother. Everybody agrees now, that was a big lie; just like government takeover of health care is a big lie. And it's amazing the lies: denying the effect on the deficit, claiming it's a government takeover, claiming there were death panels. This lady on my Facebook page talked about the fact that it was going to take insurance companies out and there was a public option. Well, there is no public option. And the exchanges aren't a public option but the exchanges are private insurance where people can come together and get better rates that they couldn't get if they were dealing as individuals on the open market. People don't understand. If you read Paul Krugman today, or yesterday--today in Memphis, we get it a day late--but yesterday in the New York Times, he talked about the errors in arithmetic, basically the lies that are being put out about how it will affect the budget. And Krugman, who's only a Nobel prize winner, says it's just not true, and what it comes down to, the bottom line, is there is a group in America that don't feel like they have a responsibility, a social responsibility, a moral responsibility, to those 32 million Americans who can't afford health care and right now are seeing death panels, the death panels that say you won't have insurance and you won't have health care. As we are just one day beyond Dr. Martin Luther King's holiday, America's holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. King was not only for social justice, which everybody embraces today and talks about kumbayah and integration, but it was also economic justice. And economic justice involves health care, and it involves giving everybody an opportunity to stay alive, to get educated, and to get a job. The first priority I have always believed of government is to keep people alive, their health care. The second is to get them educated. And the third is to get them a job. This rhetoric on the other side of the aisle about whatever they want to call it is not only false--read Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner--but it is the third priority. The first thing is keeping people alive. And you want to tell those 32 million Americans we don't want you to have insurance, we don't care about you. That is wrong. Dr. King wouldn't approve of it. I don't approve of it. America won't approve of it. And it is as I started with, surreal to think that the first thing that this Republican Congress is doing is trying to repeal what will be known down the years as one of the great acts ever passed by this United States Congress. It will be to the fortune of the Democrats because like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and voting rights and civil rights, they are Democratic initiatives that brought America forward, progressive initiatives that have been brought forth by this side of the aisle. And the myopia of the other side is politically welcomed, if not policy-wise sad.

Mr. COHEN. What is good for the goose should be good for the gander. There but for the grace of God go I. You should care about your brother and your sister. And this is going to be repealed in the same week as Dr. King's holiday? I mean, I know it took a while for Dr. King's holiday to come about. It was John Conyers' steadfastness for 15 years to make it become law, and even then there were people in this House who voted against it, and there were people in the Senate who voted against it, but there is nobody who has given a better philosophy of life over 2,000 years than Dr. King.

Mr. COHEN. Well, just the idea--and I will yield to Ms. Jackson Lee in just a second--but the idea of having medical records on computers rather than having them on notes. My father was a doctor. I inherited his penmanship. I got a C in penmanship. The teacher was kind to me. Doctors don't write real well. If you have to go from written records, it's difficult, and they don't get transposed well. But if you have them on computers, it's very easy to see what shots and inoculations the patient has had in the past, what treatments they've had. It makes it easier to render a diagnosis and not have to repeat tests that are unnecessary and costly. It is so important. And part of this bill is to see to it that the records are put on electronic devices so that they're available throughout the Worldwide Web and everywhere. That saves medical costs in the long run.

Mr. COHEN. Well, there are so many problems. I represent an urban district in Memphis, and we do have a lack of health care in the urban areas. We need more primary care doctors, and we also need more community health centers. That's something else the bill is going to provide for, more community health centers. There are large areas in my community where there are very few doctors who are available and where there are not community health centers. So that's another portion. It's not just the primary care doctors who are so important--and we've got some of the greatest in Memphis--but it's the difficulty in not having community health centers.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, I, as some of the future speakers here, are members of the class of 2006, which Representative Giffords was a member of. We had the opportunity to go through the orientation with her, to meet with Speaker Pelosi on many occasions, and to share many activities. Gabrielle Giffords is a tremendous Member of this House--bright, caring, beautiful--and we all pray for her recovery and that she comes back and works with us. I listened to her remarks on television when she talked about words having consequences and her brother-in-law, who is up in space, saying the same thing. It's true. Words have consequences, and we all need to be more concerned about how we speak about political opponents or people who have different perspectives than we do on political issues. We are all Americans. We are all human beings. We all have similar goals and similar aspirations; and even though we may differ on philosophy, that doesn't make us communists or socialists or Birchers or whatever. We are all trying to make this government work. One thing that we know about the person who did this shooting, besides the fact that he needed mental health treatment and was obviously crazy, is that he didn't like government. Government is good, and one thing we should learn from this is that government can be and is a good force. It is a lot about what America is. People who tear down government are doing a disservice to all of us, and they provide an atmosphere in which people think that anarchy is an answer. It is never an answer. Orwellianism is a philosophy that ought to be followed, and it isn't. Gabby works as a Congressperson to make government work for her people, and that's what she was doing with her program on Saturday. The staffers who were there were working on the weekend, as many staffers do, and they work long hours. They love government and they love people, and they try to make a difference. So I think we just need to remember that we are all human beings, that we all have similar goals and aspirations, that government can and is good, and it is the representative body of the United States of America. If you don't like the government, you don't like the country, and I love the country and so did Gabby.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, today is the beginning of a process by which the Republicans will try to repeal the affordable health care bill. It is about 50/50 in popularity in America. How can a bill with such individual constituent elements that are so popular, such as keeping young people on your insurance until they're 26, eliminating the doughnut hole, and seeing to it that there are more community health centers, be so unpopular? Because the Republican mantra has been--and it was even said today--that it is a government takeover of health care. PolitiFact, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalistic group from the St. Petersburg Times--a nonpartisan group--said that was the biggest lie in political 2010. Instead of reading the Constitution yesterday, maybe we should have just repeated ``do not bear false witness.''

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. I just wanted to add one thing. Thank you. The gentleman from New Jersey brought up an issue, and he said that it was not true that it was costing jobs. There is some respected group, I think it's called FactCheck. They were on national news giving the biggest lies told in politics in the last year. The number one biggest lie--this independent group--was the Republican mantra of government run or government mandated health care. It's just a fact. That's the biggest lie told the American public. And it came from the leaders on the other side, it came from these halls where they are immune from defamation suits. Because it's not government run health care. It's unheard of, unfathomable, that the other side would use the fact that they're immune from prosecution in any other jurisdiction or court for words that aren't true to do that and in politics to say it was government run health care, the biggest lie of 2010, and it comes to the floor next week.

Mr. COHEN. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you, and I want to first start because this day has been a day that started with the reading of the Constitution which is a document that we all revere. I have a little pocket copy of it right here, and we revere it. We pledge when we take our oath of office to protect and defend and support the Constitution, but we all know that it's interpreted by our Supreme Court, and it's Supreme Court history would have been better today for people to understand. And you mention that the foundation of the particular health care bill is in the preamble: We, the people of the United States, to form a more perfect union, establish justice, et cetera, promote the general welfare. Also, in article I, which is the legislative article, section 8, it says that the Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce among the several States; and further, it says in article I that the Congress shall have the authority to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution of the Government of the United States, in either Department or office thereof. So, in my opinion--I'm a lawyer, but there's lawyers on both sides--there's plenty of justification for this health care bill. Do you know next week when the Republicans will try to repeal this opportunity for Americans to get health care and wipe out these pre- existing conditions clauses, et cetera, will they be coming under the idea that health care is not part of the general welfare? Will they be coming basically on a constitutional argument that they may make that this wasn't allowed to require a person to buy insurance even though we can, of course, require a person to sign up for the draft and lose their liberty for a while and serve in the Army--and we can do that, we can conscript soldiers, but we can't make them buy insurance. Is that what they're going to say, or are they going to come and talk about these things that Mr. Scott talked about and say that we don't think it's good policy for parents to have their children on their insurance until they're 26 or it's not good policy for women with breast cancer to get treatment at a certain amount? What are their tactics?

Mr. COHEN. And they will control the amendments that will be permitted to be discussed on this floor. I know Speaker Boehner said we were going to be able to have amendments and be able to have good discourse.

Mr. COHEN. I wanted to ask you a question. Because I had said, and I was, I think, incorrect, when I suggested that the first thing the Republicans wanted to do was repeal the affordable health care bill. It's one of their first major priorities. But the first thing they did was today, and we joined with them. It was bipartisan. It was to cut 5 percent from our Members' representational allowances, a small amount of money in the big picture, of course. But the deficit was the issue that they were highlighting. What would the repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act do to the deficit? That's the big issue, because that's one of our big issues.

Mr. COHEN. And that's money we owe China; is that right? So it's okay to issue these securities and pay the Chinese the interest to be able to finance it, and our children and their grandchildren will be paying this if they don't have preexisting conditions where they can get insurance to cover the illnesses they may have to stay alive to pay these taxes.

Mr. COHEN. Consistency is the hobgoblin. Right? Thank you, sir.

Mr. COHEN. Let me ask a question. I was just thinking here, it's an honor to be in the House of Representatives and with a Constitution that's so beautiful that it says we are to promote the general welfare. We are among other industrialized nations on this earth. What do the other industrialized nations on the earth do about health care for their citizens?

Mr. COHEN. What do the other industrialized nations in the world do for health care? Do they program policies like ours, where 32 million people don't have health insurance reform and they are not mandated to get insurance? What do they do?

Mr. COHEN. And does the United States not have one of the greatest discrepancies of wealth between the richest and the poorest in the industrialized world as well? So are we saying to our wealthy people, ``You can afford health insurance so you can get it,'' but for those people who are poor, ``Too bad''?

Mr. COHEN. Let me, if I can, read something that I've had prepared for today that came from a constituent's story, John Hopkins; and I know John Hopkins. He's a very important and active member in my community and contemporary. He sent me an email, and Mr. Hopkins requests I share this story with the House as we consider repeal of the Affordable Care Act. I want to share it with everybody here on C-SPAN. John was diagnosed with two unrelated cancers during his life. If you know anything about cancer, getting it twice for unrelated reasons is almost unheard of, but it happened to John Hopkins. Midway through his first bout with cancer, he was, of course, dropped from his health insurance plan. He was left with a medical bill that wiped out his and his wife's entire retirement savings, as well as the value of their house. They were never able to repay the debt in their lifetime. When he was diagnosed with a second bout of cancer 2 years later, he had no health insurance because there was no insurer anywhere in the market who would offer him a policy because of the pre-existing condition. He got some coverage in Tennessee because of a plan called Access Tennessee for uninsurables, but it was limited to $250,000 a year. As we all know, annual limits are set to be phased out by 2014 because of this law, and lifetime limits are already a thing of the past. A quarter of a million dollars may seem like a lot of coverage; but when somebody needs something like a bone marrow transplant to cure their leukemia, that single treatment would exceed the annual cap. My Republican colleagues have decided their first priority as the new majority will be repealing the Affordable Care Act; and when they vote to do this, they will be voting for the following: denying Mr. Hopkins the ability to enroll in a health insurance plan that doesn't discriminate against him for daring to be diagnosed with cancer again. They will deny John Hopkins the ability to enroll in a health plan that will actually continue to cover his treatment after he exhausts the current annual cap of $250,000, an amount that many cancer patients meet in a matter of weeks upon diagnosis, let alone those who are fighting two cancers over a number of years. And it will send a message to John Hopkins and every other single American who has ever been diagnosed or will ever be diagnosed with a disease like cancer that they're on their own when it comes to coverage, that sure they're free to get treatments and meet with their doctors, undergo laborious and life-saving surgeries year after year, just so long as they can foot the bill or try to keep it under the annual cap, because when it comes to cancer, budgeting your treatment should surely take precedence over anything else. Right? Mr. Garamendi, I am ashamed that we are considering repeal of this affordable health care bill; and when I see these numbers about $250,000 and I think of the fact that the Republicans were against any caps on taxes, they realize $250,000 annual income in many places is a middle-income salary, but for limitations on health care, they think the insurance company should determine that and that's enough; and if you have got cancer, it's not enough. Another friend of mine Facebooked me, Jimmy Barrasso. Jimmy worked for a long time for a company in Memphis. He's always been successful. He lost his job with that corporation. Because he had high cholesterol, he had difficulties getting insurance, and it took him a long time to find private insurance because of that pre-existing condition. He just sent me this on Facebook. He was friending me and he mentioned it, and I wanted to relate it. There are so many people in this country who are getting benefits and will get benefits and many of the benefits don't go into effect until 2014, and the idea that this Congress, the 112th, as its first act would do such harm to the general welfare of the American public is hard to fathom.

Mr. COHEN. When I was a child, I had polio when I was 5 years old in 1954. I was fortunate. My father was a doctor, and so sometimes professional courtesy, but I'm sure he had insurance that covered my hospitalization. But there were years later, I think it was 11 years later I had a tendon-lengthening operation that was immediately related to my polio and necessary on my Achilles tendon. That wouldn't have been permitted necessarily if they could use the pre-existing condition such as polio to have denied coverage; and whether or not how my father dealt with the expense and whether it's because he was a physician, I don't know; but I'd hate to see children in the same situation and parents in the same situation not be permitted to get that type of coverage later on.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, in a few minutes, we are going to have the reading of the United States Constitution--a show for the American public--for anybody who knows anything about constitutional law knows that it is up to nine men and women as to what the Constitution says. When the Constitution was originally drafted--and I love it and I defend it--it didn't give women the right to vote, and it said slavery was permissible. Until the vilified Warren Court, in its correct decision in Brown v. Board of Education, it said separate was equal, and we knew it wasn't. African Americans were held back with Jim Crow laws. Five people on the Supreme Court, not the whole nine, can make decisions that change the way the Constitution is interpreted. Bush v. Gore, an abomination of a case that determined the Presidency for 8 years and took away States' rights. The Citizens United case funded the opposition that turned in the majority that the Republicans now have. Making corporations the equal of people and putting money into politics poisoned the political system. The Supreme Court should read the Constitution. They need a lesson.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth. Indeed, the issues that Mr. Courtney brought forward in his 1 minute today were alarming to me because my hometown of Memphis depends upon transportation. That's what makes it America's distribution center, the roads, the rivers, the runways, and the rails. And if we don't have moneys to go into helping our airports--where Federal Express is located in my district, and in your district, Mr. Yarmuth, UPS--because that's how we move products all over the world. From those hubs, we move commerce. And that is why it's so important that we have an FAA Reauthorization Act passed, a lot of which would be expenses to modernize the structure and the transportation bills that Mr. Oberstar, who was one of the great Members of this House but is no longer a Member, tried to get passed last year to both stimulate the economy in the short run and in the long run, as Mr. Courtney said, with that multiplier effect by creating jobs. It's roads that take goods to market, that move commerce, that move raw materials. And I was hoping and do hope that we will have bipartisan efforts to have transportation, FAA reauthorization bills pass that will move this economy forward. The economy is still in a difficult spot, and we can't really see that the economy is improving if we continue to cut spending, particularly in places such as transportation, infrastructure, and the airport infrastructures. That's so important. So it was distressing news to see this happen. It is difficult to see how we can get ourselves out of this near depression that was caused by the Bush administration with cutting spending. I know Paul Krugman has people who don't think he is correct all the time. I happen to think he is correct most of the time. And the Nobel Prize people aren't always correct. But when they gave him the Nobel Prize for economics, some of the brighter people in the world thought he was pretty good on economics. And it's his belief that we need to do more spending, and I concur with him. I would hate to see us lead this economy--it's about to get out of the ditch--put it back in the ditch.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, today does end the 111th Congress, which Norm Ornstein, one of the most respected historians and observers of public events, said was the most historic and productive Congress since 1965. I am proud to have been a Member of this 111th Congress that gave us health care, which this country yearned for for over 100 years; that saved us from the precipice of economic decline with the stimulus act that has done much good for this country and saved us from a great depression; that gave us the Lilly Ledbetter law for women who were discriminated against in the workplace; that gave us Don't Ask, Don't Tell; that also gave us credit card reform, student loan reform, additional Pell Grants, tobacco regulations, and food safety legislation. This 111th Congress did more than any Congress since Lyndon Johnson's in 1965 to 1966, and did it under the effective, passionate, honest, and remarkable leadership of the most historic Speaker in the House of Representatives' history, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, who I am proud to have voted for and served with.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. To my friends on the Republican side, we did this 10 years ago with the Bush tax cuts, and it didn't work. It has been mentioned over and over again. It built up these deficits, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that you supported so well, and has created this deficit that threatened our country to make us look like a future Ireland, a future Portugal, countries that are in great deficit, problems that we are putting our country and our future into. We don't need to be insane and try to do this over again. I feel like it's a return to Christmas Past. And there's a book in the New Testament that says: From those who are given much, much is expected. But in this Congress, from those who have much, we are expecting little, we get little from it, and we are giving them the biggest tax breaks of all. And to the people who die and are the richest in our Nation, the Steinbrenners who died with $1.1 billion, we will be giving them this year a $450 million free ride and, with the differences in the taxes of 35 or 45 percent, $100 million. This is wrong, and that's why I'm opposed to the bill.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairlady for giving me this opportunity. I wasn't going to support the rule this morning, but I am going to support it now. I am going to support it because I want to be able to vote to make the estate tax more reasonable, even though the reality is, what we are voting on is whether we are going to give the wealthy with the estate tax a six-course meal with wine or a seven-course meal with wine, and we should be talking about a meat and three. The fact is, the estate tax with a $675,000 exemption was started with the Bush tax cuts, and now we are putting it up to a $5 million exemption per person and $10 million per couple. It was at a 55 percent rate and precipitously drops in this bill to 35 percent. The benefit to the heirs of the richest people in this country is unbelievable, unfathomable. And what that means, you will have a continued concentration of wealth in a few select families, lords so to speak, princes that have money beyond what anybody needs to have in this Nation and not contribute to others. The fact is, this was a very difficult vote, a very difficult decision for me. I asked my constituents to let me know what they thought. I had hundreds of people call and write and contribute to a poll, and it was about even, for and against. The fact is, the future of our Nation is at risk. These tax cuts for the most wealthy people in our Nation, for corporations that will not produce jobs, in the hundreds of billions of dollars category, and the inheritance tax will take away the children, the aged, and the needy in years to come who will need support from this Nation. The deficit will be so great that when it comes time for deficit cutting, the cuts are going to come to the people who most are in need. Hubert Humphrey said, ``The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.'' He and others, like Dr. King, the Dalai Lama, and others who you look to never talk about giving more to the rich. Mr. Garamendi started talking about Franklin Roosevelt. The fact is, those people who are the moral tests will suffer when the cuts are made, and I don't see that as something I should support. I cannot be sure of that.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, we will probably be voting on the President's tax proposal this week--a very difficult vote. I really don't know how I'm going to vote. On the one hand, I see the benefit of getting timely temporary and targeted relief to people, which helps the economy with unemployment compensation, unemployment compensation that is most needed for the people of the purple hearts of this Bush recession. On the other hand, I see the money going to the upper 2 percent--the millionaires and billionaires--who will get $700 billion over 10 years, which will put a deficit on our children and grandchildren for years to come--something we can't afford. When it comes time to affording it on reckoning day, it's going to hurt people getting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and that's something I can't see. The estate tax will benefit 6,600 families, to the tune of $25 billion, and I see that as wrong, too; but I understand the need to stimulate the economy and to get middle class tax cuts to the people earning less than $250,000. I ask my constituents to contact me at www.Cohen.house.gov. Let me know what you think.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, I was detained from voting due to a family emergency on Thursday, December 9. If present, I would have voted ``yea'' on the following rollcall votes: Rollcall 626 and rollcall 627.