Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague for yielding. As we are moving forward now--and it looks like we are going to move forward on this debate and vote on the Pelosi health care bill, and we're going to have a massive government takeover--I would just like to have a dialogue with my friend to talk about some of the issues that the American people need to consider. Before I came over, I think I heard my colleague talking about some of this, and I know what a fan you are of this document right here, called the Constitution. You know, as you go through the Constitution and as you go through the first 10 amendments--the Bill of Rights--people wonder, now, if you can build a Nation off of 37 pages, why does it take more than 2,000 pages to build a health care system? It's very simple. If you go through and take a look at the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are all about enshrining freedoms: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. The right to bear arms shall not be infringed. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects shall not be violated. It's all about ``the government shall not.'' ``The government shall not.'' Again, it enshrines your freedoms and my freedoms. The health care bill is 2,000 pages. What's in that bill? What's the difference between that document and this document?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, I was having this discussion with a friend of mine. He said, You know, you've got to get away from that term ``empower.'' Actually, that's exactly it. It's empowering the very foundation of American society and American Government. We made that decision more than 200 years ago that, in America, we would empower the individual, and the Constitution enshrined that, and it has worked phenomenally well. This bill--I don't have it with me. I don't take it with me because you don't carry it too many places. It's 20 pounds. Tomorrow, we are going to unroll this bill. We rolled it up as a scroll. It's more than a third of a mile long, meaning that I could leave my district in West Michigan and go to Chicago. I could stand on top of the Sears Tower, and then I could put the Washington Monument on top of it. I could drop it, and it would be from the top of the Washington Monument on top of the Sears Tower, and it would just about get to the ground. That's how long this bill is. It's more than a third of a mile if you lay the pages from end to end. The Constitution is just 37 simple pages. Like you said, which is a great way of putting it, the Constitution chained government and put limits on government. This health care bill chains you and me and each and every one of our constituents because, in this bill--I've not counted them all, but I think someone has said that it has the word ``shall'' in it--what?--over 3,000 times.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. So, where the Constitution has in it the words ``shall not,'' I would bet that those two words ``shall not'' do not appear together very often in this health care document, but over 3,400 times it says ``shall.'' It's the Health and Human Services ``shall,'' and most importantly, it is the commissioner ``shall.'' What we've done is we've taken the rights from this. We've taken them away. We've put them into this health care bill, and we've said the commissioner now shall make these decisions; shall make the decision as to what kind of insurance policies are available to you and to me and to our constituents and which ones are not; shall determine what benefits are going to be in a basic plan and which shall be available in a premium and in a premium plus plan. The commissioner shall decide whether you and I can get health savings accounts. Actually, we've already made that decision. That's a decision that we in this House shall decide because health savings accounts will no longer be available. So it is a great transfer of power from where the Founders wanted it to be to where now this House believes it should be, because this House now believes or may believe--I hope we stop this bill because, before I came here, you outlined some issues. They're not simple. They are complicated issues--tort reform, competition, availability, and those types of things. But those are the types of things that we could do that would address the specific problems that we have in the health insurance market and that we have in the health care area today that would specifically fix those areas and make insurance more affordable and more available for the people who don't have it today, whereas this new massive bill says it's going to change for all of you. The commissioner shall decide. For those of you that have a health care plan, you can keep it for 5 years maybe. But after 5 years you can be pretty well assured we all shall have a new plan that shall be determined by the commissioner, and we shall not be able to buy anything else.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. You and I have a tremendous amount of background in dealing with legislation that has a lot of ``shall'' in it. We can go back, you and I weren't here, but we can go back to a very novel and noble idea, the highway transportation bill back in 1956 under the administration of President Eisenhower. The goal was very, very good-- build an interstate highway system, something that was very, very much needed, and we built it. That thing still exists. Now what has it become? It has become this massive bill, this massive process where we take all of this money from the States, so a State like Michigan, and I don't know if you are a donor or a donee State.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. All right. Let's explain to our colleagues and our visitors in the gallery exactly what a donor State means. It means that Michigan, we send, on every gallon of gas, there is something like a 19-cent tax. For the 53 years that this program has been in existence, for every dollar that we have sent to Washington, Michigan has gotten back 83 cents. People wonder why roads in Michigan aren't in great shape. I had a constituent a couple of weeks ago come to me and say, Congressman, why can't our roads be like West Virginia? We checked. For the average of 53 years, West Virginia has gotten $1.74 back for every dollar that they put in. That's a pretty good deal. No wonder their roads are better than our roads in Michigan, because they get $1.74 back. Michigan gets 83. I don't know what happens in Arizona.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. They whack a little piece off, it goes into this bureaucracy. Then they allocate it according to people who may be more powerful than others, that's why your State and my State, why we are donor States. At one point in time it was to build an interstate highway system. Today that money is used for all kinds of things. That money now comes back to Michigan, and we've got to put up matching funds. Two years ago the money came back and it had to go to highway enhancement. You kind of look at it and say, What's highway enhancement? Well, our Governor figured out, working with the Department of Transportation, that the ``shall,'' you shall use this money for highway enhancement meant that rather than improving our interstate highway system by expanding capacity, perhaps putting on a new interchange, perhaps extending it into an area where we needed it extended, the ``shall'' meant you shall build a turtle fence. And what's a turtle fence? Well, in Arizona, you probably don't have many turtles.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, in Michigan we have quite a few. It was $400,000 for you shall build a turtle fence, you shall not use it for an interchange, you shall not use it to fill potholes, you shall build a turtle fence. I didn't really know what a turtle fence was. I had an idea, but I asked. A turtle fence is exactly what it's intended to do, what you would think when you hear the term. A turtle fence is intended to keep turtles from crossing the highway.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I don't know if a snake can go over a fence or not. But in Michigan, they decided to make sure that this fence would be turtle- proof, to make sure that no turtle would go over the fence, they built it about 3-feet high and then they put one of these round things over the top of it, 3- or 4-inch diameter, to make sure that for those turtles that were climbing turtles, they couldn't climb and climb over the fence. The irony of this whole thing is I still drive that road and I drive it quite often; and I still see turtles that have been hit by cars. You say, now, how can that be? We've spent all of this money. We spent $400,000 to build this turtle fence and to study it. Why are there still turtles being hit on that highway? Then you think about it and it's like, I know why, because this protects the turtles that are outside of the fence, because they can't get to the highway. But it's really a bad deal for the turtles that were fenced in. They have nowhere to go. They can't get out. Most of their living area now is the median, and a little bit of land on each side of the highway before you get to the fence. But for the turtles that are in the fenced-in area, they can't get to the river anymore, because that's fenced in, and they can't get out anywhere else. The only place they can go is stay in the median, or if they want to move at all, they get on the road. It really didn't work that well. The Federal Government, in its infinite wisdom, saying you shall spend it on a turtle fence. And the people say, Pete, why do you bring this up in the context of health care? Why are you and Trent talking about this? We will see the same kinds of decisions in health care. The money will come here, and it will not be fairly distributed to the States, just like you are a donor State and we are a donor State, and there are other States that are getting an unfair share. The same thing is going to happen to health care. One of these days a Congressman from Michigan is going to come back home and someone is going to say, I was traveling through West Virginia, we got sick, and why do they have such better medical care, and their facilities are so much better than Michigan? And the answer will be, well, you know, over the last 30 years of this Pelosi health care, West Virginia got $1.74 back for every dollar that they sent in taxes and Michigan and Arizona, they got 83 cents. There will be an inequity in health care. Then the other thing it will be is we'll start spending it on foolish things because people here in Washington will all have their pet projects, whether it's rattlesnakes or whether it's turtles, they will start siphoning the money off and growing it to something it was never intended to be.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, it is. You and I have another program that I believe you and I fought together: No Child Left Behind. Congress in its infinite wisdom in 2001, again with the noblest of goals, just like building an interstate highway system, just like making sure we left no child behind, just like making sure we want everybody to have quality health care? What did we do in 2001? You and I voted against it, I believe.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We said taking power from parents, and you and I are working on this constitutional amendment together that enshrines in the Constitution that parents have the right to raise and educate their kids, protecting parental rights. Again it says, Congress shall not, government shall not infringe on the right of parents to raise and educate their kids. We are enshrining rights. No Child Left Behind took rights away from parents and gave them to government. Washington now forces States and local school districts to go through this paperwork and determine this process. Well, we'll determine whether your kid is making progress or not. We'll tell you who is a good teacher or a bad teacher, what school is a good school or bad school. You know what? I don't need to send money to Washington and have them come put a bunch of paperwork and try to tell me that.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. You and I in 2001, we didn't call it the Pelosi nightmare, we called it, in not so many words--maybe we're a little kinder--but we both genuinely felt it was the President Bush nightmare for education. What have we found out? There were 41 of us, 41 of us that I believe stood up for the Constitution, stood up for parents, stood up for local public schools, stood up for the States and voted ``no'' on No Child Left Behind. Eight years later, there are a lot of people who now recognize that program doesn't work, it's leaving more kids behind, it's wasting money. And the answer some people have now is, we've got to spend more. And it's kind of like, no, when you're sending a dollar to Washington and the thing that you highlighted, Washington skims off the top or bureaucracy skims off the top. We now know that under K-12 education, when we send $1 from Michigan, whether it's from Holland or Lansing or Detroit or Pontiac and it comes to Washington, before it ever gets back into a classroom, we are actually doing what education dollars should do, which is educating children. We figure that we lose about 35 cents of that dollar in wasted bureaucracy. I tried to talk to the superintendent--he and I have not been able to connect yet--the superintendent of Pontiac public schools. I give him credit. They took the Federal Government to court and said this is unconstitutional; it is unfair and inappropriate for the Federal Government to have these kinds of mandates on our schools, because what's the other thing that they do? When they say in No Child Left Behind, you shall, they don't give them the money to do it. He said, or the school district said, you can't put all of these unfunded mandates on us, because what you are forcing us to do is to spend money on programs that we don't think are a priority for our kids. We know our kids. We know their names. We know what their challenges are. We have got these sets of priorities that we think we need to spend on our kids. That superintendent and those teachers and those parents and that community, you are right. They know those kids' names. They know what those kids need, and they want to spend the dollars to get the most advancement for those kids. The bureaucrats here in Washington, what do they know? They know the book of rules and regulations and say, sorry, it says right here, Congress says you shall do these things. All I can do is make sure that is what they do. That is, again, exactly what is going to happen in health care.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes. What we have seen in the highway system is where the money comes to Washington, it gets distributed unfairly, and it comes back to States with mandates on it as to where they will spend it. It is hard to believe. You send the money to Washington, and to get it back you have to have matching funds. So now they are also starting to impose taxes on the citizens of each of our States so we can actually get our own money back. So there is the infringement and the intrusion of the Federal Government on the highway system. The same thing on education. Michigan has now gone through a process and they are considering some spending bills. And part of the spending bill is, well, you know, if we do this, we can get more Federal education money back, or we can get more Medicaid money back. It is kind of like, why do we have to put up our own money to get our money back in the first place? And think if we left it in the States. I think this is where we as Republicans lay out our vision for the future. I think one of the parts we are going to see on health care, on transportation, it is going to be devolution. Leave the money in the States. Send a penny out of every dollar to Washington to let them maintain and, if necessary, expand the interstate highway system. But leave 98 or 99 percent of the money in the States. We ought to do the same thing with education. Devolve education responsibilities to the States. I don't need to send a dollar here and only get 65 cents back for the classroom. Do the same thing for Medicaid and health care. Don't take health care down the same failed road of moving all of this power away from individuals, away from communities, away from States, to bureaucrats in Washington who will distribute it unfairly. The powerful will take more to their States. They will give less to the other States. The powerful will then establish the mandates so that we will run health care the way they believe it should be run, not the way that markets or individuals who want to direct their health care want it to be run. And they will be inefficient. The bottom line is, it won't work. You and I know it. And we have seen the numbers. No Child Left Behind is not working. We are leaving more kids behind.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. They also can opt out. They do two things in Canada. They cross the border and come across into Michigan to take advantage of our quality hospitals and our quality health care; and for those that have a little bit more money, they fly down to Arizona, especially in the winter, and take advantage of your quality health care. They have got an escape valve.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If they have the resources.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We are not going to educate them, and we are going to put a huge debt on them. Yes. Thank you.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The amazing thing is they have made up their mind. The bill has been around for all of 8 days, and we have never had the opportunity now to take it home to any of our constituents or whatever. But I was struck by reading the same comment. It was also laced I think with some profanity and saying, we don't care. We have made up our mind. The inference was, I think, we could have 100,000, we could have a million people out there. We don't care. Unbelievable. Who do these people think they work for?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield one more time, I think maybe that is why we are doing this on Saturday, because they will finish the bill tonight, sometime tonight, and file it, I would guess, sometime through the night. And since most people have Saturdays off, maybe the Speaker is figuring that maybe everybody can have Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon to really study this bill, and if they have some input they want to give us, if they have some input they want to give us, they can maybe do it before 6 o'clock on Saturday night, when we are currently scheduled to vote. That is actually brilliant on the Speaker's part, because I think most Americans are going to be just eagerly waiting to get this bill and go online and read it tomorrow.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, when they added 400 pages.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I think we also put this in the context of already what's happened in this year. Very early on this year, we spent $800 billion to stimulate the economy. It hasn't worked. Today we saw the numbers. They came out, 10.2 percent unemployment. If you include those who have stopped looking for work or those who are maybe working part-time because they can't find a full- time job, that goes up to 17.5 percent. So 17.5 percent of the American people are either unemployed, stopped looking for work or underemployed. You know, that's the effect of our stimulus bill that was passed. I don't think any of us voted for it. Then we put on top of that the cap-and-trade vote that my colleague was talking about, which is going to just hammer manufacturing and put a huge tax on every American again and every business out of this new carbon tax. Then you put the health care bill on top of it, $1.2 trillion, and people are wondering, Why isn't the economy coming back? Because we put so much uncertainty into the business climate. We've loaded up the debt. People were talking about, you know, the debt under President Bush. In 1 year they've tripled the deficit from what, $450 billion. And that was the deficit under the Democratic Congress. I think the last time Republicans had control, the deficit was around $250 billion. It was going the other way. It was going down. Ever since the Democrats have been in charge of Congress, it's been going up, so that we are now at $1.4 trillion in a single year deficit. All of these new taxes and new spending out there--the deficit is projected to be what, $1 trillion every year for as far as the eye can see, and people are wondering why there's not job creation? It's not hard to figure out. I yield back.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague for yielding and I think you made a great point. It's not about the quality and the quantity of health care; it's about control. That's why you see such a difference between the Republican proposal and the Democrat proposal. Because the Democrat proposal says we're going to totally wipe, out over a period of time, private sector health insurance and we're going to take the freedom that the American people have to direct their insurance, to direct their health care, and we're going to move it over and we're going to put that responsibility, that authority and that control in the Federal Government. This is their bill, but that's not all of it. That's their bill. This is their bill. This is almost all of it. I don't have the last 40 pages that the Speaker added to it last night. But when you're going to take over health care and move responsibility from you and me and our constituents and move it to government, it takes you 2,000 pages to describe what you're going to do, create the 3,000 times where it says the commissioner shall, will or must, because those are new decisions that the Federal Government is going to make and we're not going to make. If you want to fix health care and address the problems, this is all you really need. That's the Republican proposal.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The Republican proposal says we want to do tort reform, we want to deal with preexisting conditions, we want to do some stuff with competition and those types of things. This fixes health care; takes steps toward improving and fixing the problems that we have identified. This creates massive government bureaucracies. This represents a loss of freedom. And this says we're going to fix the problems that are out there.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. They've got to be approved by this new bureaucracy, the czar.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. So what we've got is this 2,000 pages, but it's still an outline. This outline creates that which is going to make all of the decisions. And when you take a look at all the bureaucracy and paperwork that's going to come out of here, this is only the beginning. This is not the end. This is the beginning of government-run health care in America.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Does the gentleman mean it's not all going to health care?