Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is a bad idea. So we found a system that worked for the interstate highway system, but over 53 years it has grown into this bureaucracy that no longer works to build what it was intended to do. The second example, as you and I were here, 2001, it is kind of the same debate we had on health care. We had a President who came in and said, My number one priority is what? Education. No Child Left Behind. And who could argue with that? Who wants to leave any child left behind? Some of us had a vision that said, you know, the most effective way to make sure we don't leave a child behind is not to give the authority, but to return the authority that is inherent with parents to raise and educate their kids. But we had a President who had another idea. He said, well, the way we are going to make sure we are not going to leave any child behind is that we are going to take that authority from parents, we are going to take that authority away from local school districts, we are going to take that authority away from the States, and we are going to move it all here to Washington. I think about 390 people voted for it, because how could you vote against No Child Left Behind? Everybody was scared, you know. We are going to have to go home and people are going to say he voted to leave a kid behind. You and I voted ``no.''

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Which is exactly what we found with No Child Left Behind. It became a huge power grab to Washington, a huge unfunded mandate, and, most importantly, it didn't work. And this is the exact model that we are now following with health care, except we now have a new President who says, My legacy is I am going to do health care. Again, he is not enabling people to exercise the freedom and authority that the Constitution has given them. He is taking that freedom and authority from them, just like No Child Left Behind, moving it to Washington, and saying, Don't worry, Washington will take care of your health care. Everything will be fine.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Actually, he was right. This plan will not add a dime. It will add $1.2 trillion. I am not sure to the deficit, but it is $1.2 trillion of new spending. He is right. It is not a dime; it is a whole lot more than that.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. He can tell you how many bushels of corn it will take, but don't ask him about dimes.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We have to put this, again, in focus. What taxes are we already looking at? They have said we are not going to extend the tax cuts that were done in 2001 that led to economic prosperity. Those are going to expire. There is a whole range of taxes that will go up for all Americans when those expire at the end of 2010-2011. We then have all of these taxes that they have put together.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Dividends. I think the marriage penalty comes back. The adoption tax credit goes away. This is Adoption Awareness Month. We have wisely put in tax policy that encourages and facilitates and provides a financial assist for families who want to adopt. That goes away, because that is a bad tax cut, according to folks, because everything that was done from 2001 through 2008, any type of tax adjustment was a terrible tax. So they want to get rid of that. Then you put that with cap-and-trade, the carbon tax that has created a tremendous amount of uncertainty on business. Then, like you said, you put this new health care tax on top of small and medium-size business, and you put all the other taxes in place, there is no wonder why the economy is in such turmoil today, because every business person today, if they are taking a look at whether they are going to invest or hire someone, they are going to be very, very reluctant to do it because they are seeing all of these taxes on the horizon and there is so much uncertainty. Again, what is every tax? The same thing as in health care. Every tax is taking freedom away from the three of us, from our constituents, and moving it to Washington, because we then can no longer direct that spending. Washington politicians can.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. You put it all together, and I think this is what we started seeing in August. In August we had people who were frustrated about programs that had been around like No Child Left Behind, massive amounts of money but also massive amounts of unfunded mandates that weren't working, and parents recognizing that, wow, now Washington's telling me which schools are good, which ones are bad, which teachers are good, which ones are bad. It's kind of like I knew that before. I didn't need Washington to tell me that. Then they saw what you articulated, Mr. King, so eloquently earlier where we did this massive stimulus bill that's not creating jobs. You've got cap-and-trade. You've got this health care. And I think this is why they came out in droves during August and saying stop, we want our freedom. And this is why we need people to do one of three things or four things on Thursday at noon. Number one, if you can be in Washington and join us, come here and stand up and express your vote for freedom. And I think it's happening tonight in Virginia, and it happened in New Jersey, and I'm not should exactly what happened in New York, but in those two States that's exactly what people did. This Tuesday they stood up for freedom in Virginia, and they stood up for freedom in New Jersey. Join us here on Thursday. If you can't come here, go visit your Congressman's district office and express in person your vote for freedom. And if you can't go there, then get on the phone and, you're right, target those Members who are on the fence and say we need your vote for freedom and not for massive new government bureaucracy. And I think as we were talking and organizing this session for Thursday, someone came up and they gave us the fourth idea that says if you can't do one of those three and you're driving, and we don't want you to get on your cell phone and call your Congressman, then at least what you can do at noon on Thursday is start honking your horn for freedom. So do one of those four things on Thursday afternoon, and people will start getting the message. But it's not only Thursday. This vote may happen Friday. It may happen Saturday. We're not sure exactly when. But keep that effort going and build the momentum that we started in August, that you started in August at the grass-roots level. It has been reinvigorated. It's been going on for the last couple of months, but now we need to accelerate it back up. Get it going again on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday until we come back and we do a sensible, commonsense reform of health care that says for the 85 percent of us who have health care and are relatively happy with it, we're really not going to mess with that. We're going to focus on those problems that we have identified in health care for those 10 to 15 percent of the American people who can't get health care. We're going to address those problems. But we're not going to mess with the rest of the system.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman was with us in one of our colleague's office's an hour ago, and one of the other Members answered the phone and said, You know what? That was two people from Oregon and they thought they got the wrong office because they were calling at 9:30 at night and someone actually answered.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. And it was a Member of Congress. And they said, We were talking about this House call on Thursday, and we are coming. We think it is important to be there. Where do we need to be? So I think you are absolutely right. We have heard about people coming from New Jersey. We know there are people coming from the area here. As people start thinking about this--and it is encouraging that people in Oregon are getting the message. They are going to take the time. They will probably have to leave Wednesday. They will have to leave tomorrow to be here Thursday at noon. They will be out there on the east front. I guess we have to call a press conference, although some might call it a rally, although I guess the speech police here on Capitol Hill and the House of Representatives forbid us to use the term ``rally''; is that correct?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, the real sign of success is that the bill doesn't come to the floor. The real statement of success is that we do have a bill that comes to the floor.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. A good bill that recognizes the ultimate and the necessity that we give freedom and power back to the American people and that we don't take it from them. If you are doing 1,900 pages, that is saying we are taking your freedom. You don't need 1,990 pages to say, You know what, we are going to make it easier for you to exercise your freedom in these areas.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Take the subway.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The other thing that they are telling us, they are saying before you take on health care, why don't you fix what you have already taken and figure out, you know, No Child Left Behind, the way it was designed and implemented, after 8 years, more people here believe it doesn't work, but a whole lot of people in the grass roots America are saying, That doesn't work. It is kind of like why don't you go back and maybe devolve the authority of No Child Left Behind and let's take a different approach and do some of the things with some of these other programs. You know, before you take on this massive responsibility, fix what you have already put into place.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is the problem. And before you take this on, why don't you get back to a balanced budget. You know, it is the commonsense things that people, it gets to be a phrase that is overused, but it is the things that people are doing around their kitchen table. Today, I ran into some friends of mine from the company where I used to work, and there the industry is down about 30 percent, the office furniture industry. What they have done is the workers at the company, they have all had to sacrifice. They work 9 out of 10 days, and the 10th day is a day off. It's a day that they don't get paid for. That is an automatic 10 percent reduction in their pay. At the same time, they are also not getting the same level of profit sharing, contributions to 401(k)s, their health care premiums or their deductibles have gone up. They're figuring that they maybe have lost 15 to 20 percent of their discretionary income over the last year. Do you see that in Washington? We haven't made those decisions to get back to a balanced budget.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We have grown government. We are a growing industry, and we're growing it on the backs of our kids and grandkids. So my constituents are saying--and all across the State, because we tried this in Michigan, we tried to grow Michigan's economy and make us more competitive by increasing taxes, increasing regulations and all those types of things. And guess what? Mr. President, you don't have to go talk to your economist to figure out if your strategy is going to work. All you need to do is look at Michigan. It doesn't work. What we now need to do is we need to get back to the basics here, that's what my constituents are telling me, get back to the basics, don't try to take on more, because you can't even handle what you've got.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We hope so.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. One interesting thing, they talk about this being a national health care bill, and we know all the gyrations that the Speaker is going through right now to get those last few votes. Can the gentleman from Iowa tell me how they got the votes of the Congress persons from Hawaii?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The bill doesn't apply to Hawaii.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It doesn't apply to Hawaii. Hawaii is exempt.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is within the first couple of hundred pages because Hawaii has done kind of their own thing. But go to the bill, I believe it's in the first 300 pages. I read it over the weekend.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Remember, they may have done some bad things at the State level, but Hawaii is exempt.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. But these are the kinds of surprises that you will find as you read through 1,990 pages. Because, again, this is not about the quality and quantity of health care; this is about getting the votes to grab that from the American people.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think that's on page 492, and I haven't gotten there yet.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The commissioner shall decide that.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank our colleagues for doing this and remind the American people, this is the opportunity on Thursday on a number of different levels to make their voices heard. I thank my colleague for yielding and leading this Special Order tonight.