Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The people who won't like this are people who are saying it is 16 to 20 percent of the economy. Let's go through this in a professional way as we write this legislation. Let's make sure that we deliberate it. Let's make sure we understand these consequences that just magically appeared today and give us some time to digest this, because at the same time that the President is saying this group likes it, that group likes it, this group supports it, all of the sudden it's a whole new plan. And so by tomorrow afternoon there will be, I expect, a new plan on the floor of the Energy and Commerce Committee that nobody in the committee will know what's in it except for maybe one or two people. So people who believe that we shouldn't rush into messing around with their health care and with our doctors and our hospitals and that we ought to be very deliberate and that they would like us to know what's in a bill before we vote on it, and they would like to know what the bill is so they can call us and tell us what they like--

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I did a tele-town hall meeting tonight, and there were two areas of questions all night. Number one is, where are the jobs? I am from a State that has 15.2 percent unemployment. They've seen that we have spent $800 billion. They are saying, Pete, where are the jobs, where are the jobs, where are the jobs, because the impact that it's having on their families, on their kids and those kinds of things. And the second category was, don't mess with my health care, or don't mess with my health care until I have an opportunity to review it and see what it's going to do to my health care, and, you know, don't vote on anything that you haven't had the opportunity to read and review and to explain to us what it will do.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, you think that's the bill you're going to be working on tomorrow afternoon?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think the gentleman hits it right on the nose, because the alternative to that chart is freedom, is freedom by the American public to be involved in their health care, and if we vote in this massive health care, what we are doing is giving up exactly what the gentleman described. We are giving up our freedom and we are turning it over to this town, to this building, and to that bureaucracy.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Small business.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield for just a second as you get your chart ready.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The 22nd.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Just before you took over and joined us in this Special Order, my colleague was saying that this doesn't do much for the unemployed. I think we have to recognize that it does. For those people that are in the unfortunate circumstance today of being unemployed, one of the things that they are concerned about is that they don't have access to health care. That plan may provide it. But the other thing that I think has been pointed out, this plan will hurt the economy and hurt more jobs, and what these people want is they want the opportunity to get back to work. And I think under the Republican proposals that we have out there, we have ways for people who are in that unfortunate situation of being unemployed there a tax credit or whatever to be able to go out and to buy and to have the freedom to choose a health care plan. I think that's now becoming a selling point of this new plan. It says if you're unemployed--and they're creating a lot of them--we're going to be able to provide you health care. But the Republican plan will do the same thing because we do believe it's important that everybody have the security of having access to health insurance. We just don't think you have to create this bureaucracy to do it. So let's not forget about the people who are hurting, who are unemployed. But just because they're unemployed doesn't mean this system is what they need. There are better alternatives.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I will yield.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. And we want to be able to provide them with that opportunity because we believe that is a more effective and more cost- efficient way and a better way to get health care to Americans. And so that is one proposal to do it. But Republicans also have a proposal and ways to make that available that move away from this extraordinarily expensive and job-killing bureaucracy.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Before you go there, can I just add a point?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. There will be some people who keep their health care. Who will that be?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It will be Federal employees and Congressmen and Senators will keep their health care. I believe in the Senate there was an amendment that was voted on, and I hope we have the opportunity to vote on this in the House. In the Senate there was a vote that said, We're going to put all Federal employees, including Members of Congress, into the public health plan, the plan that we will force millions--what was the number, 73 million in the first 5 years or something?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We're going to force 100 million people into the public health plan. I'm not sure if they had a vote in the Energy and Commerce Committee on this amendment yet, but I think it's coming. When that vote was held in the Senate, the Senate said, We're not going into the public health plan. We're going to keep what we have. So it's fascinating for the Senate to say, We're ready to force 100 million people in the public into the public health plan, but we ain't going there. That tells you what the Senate thinks of what will be the public health plan. I thank my colleague for yielding.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Can I offer a little history lesson? I'm not sure any of were you here in 2001. One of you was here in 2001.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. You know what this reminds me of, remember we passed a bill--I'm thankful I voted against it--No Child Left Behind.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Why did we vote ``no''? Because what it did, it put the Department of Education between a parent and their local school and their local administrators. That thing passed with all of this promise because the promise was, We're not going to leave a single child behind. Well, you and I felt passionately. We don't want to leave a child behind. But the way to fix that isn't to put a government bureaucracy in charge of that kid's education. Guess what, here we are 8 years later; and who now agrees with us? A lot of folks on the other side of the aisle; and most of the folks on this side of the aisle who voted for that bill now recognize that No Child Left Behind was a huge mistake because what it did is it took local control, parental control of your child's education away from parents, away from local administrators and moved it here to Washington. We're leaving more kids behind, even though we're spending more money than ever. A lesson from history from those of us that saw that No Child Left Behind wasn't going to work; this is a monstrosity that is 10 times bigger and will have 10 times more impact than No Child Left Behind will because No Child Left Behind only impacted our kids. This will impact every single one of us. It is the same model of moving away from the concept of freedom, which my colleague talked about earlier, the concept of freedom, freedom to raise our kids, freedom to choose our health care, freedom to make our own health care decisions, moving them to Federal bureaucracies and bureaucrats who don't know the names of our kids, who don't know the names of our doctors, and who don't know the hospitals that we want to go to. That's the problem with the approach that we are seeing today.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That passed, right?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I was going to talk about the rationing. I used to be in the private sector, and I used to be in the marketing world. We all know that these forecasts aren't actual numbers; they're predictions. One of the things that we have learned from these predictions is that--what? Does government forecast conservatively where, you know, if everything goes bad, we're going to be $800 billion short? No. The government forecasts optimistically. I think it's pretty safe to say that, if you take a look at the assumptions and the predictions that the deficit or that the amount that this program will add to the deficit over this period of time, it is probably at least double what the CBO is predicting.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes. It's what the CBO is predicting. The other things it is based on are reimbursements to the States. To get people and some of the States to buy off on Medicaid reimbursements, what they do is they bump them up in the first 3-4 years of this program, and then they cut them dramatically. We all know that those cuts will never take place in future years, so the deficit, most likely, of this proposal will be significantly higher than the numbers we see today. I think that has been true for just about every Federal program we've seen.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, actually, I hate to take the lead on that, but we're at 15.2 percent. We have a lot of people hurting.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, last week, the President visited Michigan. With an unemployment rate of 15.2 percent, we were hoping that the President would answer the question: Mr. President, where are the jobs? When will the jobs come back to Michigan? We had hoped that the President would have come to Michigan and would have recognized that raising taxes, that excessive spending and that more regulation wouldn't work, because that is what we've done in Michigan. We now have the highest unemployment rate in the country. Mr. President, take a look at Michigan. Recognize that we need to reduce taxes, that we need to control spending and that we need to reduce regulation to get this economy moving. America and Michigan will begin moving forward again when we empower its people, not when we empower the bureaucracy and the governments in Washington or in Lansing. It's about freedom. Give our constituents the freedom to spend their money to create their jobs.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the House Republican standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding funding that will benefit the Second Congressional District of Michigan as part of H.R. 3183. Requesting Member: Congressman Pete Hoekstra Bill Number: H.R. 3183 Account: Army Corps of Engineers, Operations and Maintenance Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Detroit District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Address of Requesting Entity: 477 Michigan Avenue, Detroit, MI 48226- 2550 Description of Request: Provide $170,000 for operations and maintenance of Arcadia Harbor. Provide $185,000 for operations and maintenance of Pentwater Harbor. This request is consistent with the intended and authorized purpose of the Army Corps of Engineers, Operations and Maintenance account.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank my colleagues for allowing me to just be a part of this discussion for a few minutes. You know, it's interesting. As my colleague from Arizona is pointing out the differences between the U.S. system, the Canadian system, and the British system, and I think one of the things that you see there is in America you've got competition, so the hospitals are all working to improve their survival rates. If you get a certain type of disease or illness, you know, people will check the various performance rates by hospitals, by clinics, as to where it's working. You know, I just--this bill now is 1,000 pages. It's over 1,000. We just went through a massive cap-and-trade and tax bill. But, you know, I just opened it up, and one of the things that people say, Don't worry. There's still going to be improvement and competition to get excellence. You know what job I want? Start on page 84. I want to be the commissioner. The commissioner shall specify the benefits. The next page, The commissioner shall establish the following standards. You go to page 87, The commissioner shall establish a permissible range. If the State has entered into an arrangement satisfactory to the commissioner, page 88, the commissioner shall, the commissioner shall. I mean, it's like--and this is in 2 minutes of looking at this bill. And it's like, well, it looks like the commissioner knows what to do. And if the commissioner's going to do all of this, what's there left for me? It looks like the commissioner's going to take over my health care.