Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is kind of interesting. We did a telephone town hall tonight, and we had a thousand, 1,200 people on the phone. People were asking, When is this bill going to come up? And we say right now the plan is to have it come up on Saturday. They say, Why? The Senate has now said they are not going to vote on this bill, or they are not going to vote on health care reform until when? I think the majority leader has said in the Senate they are not going to do this until after the first of the year. So we have 1,990 pages, plus 40, we are supposed to not only read this but understand it in 7 days, and we will not have any opportunity to go back to our constituents and say, What do you think of this? Or explain it to them and explain the difference between the two bills, the difference in approaches, government takeover of health care, freedom for you and more opportunity for you to select your health care. These folks, they are outraged, saying why don't you take an extra week? Why don't you taken an extra 2 weeks? We are supposed to be home next week for Veterans Day, why not schedule a whole series of town hall meetings? We saw some of the impact of this yesterday where people from around the country sent a clear message to the White House and to the leadership of this Congress saying we don't like the arrogance with which Washington is treating our concerns and our issues. This stuff, we are not going to have an opportunity to provide an insight or a perspective on these bills to our Representatives in Congress. They are just going to ram this through. The end result is they sent a clear message and they sent it across the country. They sent it in Virginia and New Jersey and in Michigan, all across the country, saying if this is the change that came as a result of the elections last year, we sure don't like it and there is an arrogance that is saying we are going to force this down Congress. We are going to force this on the American people without providing them with the opportunity to provide feedback. This is why my colleague and all of us are excited about this process, saying if we can't take this bill to the American people, the American people are going to come to Washington tomorrow, and I think my colleague from Iowa wants to talk about this house call that hopefully the American people will participate in tomorrow.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. As we were meeting in a Member's office last night we got a call, and it was two people from Oregon saying, We are coming. We will be there on Thursday. So late Tuesday night, they were wondering what can we do to have an impact. I think another one of our colleagues reported, because we really don't know how many people are going to show up tomorrow. Yesterday he said there are 10 buses coming from New Jersey. Tonight he said 24 buses are coming from his congressional district in New Jersey tomorrow to be here with us. We don't know exactly what is going to happen, but it is a clear indication that in 4 or 5 days, we have touched people around the country who want to come to this press conference or some call it a rally, or whatever. But it is a press conference. We have touched people from around the country. They came here in August. They came for the tea party and those types of things. This is another opportunity to express our opinion, and hopefully by coming to the Capitol and meeting with our Representatives, they will finally get the message that we want freedom, we don't want government health care.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, I don't think that is the Constitution. That can't be the Constitution. I mean, if that is the framework for how we run this country, if it takes 1,990 pages to do health care, it ought to take at least 20,000 pages to be the Constitution. How many pages are in the Constitution?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. When you are talking about freedom, it doesn't take very many pages, does it? How many pages?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think the point is made when you are talking about freedom, it doesn't take a lot of pages. When you are talking about government control, it takes a lot of pages and a lot of bureaucracy. I thank the gentleman. You made a great point.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. You made a great point.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, what is the other document in front of the gentleman here?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague, and I thank him for sharing his copy of the Constitution. We made the point that the Constitution establishing this Nation and the amendments to the Constitution are 44 pages. This is 1,990 pages, but I think more powerful is what this document says. When you are protecting freedom, it doesn't take a lot of words. When you're limiting government, it doesn't take a lot of words. Think about the difference. This document, the Pelosi health care document, I think, over 3,000 times says ``the commissioner shall,'' ``the commissioner will,'' ``the commissioner may.'' That's all losing authority. If you take a look at the Constitution and if you read what the Constitution says, the Constitution puts limits on what government will do, and it protects individual rights. Here it says that Congress shall make no law a limitation on us--not on the people. This expands government. Shall not be infringed. No soldier shall without the consent. The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches. No person shall nor shall private property be taken. The accused shall enjoy. This. This document. It protects the American people from invasive and from overintrusive government. That's what the Founding Fathers thought. They would be horrified by this bill to see that the commissioner shall develop the health care plans that you and I will have the opportunity to choose from. The commissioner shall establish penalties for those people who don't buy insurance. The commissioner shall develop this. The ombudsman shall do this. There are no limitations on government in here. This is all about the expansion of government, and our Founding Fathers were all about limiting government. This is night and day. This is 44 pages guaranteeing our freedoms. This is 1,990 pages taking freedoms away. Many have called and said, Congressman, is this actually constitutional? Maybe they'll find a court that says this is constitutional; but in the spirit of the Founding Fathers, they would have been horrified by what this document does and how it limits individual American freedoms. We'll have to take a look and see if we can't--although, I think the people who will be at our House call tomorrow understand this document, and they understand the night and day difference between this document and what Speaker Pelosi is trying to do here with this document in that this shreds the Constitution. It shreds personal freedom. It gives power to Washington and bureaucracies and, in one vote, 16-18 percent of the economy. That amount of freedom moves from our constituents, and it moves to Washington, D.C. It goes flying right through this House, and it goes right into unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. I yield back.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We have three.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. This is the 44 pages that our Founding Fathers put together to establish this country and articulate and lay out the freedoms for the American people. This is a document of freedom.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Right. And this is the document that Republicans have proposed to fix health care, the parts of health care that have been identified as being broken, 232 pages.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Right. And then this is Speaker Pelosi's bill, most of her bill, 1,990 pages introduced last week. It doesn't have the 40 pages of the manager's amendment which were added to the bill late last night. This is the document that contains in it the phrase ``the commissioner shall'' or ``the government shall'' something like 3,000 times. The Constitution is all about freedom. This is all about the loss of freedom. I thank my colleague for doing this session this evening.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

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

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague from Iowa for yielding. I think you've laid out very well at a macro level what we've seen happen over the last 9\1/2\ to 10 months as we've had a new administration, a new Senate, and a new House come into session. That's at the macro level. I think the other thing that's really connecting with people is what they see happening at a grassroots level after Chrysler and General Motors went bankrupt and then after Chrysler and General Motors used the protection of bankruptcy to take away private property rights--to go into a whole range of dealerships without any transparency to their customers or to even the dealers, themselves. They all of a sudden said, In 3 weeks, 5 weeks, you're no longer going to be a dealer for Chrysler. GM had a nicer word for it. They said, You're going to be in a wind- down. Well, I was just in one of those wind-down dealers last week. It's not a wind-down. They're out of business. It was a loss of freedom. You know, many of these individuals had invested millions of dollars into the business, some of them within the last couple of years, believing that, when they were investing in the contracts that they had with these folks, the contracts protected their freedoms and that they protected their business relationships. All of a sudden, through bankruptcy, that freedom and that protection, under bankruptcy law and franchise laws, were gone. That's exactly, I think, one of the reasons we're here tonight. We're talking now about the freedom, about the responsibility and about the opportunities that those car dealers lost when GM and Chrysler went through bankruptcy. It's the type of freedom that each and every one of us faces. We're going to lose that same kind of opportunity if we pass this massive health care bill because, when I look at it--you and I--we know what's wrong with health care. We've got to fix preexisting conditions. We've got to have more competition. We need to do some of those things. This is all about power and where that power will be. I started reading this health care bill over the weekend. I read 300 pages. Then you start going through it, and you start trying to figure it out, and you realize that what the Speaker and others have done is not what's going to be in health care. That health care bill simply says that it's no longer your decision and that it's not my decision. It's not your decision. It's not my decision. Those health care decisions are now going to be the decisions of the House of Representatives and of the Senate. More importantly, they're going to be the decisions of those buildings down the street--down Independence Avenue and down Constitution Avenue--which we call the ``Federal bureaucracy.'' We'll have a bureaucrat standing between you and me and our doctors and our health care decisions. I think one of the things we're going to talk about tonight is the opportunity that the American people are going to have to come to Washington on Thursday to voice their opposition to this massive takeover through the Pelosi health care bill or to go to their congressional offices in their districts or to start calling Washington--to call those Members who are going to make a difference as to whether this Pelosi health care bill becomes law or as to whether we stop it dead in its tracks and we have a vote for freedom.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Excuse me. Does the gentleman mean that this has not been a transparent process?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Exactly how much of the economy are we going to reshape?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. How many times in this bill does it say the health care commissioner shall, will or must? Those are all decisions that will not be made here through the legislative process.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. How many times?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Those are decisions that the health care administrator, commissioner or czar will make. We transfer that authority. We've taken it from the American people. We've put it into Congress. We've said, Those are no longer your decisions. We shall make those decisions. Then we say, No. Wait a minute. We shall not. We shall transfer that over to a commissioner because we sure don't want to have responsibility for it. So it's kind of like a framework of health care reform, saying, You'll know the details later on as some appointed but not elected and not accountable commissioner makes those decisions.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think you have got three examples here exactly building off of your point: 1956, the country and Congress decides that we are going to do the interstate highway system. You know what? I think that actually worked. We now have an interstate highway system that works for the country. But over the last 53 years, the system has become corrupted. Why? Because it's now Washington getting in. In my district, with Michigan's money, they say, oh, by the way, on average for the last 53 years, we are going to take a dollar of your money, and we are going to give you 83 cents back.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. What a great bargain. It's a great bargain for West Virginia because they are getting $1.74 back, but that's our money. Now they are coming into Michigan and they are saying we are not building interstate highway systems any more. We are telling you to build bike paths; we are telling you to do this. So in the last couple of years what have we had to build, a crumbling infrastructure, we have had to build a turtle fence, rest areas.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It's to keep stampedes from crossing the interstate. Like I said, our infrastructure in Michigan is not that great. We need to rebuild it.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We allow them to get to the creeks and the rivers, but again it's this loss of freedom. It's Michigan's money coming to Washington, then coming back and saying you are going to get less of what you sent, and then we are going to tell you how to spend it. We are now building a bicycle path, a bike path over an expressway; and it's kind of like, that's nice to have, but it's not an essential. The second example is, and you and I are here, you like this one--

Mr. HOEKSTRA. No. The bridge was for bicyclists, and I have not seen a lot of bikes on that road.