Andy Harris

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for yielding the time. Madam Speaker, my, my, my. Former Speaker Pelosi was so right when she said Congress had to pass this bill so Americans could just find out what's in it. Well, Americans have learned a lot since we first tried to repeal the President's health care act last January. We learned that it still continues to stifle job growth as we learn more and more about it, and that's why we have to attempt to repeal it once again. Earlier this year, Americans discovered that the law creates a new nationwide mandate for coverage that doesn't allow people to opt out when they have a religious or moral objection to those covered services, a violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act duly passed by this Congress and, more importantly, a violation of their First Amendment rights. These inflexible mandates jeopardize the ability of institutions and individuals to exercise their rights of conscience, one of the most basic rights, and, yes, we discovered this since we voted on the repeal last January. Mr. Speaker, by now Americans have learned enough about this bill. They want it repealed, and we should listen to them. We should pass the rule and pass the bill.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit the use of funds for many of the international projects in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy--that's EERE--including the President's plan to spend $600,000 on ``sustainable cities'' projects in China and India. My amendment is identical to one I offered last year that was successfully adopted by this Chamber. I would also like to congratulate the chairman of the committee for his own action regarding this issue. The chairman's bill reduces funding for EERE by $428 million from last year's level. He makes the hard choices required to address our country's deficit and spending problems. This amendment supports language in the report that accompanied the FY 2012 appropriations bill. In that report, the chairman was able to retain much of last year's amendment by directing the DOE to only fund projects that directly benefit the United States, such as increasing American energy self-sufficiency, furthering United States research efforts or reducing domestic pollution. Unfortunately, the Department of Energy is failing to follow these clear instructions. Instead, they are choosing to spend money in China and India on foreign sustainable cities projects, even as we borrow money from China to pay our national debt. Mr. Chairman, we must take great care how we spend our constituents' paychecks. I don't believe these projects make the best use of hard- earned taxpayer money. There are greater needs that remain unmet and a massive Federal debt and annual deficit that continues to drag down our entire economy, as was demonstrated in today's Congressional Budget Office report. I urge adoption of the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Salisbury University Men's Lacrosse team on winning the 2012 division three lacrosse national championship with a 14 to 10 victory in the 2012 NCAA tournament final over Cortland University, on May 27th, 2011. The Salisbury Sea Gulls join an elite group of Division III programs in NCAA history in collecting at least 10 national championships. They became the seventh squad under head coach Jim Berkman to complete a perfect season with 23 wins and no losses. Also, senior midfielder Sam Bradman was named the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive season. Salisbury University is located in the heart of the Eastern Shore of Maryland and is a Maryland University of National Distinction. I am honored and proud to represent them in Maryland's 1st Congressional District.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, this discussion is not about safety, and it's not about making projects safe or making them more efficient. This is about politics. This is about an Executive order the President put in place that takes jobs out of the First Congressional District of Maryland and other districts where there may not be union workforces. Mr. Chairman, the unemployment rate is high enough in the First Congressional District.

Mr. HARRIS. No, I will not yield. The unemployment rate in the First Congressional District of Maryland--lower shore of Maryland--is higher than the national average, and we don't have union workers. So if some bureaucrat in Washington, because of a Presidential Executive order, says we have to have a project labor agreement on a project under this bill, under this appropriation, unemployed workers in my district aren't going to work on that project, and the hardworking taxpayers in my district, as the gentleman from Michigan has said, will be paying 12 percent to 18 percent more of their hard-earned tax dollars to pay for a project labor agreement in a district that they don't want that some bureaucrat in Washington decided they needed. Mr. Chairman, we can't afford that. This country can't afford it. We have a $1.3 trillion deficit. We have a debt that approaches $50,000 per person in this United States. And we're debating tonight about whether just to be neutral about language regarding project labor agreements. The gentleman from Arizona is absolutely right. This is plain English reading. It just says that the bureaucrat, for curing that contract, can't require a project labor agreement. If someone wants to know bid on it, they can bid union labor. They can bid all the union labor they want. It just says you can't require it as a condition of the contract. Mr. Chairman, we got sent here to do the right thing for our hardworking taxpayers back at home, those who want to have a job, who want to be involved in some of these Federal contracts. Without this provision, if this amendment passes, and this provision is struck from the underlying appropriations bill, people in the First Congressional District, those unemployed workers are not going to have the opportunity to work on those projects for the simple reason that they don't belong to a labor union. That's what will disqualify them. Not that they're unemployed, not that they don't want to work, not that they don't know all the safety rules, not that they can't do the job, not that they don't have a plumbing license or an electrician's license, because they all have to have that license to hold a job. And the proponents of this amendment know that full well. It's only because they don't belong to a labor union. That's what this fight is all about. Mr. Chairman, I hesitate to rise to oppose the amendment of the gentleman from New York, but in the First Congressional District of Maryland this hurts our unemployment situation. This hurts our hardworking taxpayers. I rise to oppose the amendment because in districts around America, just like the First Congressional District of Maryland, this amendment doesn't do justice to those unemployed workers. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I rise with my colleague from New Jersey to discuss the funding provided to the Department of Energy for unconventional fossil energy research and development. I first want to commend Mr. Frelinghuysen, the chairman of the subcommittee, for his strong support of the unconventional fossil energy research at the Department of Energy. As the committee report notes, the United States' oil shale reserves are estimated to exceed 2 trillion barrels of oil, more than five times the proven oil reserves held by Saudi Arabia. However, additional research is necessary to enable economic and environmentally safe production from this incredibly plentiful domestic resource. In order to accelerate the safe and effective development of the Nation's oil shale reserves, this legislation provides $25 million for oil shale technology research and development activities. As chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, I recently chaired a hearing to examine the challenges and opportunities associated with expanding the development and use of unconventional oil and gas production technologies. The subcommittee received testimony from expert witnesses about the need for targeted government research to address specific issues associated with developing these unconventional oil resources. These research areas include but are not limited to: oil shale resource characterization, the minimization and reuse of process water, the use of high-end computing applied to the physics and chemistry of oil shale production, the modeling and simulation of oil shale exploration and production technologies, and surface and groundwater protection. It is my hope that the funding provided in this bill will address these and other key science and technology areas that are critical to enabling oil shale production and will be used to advance the environmentally sound and efficient production of our resources rather than a regulatory agenda aimed at restricting such production or limiting access to oil shale reserves located on Federal lands. I would now like to yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chairman, first I want to congratulate the committee for doing its work to help curb the rise in government spending. I rise to offer an amendment to provide level funding for NOAA's Climate Portal program, rather than the increase in the funding requested by the President and included in the bill as it currently stands. The Climate Portal program is actually a Web site run by NOAA; and in committee testimony, Dr. Lubchenko suggested that this was a science Web site. This is where you can share climate science information and make decisions. Madam Chairman, the request is a 56 percent increase in funding. Now, the only thing that's gotten a 56 percent increase over the last 4 years is the size of the Federal deficit and the debt. So my amendment merely reduces the level of funding to the current level. But I want to read, as you click on some of these topics, what the science is at this port. I am going to read from an article just published on the Web site on May 2. It talks about farming. ``The rain was as loud as pennies falling on the roof of the truck's cab.'' Later on in the paragraph, ``We had been watching Johnson work in his field until the fat drops of rain sent us racing for cover.'' Next paragraph, ``The machine behind the tractor makes it easier than ever for him to roll the grass into submission, thousands of stalks pointing accusingly at the device that just pancaked them.'' Madam Chairman, that's not a scientific article. That's something I read to my children at bedtime. But this is what NOAA is advancing as a scientific Web site to share scientific information and is asking for a 56 percent increase in their funding. My amendment is simple. Let's just level-fund the Web site. Let's revert it to a truly scientific nature and come back next year, if and when our finances are better.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Chairman Ryan for yielding 3 minutes to talk about such an important subject as the health care of our seniors. You know, the other side of the aisle wants to play pretend. Let's pretend that we have a program sustainable for all future generations. Let's pretend that all our seniors right now have access to all the medical care and physicians that they want. Let's pretend that the Medicare program that the President's health care reform bill establishes for our seniors allows seniors and their doctors to choose what care is best for them. But, Mr. Chairman, we would have to be playing pretend because, in fact, we know that the program is not sustainable for all generations. This graph here is not from the Republican conference. This is from the Congressional Budget Office. This is what happens, the red. It's no accident that it's in red. This is what happens to Medicare spending under the President's proposals. We are right here in the middle. This is when my children reach their middle age. This is when they retire. This is when my grandchildren reach their retirement. It's not sustainable. Anyone looking at that graph knows it's not sustainable. We can't play pretend. We would have to play pretend that all seniors have access to physicians. Go into my district in rural areas where seniors tell you they don't have access to primary care already because the Medicare program currently squeezes the payments, the providers to where providers no longer choose to take on as many Medicare patients as they can. The President's plan makes it even worse. Finally, we would be pretending that patients get to choose and their physicians get to choose their care because under the President's plan, there are 15 unelected bureaucrats who decide, that President's rationing board, who decide what care my mother now will get, what care I'm going to get in 10 years, what care my son is going to get in 39 years when he reaches retirement age. Fifteen unelected bureaucrats, Mr. Chairman, by law only a minority of that board can ever have practiced health care. The majority are bureaucrats never having taken care of a patient. That's the plan that we have now. Mr. Chairman, it will break if we don't take care of it. I applaud the chairman of the Budget Committee for the bravery; and, Mr. Chairman, you know what the ads are going to be. You can see it now. You can hear all the talking points. America knows health care in America needs repair. They know the Medicare program needs repair if we're going to preserve it for future generations. I urge my colleagues to choose this as the repair for our future generations.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman from California just said what this is all about: The IPAB is about cutting expenditures for our seniors on Medicare when they need their health care. The IPAB is no straw man. It's a health care policy bureaucrat's dream and a Medicare patient's nightmare. It's 15 bureaucrats--and the gentleman from California called it right--insurance company representatives, pharmacy company representatives, benefit managers, employers, all those people who really have the care of an individual patient in mind. In fact, that rationing board limits the number of health care professionals who can serve to a minority, a minority of people, and then goes further and says, And, oh, by the way, they have to actually stop practicing health care for the 6 years they sit on the board. How close are they going to be to knowing what's going on in the care of a patient? The gentleman from Iowa talked about the myth of defensive medicine. I want to ask anyone who cares to go in a labor and delivery suite and look what's happened to obstetric care, to our women in America over the past 40 years because we don't have effective tort reform. I'm an obstetric anesthesiologist. I spent 30 years in a labor and delivery suite. In 1970, the cesarean section rate in this country was 5 percent. One in 20 women going to a hospital to have a baby would have a cesarean section. Last year it was 33 percent. I will tell you, not much has changed about childbirth in that time, but now a woman going into the hospital to have a baby has a one in three chance of having a cesarean section. Not only that, but 40 years ago--those of you who want to, ask people you know who delivered 40 years ago. Most obstetrics was delivered by a one- or two-person group where a woman got to know the obstetrician who was going to deliver her baby. Go ask the folks in your district now what happens. You go into a group of about 10 or 12 people because they can't afford the malpractice insurance. They have to go into a big group so someone else can pay it. It's impersonal service. Go and try to find an obstetrician who is in their fifties or sixties and practicing obstetrics. They gave it up long ago because they can't afford the premiums. The most experienced obstetricians are no longer delivering care to American women. The C-section rate is one in three, and a woman can't even expect to see her obstetrician every time she goes to those prenatal visits because there are eight or 10 in the group, and they all have to have a chance to see that patient. That's what the lack of tort reform has done to the delivery of care to women in this country. We need to pass this bill and pass it now.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. I want to thank the chairman of the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak and the gentleman from Virginia for giving me the opportunity to cosponsor this bill. The gentleman from Virginia, of course, is from the southern end of the Delmarva Peninsula. I represent the middle part adjoining Accomack County. We heard a lot during the State of the Union Address. The President stood just a few feet in front of you, Mr. Chairman, and talked about shovel-ready jobs and infrastructure. Mr. Chairman, there are shovel- ready jobs ready to go. This land adjoins Wallops Island, the launch facility which now is one of the places that launched private and public vehicles into space. It doesn't get any better than that for a poor county like Accomack. The chairman of the committee mentioned an 8 percent unemployment rate. Well, Mr. Chairman, I wish that Worcester County, where half the employees in this industrial park will work, had an 8 percent rate. The unemployment rate was 15.6 percent in Worcester County. The President stood there and said, We've got to get Americans back to work. Mr. Chairman, we need to cut through the red tape, just like the President said, and get projects like this going. There's no loss of recreation area. Accomack County has offered to, in fact, find another 32 areas to have the recreation area. So let's not pretend there's a loss. Let's not pretend this land doesn't belong to Accomack County. They hold the title. Like a poor stepchild they are coming to Uncle Sam begging for permission to create some jobs in Accomack County. And like the mean old uncle, Uncle Sam has said, No. There's red tape involved. We have a bureaucracy. You have to fill in all the blanks. You have to do this. Mr. Chairman, the 15.6 percent of Worcester County who are unemployed don't have the time for this red tape. We must do it. The gentleman called this unacceptable and dangerous. Mr. Chairman, you're right, 15.6 percent unemployment is unacceptable. It's dangerous to our economy. The gentlelady said it's inconceivable that we're here. I couldn't have said it better. How could our Federal bureaucracy have failed so poorly? We need to pass this bill, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, as a physician, you know that buried very deep in the President's 2,000-page health care bill was the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, an unelected, unaccountable 15-member rationing board appointed by the President for the sole purpose of cutting Medicare. Who will the 15 members of the board be? Well, the law actually forbids them from being active health care providers. It only allows 7 members of the board to even have a health care provider background. In short, a majority of the board will be composed of people who have no experience in actually caring for patients. Patients across the country, especially those in rural areas like my district, are already struggling to find physicians who will accept new Medicare patients. The IPAB will only make this worse. If Medicare beneficiaries are lucky enough to find a physician who will see them, the IPAB will place a government-rationing bureaucrat between them and their physicians. That government bureaucrat has no place in the physician-patient relationship in America. We need to repeal the IPAB now.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, on the anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 1849, I would like to salute the people of Hungary, a trusted ally of the United States, for the great heritage of those freedom fighters who stood up against tyranny and risked their lives in the name of liberty. I know that Hungarians today are no less committed to the principles of freedom, self-reliance and national sovereignty than our heroic ancestors. As an American of Hungarian origin I recognize that celebrating 1848 is nothing less than celebrating freedom. And indeed, it is the ideals of freedom and liberty that have linked our countries so inextricably together for centuries. It is a little known fact, that after the Revolution was crushed with the help of the Russians, it was the United States that negotiated Kossuth's release and thanks to this, the great freedom fighter could sail across the Atlantic to raise public awareness about the situation in Hungary. And this year marks the 160th anniversary of his Congressional address which he delivered in these very chambers to U.S. Representatives. In his address he said: ``Your generous part in my liberation is taken by the world for the revelation of the fact, that the United States are resolved not to allow the despots of the world to trample on oppressed humanity.'' Even in the most difficult times, when domestic affairs in Hungary were hard to decipher, Americans found the proper and prudent way both officially and unofficially to help those who were truly committed to freedom against those who strove to ignore the will of the people. Hungarians in 1848 took up arms in order to reclaim their national sovereignty, an ideal that I know Hungary's current government values very much. As Kossuth said while in America, ``The sovereign right of whatever nation to dispose of itself to alter its institutions, to change the form of its government, is a common public law of nations, common to all, and therefore put under the common guarantee of all.'' Americans treasure our own independence and share in the celebration of the Hungarian revolution.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, today I offer my sincerest thanks and appreciation to my District Director, Patrick H. Daly, Jr., for his seven years of service to me. Pat has been a vital part of my staff from before I was even elected to Congress, serving in my Maryland State Senate office as a Legislative Assistant. As District Director to a House freshman, he took on the many logistical challenges of setting up my three district offices in Kent Island, Salisbury, and Bel Air. He also oversaw my casework operations, which provided help to 1,200 constituents in the last year. He coordinated many constituent events and town hall meetings to keep me in tune with my District and hear the voice of the people. Simply put, Pat has always been there to see that the job is done, no matter how large or small the task may be. Pat has crossed the First Congressional District too many times to count in the name of constituent service, and provided goodwill among its residents that is immeasurable. I offer my very best wishes to Pat and his family for his bright future ahead.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Archbishop of Baltimore, Edwin F. O'Brien on his recent selection to serve in the College of Cardinals by Pope Benedict XVI. We in the Archdiocese of Baltimore have been blessed by his service and leadership as the 15th Archbishop of the nation's oldest See, the city of Baltimore. We applaud the Pope's decision to recognize his leadership in serving Him and His mission in Baltimore by elevating the Archbishop to serve in the College of Cardinals. Archbishop O'Brien, we thank you for your devotion to God and for your service to the Roman Catholic Church in Maryland and we congratulate you as our newest Cardinal.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, it's day 7 since the loss of religious freedom for Americans guaranteed under the First Amendment. We know that last Friday, when the final rule was issued by the Department of Health, it was identical to the rule issued last September, with no further accommodations for individuals of faith. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, on day 6 of the loss of religious freedom for Americans guaranteed under the First Amendment, outside the White House a Catholic priest and Presbyterian minister were arrested for protesting that loss of religious freedom when they knelt to pray for the restoration of religious freedom. Yes, Mr. Speaker, it is now illegal in the United States to kneel and pray in front of the White House for the restoration of religious freedom. These Americans had to pay a $100 fine for exercising their religious freedom in front of the White House. Mr. Speaker, you know that if they were Occupy protesters, I guess they would just put a tent over them and they would be immune from anything happening to them. But they weren't Occupy protesters; they were there to kneel and pray for the restoration of religious freedom. Mr. Speaker, I hope we don't go past day 7 of that loss of freedom.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, we have one of the most serious assaults on religious liberty in American history. The President's rule, finalized last Friday, in its unchanged form, as we just heard, violates the individual rights to religious freedom that every American shares. The Bill of Rights doesn't pertain to organizations. It wasn't written for groups. It was written for individuals, every individual having the right to exercise their religious belief. The President's rule not only restricts individuals, but it restricts everything except what exists between the walls of a church building. Mr. Speaker, that's not what the First Amendment is about. My parents, like many immigrants to this country, fled countries where those beliefs weren't held. My parents came from communist countries where we don't find it farfetched to believe that they would imprison, they would punish individuals for their religious beliefs. Let's look at what the President's Affordable Care Act has turned into. We knew and America knew when that bill was passed, because the previous Speaker of the House said: We just have to wait to pass it; we'll find out what's in it. Mr. Speaker, we are finding out what's in it, and America doesn't like it, because what's in it is the ability, under the current rule, to restrict individual religious freedom. And if you choose to exercise your religious freedom, you are punished by the government with a fine. And it's not just a few dollars; it's $2,000 per employee. If an employer has deeply held religious beliefs, deeply held, it's not up to the President or the Secretary of Health or anyone in the Federal bureaucracy or government to decide if those are appropriate religious beliefs. Yet that is exactly what this rule does. It says if you don't share their religious beliefs or their beliefs in certain types of health care, you are going to pay a fine to the government. Well, that sounds a lot like governments where immigrants have fled from to this country to share in the individual religious belief. Let's go down the list of what this final rule impairs. It violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed in this Congress two decades ago. It obviously violates the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause because it does place a substantial burden on individuals who choose to exercise religious belief. That's all they're doing. We have made it an effective crime to hold a certain religious belief that this administration disagrees with. That's not America. That describes a whole lot of other countries in the world, but it doesn't describe America. It violates the First Amendment free exercise rights because it intentionally discriminates--intentionally discriminates--against religious beliefs. It imposes requirements on some religions, not on others. It picks winners and losers. That's exactly what the First Amendment was meant not to do. And, Mr. Speaker, it's not going to be adequate if we just extend it to religious organizations because, I remind you, the First Amendment is not about groups or buildings or churches or any institutions; it's about the ability of every American to not violate their conscience. And if their conscience says, It would be wrong for me to provide insurance to an employee that would provide something that my religious belief disagrees with, who are we, as the government, to step in and say, You have to violate your religious beliefs; and if you don't, you pay a fine to the government. That's not the America we believe in. It never has been; hopefully, it never will be. We know that the President's final rule, because we just heard it-- and, Mr. Speaker, you know, some people listening to us will say, That's not true; that's not true. Go Google the final rule and compare it to the rule last summer, the final rule, issued hours after the President claimed a compromise, and compare it with the interim rule issued last summer. Not a comma is different; not a comma was changed. The smoke and mirrors was: Don't listen to what I say; don't watch my hands as I do this magic. Go and read the final rule. There was not a single change. There was an accounting gimmick. Americans understand accounting gimmicks. That's why we're in the fiscal mess we're in, because Washington likes them. This time the accounting gimmick attempts to override Americans' religious conscience, and you can't do that. Americans understand there's no such thing as free anything. Somebody pays for it. And if the government is going to mandate that an employer provide insurance that includes provisions that conflict with their conscience beliefs, this is an accounting gimmick to say that somebody else has to pay for the rest of that insurance policy that you provided. Every American knows that's not true. We know specifically for larger institutions that self-insure, they are the insurer. There is no other insurance company. Large bodies, and if they happen to be religious, self-insure. You will now force them to violate their conscience or pay a $2,000 per person fine. I want to thank the Representative from Colorado for bringing this point up tonight, reminding the American public to pay attention to the debate. Go look at that final rule and understand that we're in the same situation as we were last week with a violation of religious liberty that we should never tolerate.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Thank you for yielding to me to speak on this very important issue. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman from Louisiana has said, we really have to talk about saving Medicare. Medicare is under assault in a way that it has never been under assault before. The gentleman from Louisiana mentioned quite accurately that the President's health care bill passed 2 years ago would take $500 billion from Medicare spending on our seniors who are currently receiving Medicare--$500 billion. Now, how are they going to do that? What are we not going to deliver to those seniors? Well, the way it's done is the President appoints the Independent Payment Advisory Board, 15 appointed, not elected members, no appeal from their judgment. What they're going to do is they're going to say in a year when it looks like we're going to spend a little more on Medicare than the country can afford by the budget, we're going to decide what can and can't be delivered. The President's budget he just released this week makes it even worse because it sets even a lower budget target for Medicare spending. And, of course, the President doesn't even deal with the issue that's before the House this week, which is what are we going to do about physician payments. Now, Mr. Speaker, I represent a rural area of Maryland, Maryland's First Congressional District, where it's already very difficult for seniors to find a physician who is willing to take a new Medicare patient because, to be honest with you, they're afraid that their pay is going to be cut 30 percent at the end of this month, on February 29. And the President, in his budget, doesn't even deal with this issue. The President doubles down on the President's health care act. He sticks to that $500 billion in cuts that are going to occur. And not only that, he lowers the threshold for that Independent Payment Advisory Board to begin rationing care to our seniors. We have got to save Medicare. Mr. Speaker, some of the people listening are going to say, well, we're not going to believe these people. They all wanted to vote against the President's health care bill. Mr. Speaker, they don't need to believe us. Go to the Congressional Budget Office's Web site. It's nonpartisan. It doesn't pick sides. It says that the Medicare plan is going to go broke by the end of this decade. And if you don't believe them, go to the Medicare trustee's Web site. Just go to Google and search Medicare trustee's report. They say it goes bankrupt a few years after that. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is right. We have to address Medicare, and we have to address it now before the President's health care act destroys health care for seniors. My mother, who is 88 years old, depends on her Medicare. She depends on her prescription drug coverage. She depends on it to have access to the physicians that she needs for her health care. And, Mr. Speaker, I'm afraid that under the President's plan, my mother, and millions of other Americans, our seniors receiving Medicare, are just not going to have the care they're used to and that they deserve. We need to save Medicare. Mr. Speaker, I think we're going to hear about some of the ideas tonight about how we're going to do that. So I want to thank my colleague from Louisiana for yielding me these few minutes, and thank you for coming to the floor and doing this work tonight so that we show our Members and show the public who's watching how we have to save Medicare for our seniors. Thank you for yielding to me.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, once again we are reminded why we need to repeal the President's Affordable Care Act, which most Americans know as ObamaCare. Mr. Speaker, a majority of Americans already understand how harmful ObamaCare will be to American health care, especially to the millions of seniors on Medicare who will have that program cut by $500 billion if we don't repeal it. But 2 weeks ago, the latest administration rule implementing ObamaCare was announced by the Secretary of Health, and that rule would impose the latest mandate, this time, a mandate on all religious institutions to provide government-mandated coverage for drugs and surgery that is contrary to the beliefs of those religions. The greatest uproar was from the Catholic Church over the rule that would force Catholic institutions to pay the full cost of all government-mandated drugs and procedures, and that would include sterilization and abortion-causing drugs. That mandate would put those institutions in the position of either paying the full cost of those drugs and procedures that violate their beliefs or paying a government fine. I repeat: It would end up being a government-imposed fine to practice your religious beliefs, with the administration using the broad mandates of ObamaCare to impose those fines. But the religious intimidation by the administration didn't stop there. When the Archbishop for the Military Services, Timothy Broglio, wrote a letter about this new mandate to his diocese to be read at Sunday services, the U.S. Army Chief of Chaplains, a recent Obama appointee, ordered his chaplain corps not to read the letter at those Sunday services. Mr. Speaker, you know that those services are attended not only by the military, but by family and DOD employees. And this order was a clear violation of the First Amendment guarantees not only of the freedom of religion but the freedom of speech. Let me read from the letter, and you will see why the administration was so concerned: Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ: It is imperative that I call to your attention an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the church in the United States directly and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The Federal Government, which claims to be `of, by, and for the people,' has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people--the Catholic population--and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful. It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those immoral `services' in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as part of their policies. In so ruling, the administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation's first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to choose between violating our consciences or dropping health coverage for our employees. We cannot--we will not--comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America's cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God-given rights. Mr. Speaker, after protest, the Chief of Chaplains finally allowed most of the letter to be read, but ordered that the line ``We cannot-- we will not--comply with this law'' still not be read. Mr. Speaker, now you can see why The Wall Street Journal--not usually a paper that comments on religious matters--found this issue so compelling that today's lead editorial deals with this under the headline, ``ObamaCare's Great Awakening,'' with a highlight line, ``HHS tells religious believers to go to hell. The public notices.'' Yes, Mr. Speaker, the public noticed. Let me just read the opening of that editorial: The political furor over President Obama's birth control mandate continues to grow, even among those for whom contraception poses no moral qualms, and one needn't be a theologian to understand why. The country is being exposed to the raw political control that is the core of the Obama health care plan, and Americans are seeing clearly for the first time how this will violate pluralism and liberty. Mr. Speaker, in the last few days, a strategist in the President's campaign--not the Secretary herself or an administration official--has suggested that, well, maybe something can be done. Really, Mr. Speaker? Are we leaving dealing with First Amendment rights violations to campaign staff for resolution? This latest controversy has given us yet another reason to repeal ObamaCare, a bill forced on America by the last Congress and this administration. Given the obvious willingness of regulators to force their value system on all Americans regardless of religious belief, the editorial comes to the right conclusion: ``Religious liberty won't be protected . . . until ObamaCare is repealed.'' Mr. Speaker, the time for repeal is now.

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. I want to thank the gentleman from Texas who spoke so eloquently about the condition of the country and the condition it's left in. I want to remind the American people that one of the obstacles we still have to overcome is that we have a health care plan that was passed out of the last Congress that isn't in full effect yet, but we're starting to feel the problems with it. What I'm referring to is, of course, what everyone else calls the ObamaCare legislation, passed 2\1/2\ years ago now, not fully implemented until after this next election, but influencing Americans in their daily lives. Now, the majority of Americans don't agree with the plan. A majority of Americans don't want the plan, but we still have it. Interestingly, about a third of Americans think we don't have it anymore, that when the House passed their repeal last year in January-- one of the very first actions we took in the new House--they thought we were done with it, that America could wash its hands of it. But, in fact, the repeal bill was sent to the Senate where, as many other bills coming out of the House last year, it suffered the same fate. It sits in the Senate without the Senate taking action to do what the American people want, which is to repeal ObamaCare. America understands that that bill has many, many problems, some of which we'll talk about in the next few minutes, just to remind Americans this is still there. It's still causing problems. The gentleman from Texas spoke about the problems with our economy. As I go through the district I represent, I talk to businessmen and - women every week; and they tell me the same thing: they're worried about the economy. They're worried about government regulation. They're worried about health care insurance for their employees because they're worried about what the effect of ObamaCare is. And as this shows, 74 percent of American businesses surveyed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce say: The recent health care law--that's ObamaCare--makes it harder for their businesses to hire more employees. The bottom line is they don't know what the rules are. The rules are changing. As we know, 1,700 businesses and unions have to get waivers from that bill in order to keep their health care going this year. And of course those waivers will disappear in a year, and businesses don't know what's going to happen once those waivers expire. A real life example: a furniture business owner in the Fifth District of Texas, this is what he said: I could start two companies and hire multiple people; but based on this administration and the lack of facts with ObamaCare, I will continue to sit and wait. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Speaker, America knows that you can't possibly make another empty government promise to ensure 14 million additional Americans while you are going to save money, increase access, and increase quality. Americans have figured this out a long time ago. You can't get all those things. And they know and they suspect what's going to happen is what will happen: the quality will go down, and the amount of money spent on other health care programs by the government will go down. What's the other major health care program paid for by the government? Medicare. The ObamaCare bill takes $500 billion out of Medicare over the next 10 years. Most worrisome is how it takes that $500 billion out of Medicare. It sets up what's called the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Now, every American ought to be familiar with those terms because this is what's going to control your health care when you get old or your parent gets old or a loved one you know enters Medicare. These 15 bureaucrats, chosen by the President, not accountable to anyone, with no appeal of their decision, will decide what gets covered and what doesn't get covered in Medicare when the government runs short of money. Now, Mr. Speaker, you read the same headlines I do. The government's $15.2 trillion short of money, with no end in sight. The President's last budget, submitted to Congress a year ago--we're waiting to see the budget he's supposed to submit next week, which we understand will be a week or two late--that budget never balanced. Mr. Speaker, I don't have that luxury in my household. I actually have to make a budget balance. And Mr. Speaker, I would never make a financial move that I knew was passing along a debt to my children and my family. I wouldn't go out, buy a big house, buy a big car, take an expensive vacation, put it on a credit card that I knew my children are going to have to pay. But, Mr. Speaker, that's exactly what the President's budget and ObamaCare does. It takes the big government credit card, which is already past its credit limit, $15.2 trillion, runs it through the swiper one more time and says, we're going to insure 14 million more people. But don't worry, the cost will go down, the access will go up, and the quality will go up. Americans just don't believe it, and they have a right not to believe it. This 15-member board, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, IPAB is what we call it around here. What you ought to call it is the Voucher Rationing Panel. Mr. Speaker, what they are are 15 bureaucrats, specifically excluding someone who practices medicine from participating in the decisions of what Medicare is going to cover and not cover if and when the government runs out of money. But we know the government's going to run out of money. We know Medicare's going to exceed its budget. It does every year. But if that were all that was bad in the bill, we might be able to just repeal that and move on. But it's not. We saw earlier there were provisions on small businesses called the 1099 provision, making small businesses do tens of billions of dollars worth of paperwork so that the government can collect a few billion dollars more in taxes, meanwhile, strangling small businesses. This Congress was smart enough to repeal that aspect. Just last week we repealed another aspect of the bill. It was called, strangely enough, the CLASS Act. Now, what this act did is, this was long-term care insurance under the Medicare provisions that starts collecting the premiums now, but doesn't provide services until the future, meanwhile, spending those premiums on other expenses in the government. Sound familiar? Sound like what's happening to your Social Security dollars and your Medicare employment taxes now, your payroll taxes? That's exactly what this was. Set up what even Democrats called, in the Senate, a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud. So we repealed it. But last week, in perhaps one of the worst parts of the bill, which really had nothing to do with money, was when the Secretary of Health held that religious institutions had to provide care under their insurance policies that was not consistent with their religious beliefs. That is, sterilization, contraception, and abortion. Full coverage, no deductible, zero deductible, putting it in the same category as breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, the other measures that were meant to be covered by that clause in ObamaCare, the preventive care clause. Now, Mr. Speaker, that assumes, if you want to prevent illness, that pregnancy is a disease. Or pregnancy is an illness. What a long way we have come from when society felt that pregnancy was something to be celebrated, it was an extension of life, it was an extension of society, the next generation. The Secretary of, and I put it in quotes, ``Health'' in this administration, has decided that pregnancy is a disease or illness that needs to be prevented. That's not a good recipe for the future of our society or this country. And worst of all, it's a stark violation of the First Amendment of the United States that the government shall not compel anyone to go against their religious principles. They'll tell you there's an exemption, but there isn't. Yes, if you're a church, you're the church itself, you are. But God forbid that church goes into the community and runs a center for social justice, a center for adoption, a hospital. That religious institution running that other entity would be forced to provide coverage for something that is antithetical to the religious beliefs of that religion. Ladies and gentlemen, that is just wrong. It's bad policy, and it violates the First Amendment of the United States. Mr. Speaker, if I might inquire, how much more time do I have remaining?

Mr. HARRIS. May I inquire of the Chair how much time remains.