Bill Huizenga

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker on rollcall No. 381, I was absent due to personal reasons. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 382 I was absent due to personal reasons. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 384 I was absent due to personal reasons. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 387, I was absent due to personal reasons. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 388 I was absent due to personal reasons. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 412, I was absent due to personal reasons. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 413, I was absent due to personal reasons. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker on rollcall No. 383 I was absent due to personal reasons. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. The Supreme Court recently made it clear that the individual mandate is, despite what the President and my colleagues in this body are trying to say, it is a colossal tax increase on the middle class. While I'm disappointed in the decision, we know that the American people want us to come back in and change this law because it will not help them in the long run.

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. I appreciate my fellow friend from Michigan yielding this time. I'm a freshman. This is my first term in session here in Congress. And I wasn't here for the passage of this bill. But I can tell you, I am here because the American people wanted changed. They did not and will not accept what was passed by this previous Congress. You're going to hear a lot today about how it has helped people. We cannot go back to the status quo. But this is not the solution. This is not the way. And that's why I rise today in strong support of the repeal of the ObamaCare Act, H.R. 6079. The fact is, the recent Chamber of Commerce survey indicated that a whopping 74 percent of small businesses say that the law makes it more difficult for them to hire new employees. I'm one of those small business owners who's been paralyzed trying to figure out what my insurance costs are going to be for my employees. In addition, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts ObamaCare will reduce the Nation's labor supply by 800,000 people, not something that we need right now. This law is full of compliance uncertainties and disincentives for growth.

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 308, I was absent due to a family matter. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 309, I was absent due to a family matter. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 307 I was absent due to a family matter. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 313, I was absent due to a family matter. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 314 I was absent due to a family matter. Had I been present, I would have voted: ``no.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 311, I was absent due to a family matter. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 312, I was absent due to a family matter. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. HUIZENGA

Mr. HUIZENGA. Mr. Speaker on rollcall No. 310, I was absent due to a family matter. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. I thank my good friend from Illinois for yielding. Mr. Chairman, we not only serve on the Financial Services Committee together, we also share a Great Lake. Michigan is uniquely situated, literally bordering all five of the Great Lakes--Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Saint Clair, Lake Ontario. Four of those are actually international boundary waters with thousands of miles of shoreline that are on there, and there are dozens of ports throughout the Great Lakes. I might add that they are aptly served by the District Nine commander out of Cleveland as he is juggling all of the various assets that the Coast Guard has. But I do reject the plans by this administration to decrease the search and rescue capabilities in the Great Lakes. This vital amendment restores funding in order to maintain a level of capability that has been present in the Great Lakes for many years, and it has been much needed, Mr. Chairman. As the gentleman noted, these funds, combined with offsets in this bill, address shortfalls that this administration has actually advocated for. So Coast Guard search and rescue in all of the Great Lakes cannot be shortchanged. As we see in example after example, whether it be by boat or by helicopter in Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake St. Clair, Lake Ontario, some of the busiest boating traffic--recreational, as well as commercial traffic--that we see anywhere in the world concentrated in that area. I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. I would like to commend my friend, my freshman colleague from Minnesota, for offering this amendment, and commend him for his service to our country in the military and then what he's been doing. I think it's a valuable lesson, having been there in that cockpit yourself, dealing with this program. And I support this amendment as well. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. I wish you could meet my friend, Dr. Gaylen Byker, a truly renaissance man who was born in Iowa but raised in Hudsonville, Michigan, which is in my district, where he grew up in a family that was very entrepreneurial and very politically involved. His father actually served as a State senator, Gary Byker. Gaylen attended Calvin College, where he is now President, and earned a BA with concentrations in philosophy, English, political science, and speech, with a minor in Russian. He also entered the Army in 1967 and served in Vietnam, and he was discharged with the rank of captain. He went on to earn a law degree at the University of Michigan and then his master's degree in world politics at Michigan as well. After that, he decided he needed to get his Ph.D. in international relations from Pennsylvania. He then served and worked at an energy exploration company out of Houston. He worked on Wall Street, both on energy as well as in derivatives and futures. He then served as a lawyer in Philadelphia. He has been involved in numerous organizations and volunteer opportunities, including the Ruffed Grouse Society of the United States. He is an avid hunter--and a pretty good shot as well, I might add. He became president of Calvin College in 1995, where he has served it since then for the last 17 years. Gaylen is truly a person who has left a place better than when he found it. Dr. Byker, we just want to say thank you for your service to Calvin College in the greater community in west Michigan.

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Madam Chair, I rise in support of my amendment to strike section 212 of this bill, H.R. 5326. Madam Chair, Congress should be taking steps to encourage the creation of more private sector jobs, not growing government. Legislative provisions that prohibit, impede, interfere, obstruct, encumber, or delay contracting out opportunities, or even require in- sourcing, require these things to be done, are counterproductive to reducing the deficit, limiting the size of government, and creating private sector jobs. Madam Chair, I was one of the founding members of what has been dubbed the Yellow Pages Caucus, a group of people who came to Washington and said, hey, if the private sector can go out and do this, maybe we need to think about whether the government should be doing it and taking those opportunities away from those people who are advertising in the Yellow Pages or in the modern equivalent, on those Google searches that might be on people's iPads. Well, not only do Federal Agencies duplicate oftentimes private business, but many engage in unfair government competition with the private sector. This amendment would allow A 76 competition within the Bureau of Prisons for the performance of commercial activities within the organization. By allowing the private sector to compete for these services, it forces the Bureau of Prisons to take a hard look at the things that it is currently doing and find savings for us hardworking taxpayers. It is only common sense that these A 76 provisions force government to be more efficient. Now, what is an A 76? An A 76 is a circular or a letter that is produced by the Office of Management and Budget. And in this it says that whenever possible, and to achieve greater efficiency and productivity, the Federal Government should conduct competition between public Agencies and the private sector to determine who should perform the work. We are going out and saying, hey, where does it make sense to go do this? Who can go and do this cheaper and deliver a better product? It requires these executive Agencies to annually prepare lists of activities considered both commercial and inherently governmental. All we're doing with this amendment is to say that the Bureau of Prisons ought to be holding to the exact same requirements that all of the other Departments and all of the other Bureaus must do in the Federal Government. A 76 forces government Agencies to keep up with the lowest bid the private sector can offer, and it forces government to cut costs and increase efficiencies. Now the other interesting thing is that with this section 212, we wonder oftentimes what does section 212 do. Section 212 exempts the Bureau of Prisons from doing this activity. This makes no sense to me, Madam Chair. This makes no sense to me that we would take an organization like the Bureau of Prisons and say don't worry about it folks, we trust you. We think you're doing this as efficiently as possible. Well, Madam Chair, I believe in that old idiom that Ronald Reagan came up with: trust, but verify. I would like to see the Bureau of Prisons do that exact thing. I think they ought to go out and demonstrate that they can in fact and should in fact be doing these activities that they are. It's estimated, and this is from the Office of Management and Budget from July 2003, page 2 of a report that they have, ``Competitive Sourcing Conducting Public-Private Competition in a Reasonable and Responsible Manner,'' is the title of that, they estimate that this act of competition alone generates cost savings from 10 40 percent on average. So what we are really talking about is we cannot even ask about or study how we can save the hardworking taxpayers of America these moneys in the Bureau of Prisons. If it is good enough for the Department of Defense, if it's good enough for Treasury, if it's good enough for all of these other Departments and all these other areas, why can't it be an option to save those same dollars in the Bureau of Prisons. I ask you, Madam Chair, does this make sense to you? It sure doesn't to me. Well, during this continued period of economic uncertainty and unsustainable Federal spending, Americans are looking to Congress for commonsense, taxpayer-first solutions to reduce the cost of services provided by their Federal Government. This amendment allows our Nation's free market system to fairly compete. The role of government should be to govern, not to operate businesses inside of the government. And with that, Madam Chair, I ask for my colleagues to support my amendment to section 212. And with that, I yield back the balance of my time.