Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 19 I was unable to vote because my arrival in Washington from Iowa was delayed by severe winter weather. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 17 I was unable to vote because my arrival in Washington from Iowa was delayed by severe winter weather. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 18, I was unable to vote because my arrival in Washington from Iowa was delayed by severe winter weather. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding some time on this subject matter. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, whether it is amended or whether it is not amended. And I do so, Mr. Speaker, because first of all, the United States of America was founded upon the principle of equality, the principle of equality before the law. And we have further built upon the principle of equality of opportunity. As I have listened to each of the speakers address this tonight, there seems to be a continuing theme that there are specific groups of people that deserve a certain kind of specific consideration before the law and before the appropriations of the United States Congress, and specific access to assets that might be utilized for their specific use, as opposed to other Hawaiians that aren't defined as Native Hawaiians. I recall the debate back in 1959 when Hawaii and Alaska were both brought into the union, and I recall the discussions that were there then about the success that Hawaii had had by assimilating peoples into the broader society of Hawaii, and about how we didn't have to worry about the expression--then it wasn't Balkanization--but we didn't have to worry about the Hawaiians dividing themselves into separate and competing ethnic groups, that they were assimilated. Assimilation was the watchword of the day, the code of the day, and that was the message and the promise and the commitment that Hawaiians made to the United States Congress when they were brought into the Union as a State. Well, today we see a piece of legislation that comes before us that defies the very concept that was a principle that was clearly understood here on this floor of this Congress when Hawaii was brought into the Union. And when I look at what this does, the broad definition of Native Hawaiians that might mean Native Hawaiians anywhere where they are in the United States that could be brought under this umbrella of beneficiaries of assets that could be as great as 40 percent of the land mass of the State of the Hawaii to be governed and regulated by self-described, self-defined Native Hawaiians at the expense of everyone else, and I wonder how good these promises might be, the promises that we wouldn't set up gaming institutions, we wouldn't set up toll roads or roadblocks; this would just be a very compatible, logical pro-tourism industry. It might be. In fact, it probably will be, Mr. Speaker. But I am so concerned about the broader fundamental principle that applies here. And I would argue that the gentleman that has spoken on behalf of those Native Americans that actually are real tribes by definition that exists within statute and within the tradition of law, have no solution for the reservation system that we have. They envision it the same 100 years from now as it is today. And so we see the replication of pathologies from reservation to reservation and not the opportunities. I would have supported the Dawes Act however many years ago.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman, and I'd just make this point. When I read the material on this coming back up again, and I so appreciate Mr. Abercrombie's work, and I know his heart and his head are in this. This is in a verbatim email that I wrote up to my staff, and it goes this way. This bill makes a resounding statement that even Native Hawaiians can't be assimilated into a Western society. I disagree. It is a fundamental statement that goes to the heart of what it means to be an American. If, after all these years, Native Hawaiians have to be tribalized in order to function in a modern society, all Americans then must, by the identical logic, be Balkanized. Mr. Speaker, the philosophy is wrong underneath this. However good the thoughts are, Americans should be assimilated, not subdivided. We should not be pitted against each other, and Americans should not have certain assets designated to them because of the ancestry that they claim. We should be all Americans under one flag.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge from Texas, and I appreciate the chance to address you, Mr. Speaker, here on the floor of the House. I tell you, I am full of amazement that the President of the United States can make a proposal that he wants to come out here and negotiate on health care, and yet he doesn't want to negotiate on health care. He insists on bringing forward one or another of the bills that passed the House or the Senate, but he apparently doesn't have a bill yet. Bill Clinton had a bill. Hillary Clinton actually had a bill. This President actually doesn't have a bill. He has a position. We asked him if he was going to keep his word and present his legislation at least 72 hours before it would be voted on. It is quite interesting that the platitudes that the President has released in bullet points this morning at 10 o'clock happens to be 72 hours precisely until such time as the meeting starts at the Blair House on Thursday at 10 o'clock in the morning. So there is 72 hours to digest some platitudes, but all the while that is going on, and you have spoken of it very well, then the secret meetings have been taking place in the White House and wherever. This is something that is clearly being done behind closed doors, in formerly smoke-filled rooms, with guards on the outside, albeit there for the security of the people inside the room. We don't know what went on in there. But the President is not coming to the table looking to negotiate. The President is coming to the table looking to put the reconciliation gun to our head, cock the hammer and say, you can say ``yes'' on Thursday or we are going to pull the trigger on reconciliation. That is the nuclear option. That is the thing that was intolerable when Republicans discussed it, and I would like to think it is going to end up being intolerable to the American people. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate being recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. I appreciate my colleagues that have spoken in the hour previous and those that will perhaps join me in the hour that ensues at this point. As one can tell from listening to that dialogue, we can clearly see that there is a high degree of concern about the direction America is going. I would like to get into that pretty deeply, but I also recognize that my friend from Georgia has something left unsaid, and so I would be very happy to yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Broun).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I very much thank my good friend from Georgia, who is always there when I need him, and he shows up sometimes before I realize I need him. This may well be one of those times. Mr. Speaker, there are certain bonds that get built here in the House of Representatives. There are people here working late at night and they're up early in the morning and they are pushing an agenda, those that carry a Constitution in their pocket and those that believe it. There are some that carry a Constitution in their pocket that believe that it is a living and breathing document. That way of thinking that began to erode our liberties over 110 or 120 years ago is the way of thinking that says that there is no guarantee whatsoever, that the Constitution is not only a protection of the rights of the majority, it is the protection of the rights of the minority, whichever side of that equation you happen to be on. This liberty that we have is not just in the document, but it is something that we have to preserve and protect. Those that set about with the argument that it is a living and breathing document are actually undermining our liberty and turning it over to people in black robes who then can decide in their fashion what they believe the Constitution is supposed to say. So I pose the question, Mr. Speaker-- and I posed this question to Chief Justice Rehnquist when he was alive and sitting on the Supreme Court--and that is, if the Constitution doesn't mean what it says, if it doesn't mean what it was understood to mean at the time of its ratification, then what has it become? Has it become just an artifact of history, or is it a shield that liberal judicial activists can hold up to protect themselves from the criticism of the public that they would like to convince that they don't have the capability of reading a very simple document, that clear, plain, precise language of our Constitution? I yield again to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. KING of Iowa. The tyranny of the majority, as our Founding Fathers defined it.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, if I can just make this point that however long we might talk to the people on that side of the aisle, they're not going to change their mind. They are the wrong people. I can tell you that I stood here for 7 years and made some powerful arguments, and I can't think of a single time when one of them stood up and said, Oh, my, I didn't realize that. I didn't think about it that way. I'm going to change my mind. It doesn't happen in the real world. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia, and I appreciate him sticking around for a few extra kind words. The gentleman, the doctor, the marine from Georgia, thank you very much, Dr. Broun. I want to move along into a component of this that is at the front of my mind. The first part of this is so that you, Mr. Speaker, and the people on the other side of the aisle--and I know your constitutional position from a formal standpoint, nonpartisan position from a formal and constitutional standpoint, that would be one of the points we would disagree on, but how did we get here is the question. Why is it that America is watching as the White House has rolled out, what is it, 14 pages of platitudes, no legislative language, that is supposed to be a bipartisan negotiating standard? Why is it that the President of the United States has refused to give up on ObamaCare--which some could call ReidCare, others would call PelosiCare, some of that is ObamaCare, and I call it TroikaCare. It is a health care policy that is put together by those three rulers and leaders that are untested in a single party government, and this is what you get. You get something, Mr. Speaker, that is put together behind closed doors in those formerly smoke-filled rooms with guards outside the doors, and they are trying to put together some kind of package that can garner now 51 votes in the United States Senate and 218 votes in the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the President is chastising Republicans for not wanting to work in a bipartisan fashion. So what has happened? I will make the point, Mr. Speaker, that the President of the United States has simply lost his mojo. He doesn't have it anymore. He had the most juice of any President I can think of when he was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. This was a Nation that was on the verge of euphoria because they elected the first black President of the United States, because it was a new way forward, because it was all about hope and change. And this hope and change was defined differently to people depending on what they heard from the ambiguities of the President of the United States. One side, the extreme liberals, believed that the President of the United States was going to jerk the troops out of Iraq come whatever calamity. They believed that he would never engage in a foreign conflict and he would sell off our tanks and airplanes and spend the money on social programs. The other side believed that the President might be somewhat stable with national defense and maybe wouldn't spend so much money. And everybody certainly believed that the President would work in a bipartisan fashion, but it didn't happen. When the President of the United States, today's President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, was working in a complicit fashion with George W. Bush when TARP unfolded 1 year and several months ago, it turned out to be first $350 billion, and then another $350 billion. We see it as one package. Well, it was not. Under the 110th Congress, and it would be in the last months of the Bush administration, $350 billion was approved for TARP--Troubled Asset Relief Program. Henry Paulson came to this Capitol on September 19, 2008, before the presidential election and did what I call his ``Chicken Little routine.'' He said, The sky is falling, the sky is falling and it is a financial calamity, and the only way we can prop the sky back up is you give me $700 billion and do so right now. And maybe, just maybe I will be smart enough and wise enough to do this, but if you tie my hands and you put any strings on this money, if you try to alter or amend the latitude that I demand, then the whole sky is going to come crashing down. The economic world will collapse. Because he had been thinking about it for 13 months, he presumed we had only thought about it for 24 hours, and we had to bite the bullet and take the bait so that they could set the hook and reel us in on TARP. Well, Mr. Speaker, that was one of the things that happened. It wasn't actually the first. But through the course of this, President Obama, then-Senator Obama, was right along the way supporting for, voting for every irresponsible spending that took place as a United States Senator, and then as a President-elect United States Senator, then as President of the United States newly inaugurated. That is when he really turned up the heat. That is when he really opened the floodgates, and that's when the spending really moved on and that is when we really saw the nationalization of these eight huge entities. That would be three large investment banks, Mr. Speaker. It would be AIG, the insurance company. It would be Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. Now, that's six of the eight. The American people are watching this, and they're thinking we have a constitutional republic. We elect our representatives. Their job is to use their best judgment and their best resources to come to the best conclusions possible and to make decisions for the American people because, first of all, the American people can't all be investment bankers. They can't all know what's going on on the inside of Wall Street. They can't all know what the United States Treasurer is doing, and they can't understand necessarily all of the advice that's going into the White House or into the offices of the Members of Congress. They can provide their input, and we need to listen, but they also trusted the judgment. That's how our Founding Fathers set this up. That's why this is a constitutional republic, because every one of us has his own unique franchise. Every one of the 435 Members of the House and of the 100 Members of the Senate has a unique franchise. We owe the American people this, Mr. Speaker: first, our best effort; second, our best judgment. Our best effort is clear, which is to work as hard, as diligently and as efficiently as you can. Our best judgment includes input from the American people, and it includes input that comes from the experts and the data and the analyses and the studies and the testimony and the hearings that come before these committees so that we can come to a good conclusion. The American people, to some degree, trusted those conclusions, but they saw TARP come down the pike. Then they saw the takeover of some of the large investment banks and the investment brokers like Bear Stearns, Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG--bing, bing, bing, one after another--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac taken over by the Federal Government. They are getting more and more uneasy as this unfolds. Then, Mr. Speaker, as the American people had this knot in their guts, along came the nationalization of General Motors and Chrysler. That's when the credibility of the White House tanked, because, even though the American people don't necessarily understand Wall Street, they understand cars. Most of us own one or more of them. We know pickups, too, and people who know pickups certainly know cars. I'm not sure it's the other way around, Mr. Speaker. We know cars. We make cars. We market them. We sell them. We fix them. We race them. We buy them, sell them, trade them. We collect them. Americans have a love affair with cars, especially with their American cars. The President of the United States nationalized two huge, important American automakers. He took them over. He dictated the terms to the bankruptcy court, and the hearings that were held before bankruptcy changed not one single dot or cross on a ``t'' from the proposal that was dictated by the White House going into the bankruptcy court, according to testimony in the Judiciary Committee on just this. So the President dictated the terms, or his people dictated the terms, and the President appointed a car czar, a 31-year-old car czar who had never made a car or sold a car. We don't think he has ever fixed a car. We don't even know if he owned a car at the time, but if he did, we ought to take a look and see if it was an American car or if it was a foreign-made car. We began to lose faith quickly when we saw the White House take over our automobile business. The Speaker of the House, Mr. Speaker, made the point that she would not give the automakers bargaining control over the unions, over the United Auto Workers union. When she said that and when that term stuck and when the President of the United States and others leveraged the bondholders out--the secured creditors who had hard collateral invested in these companies--and when they had secured collateral that they could foreclose on, they were aced out. One of the reasons they were is that those secured entities that held those were some of the investment banks that were bailed out by TARP. So they had leverage that said, Give up your positions because we've got the money, and we can control your boards of directors. So the White House dictated then the terms of these bankruptcies to the automakers. They took the secured credit away from the investors, and they handed it over to the labor unions. Additionally to that, the President of the United States fired the CEO of General Motors, and replaced the board of directors of General Motors down to the last two. All but two were directed by the President of the United States, and the American people were repulsed by the very idea that the President of the United States would be engaged in nationalizing companies. As I look at this, I just have a little piece of document that I've printed off of the socialist Web site, the Democratic Socialists of America. Mr. Speaker, I would encourage you and the others who are interested in this to go to the Web site dsausa.org. There you will find some of the text of the strategy that appears to be the strategy of the White House. ``Social redistribution,'' it reads. Social redistribution is one of the goals. ``The shift of wealth and resources from the rich to the rest of society will require''--this is the Democratic Socialists' Web site--``the shift of wealth and resources from the rich to the rest of society will require, No. 1, massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector in order to provide the main source of new funds for social programs, income maintenance, and infrastructure rehabilitation.'' A massive shift of income from corporations and the wealthy. In other words, share the wealth, Mr. Speaker. This is right off the socialists' Web site. Item No. 2 reads, ``A massive shift of public resources from the military to civilian uses.'' We've seen that, too. Furthermore, on the socialists' Web site, it talks of the nationalization of major corporations. It says they don't have to do it all at once. They can do it gradually. They want to nationalize the oil refinery business. They want to nationalize the energy industry in America. All of that is on the socialists' Web site, Mr. Speaker. All of that looks stunningly like what we've seen happen over the last year and a half. The American people have had enough. Eight large entities. The last two were the automakers, and the automakers were the ones that gave the American people the insight into what the rest of those decisions were. Right after that came the stimulus plan--$787 billion poured into the economy for a purpose that only 6 percent of the people think it produced. Only 6 percent think that the stimulus plan worked. Right behind that came cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax. This was another plan to punish American business and to punish everybody in America who uses energy under the extremely myopic and ill-informed idea that anybody is ``trying to save the planet, trying to save the planet.'' I don't want to sound like a broken record. I'm actually quoting a high- profile person in the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker. Well, you're not going to save the planet if you're going to use false data--data that has been either jiggered or data that has been sorted and selected to produce the results that they want. It looks like the data that produced the hockey stick graph was selected data, and the language that came out of some of the leaked emails said we have to hide the decline. Michael Mann wants to hide the decline. Phil Jones wants to hide the decline. Well, the American people understand now that it wasn't just something that they didn't understand. Cap-and-trade, the science behind that--if you call it science--is another one of those things the American people thought they didn't understand, but surely, the experts did, just like they didn't understand Wall Street, but surely, the experts did. Now they're finding out the American people knew more about Wall Street than the people of Wall Street did, because they want fiscal responsibility. They aren't skimming the cream out every quarter and, come what may, letting the economy become unstable and, perhaps, crash. It's the same with cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax, and the pseudoscience behind that. They understand now that the results have been rigged to some degree--they don't quite know what. Right behind that came comprehensive health care reform--socialized medicine, Mr. Speaker. The American people rose up again, and they filled the town hall meetings in August, and they kept them full into September, and we came back here and argued and fought this legislation. As that unfolded, finally, on the 7th of November, a version from the House passed here on the floor. In the following month, on Christmas Eve, a version in the Senate, a significantly different version, passed there with a 60-vote super majority. On Christmas Eve, the elves were just putting away the last gift that they had put together, the last toy for the kids, and they were going to go to bed to sleep while Santa delivered, but Harry Reid had to have a vote over in the United States Senate. So the Christmas Eve gift to the American people was socialized medicine, Senate style. Now we have a House version and we have a Senate version, and the American people rose up. Not a single pundit on Christmas Eve, on the day that that bill passed, had said that there was a chance for Scott Brown to win the United States Senate race in the special election in Massachusetts, which was scheduled for and did take place on January 19 of this year. Not a single pundit predicted it on that date. No one saw it coming. Some poll showed Scott Brown down 30 percent. Others showed him down 21 percent on that day. His opponent went dark, and they stopped the campaign. People thought that everybody would be distracted over Christmas, and so there wasn't any point in doing politics during that period of time from Christmas Eve on through New Year's Eve and on into the new year, when you finally get back into the rhythm of things. Yet the thing that didn't get anticipated was that, oh, we talked politics all right when we got together for the holidays. We do several King Christmases to get it all taken care of in the right way. We talk about politics. We talk about religion. We talk about the weather. So do all kinds of Americans, and so do people in Massachusetts. So, when they came through the other side of that and with the intervention that we had, Scott Brown obviously won the election in Massachusetts in the ``Scott Heard Round the World.'' That was the death knell for socialized medicine in America. The President of the United States immediately refused to receive the message from the people in Massachusetts, and he insists on pushing ObamaCare back at us over and over and over again. While that was going on--excuse me, Mr. Speaker. I think I need to make this point--from the 19th of January, there were a lot of other maneuverings that went on. Senator Tom Harkin said that they had already negotiated a settlement between Democrats so that they could figure out how to pass a bill before Scott Brown won the election. That strategy, I presume, was predicated upon an assumption that they would have 60 votes in the Senate. In any case, they contemplated the idea that they might have to try to move something through on reconciliation--the tactic that they use in the Senate on rare occasions which Democrats call the ``nuclear option,'' but it's not too handy to call it a ``nuclear option'' today. Mr. Speaker, even though the blizzard shut this town down for a week and it was hard to get some business done, they have been meeting behind closed doors again. Even though the American people are revolted at the idea of cooking up this toxic stew called ObamaCare-- ``TroikaCare'' I called it earlier--this toxic stew that started with socialized medicine, single-payer government runs it all, this big, old, dated, 15-year-old, tainted soup bone called HillaryCare, they dropped it into a pot to cook up this health care bill. Then they saw that nobody wanted it. Nobody wanted the plain old, straight, single- payer that President Obama, as candidate Obama, had promised that he was for to the American people. So they started throwing in some other kinds of vegetables and things to change the flavor of it or the looks of it a little bit. So they gave some options about it the other way, but it still turned out to be the same soup bone in there, that same tainted meat that cooked up this toxic stew. This toxic stew, called ObamaCare, is something the American people don't want. They don't want the taste of any toxic stew, and once it is, no matter what you add to it it's still toxic. It's still tainted. The American people don't want a potful, and they don't want a bowlful, and they don't want a cupful, and they don't want a spoonful. Mr. Speaker, they want no measure of this national health care plan that has been cooked up. It's tainted. It needs to be thrown over the side, thrown out, and we need to start over. That's what 47 percent of the people say--they want to start over. Another quarter of them says to just throw it out and do nothing. There is maybe a quarter of them who think--I think the number was actually 23 percent--that ObamaCare should be passed, and that's a pretty low percentage. Thomas Jefferson said a large initiative should not be passed on slender majorities. Well, now they're trying to push a large initiative through without a majority. I say that because, Mr. Speaker, the American people have spoken. The American people realize now what they have produced in the past election. They know they have got a new election coming up here in November of this year. The political center of America has moved, and the elections haven't caught up to reflect the movement of the political center, but no one doubts it will happen. They are just as confident that there are going to be significant seats that are going to be picked up here in the House of Representatives. So I'm going to make this point, Mr. Speaker, which is that nothing good can come from the President's insisting on pushing ObamaCare back out onto the table on Thursday. Nothing good can come from closed-door, secret meetings, planning a strategy called ``reconciliation-nuclear option,'' which is the equivalent of holding a gun to the heads of Republicans, figuratively speaking, and then saying, Listen, I have all the cylinders full; the hammer is cocked. This is reconciliation- nuclear option. Now you can either accept this that we offer to you, ObamaCare through this version, or, if you don't, we're just going to pull the trigger, drop the hammer and run that reconciliation package through the Senate and over here to the House where the House would be sitting with two Senate versions passed. Then they would pass the reconciliation, which are the changes that the House insists on in the Senate bill--not the House--excuse me--the Speaker and the House Democrats insist on in the Senate bill. If they pass that, they would then hold it and not message it to the President. They would wait, and then they would pass the Senate version of the bill, message that to the President, ask him to sign the Senate version. Then the reconciliation-nuclear option package would go to the President of the United States, and he would sign that right afterwards, probably in the same bill-signing ceremony, and the second bill amends the first bill. That, Mr. Speaker, is how honest this is, and I'm not suggesting that it is. That should give the American people an idea of what's going on here, and it is something that repulses them and me. The job of the Speaker is to bring out the will of the group, not to bring out the will of the Speaker. We have some negotiations to take place. Before we go to those, I want to make a point that is very useful to me, and it is something that was originated within the mind and the thought process of my friend from Minnesota. This is the Declaration of Health Care Independence. I could read this whole thing down here, but it recognizes six points above of what went wrong. Those six points are that everything that's going on right now, except for what Republicans have done, has denied our American liberty. It increases our taxes. It cripples the economy. It creates a new tax. It creates a bureaucracy that will devise ways to increase the spending. It empowers bureaucrats to do what they will to us. And it costs us quality and choice. Those are the negatives. Mr. Speaker, the positives are these in this Declaration of Health Care Independence: These are the things that we say are the new rules for the road going forward. We're going to consider working with people who believe in these principles. These principles are, number one, we're going to protect the doctor-patient relationship. Number two, we're not going to add to the debt. Number three, we're going to improve, not diminish, the quality of care. What we do is going to be transparent in its negotiations and in its meaning with no favoritism to anyone from any State, equal protection under the law. We're going to treat people the same whether they're Members of Congress or whether they are your regular citizens that don't have the privileges that we have here. We are not going to fund abortion. We are not going to fund illegals. There will be no new mandates on the States, individuals, businesses, or employers. I said equal protection. And we're going to utilize the marketplace of ideas and choice with competition. That, Mr. Speaker, is what this Declaration of Health Care Independence does. It currently has at least the signatures of 96 Members of Congress. Somebody printed that there was a small number of people that have supported this. That's only 2 days of trying. Ninety- six Republicans have signed this. Not a single Democrat has come forward and been willing to sign it at this point. And we need to send a strong message to the leadership, going cheek to cheek with the President of the United States and dancing a tango and acting like we want to do business and we don't have any rules for the road. These are the rules of the road. And I will, Mr. Speaker, make the announcement here that I will not vote for a bill that doesn't honor and respect these parameters. And I want to start with single standalone pieces of legislation, and I want to start with tort reform. I need to recognize the gentlewoman from Minnesota because she was here first for so much time as she may consume until such time as Mr. Gohmert gets nervous about it.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Exclusively with Democrats.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I have not seen the bill.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I very much thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota. In transition to the gentleman from Texas, I will just say I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, who will not be at the summit, who will not have a forum, who will not have a microphone, and that will be there will be no outspoken conservatives allowed to address that issue on Thursday at the Blair House. That's a given. I make that prediction for the American people, Mr. Speaker. I yield to the gentleman from Texas who has so patiently waited and has so much to say. And I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for joining us.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank my friend the judge and Congressman from Texas for joining us here this evening. And to bring this together and bring it to a close, Mr. Speaker, I'd just say this, that there will not be outspoken conservatives that will be part of this discussion. There may be outspoken liberals; that would be if the President speaks up. That would confirm that, in my view, Mr. Speaker. But the American people have rejected the very idea that the Federal Government would do what it would do, take over 100 percent of the health care in America and all of the health insurance policies that are in America, and, by the way, if they say that they won't, but they'd actually regulate every single one, it's true. I talked a moment earlier, some minutes earlier, about the nationalization of these eight huge entities and what that means to free enterprise, but the real utter irony that we have, Mr. Speaker, is that not since 1973, since Roe v. Wade, have there been thousands and thousands of people who have stood up and said the government has no business telling a woman what she should do with her body. That is a sacrosanct decision made by the woman and her doctor and her pastor or her priest. I've heard the argument over and over and over again. And it is made by men and women. It's been made for two generations. And now the very same people that are arguing that you can't tell a woman what to do with her body, are now advocating that the Federal Government should take over the management of everybody's body. The utter nationalization of the most private thing we have, our health care. Take away our choices, take it over and manage it, give us whatever insurance policy the Federal Government will approve, tell us what we have to pay for it, tell us what mandates will be included in it. And if we can't afford it, they will give us a refundable tax credit, and if we can't afford it and don't buy it, they're going to fine us, and they're going to fine the employer that doesn't produce it. This is a mandate for the first time in the history of America that the Federal Government would mandate that a person has to buy something that is imposed on us by the Federal Government, and I say ``no'' to it all.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) for leading on this Special Order tonight and for leading on fiscal responsibility here in the United States Congress. This balanced budget amendment is something that I am proud to be an original cosponsor of. I have done so every time that this has been offered since I have been here in Congress. And the dialogue that is here tonight adds so much to something that has been missing completely, I think, from the administration and from the White House. We went from a point of Republicans pushing towards a balanced budget and listening to the PAYGO arguments of the Blue Dog Democrats demagoging on the issue. I don't know where they are today. It seems to me that they have gone underground. Maybe they are the Ground Hogs rather than the Blue Dogs at this point. I don't hear anything from them about balancing the budget any more, because they understand that in order to fund this kind of profligate spending that we have, this $1.4-plus trillion deficit created by this Obama budget, that, by their method, we would have to raise taxes dramatically. What I wanted to do is keep the taxes low, slow the growth in government; and for years I said, slow the growth in government so that the economy can catch up. I am now to this point where I would say the other way is that I don't believe the economy can catch up with the spending that we have. I think we actually have to shrink government in order to get it back in line. This is going to be a very big task. It isn't going to happen under Speaker Pelosi's watch. It isn't going to happen if President Obama has a veto pen to control our spending in this Congress. But we do have an obligation to advance, as much as we can, this constitutional amendment. We have an obligation to offer a balanced budget, which we did this year. The Republican study committee balanced budget, that is something that I had pushed for for some time, and we will have a balanced budget offered this year. So I just encourage all of my colleagues, Madam Speaker, and everybody in the United States of America to step up to this level of responsibility. If we can do it with our family checkbook, we must do it with our government checkbook. If we fail to do so, our economy will continue in this downward spiral. We have got to get our capital, our money, our spending back underneath us and realize that government cannot grow us out of this economic problem that we are in. It has got to be the private sector. And the private sector cannot continue to pay the taxes to service the interest and the debt of a deficit that we have been spending under this administration. I would point out, also, that Speaker Pelosi took the gavel at the end of November elections in 2006, January of 2007. At that time, we saw capital investment in industry go significantly downward. And I watched the members here and the freshmen from the other side tonight talk about how this was all Bush's problem. Well, if they are taking responsibility for anything that turns good, they have to accept the responsibility for what has happened since Speaker Pelosi took the gavel. All spending starts in the House of Representatives. I thank the gentleman from Virginia, and I yield back.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I appreciate the honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House. I appreciate the previous hour, the gentleman from Virginia leading it, talking about the responsibility that we all have to provide a balanced budget here in this Congress and recognizing that the political forces that are at play here, let's say in Congress and across the country, everybody wants their measure. It has been something where Federal dollars have been distributed on down through the chain from the Federal Government to the State to the counties to the cities, other political subdivisions, parishes. Other examples of that, individual organizations get appropriations. It has been very, very difficult for this Congress to find the discipline to produce a balanced budget. So that's one of the reasons why I believe strongly that we have got to amend the Constitution so that we have real strict constraints, because Congress hasn't shown the discipline to balance the budget. That would not be the case for the individuals that are here on the floor tonight that are pushing so hard for this constitutional amendment. Every one of us that are cosponsors of the resolution led by Mr. Goodlatte would vote for a balanced budget, of course, and we would also and have supported a constitutional amendment. I wanted to transition the discussion just a little bit tonight, Madam Speaker, from this fiscal responsibility on over to the health care responsibility. First, I'd take us back to the President's statements and throughout the campaign and into his Presidency and after he was inaugurated as President over here on the west portico of the Capitol building, and that was January 20th of last year. That first anniversary just rolled around last Wednesday, Madam Speaker. The President of the United States, President Obama, said that we are in an economic problem--I don't want to overstate the language he used, but we couldn't fix the economy without first fixing health care, that health care is apparently a contributor. Too much health care spending is a contributor to the economic problems that we are in. So it didn't make sense to me and it didn't connect that when you have what was described as an economic meltdown, a chance that we might be losing the fiscal structure of currency and trade between the countries and the global financial structure, if we're risking a meltdown of the global financial structure, I don't know how we could think the problem of spending too much money on health care, solving that is going to solve the economic potential meltdown. But that was the position that the President took, Madam Speaker, when he said over and over gain we can't fix the economy without first fixing health care. So, even though it didn't make sense, that was the position that President Obama took, and here we are. The average industrialized country spends about 9.5 percent of their GDP on health care. Our numbers are about 14.5 percent of our GDP. Some will say a little over 16 percent of our gross domestic product on health care. So the President's proposal is we spend too much on health care, but his proposed solution is spend more on health care. In fact, spend a lot more on health care, even to the point where he drew a line and said, I won't sign a bill that costs more than $900 billion. So the House went through a lot of logical contortionism and contrived a bill that tried to stay underneath that level and then sent it over to the Senate, where they went through a few more, let me say, accounting contortionist activities to try to be able to proscribe their bill from going over $900 billion, why? Because the President said he didn't want to sign a bill that costs more than $900 billion. Well, it turns out that the accounting gimmicks were so stark that anybody else would have been laughed out of the Econ 101 classroom if they had proposed such a thing as, let's say, 10 years of revenue and 5\1/2\ to 6 years of cost to get down to a number that's just slightly under $900 billion. When you look at the first real 10 years, according to Senator Judd Gregg from down this hallway in the Senate, the first real 10 years is $2.5 trillion. We have some other numbers out of the House side that shows around $2.1 trillion in cost for the first 10 years. And when you look at what John Shadegg has put together, you really see some numbers that escalate all the way up to $6 trillion. So the President's problem is, we have an economic problem that he wants to solve by, first, fixing health care because we spend too much money, and we're going to fix it by spending a lot more money, trillions of dollars more, $1 trillion to $2 trillion to $3 trillion to maybe as much as $6 trillion more. Illogical? As I said, you'd be laughed out of an Econ 101 classroom to come up with an argument that you could do an accounting that showed 5\1/2\ years of cost and 10 years of revenue and then claim that it only costs $900 billion under that. So we know that's, number one, a flawed premise, a flawed result. The American people understood that, even though the people in the echo chamber in the White House and the leadership chambers here in the House and in the Senate didn't seem to understand that. The second thing, the President of the United States consistently said that we need more competition in health insurance, that the insurance companies aren't competing, they don't have competition. So in order to do that, he proposed that we create a Federal health insurance program. A Federal health insurance program, that the Federal Government get in the business of competing against the private sector health insurance industry. Now I wonder if the President was briefed on how many health insurance companies we have in the United States. That number is 1,300. There are 1,300 health insurance companies in the United States. Now that would seem to be a lot of competition to me, to have 1,300 companies and have the Federal Government get into this and create one more company--the Federal Government, as big as it is, as much advantage as it would have. Then we would have, though, 1,301 companies in the United States selling health insurance. How many policy varieties do we have? Well, Madam Speaker, that number falls in the area of 100,000 possible policy varieties out there in the marketplace. So 1,300 companies, 100,000 policy varieties that one could choose from if they could buy insurance across State lines. The President wouldn't go for allowing people to buy insurance across State lines. That would be a little bit too much liberty for an American to have. So instead, he would want to impose a single-payer--he said he was for single-payer many times during the campaign--a single-payer plan, which would be a Federal health insurance plan to supplant or replace all 1,300 companies and 100,000 policies with the beautiful, wonderful Federal Government offerings that would surely be adequate for anybody in America and satisfy all of us, unless we just weren't quite enlightened yet. That seems to be the message I'm hearing from the White House. So we find out that we had two flawed premises. One was, if we spend too much money on health care, spending more doesn't solve that problem. The second premise was, if health insurance companies need more competition, the way to get it is not to put the Federal Government in the business and try to replace them and drive them out of business. The way to get it is to open up sales across State lines so that that young man that is paying $6,000 a year for health insurance in New Jersey can buy his health insurance from Kentucky, where a similar policy would cost him $1,000 a year, not $6,000. That would be an example of what's going on. If we took the House version of the health care bill, a young man in Indiana, would see his health insurance premiums go up 300 percent. His $84 a month would be $252 a month, almost exactly a 300 percent greater health insurance premium because of the mandates and the language that is in the House bill or in the Senate bill. So the American people watched this, Madam Speaker. They watched it all across America. We watched the reaction, the rejection of the American people of this irresponsible spending. It was discussed pretty deeply in the previous hour. The nationalization of these huge entities, which was discussed by the Democrats in the hour before. It sounded to me like George Bush had nationalized all of these companies and had taken over the private sector, and now here we are, President Obama is stuck with all of that, and that they don't really have any choice, except to go do a lot more of what it was that they said that George Bush did that was wrong. Well, I'm not here to make a statement into the Record that George Bush got it all right, Madam Speaker. He got a lot of it right. A few of the things history will judge that he didn't get quite as right. But what we have seen in the last 16 or 17 months--and at least 12 of them have been under the Obama presidency--we have seen the nationalization of eight huge formerly private-sector entities, entities that are making a profit and competing in the private sector. That's three large investment banks, AIG the insurance company, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, Chrysler. And throughout all of that, put on one end the $700 billion worth of TARP and on the other end the $787 billion worth of economic stimulus plan that looks like maybe only about a third of that has been spent at this point, but they still want another $150 billion or more dollars in Son of Stimulus, or Stim II, some call it. This is Keynesian economics on steroids, and I have heard the President say--and I doubt if he will make this statement from this Well, Madam Speaker, tomorrow night--I have heard him say that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal actually did work, but the problem that he had was in the second half of the decade of the 1930s. He failed to spend enough money. If he would have just spent a lot more money, then the New Deal would have actually been a good deal, but FDR got a little nervous about spending too much money, so he pulled back. Those were the words the President used, ``pulled back.'' And then what we had, according to his description, was a recession within a depression, and it was brought about by the Federal Government not spending enough money. Well, this wild program, these Keynesian economics on steroids have been driven by this presidency--not driven by George Bush--driven by President Obama. And by the way, every nickel and dime, every nationalization, every single move that was taken in the last months of the Presidential campaign and in the last months of the Bush presidency, were all things that were approved by and supported by President Obama. He voted for TARP. He spoke for TARP. He sat at the table in the White House and spoke in favor of TARP. That's $700 billion, and you can't hardly say that it was not President Obama's responsibility when he spoke for, went to the White House and negotiated for it, voted for it and took it over--and by the way, that TARP was only--and I say only, Madam Speaker. The original TARP was $350 billion. That's half of what Henry Paulson asked for. The other $350 billion had to be approved and authorized by a President to be elected later, by a Congress to be elected later. That's this Congress, this 111th Congress. That's this President, President Obama. It's the Pelosi Congress, the Reid Senate, and the Obama presidency, all of this except $350 billion in spending. So it brings us to this point where the American people have seen that they thought that they had elected people that were responsible, that understood high finance and the whole big picture that a government has to do so well--that is this constitutional Republic, this representative form of government, Madam Speaker. And so when we saw the TARP plan come through and the nationalizations of a couple large banks and then AIG, and we watched how some of those insider deals worked out pretty good in the long run for those people that were inside, as we marched down this line--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--the American people were getting ever-more nervous at the spending and the nationalization, the government takeover of private business. But when they got to the takeover of the car companies, Madam Speaker, that, for sure, wasn't George Bush. That was all President Obama. When that happened, the American people's lightbulbs came on because they know cars. And when the car czar turned out to be a 31- year-old fellow that had never sold or made a car--we don't know if he actually ever fixed one or what he drove--but in any case, he was not qualified to be the car czar, and I think that that was a universal opinion or he wouldn't have been gone. But the American people saw with that example that the Federal Government, that they really didn't know what they were doing inside the White House echo chamber, and they got ever more uneasy, ever closer to the civil type of a revolt that took place. We saw it happen in Virginia, and then we saw it happen again in New Jersey, and then in Massachusetts a little over a week ago when Scott Brown was elected to the United States Senate--the most improbable place. And when the exit polling was tabulated, and they asked people, Why did you go vote for Scott Brown? Over 70 percent said, I did so because I want to kill the bill. I want to kill the socialized medicine bill. Madam Speaker, that bill may be dead. On the other hand, it might be a--I know it's a monster. It might be a cold-blooded monster. And on a cold day, and it is a cold day here, you can't tell if a cold-blooded monster is alive or dead. But I want to make sure that it's dead and that bill stays dead and that the American people are glad that it is dead, and they don't want to see it resurrected by the White House, by the Speaker of the House, by the majority leader of the United States Senate or anybody else. They breathed a big sigh of relief and a shout of joy went up all over America when Massachusetts elected Scott Brown, because people are going to be allowed to keep their liberty. And we want to make sure they're allowed to keep their liberty. And for that reason, some of us, and my colleague from Texas certainly in the middle of this, worked to put together a declaration of health care independence. We want to put a marker down that we all adhere to, that we can keep our word on because there remain people in government, I mean, at least in Congress, that do give their word and keep their word. As cavalier as it's been dealt with here in the last few months coming out of the White House, those of us that'll sign on this declaration of health care independence, we intend to lay our word down and keep our word. And I say that here, and I haven't backed up on mine. Neither has the gentleman from Texas. I think I'd get along pretty good in east Texas. There's some times I'd like to go down there and visit those folks because it's quite interesting the people that they send up here from that territory. And I'd like to yield so much time as he may consume to my friend, the gentleman from Texas, Judge Gohmert.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, listening to the gentleman from Texas recount the circumstances by which the Declaration of Independence was written, and I recall reading through a fair amount of that history and watching a movie or two, some of the frustration that Thomas Jefferson felt with John Adams' scrutiny of his language and later on Ben Franklin's and then the broader Congress, I've never been in a position where I could so sympathize with Thomas Jefferson as I do. But also I so much more appreciate the artful work of the Declaration of Independence because it was a product of a lot of fruitful minds that had to come together and to be able to take all of the ideas and patch them together and then turn it into something that is beautifully eloquent at the same time. It's pretty hard to do. It's like a piece of sheet music and trying to patch in different stanzas here and there and have it come out and have it actually play right before the orchestra. And the Declaration of Independence has stood up under the tests of time as one of the most beautifully written documents anywhere. But part of the reason is not just its eloquence but because it speaks to the heart of humanity. We know we hold these truths to be self-evident, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think if he could go down do to the Jefferson Memorial and realize that of the four panels inside of the memorial, three of them--the quotes of Jefferson--three of them referenced his belief in God. It's hard for the people on this side to argue that Jefferson was a Deist when three of his quotes referenced God. And, by the way, there are two typos in there, Madam Speaker, that I would challenge the historians to go down there and check on them. One of them comes to mind right away. The other one I'll think of when I go back down there to read it. I wanted to take up this issue of our Declaration of Health Care Independence which will be rolled out tomorrow, and we will lay it out in more of a clear, concise form. But it's laid out on these principles that you've heard Mr. Gohmert talk about and the prediction of what would happen--let me say what would have happened if that horrible socialized medicine bill would have been sent to the President's desk where, if he could sign his name at all, he certainly would have signed the bill. He had no reservations about what was coming out of the Pelosi House and Reid Senate. The people of Massachusetts did; the President did not. And the American people line up against this in any form, any of these forms that have been proposed, at least 70 percent in opposition. And so here's why first the American people lined up against this socialized medicine proposal, either the House or Senate version or the ObamaCare as it's sometimes described, because we know that a Washington takeover--and the American people know, Madam Speaker, that a Washington takeover of American health care would deny fundamental personal and economic liberties, and it would devalue our individual liberties, and it would reduce the principle of limited government as established by the Constitution. That's number one. It would have increased costs and taxes upon every entity that we could possibly mention, and it would have crippled our American economy, and it would have created inescapable new taxes, mandates. If the Federal Government were for the first time in the history of the United States to produce or approve a product and then require every American to purchase that product--the people that couldn't afford it, send them a check and then say, Use this voucher to buy yourself some health insurance, or, by the way, If your employer has 50 or more employees, they have to provide your health insurance for you. Unless you're in the construction business, then it's five or more employees because of the exemption that was written in by the construction labor union. So all of these little construction companies that are sitting here with five and maybe tomorrow are going to have six employees, they're only going to have five--those that have six through 49 would be treated differently than every other employer because they were in the construction business, because somebody in the construction business had unions that were strong enough to leverage a piece of favoritism into the legislation. But if there is a mandate there, it is a tax. Whether it is a tax that is levied and you have to pay the tax to the IRS and they go out and buy your insurance for you or if the Federal Government mandates you go out and buy that insurance, the only difference is who actually handles the transaction. You handle it yourself to avoid the IRS levy against you, which would be the fine. The punishment for not paying it, the same thing. A mandate to buy insurance, to compel people to buy a product produced or approved by the Federal Government for the first time in history that that has ever been done is a tax, a new tax, and it's a new tax on everybody that has to participate that wasn't otherwise or wouldn't otherwise have been participating. That is one of the other bad things about this. It would institutionalize, Madam Speaker, a massive, ever- expanding Federal bureaucracy that is impersonal and impractical. And that bureaucracy would devise new ways to grow and get more power and diminish the liberties of the American people. That's the nature of bureaucracies. They've always done that. And we've put people in white shirts and ties and sent them off in an expensive Federal building, and then they set about building empire. And they'll come back here and say, We need a little more empire, and they'll write rules that we'll never see. And those rules will have the full force and effect of law, because this Congress has abdicated a lot of our responsibility when it comes to rules. So the bureaucracy grows. The huge administration state grows. And it also would have--and I say ``have'' because I believe this bill is dead and I want to make sure it stays dead--it would have empowered bureaucrats to interfere with a doctor-patient relationship and that the process of doing so would have undermined quality, would have limited choice, would have increased the costs. These were the downsides that were coming at the American people that caused them to rise up and express themselves in two Governor races. Those were nationalized races in Virginia and in New Jersey. And when they had the opportunity to have a national election for a United States Senator in Massachusetts, they took it. The American people appealed to the decency of the elected majorities. And their leaders here in this Congress did not respond, except to do more force-feeding of liberal, social engineering policies, expensive policies and things that people don't want. The level of elitism and arrogance is breathtaking. And I don't think it has ever reached this high in the history of America. That cavalier disregard for the Constitution, when someone would ask Speaker Pelosi, where in the Constitution do you see the constitutional authority to pass a national health care act such as you have done here out on the floor of the House of Representatives? A cavalier attitude, Madam Speaker. We take an oath to this Constitution. And people will take the oath. They will do so with their hand on a Bible, and they will walk out with no other thought to it at all. There is a whole movement over on this side of this Congress that believes the Constitution doesn't mean what it says. They will make that argument. I sit on the Constitution Subcommittee. I have heard the argument over and over again, a living, breathing Constitution. Some time back in the 1930s, the Supreme Court had some language threaded into a decision that says that the Constitution is living and breathing. If the Constitution is living and breathing, if it doesn't mean what it says, then, Madam Speaker, I would ask the question, what is it for? Who is protected by a Constitution that is living and breathing and changing and can be amended by the whim of any judge in any Federal courtroom anywhere in America? I had an attorney tell me once, if you give me a favorable judge and a favorable jury, I will amend the Constitution in any courtroom in the land. And that happens by precedents that find their way up to the Supreme Court. I take this stand, Madam Speaker. That's this: This Constitution does mean what it says. The text of it means what it says. And it means what it was understood to mean at the time of the ratification, either the base document, or the amendments if things flowed through. And if it's something else, then the Constitution is no guarantee whatsoever. It simply is an artifact of history, or else it can serve as a shield for someone in a black robe to hold up and make the argument that you're a layperson, so you can't begin to understand what this Constitution means. Leave it to us. We're the professionals in the black robes. We dropped the powdered wigs; we still have the black robes. I don't think putting a robe on makes a person exclusive when it comes to understanding the English language. I think we have a lot of people--and I'm a ditchdigger by trade. A lot of people digging ditches can read this Constitution and understand what it means. I think we have a lot of TEA party patriots that do read the Constitution and understand what it means. We see a lot of people standing under American flags and yellow ``Don't Tread on Me'' flags with a Constitution in their pocket. They understand what it means better than some of the people who have taken an oath of the Constitution in this House of Representatives, Madam Speaker. This Constitution is threatened by socialized medicine, the bill that has to stay dead. We also offer solutions and a framework to go forward, a solution and framework to go forward, and we say, we the people and representatives of the United States, make this declaration, that as a matter of principle, we want to protect the doctor-patient relationship which the gentleman from Texas talked about. And we want to reject this national debt that gets heaped up on us over and over again that was the subject of the previous hour. And we want to improve quality of care, and we want transparency in the negotiations. And we want to treat every American citizen in this same fashion that we treat our public officials, and vice versa. If it's good enough for an American citizen, it ought to be good enough for an elected public official, wherever they might be serving. And I appreciate the discussion about the funding for abortion. When there's a policy that is seeking to be advanced by this side of the aisle in the United States Congress that would compel the taxpayers to fund abortions, something that is abhorrent to the value system of America, the majority value system of America, that is about as egregious as it can get, to be roped into being a citizen, held down to pay your taxes and have that money extracted out of your pocket to go to the Planned Parenthood or the abortion clinic. When you think of conscientious objecting taxpayers, that is about as close as you can get to having a complete revolt on your hands. And when I looked out last Friday at the March for Life, the numbers in the Mall here and standing on that stage, people as far as the eye could see. It was reported to be in the neighborhood of 200,000 pro-life people bussed from all over this country, and some flew in to come and stand up and march, pray and speak for life, as they do every year, as they do every day in these United States. That is the largest continuing demonstration in the history of this country. There's no movement that has brought those numbers of people here to Washington, D.C., year after year after year for 37 years. And to think what they would have had to say and do if there had been a socialized medicine bill passed that compels people to fund abortions or brokers policies that pay for abortions. Those people that came, I among them, would have been in even greater numbers than 200,000. And at some point they aren't going to be as polite as this good group of people are when they see that happening. So I'm glad that marker has been put down. The new mandates that are being proposed on patients, employers, on States--we've heard from the States. In fact, that is the Corn Husker Kickback. ``Exempt me from the cost of the new mandates'' is what that statement was. But in reality, there was a moral portion that was negotiated in that, too, and it was language that didn't hold up to the standard of the Stupak amendment, which wasn't good enough for me. I supported it, but I would have liked to have done more and better. It was an eroded standard that was offered in the United States Senate. And it was rejected by the pro-life organizations in the country. That moral position appeared to have been traded off for a monetary one, which is an exemption from paying the increases in Medicaid that would come about because of the socialized medicine bill in the Senate that brought about these special deals. Special deals, Madam Speaker, for--let's see, let's go to Maine. Was that $11 billion for community health clinics in Maine? Eleven billion dollars. Well, there's a kickback there. That didn't get a lot of publicity. But that is part of the deal. The exemption from the--say the elimination of the Medicare Advantage programs in Florida for that Senator Nelson, the Corn Husker Kickback in Nebraska, the Louisiana Purchase in Louisiana, the list goes on. We don't know what all is in the bill. Those we do know about. Those are all special deals. All those special deals are completely rejected by this declaration. Another one of those mandates that came would be setting up health insurance policies in the country that are funded by the taxpayer and that compel employers to insure their employees or individuals to buy the insurance if they are not working or if they have an employer that is not mandated to buy. And within all of that we would fund illegals, give them their own health insurance policies so we could put another, bigger magnet out here, a jobs magnet, a welfare magnet, and now your own private health insurance policy magnet, argued and defended for by Luis Gutierrez, for example, and Mr. Honda of California. Many others believe that it's a matter of social justice that American people would owe a health insurance policy, an individual health insurance policy, to people that break into the United States illegally. What a reach that is from a justice standpoint. We cannot be expanding any further benefits, health care benefits to illegals in America. We provide emergency services by law. And a lot of times, we don't backfill the bank accounts of the health care providers. For example, if you go down to Arizona, in Arizona the most southerly trauma center is the University of Tucson Hospital. That is at least 70 miles north of the Mexican border because the rest of those hospitals have closed. They can't afford to provide free health care services to the illegals. And the American taxpayers can't afford to pay them either. So those are some of the things that are on the list here and things that are important for us to talk about. I'm happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas to pick up where I left off.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the judge from Texas. On the transparency side of this discussion, too, to broaden that out, Madam Speaker, when I address transparency, I am speaking of two things. One is transparency in the negotiations, so everything is out there in sunlight. And the other is transparency in billing, so people know what is being paid for health care services. The part about the negotiations that is so important, if they took place on C-SPAN out in the open, out in the light of day, if it is a big negotiating table that is there and in comes Big Pharma and here comes AARP, here is the health insurance companies, here is a doctor sitting over here. The patients, I would like to think they have a place at the table, but I am not sure just what entity speaks up so well for them. But here's how a piece of legislation gets passed in this Congress today. This is what happens. Think of the scales of justice, blindfolded. Justice is blind, and here they are balancing these scales of justice. That's what I see. There's an image in that; that image of justice and equity. I'm reluctant to use the word ``fair.'' But in legislation, it works out this way. It's kind of a scale, and somebody comes up with a bad idea. Let's just say it's cap-and-trade or it's socialized medicine. They put all their ideas over here and, clink, here's the way the scale sits. All the bad ideas weigh it down. And then people start to say, Well, wait a minute. I've got a couple of ideas that are pretty bad. Let's take them off the table and put an idea over here you think is a good idea. And then it starts to weigh a little bit. You don't see that scale move. It's still sitting there. Then one large entity after another starts to come to a conclusion that passage of this bad bill is inevitable. So they take away their opposition to a bad bill and they begin to negotiate for their own carve-outs and exemptions in a bad bill so it damages everybody but them. When they get their carve-out, the political capital over here that is on the ``no'' side either goes to neutral or over here on the plus side because they've agreed to support a bill now because they've got their exemptions so they're not affected by the bill. That might be the Cornhusker Kickback. That might be the Florida exemption for Medicare Advantage or the $11 billion in clinics in Maine or the Louisiana Purchase or it might be exemptions from executive pay controls in Big Pharma. It could be anything. They will add and add and add over on this side until all of this ``no'' political capital that knew it was a bad idea when it began, enough that has moved over to the plus side or moved to neutral to where if you put that final little weight on the scales--I like to call it the straw that breaks the camel's back--clink, it goes over this way. Now there's enough support to pass a bill. And that's when they ram it through and they don't let you up for air because they're afraid they will lose votes. When that little moment comes when they think they've got the votes, it comes through. That's why the United States Senate was doing business for 3 constant weeks without a break and that's why they were doing business on Christmas Eve, to pass socialized medicine with a 60-40 majority on December 24, Christmas Eve, because they finally stacked the scales to the point where, clink, it would go over on the side where they could barely pass the bill. That's what they did. If those kind of negotiations are taking place out in the open where the American people understand it, they would be revolted by the concept of how this is business, how very little of it is a discussion about what is the best policy for America and how much of it is a discussion about how you get the support of this group or that group or how you leverage to get the vote of a Member of Congress or United States Senator. Instead of evaluating the policy and stepping back and looking at it objectively and coming up with new ways to make something right for the American people, it becomes a political equation. If we could get it out in the sunlight, we could get rid of some of those political equations and come a lot closer to getting the right policy for the American people. That's why transparency matters so much. That's why C-SPAN in those negotiation rooms would matter so much. That is actually a very big part of this Declaration of Health Care Independence. And I am proud to be part of it, and I'm looking forward to our press conference tomorrow. I'd be happy to yield just a moment to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank my friend from Texas for being up late at night and coming down here. When you have a friend that will stand with you like Judge Gohmert, in the end we can, I think, together, do some good things for the American people, Madam Speaker. So we'll be working to get to that point. We want to empower rather than limit an open and accessible marketplace of health care choice and opportunity. And if we're going to do business now, the rules have changed. There are new rules for the road. These are the new rules for road, and we're going to find out when people are serious. If they're ready to address lawsuit abuse, the people that are advocating for socialized medicine, if they're ready to address lawsuit abuse, we're ready to do business. If not, there's a new sheriff in town.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate being recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. I have been listening to the dialogue that has been poured before us from the three gentlemen here, my colleagues, speaking mostly about health care, the National Health Care Act, and what this could mean. I would like to pick this up from the place where Todd Akin left off, and that would be the importance of the State of Massachusetts. I do not believe that it can be overstated, the impact of the election returns last night. I listened to Carl Cameron on FOX News who is, I believe, a very well-informed and probably a deeply researched individual. He said that this was the most important congressional race in 50 years. Well, I can remember that far back, and I would completely agree with him. And I would suspect it may be the most important congressional race in the history of our country, Mr. Speaker. The situation in Massachusetts where Todd Akin laid out the poem that said, ``and fired the shot heard around the world,'' well, this in Massachusetts last night was a shot heard around the world. It was the Scott heard around the world. He will be here tomorrow, straight down that hallway, swearing into the United States Senate. So how did we get to this point, and what happened? And what is the significance of what took place in Massachusetts last night, Mr. Speaker? Those are the issues that I think are important to the American people here. I will make the point that we're a Nation that, let's say, we have people who are studying every day to be nationalized American citizens. We're a Nation that has skimmed the vigor off of every donor civilization that has sent immigrants to the United States. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, 390 years ago. They disembarked from the Mayflower because they came over here for religious liberty, religious freedom. They established those freedoms and liberties right there in the Bay State. Now this Nation was founded on the same principles and the same liberty that came to us with the Pilgrims and were built upon as the years unfolded. And it's rooted back, a long ways back. A Western civilization itself, I would trace it back to the Greeks 3,000 years ago and the Age of Enlightenment, especially the English-speaking division of the Age of Enlightenment, which brought us free enterprise. And if there is an immigrant in the United States who is studying to take the test to become a naturalized American citizen, there is a whole stack of flashcards that are there that are put out by the United States Citizenship Immigration Services. They are glossy flashcards. The government spent a lot of money to make these things real nice. You look on one side, and it will say, Who is the founder of our country? You flip it over to the other side, George Washington. Who saved the Union? Flip it over, Abraham Lincoln. Who signed the Emancipation Proclamation? Same man. Next question, What is the economic system of the United States of America? You flip the card over, and if you are going to pass the test to become an American citizen, you have to answer what it says on the back of that card, free enterprise capitalism, Mr. Speaker. The economic system where we don't have the government setting prices. We have the market setting prices. We have supply and demand setting prices, and we let people invest equity, sweat equity and capital to buy, sell, trade, make, gain, invent. We protect the intellectual property through patents and trademarks, and we also encourage people to make money. We know that when you generate that wealth in the legitimate private sector that everyone prospers, that a rising tide does lift all boats. And that's what people were thinking, I believe, in Massachusetts yesterday. I spent 3 days there. They were an outstanding 3 days. It was a fantastic experience. I went to polling places. I went to campaign headquarters, both sides of the case. I went to union halls, and I talked to as many people across the State of Massachusetts as I possibly could. The center line was this: the Federal Government spent too much money. It's gotten too big. It's gotten too intrusive. They're imposing too many mandates and regulations on the American people. They have their own universal health care in Massachusetts, and they aren't particularly happy with it. One of the things they have a conscience about is not imposing that version on the entire United States of America. They understood that for them to cast a vote wasn't just, How did their ballot for Scott Brown, how did it affect the destiny of Massachusetts? It wasn't a selfish vote. They understood they have a national responsibility, Mr. Speaker. It was a national responsibility, and I understand this, I think, as well as most in the country because Iowa is first in the Nation caucus, and we take our jobs seriously, and we're all politics all the time. Generally, every 4 years we very, very often have at least one Presidential candidate from Massachusetts that we host. They go around through Iowa, sit down, have coffee with us and we talk to them. We look them eye to eye. I have done that more than once. We take our retail politics seriously. But when we go to the first-in-the-Nation Presidential caucus and cast our ballot there, even though it has more impact than probably the single vote of anyone from any other State with regard to who is nominated as the President, Mr. Speaker, it is still only a recommendation to the rest of the country. Iowa gets to go first. We take it seriously. Somebody has to be first. I don't have confidence in anybody else to do a better job. But it's still only a recommendation. What happened in Massachusetts last night was not a recommendation that affected the rest of the country like Iowa makes when they do the first-of-the-Nation Presidential caucus. What happened in Massachusetts last night was a decision for the rest of the country, a decision that will bind the destiny of America. They understood that, and they stepped up to that cause, and their conscience and their sense of responsibility kicked in. So I am very proud of what the citizens of Massachusetts have done. They have mobilized the political effort that many of them hadn't seen ever in their lifetimes. I talked to a lady that said that she has worked in political campaigns for 50 years, 50 years; and she said that when the polls closed, and they counted the ballots, they cried their eyes out, and then they got up, and they went to work again. Well, this time I imagine there were tears among these groups. They probably did cry their eyes out, but they were tears of joy. And a great shout of joy went up all across America that finally, finally somebody heard. I have asked for reinforcements. I have prayed for the cavalry to come, and at the last minute they came riding over the hill in the person of Scott Brown. Now we have a chance to save, serve and protect our liberty; and this debate now begins on an entirely different field, on an entirely different terrain, and I believe an entirely different outcome. I am completely in awe at how the most improbable sometimes comes along to save us with something that appeared to be inevitable. The gentleman from Tennessee has been willing to stick around, and I would like to yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Tennessee who happens to be a doctor, who knows what TennCare looks like and knows what America would look like if we adopted TennCare, CanadaCare, United KingdomCare, GermanCare, name your country. But this is America, and take care to protect America. The gentleman from Tennessee.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee. He mentioned that he has taken calculus. I would submit that they put me through calculus, too, a couple of years, and they actually never told me at the beginning, middle, or end that there wasn't much purpose of going through all of those calculations. It was more about how to discipline the mind to think rationally, logically, and reasonably. That is also why they send people to law school. Our President went to law school and actually taught in law school. He taught constitutional law, which is a bit of a surprise to me that he can advocate some of the things that he does. The basic logic that comes isn't rooted in law school and it isn't rooted necessarily in calculus. It isn't rooted in geometry or algebra. It might be two plus two equals four. But the rationale that was presented to us consistently and repeatedly by Presidential candidate, President-elect, and then President Obama, Mr. Speaker, was health care costs too much money. I have been browbeaten by the Europeans. They would say we spend 9.5 percent of our GDP. You spend 14.5 percent of your GDP. That is way to much money. Well, never mind, we make more money than they do. And never mind, we have better health care than they do. Never mind that we are willing to spend that. We don't like to spend it when we are looking at it in large, but when it comes time to save our lives or our health, we are glad to spend that kind of money. We don't know what the threshold is, but our GDP, about 14\1/2\ percent spending, some say as high as 16 percent, we spend too much money; so, therefore, we should solve the problem by what? This is this two plus two. What the President proposed to us didn't spend less money. Anybody in third grade, if you say you have a problem with spending too much money, what do you do about that, you could hand them a 50-cent allowance, and you spend a quarter, not all 50 cents, and a kid can understand that at age 6 or 7, maybe even less than that. But we are here listening to, being browbeaten and demagogued because we have a health care policy that spends too much money. It is 9.5 percent in the rest of the industrialized world and 14.5 percent here in the United States. So what does the President propose to do about solving spending too much money? Spend more. Spend at least a trillion more. If you look at the real costs involved, look at Judd Gregg's numbers, the first real 10 years, it is $2.5 trillion more. If you look at the contingent liabilities that go along with this and all of the other components, it may be as high as $6 trillion more. So the problem of spending too much money is solved supposedly in a rational fashion and advocated by the President, the Speaker of the House, the majority leader of the United States Senate, and all of the people that line up to vote for their bills, solve the problem of spending too much money by spending a lot more money. Now we have kind of forgotten about all of the browbeating that went on about we need more competition in health care insurance. The President made that argument over and over again. Well, he has the bully pulpit, but, you know, they have yet to invent the saw that will cut off the branch of truth. We can go out and stand on the branch of truth and we can say, All right, how many insurance companies do you need in America, Mr. President, to have the extra competition? Funny, a guy that doesn't much believe in the free market system thinks we ought to inject competition into the health insurance industry. So the President wants one more health insurance company in America and then that is going to fix the problems. So I ask a simple question: How many companies are there in America? The answer comes back, 1,300; 1,300 health insurance companies, Mr. Speaker. And that is a little bit of a round number. So if you have all of these companies that are competing, 1,300 of them--I have never had that much competition, and I made my living on low bid in the construction business. When I had seven or eight or nine people bidding against me, I already knew somebody was going to make a mistake on the bid and lose money and take the chance for profit away from the rest of us. So if there are 1,300 companies and they are competing, throwing one more in there doesn't really help that mix. But it wasn't the President's idea to provide more competition anyway; he just thought we would believe that. His idea was to get government in the business of providing that which the people in the private sector could do very well themselves. And, by the way, these 1,300 companies offer a different variety of policies that individuals could shop and buy, approximately 100,000 different policy varieties, Mr. Speaker. So you can multiply 100,000 policies out there and you can look at 1,300 companies that are brokering them, and imagine how is it the Federal Government getting into the business could legitimately compete with those kinds of entities. And if you want more competition, the way you provide that is open up the trade from State to State so people can buy health insurance in Tennessee instead of New Jersey. The gentleman from Tennessee knows what that is like. That would make sure that all 1,300 companies competed against each other, and these 100,000 policy varieties would probably get to be less because they wouldn't have to accommodate some of the silly mandates that come down from the States. So a young man buying health insurance in New Jersey, a healthy 25- year-old might pay $6,000 a year for a typical policy. Or he could go to Kentucky where there are fewer mandates, and a similar but not identical policy might cost that same individual $1,000. Now, what kind of a smart, young person usually on a limited budget would write a check for $6,000 if they could write a check for $1,000. Wouldn't we then have more people insured if they had more options? That's the answer. Furthermore, there are things we want to fix. We want to fix lawsuit abuse. The health insurance underwriters produced a number. The one that I trust the most--and I have seen numbers on the cost of lawsuit abuse in America on health care to go as low as 5.5 percent of the overall cost of health care services provided. I have seen it go as high as over 30 percent. The number that I trust is 8.5 percent. So 8.5 percent of the cost of health care in America is $203 billion a year, and this is included in the additional tests that have to be given because they are done for defensive medicine purposes. Also, the litigation and settlements that don't have a medical reason for them. We want people to be whole. If they have suffered from malpractice, the legitimate system is there, but the abuse has taken this way out of sight. So $203 billion a year going almost all of it to the trial lawyers, not to the patients but the trial lawyers. And do you think there is a single Democrat in the House of Representatives or a single Democrat in the Senate who would stand up and say this is completely and totally utterly wrong to be funding trial lawyers on the backs of health care patients and acting like we are reforming health care and protecting the trial lawyers completely, not allowing insurance to be sold across State lines, and denying full deductibility for everybody's health insurance premiums?