Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I had a conversation with an orthopedic surgeon a couple of months ago. He said to me, I have a small practice. He said 95 percent of the MRIs that he orders are completely unnecessary except he has to cover everything because someone might try to hit the jackpot. So he has to order those tests. Everybody in the business orders all of those tests. If you cut out that 95 percent, his number is that it costs patient's insurance companies, taxpayers, a million dollars a year just to fund the unnecessary tests in one that he calls a small practice. That gives you an implication. You can multiply that $1 million across the whole country, and what you come up with is $203 billion in additional costs. We can't get them all out of there. There is a bill that we have introduced that finds about $54 billion over 10 years. I think it ought to be tougher than that. I think we ought to tighten this thing down more. The argument again that has been made out of the White House and out of the majority party and from the Speaker's office itself, too, is that Republicans don't have any solutions. Well, they must have sat up some night in one of those formerly smoke-filled rooms to come up with an idea like that. It is completely and utterly false, Mr. Speaker. Republicans have introduced at least 42 separate bills in this 111th Congress that reform health care. And I can tell you exactly how many of them were incorporated into this document that was promised to be a bipartisan document, and that is a complete double aught goose egg. None. No free market solutions, no patient choice solutions, no medical malpractice lawsuit abuse reform, no selling insurance across State lines, no full deductibility, no real transparency, none of the components that give people options and choices have been considered. And why? Because if you put free market solutions in and you give people the liberty and the freedom to make their own decisions on health care, first, they are going to take a financial responsibility and a personal responsibility. If you help out on the lawsuit abuse, more people are going to say, I don't need that test either, Doctor, and so let's save the money and not do that. But the bottom line is Republicans have always injected free market solutions in place; for example, health savings accounts. Health saving accounts are just starting to grow the way they need to. That is 2003 legislation, wiped out by this proposal that comes from Speaker Pelosi, the President, and Harry Reid. No more health savings accounts if you read the legislation and figure out how it is going to come out. Imagine this, Mr. Speaker. If a young couple had engaged in health savings accounts when it was first set up by this Congress in 2003 and they invested $5,150 as the maximum amount into their health savings account, and if they spent $2,000 a year out of that health savings account in legitimate expenses and accrued the balance of that account at 4 percent per annum and compounded it, they would reach retirement age, the two of them in reasonably good health with $950,000 in their health savings account. And what is the interest that Charlie Rangel has on that: Tax it. They want to tax it. I want to give an incentive to buy a Medicare replacement policy and let them keep the change. That Medicare replacement policy would cost about $72,000 per person today. That is one of the Republican solutions, but it doesn't fit very well with socialized medicine, you know. That is what happens. This is an effort to try to mix. They didn't try to mix, but the reason it doesn't mix is because it is oil and water. It is freedom and liberty. It is market solutions and individual responsibility and doctor-patient relationships on this side, and over on this side it is socialized medicine, one size fits all. Big Brother at the top draconianly mashes this down on everybody else in America, and you have to accept the policy that they give you and you have to then get in line.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee. They are simple, real-world solutions. They are free market solutions. They are commonsense solutions. And there is this other part about human nature. It is helpful when a country has its leaders that believe in the principles that built this as a great Nation, and also understand the human nature part. There has to be incentives in place. And a nanny state can never be enough of a nanny to take care of people's failings. I think it was Phil Gramm that said this first, that I heard it anyway, and that is you take the safety net out there, that safety net that taught a man to fish, and then you give him the fish instead, and you turn the safety net into a hammock. So here is the safety net down here, and as Congress keeps cranking that safety net up higher and higher and higher, and it becomes more and more of a cushy hammock. And you know, there is a reason why the most successful civilizations in the world generally originated someplace in a temperate climate instead of down by the equator. Because there wasn't an incentive. You didn't have to prepare for winter. Where I live, you by golly got to be ready for winter, which means in that window of time that we have from around the first of April until about the first of December you got to get all the things done you are going to get done outside. That means all the food has got to be put up. That means all the staples have to be put in place to get your work done. We got to get our construction work done then, because in the wintertime it gets cold and it gets dark soon. That means you have industrious people. Now, I am not drawing a comparison between the Mason-Dixon line. I am drawing a comparison between the equator. And I want to make that point clear for my colleagues here. But the industriousness of people, that was necessary. Squirrels put away for the winter, grasshoppers freeze to death. And if you give people the hammock instead of the safety net, they are not going to take care of themselves, and more than likely they are going to have to require us to do that because we are not allowing them to be tested. There is a value to adversity. When I think of the things that I have gone through, and I don't wish them upon anybody, the challenges that are there, but every one of them put a little more steel in me, a little more mettle in me, and caused me to be better organized, work harder, be more industrious, prepare more. And if you take away that reward for planning for your future, you will have people that don't plan for their future. If you pay young women to have babies if there is not a man in the house, they will have babies. If you pay them as long as they don't go to work, they won't go to work. These are simple things that anybody can understand that seem to have completely escaped the President of the United States and the majority party and the troika of leadership we have in this country called Obama, Pelosi, and Reid.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee. And I just relate a very quick story that was presented to us by Dr. David Janda, who has written a book. He is out of Michigan. He has practiced in Canada. When he first went up there to work in the emergency room, and he is an orthopedic surgeon now, he had a patient come in, a young man who had torn up his knee playing softball, torn meniscus, ACL, I think, one of the ligaments. And he looked at him and he said you need surgery. I can schedule you in the morning. And he is in a Canadian emergency room. Must have been his first day at work. He found out that he couldn't schedule this young man for surgery the next morning. He couldn't even schedule him for a review to get the surgery approved under the Canadian health care plan. So he had to back up and put him on crutches. And 6 months later this young man was allowed to be examined by the doctor who approves the request for surgery, and 6 months later they actually did the surgery. Almost 1 year to the day, the surgery took place in Canada that would have taken place the very next morning in the United States. Meanwhile, this young man can't go to work, his leg atrophies, he is running around on crutches. His life has been altered because different things happen in your life in that fashion. He didn't get back in the groove. What does that cost when you let people come out? That is an example. And I know that we have experts here tonight. And so watching that clock tick, I am very interested to hear what the gentleman from Georgia has to say, whether it be about the Hawkeyes, the Yellow Jackets, or his field of expertise.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And reclaiming before I yield, I want to pose a question here for consideration. Canadian health care plan, the average length of time to wait for a knee replacement is 340 days, a hip replacement 196 days. Where I come from, we don't stand in line. I went to Moscow a while back, and I watched people hunched over in their shoulders with their big coats and hats walking around looking for a line to stand in. And then when they got to the end of the line, then they went and looked for another line to stand in. I think a lot of times they didn't even know why they were even standing in line. And it occurred to me, and it may not be universally true, but it occurred to me that free people don't stand in line. And if you are standing in line at Kentucky Fried Chicken, that means that somebody ought to have a free market opportunity to set something up next door. And people will go over there and get their service. But that is what the free market principle does. People don't stand in line when it is a free market principle. I would submit also that people die in line. I yield to the gentlelady from Minnesota.

Mr. KING of Iowa. The gentlelady from Minnesota.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I would propose that it actually goes another step yet, and that is, we talked about the government takeover of the private sector, and we talked about between 30 percent and 33 percent of the private-sector profits nationalized by mostly this President's administration. We've seen the nationalization take place, the government takeover, but the most personal and private property we have is our own bodies. This is a government nationalization, a government takeover of our individual persons and bodies, managing our health care and seeking to tell us what we can eat and what we can't, what we can drink and what we can't, managing our own personal bodies. What could be a more egregious violation of liberty and freedom than that? I would like to pose a question for a response here and maybe go down through some things in my mind and see if there is dissent among the esteemed Members of Congress that are here on the floor. First I would ask you, if they impose a centrally controlled system of government-run health care, will it result in a loss of personal and economic liberties? And is it an indisputable violation of the principle of limited government established by the Constitution? Would you agree with that?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I will ask another question. If they impose a government-run health care system, would such system result in increased costs in taxes to individuals, to families, to businesses, as well as to all taxpayers at the Federal, State and local levels?

Mr. KING of Iowa. What kind of harm would that do to the American economy and the businesses and jobs and productivity and quality of life?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I will yield.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, the value of life changes. And another point, a point that I think John Shadegg made very well, is that this policy here--whatever number they attach to it or whatever they might try to do--will have mandates in it. And what it will do is it will require certain health insurance policies to have those mandates covered in there, and it mandates that people buy them or employers provide them. And his case is that that's a tax. I would ask the man who is the judge if he could explain why it's a tax when the government makes someone buy a policy and then takes it out of their taxes if they don't and puts them in debtors prison if they hold back. If you have to buy something, why does that make it a tax?

Mr. KING of Iowa. They're polar opposites, Mr. Gohmert; they're Tennessee and Minnesota.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Should they be negotiated publicly and free of political favoritism, Mr. Gohmert?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I have this other thought. It occurs to me, and I believe in H.R. 3200 there was an amendment offered that would have required Members of Congress to live under the same law. That offer for that exemption was voted down by Democrats. So if you had a bad policy, wouldn't you want to exempt yourselves from that? I would ask the gentleman from Tennessee what he thinks of that.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Would you support language that would require that Members of Congress stand in the same shoes as the citizens of America?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, it's quite likely that this fellow right here, the health choices administration, czarissioner, would probably rule that those high-deductible, high-copayment, low- premium policies wouldn't fit his idea of what health insurance is in America. So the low-income people who can only buy in, according to the way this thing was laid out in negotiations in the Senate, would have about four different tiers of policies. It's interesting: those who have the lower premiums pay the least amount. Those who have the highest premiums pay the highest amount. The people who can pay the highest premiums are the ones who get the best kind of health insurance out of that, and those who can afford the least have to have the highest copayment, but they can't do the high deductible because that doesn't fit the socialist model. That's part of what's going on.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota and the other participants here tonight from across the board, from Tennessee and Texas. I will just summarize what's going on here. I think that a government-run health care system takes away our liberty. It nationalizes our bodies. It will result in increased costs and taxes. The taxes come in the form of mandates as well as whether we think we're paying taxes or premiums. It should not add to the crushing national debt or impose mandates. No tax dollars should go for abortions or for illegal aliens. It should be negotiated publicly, out in the daylight. It should apply to all Members of Congress. It should provide equal protection under the law. It should be free market-based, and it should protect the vital doctor-patient relationship. That's the summary of what we want to do here, and it's what we have the opportunity to do because the cavalry came riding over the hill just in the nick of time in the form of, today, Senator-elect Scott Brown and, tomorrow, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I apologize for the delay in getting down here to answer the call of the gavel. There are some distractions taking place around America as we speak. A lot of America has been transfixed by what has happened this year. I could go back and recap some of the events, but we pretty well know what they are: $700 billion in TARP spending. We've watched three large investment banks be nationalized by the Federal Government. We've watched AIG be nationalized, taken over by the Federal Government. We've watched Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac be taken over by the Federal Government and then by an Executive order right before Christmas, have them open up the debt ceiling on Fannie and Freddie to where every American is a guarantor of the national debt, which could be $5.5 trillion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We watched negotiations take place behind the scenes that told the bankruptcy court how to push our automakers through there, and both of them were nationalized, taken over by the Federal Government. Then we watched the $787 billion economic stimulus plan be passed in an urgency that hasn't produced a product and a resolve, except a debt that is going to drag down the economy for the American people. Then behind that, out of this House came hurry up and rush cap-and-trade, cap-and- tax. Pass it. It passed out of the House, and it went over there on the docket of the Senate. The American people began to realize what was happening. They couldn't believe it. They didn't think, first, the $700 billion TARP was really real. Somehow they trusted that we knew what we were doing here, as a majority. The majority knew what they were doing. So they sat back, and something else happened, and something else happened. That's the list that I have given you, Mr. Speaker. The American people have risen up. In the month of August, they filled up town hall meetings all across America over and over again. Hundreds and thousands of people came out so that their voice could be heard. Some of them stayed up all night long just to craft their question and do the research so that if they got a chance to ask a Member a question--you could tell there was a tremendous amount of American intensity going on all across America. Into September and after Labor Day, we came back here and the grind began. The effort to pass a national health care act began. The socialized medicine effort wound up again, and they began pushing this through, Mr. Speaker. Speaker Pelosi's agenda, Harry Reid's agenda, and President Obama's agenda, the idea of nationalizing proud, private sector companies and taking over one-third of the private sector profits and doing so in a little more than a year in the United States. Then taxing all of our energy and putting restrictions on America's economy, where the end result is to send jobs to India and jobs to China. The American people watched that, and they thought, Well, surely these people know what they're doing. But the more mistakes they saw and the list of misguided liberal ideas that had been passed out of the House and sent to the Senate--and some passed out of the Senate--was stacking up higher and higher and higher, Mr. Speaker. And the American people, in groups, incrementally began to realize that they knew better than the people that were in charge of Congress, and they lost their trust and their faith in the good judgment of the people that they elected in this constitutional Republic, especially when they saw that there was a determination on the part of the President of the United States, the Speaker of the House and the majority leader of the United States Senate to nationalize our bodies, to take over the management and the control of the most personal and private thing we have, that is this thing inside our skin, our bodies, and the Federal Government deciding what we were going to have for insurance and who was going to pay for it and what the premiums would be and what kind of mandates would be on it and what kind the coverage would be and the decisions that we would have. And then on top of that, an effort to start to tax, oh, let's say, trans fats or foods that they think we shouldn't eat, or sin taxes so that they could manage our lives, regulate everything that we do, nationalize and take over the control of our very private bodies and then tell us what we can eat and probably when we can sleep. It's way, way too much government intrusion on a proud and independent people. So when we looked across America, we looked around for, ``from whence cometh our help?'' Well, we had help from all over America. The Tea Party Patriots came up from all over America, and they had huge rallies. They came to this Capitol on 9/12, and they filled this city up with people with American flags and yellow ``Don't Tread on Me'' flags, and they cried out for relief from the overspending that's been taking place. They held up their Constitutions, and tears went down the cheeks of men and women who love this country. It happened all over, in every State, and it really packed people in here in Washington, D.C. Still their hearts were hardened, and still they were determined to force socialized medicine down the throats of the American people. And then more people came to this Capitol, and as they came closer to a vote on health care here in the House of Representatives, a call went out one day, and 3\1/2\ days later somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 Americans showed up here in the United States Capitol so their voices could be heard. They filled up over here on the west side of the Capitol and packed people out there with their American flags and their yellow ``Don't Tread on Me'' flags. They cried out for relief from this oppressive government that was taking their liberties away and my liberties away. And still their hearts were hardened, Mr. Speaker. Two days later, we called people back to town. Over here on this side of the Capitol, thousands came again, and again they pleaded with the legislature and the Congress here, Give us some relief. We just want fiscal responsibility. We want our liberties. They told us, We're not Europeans. We're Americans. We're a different people. We didn't come here for dependency. A lot of people came here under the New Hampshire motto, ``Live free or die'' in the United States of America, have a chance to succeed, take the risk of failure, take your own personal responsibilities. All that they asked for was a chance to succeed, and that was taken away, taken away by a President of the United States, a Speaker of the House, and a majority leader in the United States Senate, three people. The American people began to understand that when the House bill passed here by a vote of 220-215, that if three people changed their minds, that bill goes down in defeat on the House floor, and the rest of that saga doesn't happen, Mr. Speaker. But it went over to the Senate where they ground it out and churned it out and cut deals in back rooms. There are no longer smoke-filled rooms, I don't think. At least there are not on the House side, because by order of the Speaker, that's another freedom that you lost. And if you want to eat an omelet over here in the cafeteria, it shall be made out of the eggs of a free- range hen. Don't forget that, Mr. Speaker. That's another liberty that we've lost. So the health care bill went to the Senate, and they cut deals. And we heard things like, Louisiana Purchase II. How do you buy off the Senator in Louisiana? And then we heard things like the Florida purchase of the Senator down there so they could be exempted from losing their Medicare Advantage. Then we saw the ``cornhusker kickback,'' Senator Nelson. I can say that now. We changed the rule. Why? Because he lost the amendment, which was the pro-life amendment, the Stupak amendment, in the Senate by a vote of 45-54, so crafted some new language that would still leave the United States Government in the business of brokering abortions through mandated health insurance premiums and got a special exemption for Medicaid increases in Nebraska, the ``cornhusker kickback.'' The American people saw this with revulsion, and still they came forward and produced 60 votes to end the filibuster in the Senate on Christmas Eve, Mr. Speaker. And about that time, I had a conversation with my senior Senator in Iowa, Senator Chuck Grassley, who is engaged in this debate in a serious way with the full intention of trying to find the best policy that could be put together in the legislative body, but he had to walk away from it at a point because they didn't need his vote. They were going to go for the most liberal, the most left-wing, the most leaning into socialism policy that they could pass, and it wasn't going to be with Republican votes. So that's what they did. They put the votes together to end the filibuster, and the deal was made on the 23rd of December. The vote for the end of the filibuster came up on the morning of the 24th, Christmas Eve morning. I talked to my senior Senator, and I said, What can we do now, Senator? How do we kill this bill? And he said, We have to pray, and we have to pray for a victory in Massachusetts in the special election in the United States Senate. Mr. Speaker, you know, that didn't seem very plausible at the time. I started to take a look at this, and I followed the Senator's advice. I put a little work in up there myself. I just came back from Massachusetts a few hours ago. A few minutes ago they've announced that Martha Coakley has conceded to Scott Brown. Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you, there was a shot heard around the world up there in Lexington 200-plus years ago. There is another shot heard around the world tonight. In fact, it's the Scott heard around the world tonight, and it's the American people rejecting socialized medicine. It's the American people rejecting overspending and fiscal irresponsibility and living for the now and passing out the government dole and making sure that nobody has to worry about anything except how their children and grandchildren are going to pay this massive debt that's been created in the trillions of dollars. Voting here on the floor to increase the national debt by smaller increments, $300 billion, and next time it will be a big old chunk, and there is no restraint whatsoever in spending. The Blue Dogs are more groundhogs. They have gone underground, Mr. Speaker. They used to come down here and harangue Republicans about spending too much money because we would have a little deficit at the end of the year. Now, I have always been for a balanced budget, and I will vote to balance it every time I get the chance. But the Blue Dogs demagogued Republicans for a long time. Now they are groundhogs. They went out and saw their shadow and they went underground because the people on their side of the aisle are spending money irresponsibly, like crazy. How could you possibly take away, spend enough money and take away enough liberty that the three-and-a-half to one Democrats to Republicans in Massachusetts would elect a Republican to come down to the United States Senate and vote against cloture so that the Harry Reid bill could be killed in the Senate? How could you ever spend that much money? I didn't believe it was possible, Mr. Speaker. Some would say a miracle has taken place tonight, and I wouldn't disagree with that. I believe there has been intervention. And I am grateful for it. It is what I asked for and what I worked for. I spent 3 days up there and experienced a lot of good people in Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I want to say into the Record that working with the very liberal agenda of the Massachusetts delegation doesn't always give a person the most positive attitude about the people that they represent. I come from Iowa, where we have the privilege of making a recommendation to America on who we think should be the next President of the United States. We take it seriously, and we have a lot to say about it, and we are grateful for that privilege and that honor, but it is only a recommendation, Mr. Speaker. Tonight, today and tonight the people of Massachusetts not only made a recommendation, they made a decision, not just for the people of Massachusetts, they made a decision for the United States of America. And that decision is no socialized medicine in this country. Keep our liberty. Get the budget under control. Let people take care of themselves and each other. The government is not a nanny. That is the message that comes from the place where liberty began. Yesterday I was standing at Plymouth Rock. Three hundred and ninety years ago the Pilgrims landed there. And here we are, 390 years later, Massachusetts, of all improbable places, has brought us back to that rock of liberty. I could not be happier tonight. This is all I could ask for. I am looking forward now to the battle we have ahead to preserve the liberty that we have left and restore some of that we have lost. I am happy to yield to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Some would say it is all about health care and socialized medicine. In fact, quite a few did say that. But if you listened a little more closely, they are also telling people on our side of the aisle, Don't you spend too much money, either. We are tired of you being irresponsible with our tax dollars and with our children and grandchildren's future. That is definitely a core in the center of this. And underneath it is that list of things that I gave at the beginning: The TARP funding, the stimulus plan, the nationalization of eight formerly private entities. They see all of that spending, and they see government trying to manage everything. And as liberal as Massachusetts is, they said, Enough. The first version of it is, and some have said it is all about health care. And for them it was. For others it was health care and too much spending. For others, it was health care, too much spending, and the government injecting themselves in and taking over private businesses. They don't want to have a social democracy here in the United States. They understand we are not Europe. I mean when the first people arrived here in the United States it was down at Jamestown in 1607. And then 1620, the Pilgrims landed up at Plymouth Rock. They came for freedom and liberty, for religious freedom and economic freedom. I think it is the sweetest of symmetry in history to think that the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, and 390 years later in 2010, their descendants in Massachusetts said, We are going to send you somebody to defend our freedom for America. I was asking for reinforcements. We are outmanned and we are outgunned. We are fighting a scrappy fight. We need reinforcements, and we get some reinforcements tonight.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Wyoming for the interesting charts. I think it's important for us to refresh ourselves with these trends consistently. They have changed dramatically under this administration. I think the American people now realize that Republicans in the majority disappeared here in November of 2006, and Democrats have been in control of this Congress ever since then. In the previous years, they all said that if you would just let them have control of this Congress, things would be better. Give us the majority, they said over and over again. The 30-something Group, which now I think is in the 40- somethings, just consistently, night after night, made the same case: the economy would be a lot better off if you had Democrats in charge. Well, they came into control in November of 2006 and immediately what we saw was a significant decline in industrial investment. That was the first indicator of what was happening with our economy, and it happened this way: Charlie Rangel became the likely, and not yet formally named, but he did become the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. And he went on the talk show circuit all over America; he was a very busy guy. And the pundits were asking Chairman Rangel, Which one of these Bush tax cuts don't you like, or do you like them all? And Charlie would never be able to say that he liked any of them, but he never really answered back on which ones he didn't like. But because of his answers and the process of elimination, from November through February it became clear to the investors in America that there wasn't any Bush tax cut that Charlie Rangel liked and that he liked spending better, and he was going to do what he could do to let them expire so that the government could collect more money so they could start more programs and grow government spending. Investment knew that; business figured it out. And as they did, the capital investment went down; the industrial investment went down almost in direct proportion to the appearances of Charlie Rangel on national TV. Because capital is always smart money--it wouldn't be capital if it weren't smart--and so if the cost of investing in a business goes higher because there's a tax increase, what do you do? You invest less in business because the return isn't as likely or the margin isn't as good. So when America and the world were promised that the Bush tax cuts were going to be, let me just say that they would say it this way, ``allowed to expire,'' which is willfully kill them and raise taxes, industrial investment dropped off. When industrial investment dropped off, of course when you invest in capital investment, you get a return in productivity. If you stop investing in industrial investment, then you start losing efficiencies. There was a professor--actually, he was a professor that served underneath Lenin in Russia, his name was Professor Khodnev. He did a study, it's called the Khodnev study. Nobody really knew about this study until MIT University did a computer study some 25-or-so years ago analyzing what happened with capital investment and returns and how the cycles of the economy went. Somebody remembered that they read this old study from Professor Khodnev, a Russian who was commissioned by Lenin to prove that capitalism would be self-defeating and expire. So he went through their data and he showed that there was a decline, that unemployment would go up and gross receipts would go down, profits would go down and capital investment would go down. He showed a cycle that showed that when the capitalism of the economy peaked out, it would then drop back down over the course of about 26 years. That showed capitalism's decline. Then it would go back up again to peak out again in another 26 years. It's a 52-year cycle, Professor Khodnev's 52-year cycle. And so he was commissioned to prove capitalism was self-defeating, but he found out that, well, it defeats itself for a while, but then when you get down to the bottom, entrepreneurs start to come up with good ideas. They all figure out what they're going to do, and they invest in research and development. They implement new ideas, new ideas improve technology, technology improves productivity, improved productivity improves profitability. And when you're down at the bottom of this trough where you're making these investments, your productivity then goes up because of the capital investment at the trough. And as it goes up, your profits go up. Then you get up there 26 years later to the peak and you realize, this is pretty good, I'm making money, I think I'll coast awhile. They stop making capital investments like they stopped under the beginning of the Rangel term and then your productivity drops off. And you don't realize it for a while. You're not quite in a free fall, but you're coasting. I remember seeing a poster on a fellow's wall years ago of a little kid sitting on a tricycle. He's got his hands on the handlebar and his hair is flying a little bit, he's got his feet off the pedal and a great big grin on his face. He's having fun, but the bottom of the poster says, If you're coasting, you're going downhill. And we went downhill, Mr. Speaker. We went downhill because taxes were too high and because the wrong message got sent to capital investment, apparently because of Khodnev's theory that was matched by the computer study at MIT, by the way, and you can pick your cycles within the cycles too. But it's the nature of capitalism to invest money, improve your productivity, and then have that equipment get old. Then you can't compete so much anymore and your productivity then diminishes in the face of this competition. You still get profits because you've got the return back on your capital investment and you own your equipment, but if the profits get narrower and narrower and the harder it is to get that competitive production out of the older equipment, then you peak out and you start to slide. And then you think, what are we going to do now? Well, let's go invent some things. Let's get our productivity back, and let's compete with the rest of the world. That's what needs to happen, but it has to happen in a competitive environment, Mr. Speaker. It needs to happen with low regulations and low taxation. And you can't be punishing business. And we can't have a President that is demagoging the capital investment in America and telling the bankers that they're greedy. Bankers will pull back. I think this is a lesson out of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: he went around and punished capital throughout the thirties. And then he had his New Deal that he said was a good deal; I said it was a horrible deal. The President said it would have been a better deal only FDR didn't spend enough money. Well, now we're finding out what America thinks of the FDR-New Deal-President-on-steroids Obama who went to Copenhagen twice and went 0 for 2. He wanted to get the World's Fair in Chicago; that was a goose egg. Then he went to Copenhagen to get a deal for cap-and-trade. He got a fig leaf, but not a deal. So that's 0 for 2 in Copenhagen. Then he went to Virginia to try to win the governorship down there, about three stops across the river. Well, we've got Governor McDonnell. Then he went to New Jersey to save that for the very rich and, as of yesterday, former-Governor Corzine. We have Governor Chris Christie. Then he went to Massachusetts, a place where you would never have to call the President of the United States to Massachusetts for reinforcements, never. No one could imagine a scenario like that and have the President's political capital on the line. He has a situation where he couldn't win because the race was already too close. But this is worse than taking a black eye, this is a thumping. This is a real thumping. It is a movement along the east coast. And if it can move like this on the east coast, it can really move across the rest of the country as a dynamic sea change. The American people reject some other things, as I said earlier. The most personal thing you have is your body. And the government comes in and nationalizes General Motors; that's like nationalizing the Dallas Cowboys. But your body? The most private thing you have, to have the government decide they're going to manage it and tell you what you're going to pay for insurance and set up a health choices administration czar to write the rules after the fact? To pass legislation that would appoint someone to have power over life and death, someone to be appointed later--maybe by, let me see, and confirmed by some Senators to be elected later. Well, they have gone way too far. And the wisdom of the Founding Fathers has been, I think, ratified and established. While I'm here talking about how things have to change, Mr. Speaker, I, not by accident, have an acorn here in my pocket. We know what ACORN has been doing to try to redirect America's destiny. They have admitted to over 400,000 fraudulent voter registration forms. They have said that they've gone to swing States and turned up their organization. They said they're a 501(3)(C), not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization. I went down to their headquarters at 2609 Canal Street in New Orleans. And there, where they run most of their operations out of, there was a huge ``Obama for President'' sign right smack dab in the front window of the national headquarters of not-for-profit, tax exempt, 501(C)(3) ACORN campaigning for the President of the United States. He was elected about 8 months earlier, 9 months earlier; they still had a sign in the window. The President wrote the book ``The Audacity of Hope.'' This is a lot of audacity to see what ACORN is doing. They've got to be pulled out by the roots, Mr. Speaker. That is the next piece that comes along. The American people have to step up and make sure that our elections are legitimate, that they're not stolen, that every American citizen registered to vote that counts a ballot has their vote counted. But the rest of those people don't have any business voting, and once is enough. And the threats that came and the stories that we've heard--we will pick up more about Massachusetts; but I suspect that they're not going to look very far because on a victory you don't go examine very deeply. Yet, in the close races, those that can scramble things and those that can produce fraudulent voter registration forms, those corrupt criminal enterprises will take and steal our liberty and our freedom, and I think we've seen it happen in several States. Thank God it didn't happen in Massachusetts tonight. I yield to the gentlewoman from Wyoming.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. I think there are lots of things that had to do with the election in Massachusetts tonight. I think a lot of it was that the American people are fed up and that they've had enough. You know, people will rise to their responsibility. I don't know how many times I've seen a town that needs a mayor, a small town, but nobody wants to bother. Somebody else can do that. If the wrong person steps forward and says, Well, I'll be mayor, well, we've got a little syndrome--and I won't say the person's name--but it's a syndrome that says, if somebody who's going to do a lousy job steps up, somebody who'll do a good job will step up to protect them from the damage that will be caused. I think that's part of what happened in Massachusetts. I think, when this announcement was made that the Coakley candidate would support the bill, whatever it was that came out behind closed doors, that that really mobilized a lot of people. We need to be thinking about what actually has happened here. In this House, a bill was passed, and there were amendments that were offered in committee, but there wasn't much of a process here. I offered something like 13 amendments in the Rules Committee at 1:30 in the morning, and there was nobody there to hear that. It's like if a tree falls in the forest. The Rules Committee sat there and chastised me for wasting their time for asking them if they'd give me permission to come down here to the floor and argue for the liberty of the American people. They had the audacity to chastise me for using up paper. It was a waste of paper to print these amendments because, surely, I should have known that Speaker Pelosi wasn't going to let these amendments come to the floor. So what was the point of putting them on record? My advice to them was take that 2,000-page bill and put the paper back in the tree. The world would have been a lot better off if we'd had a few more trees and a few less 2,000- or now 4,000-page bills. I think something else we need to talk about, Mr. Speaker, is they're not going to break the filibuster in the United States Senate on this bill anymore. So what kind of shenanigans do we have to guard against? Are they going to delay the certification of the votes in Massachusetts to try to delay the swear-in of Senator-elect Scott Brown? I like the sound of that. I haven't said that before. Senator- elect Scott Brown. Are they going to delay that? Are they going to try to keep him off the floor? Are they going to try to push a bill through with the 60 votes they have and defy the will of the American people? Is Speaker Pelosi going to try to take the Senate version of the bill now, which is something that the House has lined up to reject, and bring it to the floor of the House before people figure out what's going on and send it to the President even though the American people have not just at every opportunity--and the election today was an opportunity today for the voices of the people in Massachusetts and America to be heard. Thank you, Massachusetts. Not only that, the people have stepped up to do everything they can, and they have created opportunities that their voices be heard, and I say still their hearts are hardened. If they circumvent the will of the American people, if there's a bill from the Senate that gets brought to the floor and sent to the President because everybody over here just sucks it up and decides they're going to go ahead and lose those seats, there will be holy thunder to pay in the ballot box in November. I pray the streets will be peaceful until then, and I'm not sure they will be, Mr. Speaker. This is a rejection. This is a referendum on socialized medicine in Massachusetts today. This is President Obama's socialized medicine agenda rejected in Massachusetts. This is heavy-handed legislation and backroom dealing rejected in Massachusetts. This is special deals for different States, exemptions, carve-outs for Florida, Louisiana and Nebraska and others rejected by the people in Massachusetts. No secret deals. That's all rejected by people in Massachusetts. A situation that we have now is--and I said this going into the election a year ago November--excuse me. Well, it was last November actually. Going into the election, I said, If you elect Barack Obama as President of the United States and if you return majorities to the House of Representatives for Democrats and to the United States Senate--and I didn't anticipate it was going to be 60. I think, if you went back and did a recount in Minnesota, it wouldn't have been 60, but that's what it turned out to be--I predicted then that those majorities and a President Obama, the three of them--President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Harry Reid--could go in a phone booth and dictate to America what they wanted to do to this country. I put that in an op-ed here a couple of days ago, or at least in a press release, because I wanted to make sure it was down in print. There is no formal function that has taken place in the House of Representatives all year long or in the United States Senate all year long that controls the negotiations on the part of the ruling troika in America--Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. They plan to and strategize to draft a whole new bill, one that's not guided by anything except their judgment on whether they can get the votes to pass it and bring it directly to the floor of the House of Representatives--bypass the committee process, not allow any amendments, just write a draconian bill like King George would write. You know, he vetoed the will of the colonists, and now the colonists have vetoed the will of the President today.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. This is an exhilarating day for a lot of reasons, and many of us have poured our hearts and souls into this. I have argued that even when you are surrounded and there isn't hope, it is no time to give up because you never know when the cavalry is going to come over the hill. Well, they came over the hill in Massachusetts today. There was a fellow that gave up, though, and I think it is important to put this into the Congressional Record. [From the Washington Times] Bookie Pays Off Early, Predicts Brown Win (By Joseph Curl) Boston On Monday, an Irish bookie paid off bettors who had wagered that state Sen. Scott Brown, a conservative Republican, would win the special election for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat held for nearly 50 years by liberal Democratic icon Edward M. Kennedy. ``Enough is enough. It seems that Senator Brown just has to get out of bed tomorrow to win convincingly. As far as we're concerned, this race is well and truly over,'' said Paddy Power, Ireland's largest bookmaker, 24 hours before the actual election. Before shutting down the betting, Mr. Brown had gone from 5-4 odds to 1-5 (meaning if a bettor put down $5, they only stood to make $1 if Mr. Brown wins). The odds against his opponent--Democrat Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general--soared from 4-7 to win to 3-1 to lose. ``Paddy Power has also cut the odds on the Republicans winning the 2012 presidential election from 11-10 to evens and have installed Senator Scott Brown at odds of 20-1 to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012,'' the bookmaker said. Mr. Brown, Mrs. Coakley and Joseph Kennedy, a Libertarian who is running as an independent, entered the final day of campaigning before Tuesday's special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat left empty by the death of Edward M. Kennedy. The Irish bookie also paid off early on the 2008 presidential election. About a week before Election Day, Mr. Power paid out more than $1 million to all bettors who wagered on then-Sen. Barack Obama, saying Sen. John McCain was too far behind in the polls to win. One fellow gave up, and his name is Paddy Power. He is the lead bookie from Ireland. This is in the Washington Times printed today, so you can guess he capitulated sometime in the night, and it made the Washington Times. Paddy Power started to pay out the bets to the people that bet that Brown would be elected over Coakley today. And he said the polls were far enough apart that he didn't need to wait until the polls closed and they counted the votes. It was over. So Paddy paid out somewhere around--here we go. Mr. Brown had gone from 5-4 odds to 1-5. Meaning that if you bet $5 that he would win, you would pay out $1. And so Coakley went from 4-7 odds to 3-1. Now, the people from Nevada would understand all that instinctively, but I believe that, if I read this right, Mr. Power paid out more than $1 million to all betters who wagered on the Obama race. So he paid out the bets. He just decided that he didn't need to wait for the polls to be counted. He gave up, but he predicted it right. From my view, Mr. Speaker, I think when we have a public policy that is completely wrong, that violates the Constitution and it violates the spirit of the American people, in fact diminishes and damages, the American people should never give up, should never give up until it is all over. Then, you figure out how to start it all over again. I had a poster in my construction company office for years, and I just found it as I cleaned out my office over the Christmas break and I was snowed in. It was of this shore bird, a tall, long-legged bird, and he was swallowing a frog. And the frog is going down the throat of this bird, but the frog has his arms out and he is holding that bird by the throat. He is not going to be let up, or if he does he will be swallowed. The message is, Never give up. We didn't give up in this House. A lot of us stood and we fought. And we have got a lot of battles ahead of us, but the cavalry has arrived, we have got reinforcements. And now, there are people who will not be sleeping tonight trying to figure out how to pass a bill the American people don't want. I think that this time in history, this vote and this election and this special election in Massachusetts represents the most significant congressional race in my lifetime and maybe in the history of the United States. Time will tell. Time will tell on that. But I am exhilarated to see the spirit of freedom and liberty that has emerged in a place where we didn't see a lot of that in the past. I yield to the gentlelady, and then I will come back with any closing comments.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady for joining me tonight in this Special Order. You have heard, Mr. Speaker, my enthusiasm to put an end to this socialized medicine bill. You haven't heard what has been refreshed, at least, although I am confident you have heard, the things that the Republicans would like to do. Republicans have introduced at least 42 different health care bills here in this Congress. We have passed good pieces of legislation in the past when we were in the majority and sent them over to the Senate, where the trial lawyers blocked any reform. And one of those is to reform lawsuit abuse in medical malpractice. The number that I get from the health insurance underwriters is 8.5 percent of all our health care costs is wrapped up in lawsuit abuse-- the litigation, the defensive medicine, and the premiums that are unnecessary because of the lawsuit abuse. That 8.5 percent represents $203 billion a year going out unnecessarily wasted out of health care. This 4,000-page bill. And we don't know how many pages it is now. I don't know if they are back there now writing more pages, or if they are burning up pages trying to balance out their carbon footprint. But in this 4,000-some page bill, there is not anything in there that does one single thing to reduce one penny in unnecessary health care costs that has to do with lawsuit abuse. So that is number one. We want to fix that. We have introduced legislation on it. We passed it out of the House in 2005 when we were in the majority, and sent it over to the Senate where the trial lawyers blocked it, lawsuit abuse. John Shadegg for years has been pushing legislation to allow people to buy health insurance across state lines. So today, in Governor Christie's state, someone who would pay a premium there, a young 25- year-old man, buys a health insurance premium for about $6,000 a year, a healthy young man, can go to Kentucky, can buy a similar--not the same, but a similar policy, for $1,000 a year. So why wouldn't we adopt the Shadegg language and let the people in New Jersey save $5,000, and let them buy that policy in Kentucky until they start to lower the premiums and lower the mandates in New Jersey? Buying insurance across state lines does a lot to lower the cost of health care. And the President has said there isn't enough competition in the health insurance industry. Remember, he demagogued the health insurance industry mercilessly for a long time: Not enough competition. So he wanted to create a new Federal health insurance company that would offer a handful or a dozen health insurance policies. Here are the real numbers, Mr. Speaker. There are 1,300 health insurance companies in America--1,300 companies. That is a lot of competition. The President's idea is, well, we need 1,301, then. And that will be the deciding factor. And of those companies, there are approximately 100,000 different varieties of policies. If one wanted to go shopping, you could conceivably buy 100,000 different policies. That is a lot of policies and a lot of options and a lot of companies, and they are not allowed to compete across state lines. In fact, some of them don't want to do that. Some of them want to protect their little bailiwick, and some of them are trying to establish a de facto monopoly in their States. The Shadegg bill fixes that, and it breaks that down and lets people go out of state to buy insurance. Those are two big things. I want 100 percent deductibility of everybody's health insurance premiums. If a corporation or a company, a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability corporation, if they can deduct health insurance premiums for their employees, why if they don't provide that insurance can't the employee deduct 100 percent of that premium in the same way? It is completely unjust. When I bring that up, some say it costs too much money. Well, then let's level the tax a little bit. It is $32 billion, if I remember right, on the number. That is not too much money to give people equity and give people justice. So let's have full deductibility of everybody's premiums. Let's buy insurance across state lines, make all of the insurance companies in the country compete against each other. Let's end this lawsuit abuse, Mr. Speaker. Let's have transparency in billing, so we can start to reduce the cost shifting that takes place. Because some people underpay; others have to overpay. And, by the way, cutting Medicare by half a trillion dollars and alleging that there is waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption out there-- and they'll be able to find that all if we just let them cut Medicare by half a trillion--how is it the President of the United States can make an allegation that there is waste, fraud, and abuse, and can end corruption to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and not point one finger at the people that are corrupted or doing it? And how is it that the President of the United States can hold a right hostage to an ultimatum? We have a right to a legitimate government; we have a right to government oversight. If there's waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption in Medicare, we shouldn't have to be held hostage to pass socialized medicine to find out where it is so the government can go fix it. That should happen every day, automatically, every time, by due-diligent public servants. A half a trillion dollar cut. By the way, wiping out Medicare Advantage. Oh, except for Florida. That's the carve-out on there. The American people are full up to here of those kind of shenanigans. They're tired of special arrangements. They really don't like the idea that everybody's Cadillac health insurance plan is going to be taxed at 40 percent, except the unions. They're not going to be taxed quite so much. Give those an exemption because, after all, they helped the President get elected. So this is like a huge, right-out-in-the-open, shine-the-spotlight- on-it, political payoff. This is America. And this is what the people in Massachusetts revolted against today. A peaceful revolution. People that came up and said, I'm going to exercise my right at the ballot box. And if they exercise their good judgment and their right at the ballot box, then you don't have to go to the other form of changing government, which gets a little bloody. The French had it kind of rough after our Revolution. We don't want that in this country. We're grateful for people that go to the polls and provide that kind of revolution with good judgment and good energy and good organization and a great and wonderful spirit. For me, I get to pack 3 days of good memories about Massachusetts into my mind, and I can carry that with me forever. That's something that will never change now. I look forward to going back up there. Massachusetts, that deep, deep blue State turned a little purple today, Mr. Speaker. So I appreciate your indulgence and you listening and I appreciate the opportunity to address you here before the House of Representatives on this glorious day. I look forward to every day we have from here on out to the end of this session as we shape this policy and we start to move back to sanity in America. I look forward to the elections in November of this year, 2010. I look forward to the new faces that will come, the freshman class. It will be a large freshman class--a class of vigor, people that are full of energy, that really do come to change this country. I intend to team up with them, bring us a balanced budget, bring us back more liberty, strengthen our families, strengthen our foreign policy and, by the way, while that's going on, we need to shape a President for 2010. Thank, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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