Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would submit that no one has ever conceived of a number this big before or a bill this big before. I think it's not only a record; it's beyond the imagination of anybody at this point.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I will be on the steps of the Capitol at noon on Thursday. I will be there with a large group of patriots, yourselves, gentlemen--Mr. Hoekstra and Mr. Akin--myself, Michele Bachmann and others. We will be there standing up for freedom, Mr. Speaker, and so will the American people, and so will Jon Voight and so will Mark Levin. We are going to see a gathering of patriots that speak up and speak out to preserve and protect the freedom that our Founding Fathers and everyone who has put on a uniform to defend this country has defended in one way or another, and many patriots that didn't put on a uniform that stood up for America. And I can imagine blue collar people, white collar people, retired people, young people looking across at Washington, D.C. that have been wondering, what can I do, what can I do, and deciding, I'm going to climb in my car, my Detroit-made car or Michigan-made car----

Mr. KING of Iowa. And drive that across the countryside, whatever it takes, park here and take the Metro in because parking is going to be hard, but join these people coming here to the Capitol here in Washington, D.C. And some of them will decide they can't quite afford the time and they will go to district offices, inside the offices, out on the streets. I know that there is going to be a ceremonial reading of the bill in at least one location outside a district office. That will take at least 48 hours for anyone to fast read through this 1,990- page bill.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, furthermore, if I could just briefly, and then yield back to the gentleman from Michigan, but it also says in tort reform that if States are going to try any of these pilot projects, they can't limit attorneys' fees or impose caps on damages. So how are you going to reform tort if you can't limit attorneys' fees or impose caps on damages? It is: you can fly, but we're going to cut your wings off. The gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I do not know, and I would be happy to yield.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Hawaii is exempt from 1,990 pages?

Mr. KING of Iowa. You know, I may just go to Hawaii if this thing passes.

Mr. KING of Iowa. That would be it, Mr. Akin. I mean, I don't know if that's all the answers; but that comes to mind for me, too.

Mr. KING of Iowa. But is Hawaii also then exempt from the tax increases? And are they exempt from the lack of tort reform and exempt from all of these pieces that are bad?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Are they exempt from funding for abortions? Are they exempt from funding for illegal aliens? Are they exempt from lawsuit abuse, tax increases, or Medicare cuts?

Mr. KING of Iowa. The commissioner shall decide, one of 3,425.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I call him a commissarissioner. I think that's the appropriate name for someone like that.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlemen from Michigan and Missouri.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, we stand together in our call for freedom and the call for the American people to exercise that freedom and come to this Capitol. And that is Thursday at noon, day after tomorrow. Let your voices be heard. And if thousands of Americans come to this city, we will be able to save our freedom and be able to own the health insurance policy that you choose and keep the government's hands off our health care. And those that can't come to this city, we ask them to come to district offices or pick up the phone. The American people shut down comprehensive amnesty 3 years ago twice; we can shut down socialized medicine. We can do it, and it starts on Thursday. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentlemen that have joined me tonight, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, this whole health care debate started out clear back during the Obama-Hillary debate during the Presidential campaign. President Obama has come to two premises: One is we spend too much money on health care. The proposed solution from Democrats? Spend a lot more, $1 to $2 trillion more. The second premise: That too many are uninsured, 47 million or, as we just heard, 39 million. When you subtract from 47 million illegal aliens and immigrants and those who qualify under their employer and those who make over $75,000 a year and those who qualify for government programs, you're down to 12.1 million, not 47. That's less than 4 percent of the population. They seek to overhaul 100 percent of the health insurance industry in America and 100 percent of the health care delivery system in America to do what? To reduce that number of uninsured from 4 percent down to something like perhaps 2 and, in the process, put in place the framework for socialized medicine. Additionally, they give us an opt-out. Well, here's what I'll opt out of: I'll opt out of funding abortions. I'll opt out of funding illegals. I'll opt out of lawsuit abuse, tax increases, and Medicare cuts.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to address you on the floor of the House. I have the chance to do so, perhaps, with some people that have expertise in the subject matter that I heard just go through my ears a little bit ago, and that would be where do we save money when it comes to this cost of health care in America? I listened to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Braley) talk about 17 to 28 billion in added costs of preventive medicine. Preventive medicine. When I first heard that, I actually misunderstood his point. I thought surely he was talking about defensive medicine, but, I am sorry, it wasn't the case. It was preventive medicine. This amorphous target of how you save money on health care by watching your diet and being physically fit and getting regular checkups, yes, that's important. But his discussion of $17 to $28 million multiplied across 10 years, actually, when you look at it, it pales in comparison to the overall costs that are included in the lawsuit abuse in the health care in America. I will submit these numbers, that the lowest number that I find is that the costs of medical malpractice, Mr. Speaker, and the liability insurance and the defensive medicine that definitely takes place so that doctors can protect themselves from lawsuit abuse adds up to a number of something like, a lowest number is 5\1/2\ percent of the overall health care costs. The health insurance underwriters put that at 8\1/2\ percent of the overall costs. That's $203 billion a year, and this is still a low number. If we take Mr. Braley's analysis and multiply it times 10 for the 10-year life of this bill, that comes in to over $2 trillion, the costs of the defensive medicine that's taking place and the funding that goes into the pockets of the trial lawyers. I talked to an orthopedic surgeon who had told me that 95 percent of the tests that he runs are unnecessary, that his diagnosis actually will apply. It will be there, but he has to protect himself for that 5 percent that he may need to be right. But the 95 percent are there, money that's wasted, he said completely wasted, in order to protect him from lawsuits that come from trial lawyers. It's interesting that a trial lawyer would come to the floor of the House of Representatives and talk about the value of preventive medicine but not the cost of defensive medicine. That's a subject that I will never hear defended on this side of the aisle. If anybody over there would like to ask me to yield, I would be happy to take this up how many trial lawyers might be in that large caucus that has a 79-vote advantage over Republicans and still wants to blame Republicans for their socialized medicine bill not being passed in the House of Representatives. Those are the circumstances and the facts, Mr. Speaker. Actually, I believe it's a 78-vote advantage, and it lets the Speaker be able to have 39 votes to take a walk and still have 218 votes to pass a socialized medicine bill. Now, you would think that if you had roughly 80 people swirling around over there that are extra over the number of Republicans, you might be able to turn your sights on the people in their own caucus, Mr. Speaker, and resolve this issue, instead of coming back here to the floor as the gentleman did, Mr. Murphy, and point his finger at Republicans and accuse Republicans of not having solutions. Oh, yes, we have solutions, Mr. Speaker. We have many solutions. In fact, I have in my hand here the health care solutions, not just from the Republicans, just from, oh, a little more than half of us, the conservative Republicans that are members of the Republican Study Committee. This report was produced by the Republican Study Committee, and the chairman, of course, is Tom Price of Georgia, a medical doctor himself and a lead thinker and a real national voice on health care, along with many of the doctors that we have in our caucus. I looked down through the list of legislation that has been offered by Members on the Republican side of the aisle, and I see my name there, yes, but I also see names such as Mr. Issa of California, Mr. Fortenberry of Nebraska, Mr. Stearns of Florida, Mr. Latta of Ohio, Mr. Royce of California, Mr. Scalise of Louisiana, Dr. Gingrey of Georgia, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Kenny Marchant of Texas. It goes on and on, the mountain of legislation that has been introduced by Republicans. It's quite interesting that another gentleman from Georgia this morning, Mr. David Scott, made the allegation that Republicans had no solutions. Well, Mr. Price followed him over to the side of the floor and offered to give him this stack of Republican solutions. He smiled nicely, but he refused to take it. Now, we don't always get a nice smile from the other side, but they refused to accept this whole stack of ideas. This is just a list of ideas. This isn't bills. These are a list of ideas. These are pieces of legislation that Republicans have seen fit to put into language for law and introduce into the Congressional Record and seek to get it passed into committee and try to offer these health care solutions as amendments to the overall markup of H.R. 3200, the bill that is the House version of this national takeover of our health care, or at least the framework to do so, Mr. Speaker. So, it is something the American people need to see through. I can express frustration. I can speak from facts and I can speak from a level of experience being engaged in this debate. The American people, Mr. Speaker, need to focus on what is true and what isn't; what is honest and what is just; and what is, I don't want to describe it as dishonest, I will describe it as political hyperbole designed to reach a conclusion that I don't believe is in the best interests of the American people. So I come to the floor this night to raise this issue and to enlighten I believe yourself, Mr. Speaker, and in the process the American people. And I will start out again, take us to this Medicare issue that was brought up by the other side. Now, their argument is that there are billions of dollars to be saved in Medicare. And so they only want to cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars, $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, and they will argue that Republicans want to raise the fees on payroll in order to fund Medicare if we are not willing to slash Medicare to our seniors by half a trillion dollars. I recall watching a spokesman for the AARP on television one day arguing that, well, that half a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare really isn't that much money. It is a small percentage of the overall layouts. Half a trillion dollars. What could they possibly be getting that would offset a half a trillion dollar cut directly to their members? Here are some of the places that these cuts come from: $133 billion, and now the most recent number that came out within the last few days is actually $162 billion, cut from Medicare Advantage. A lot of those people are in my State, Iowa. Of course, they are senior citizens, and they want to have some extra options and they are willing to invest in Medicare Advantage. But since this is the only component of the Medicare program that actually has the private sector engaged in it, which keeps the costs down, the Democrats want to scrap Medicare Advantage. They seem to despise free enterprise and despise economic competition. So this $133 billion apparently has grown to a minus $162 billion right out of the pockets of our seniors, taking away their Medicare Advantage, killing the rest of it after they have already landed a severe blow on this year. Here is a minus $128.8 billion from our hospitals. I don't have any hospitals that tell me they are being overpaid in Medicare, and I don't expect if I did have they would tell me that. But I can tell you the national number for Medicare reimbursement rates is only 80 percent of the cost of delivering that service--80 percent of the cost. Now, some of these doctors and nurses and health care practitioners are actually in business for a profit, Mr. Speaker, and I don't begrudge them that profit. I hope there is competition, and the more profit they make, the more competition it is likely to attract. Some of these hospitals are for-profit hospitals; they all are not. So we can't begrudge them that profit. That is what has driven the United States of America. In fact, over in my desk at 1131 Longworth there is a stack of flash cards in there that are produced by USCIS, the United States Citizenship Immigration Service. They are laminated glossy cards with a red background and pictures on them, and they are there so, let me say, naturalizing Americans that seek to pass the naturalization test to become American citizens can study on these flash cards the things they need to know. For example, Who was the father of our country? George Washington. It has the question on the front side, George Washington on the back side. Who saved the Union in the Civil War? Front question. Back side, Abe Lincoln. Question, What is the economic system of the United States of America? Flip the card over, answer: Free enterprise capitalism, Mr. Speaker. I mean, that is like the simplest no-brainer question for the economy of the United States that we require of anyone that wants to naturalize to become an American citizen in this country; they have to know it is a free enterprise system. Yet we have people in this Congress that are constantly assaulting the free enterprise system. We have seen the nationalization of one- third of our private sector just in the last one year, one-third, according to The Wall Street Journal. And this health care industry, one-sixth of our overall economy, perhaps another 18 percent. If you add those together, we are very close to if not exceeding over half of our economy being nationalized, meaning a Federal Government takeover of management and running the show and calling the shots and freedom disappearing, all of that within, what, a year or a year and a couple of months, Mr. Speaker? It is appalling to think that we have had an all-out frontal assault on free enterprise while at the same time we are testing our immigrants who want to become Americans to make sure they understand that this Nation is for free enterprise, that that is the basis of our economy. It is appalling. It is ironic. It is disingenuous to take this attack against the free enterprise system in America and go against Medicare Advantage, the only free enterprise component of Medicare, to knock all of that out, which is what they propose to do in H.R. 3200, and go after our hospitals and ding them for $128.8 billion, when many of the hospitals and many of the hospitals that I represent are taking a high percentage of Medicare patients, and every time they take a patient, they know that they are losing money, and it has to be picked up somewhere else or they can't keep their doors open. So it requires cost shifting, and that is where we get the medical costs that seem out of line. Then you can go on down through the line. Cutting home health care by $56 billion. Cutting Medicare Commission, $22.2 billion. Cutting Medicare Improvement Fund by $22.3 billion. Part D, $19.8 billion. We will be down to aspirins in no time. Skilled nursing facilities, $14.6 billion. Cut part B schedules, except for physician services, $23.1 billion. You go on down, CMS, innovation center, hospices, accountable health care organizations; $800 million out of the power wheelchairs component of that. That must be McCaskill out of Missouri. And comparative effectiveness, $300 million. The list goes on. Medigap $100 million. This stack here takes us up there in the neighborhood of $500 billion cut out of Medicare. And what do we hear from the other side? ``Well, we are always going after waste, fraud and abuse.'' ``There will be always be abuse,'' I heard a gentleman say, ``so we are going after the waste and the fraud.'' Are we? If they know where the waste and the fraud is, rather than pointing to categories, tell me. Tell me, Mr. Speaker, what is it that is going on in Medicare in my State, in my hospitals and the clinics in my district, that is waste, fraud or abuse, when they are receiving on the national average 80 percent of the cost of delivering that service. I don't have anybody in my district that is making money off of Medicare. But Iowa is the lowest reimbursement State in the Union, and that is the biggest reason why. So we have the lowest reimbursement rates in the entire United States of America. We rewrote that bill in 2003, and Iowa got a little better off. They climbed a little bit up out of that 50th in the Nation for reimbursement rates for Medicare. They closed the gap a little, but we never got up to 49th. Who was number one in the Nation at the time in reimbursement rates for their citizens? Louisiana. Who got the most per capita out of the entire 2003 Medicare rewrite legislation and the prescription-drug component of that? Louisiana. We look across this country, and Democrat after Democrat says ``there is waste, fraud and abuse in my Medicare.'' Well, maybe it is in yours. It is not in mine. But you want to cut mine, not yours. You will defend those reimbursements to your districts. You won't let us adjust those rates. You have a little package over there which I support, and I have worked with some of the people on that side of the aisle, and I appreciate the effort they put in. They deserve more of the credit than I can certainly take on this, although I did write some language into the 2003 bill that allowed for consideration for cost and quality. But this is supposedly a component of a negotiation that we will get, and that number is something like $8 billion that would be rolled back in to help compensate cost and quality. But it is pretty vague. You can't get your fingers on it. The language isn't there. We don't really know whether it is cost and quality or whether it is demography and geography. I mean, that is the question now. If it is going to be demography and geography, that is what Democrats usually want to do. So I suspect that they want to change the rates so that people that live in their chosen areas that meet their demographics will get a higher reimbursement rate. And I can only conclude that that means that they will target minorities and inner cities. And I think that every American should be considered as one of God's children, regardless of what their ethnicity or national origin is and regardless of where they live. So, if you take that off the table, and I sure would like to because it pits Americans against Americans and causes some people to focus on skin color instead of the content of our character, but if we could take that off the table, it is still geography, and they will define the demography that gives them the advantage. They will still take away our Medicare Advantage and decrease and gain themselves an advantage to their constituents, without regard to justice and equity. Now, justice and equity would look at this and conclude that the States with the lowest reimbursement rate should be in a position to get the greatest bump up. But even if that is not the case, what if it would be the States and the locales and the metropolitan service areas that had the best cost and quality ratios in America? Who ranks number one in cost and quality? And shouldn't we reward the people that produce the best product for the best value? Now, my State will rank in the top five in every broad health care results analysis that comes out. Every objective, broad health care results analysis that comes out, I will be in the top five. Sometimes we are number one in some categories, and sometimes it moves across the spectrum. But they will be in the top five in quality because of the result that they get, because a lot of people that are there put their hearts and their heads and their souls into this and their backs and their hands and all their know-how and resources, and they get a good result. So that is the quality. But they are rewarded with the lowest reimbursement rate in Medicare in the Nation. So they get a low cost, because they aren't being paid for the service that they are providing. They produce a high quality anyway. And I am saying that we need to recognize the best cost and quality combination in America and reward those. If you want to go out and find a half a trillion dollars in savings in Medicare, don't come to my State. Don't come to my district. We are producing the best combination of cost and quality in America. Go to those places then where Medicare reimbursement rates are high and results are low and advise them that they are going to have to get their standards up, but you are going to reduce their reimbursement rate, if that is your determination, to take half a trillion dollars out of this. That is my suggestion. This is the chart. This is the reality. To cut Medicare and argue that there is waste, fraud and abuse everywhere, slash it across-the- board and starve the people that are doing the best good for the least amount of dollars is unjust, and there is no equity there for anybody involved, not the providers, not the practitioners, not the patients, not the senior citizens in this district that I represent, which I believe is the most senior congressional district in America. The Fifth District of Iowa and Iowa itself has the highest percentage of the population over the age of 85. And then of 99 counties in Iowa, 32 of them are in my district, and in that 32 county district, we have 10 of the 12 most senior counties in Iowa. So, 10 of the 12 most senior counties in Iowa in the most senior State in the Nation results in, I believe, the most senior congressional district in America. And we are looking at a half-trillion dollar cut across this country because some people have to figure out a way to pay for this $1 trillion to $2 trillion bill. Now, this takes us to this conclusion that was drawn by President Obama while in debate with Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary process last year, in 2008. And I think it was a given that going into this presidential contest on the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton clearly owned the field as far as knowing her health care issues. And here is a point as to why I say that, Mr. Speaker. She produced this for America, working in conjunction with her husband, Bill Clinton, who, by the way, came to this floor and spoke from this well on September 22, 1993, to plead with and entreat a joint session of Congress, House and Senate Members and the galleries full, to adopt his concepts and write into law a national health care act that would completely take over at that time one-seventh of the U.S. economy. And Hillary Clinton was instrumental in that. She held the meetings and put together a bill. Some were closed-door meetings. That sounds a bit familiar these days. I remember my frustration at the door being closed with Hillary Clinton and a big table full of people who were sliding papers around, arguing and hammering out the destiny of America. I have always had an aversion about turning people loose to go make decisions for Americans or Iowans behind closed doors. I recall a policy that needed to be handled when I was in the Iowa Senate. They appointed six Democrats and six Republicans; the 12 apostles, I called them. They put themselves in a room and closed the door. They all swore an oath that they wouldn't talk about the product they were working on until they all agreed to come to a conclusion and sign off on this document, and then that's what they did. One of my close friends was in that room and would not utter a word of what was going on, what was being negotiated inside that room, and of course I didn't pry very hard because I respected his integrity. But you know what happens, Mr. Speaker, when they meet behind closed doors, when they meet in secret, when they appoint themselves as the people that are the--how shall I say--the sole repository of wisdom inside the room when they close the door. They come out. And once they reach a consensus inside the room, they produce a document or a philosophy, and they all sign off, either in ink or verbally, and they go out and stand together behind the microphones. Then they say, We have produced the best product possible. We've had the right brains in the room, and I am really optimistic about what we've done. This is the right thing for America or Iowa or whatever group it is that they're seeking to impose this policy on. And invariably they will say, Don't amend this because if you do, this perfectly balanced specimen that we have would be knocked out of balance, and it won't be able to function properly. It actually reminds me of former Secretary of the Treasury Paulson when last year, on September 19, he came to the Hill and asked this Congress to write him a check for $700 billion. His response to us and his presentation to us was, I've been looking at this for 13 months. You've only been looking at it for 24 hours. I have thought of everything. Whatever you think of will knock it out of balance. Don't try to amend this. You will destroy the overall product. This is a perfectly balanced vehicle. Well, it doesn't take much to perfectly balance a vehicle when it happens to be not a blank check but a check for $700 billion, signed by the American taxpayers and borrowed from the Chinese to be paid with interest and principal by grandchildren yet to be born. Those were about all the details that were in there, and I had to write some in myself as I speak about it; not in the language itself. That's what came out with the $700 billion TARP piece. By the way, the Wall Street Journal came out today with some regret that they supported that $700 billion. Now they would like to see the plug pulled and the money paid back to the American taxpayer and no more doled out in the fashion that it was. That's an inside-the-closed- doors rush to judgment. And right now we've got behind-the-closed-doors negotiations taking place in the House of Representatives, in the United States Senate; people frantically negotiating at different stages with doors closed. Maybe three Senators over on the Senate side right down that hall, Mr. Speaker. A few more House Members maybe. I've talked about some of these things that are ironic, but here is the irony: As President Obama was campaigning--and I will have to circle back to the Hillary issue in a moment. But as President Obama was campaigning, he said that he would open up unconditional negotiations with Iran. That meant to a lot of us, Mr. Speaker, that we envisioned Barack Obama sitting down across the table with Ahmadinejad or the Mullahs and maybe asking them if they would just be nice people and shut down their nuclear weapons operations. Now aside from how that makes the United States look and how it rewards people for threatening Israel and the United States, aside from that, Mr. Speaker, it seems ironic to me that the President is meeting with people like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, a handful of Democrats, and they're crafting legislation behind closed doors, yet he's not willing to sit down with people like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor. What is it about that, Mr. Speaker, that the President of the United States would announce that he's willing to do unconditional bilateral negotiations with Iran, Ahmadinejad, because he is the boss there. If you will remember, he won an election, an election supported by the White House--or the result, at least, supported by the White House. To sit down with Ahmadinejad potentially or the Mullahs but not the leaders in the Republican Party or the leaders on the health care issue--and we have many on our side--is a real irony. I was about to make the case that during the campaign, Hillary Clinton made the argument that her version of health care--now it wasn't exactly this. She had some alterations because 14 years have gone by, and we know that the shape of this body isn't the same that it will be after 14 years of wear and tear. But this is the 14-year-old, now 15-year-old flow chart of HillaryCare. I believe that her background in this is what drove President Obama into taking positions on health care that now he is seeking to sustain in the same way that he's seeking to sustain his Executive Order that closes Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay, on January 22 of next year. The difficulty of accomplishing such a thing looms now over the Justice Department in an imposing dark cloud, a hasty Executive Order, a policy in health care that was hammered out in the face of, I'll say, persistent, skillful debate on the part of Hillary Clinton. But this is her plan. This is from the New York Times back in '93-'94, shortly before Senator Phil Gramm stood down that hallway on the floor of the United States Senate and said, This plan passes ``over my cold, dead political body.'' A lot of people thought that Phil Gramm was wrong, that this health care bill couldn't be killed. Phil Gramm wasn't the only one lined up to kill it, Mr. Speaker. There were many of us that did, but he was a man that was in the lead. He was one of the generals fighting this war to fold this scary flow chart and end the effort to take over what was at that time one-seventh of our economy. He inspired people in the House, people in the Senate and people all across America with his belief and conviction that this could be killed. So this scary flow chart, this thing that I've said a number of times scared the living daylights out of me when it showed up in the paper, and I ended up with a laminated chart. And I do think it's someplace in my archives. But I hung it on the wall in my construction office in that '93-'94 era, and it stayed there all the way through the nineties. When I got to wondering about government and how I was going to keep a construction business operating in the middle of the tax increases and the changes in regulation and the burden that I had of government, I would look at that chart, and I would see that it had been buried by the leadership of Phil Gramm and others and by the American people, it gave me great heart that the common sense at the core and the heart, soul and conviction of the American people prevailed over this scary flow chart, which is a complete takeover of the health care system, and almost every one of these boxes would have become and our future would have been these proposed organizations, proposed agencies. Now we have a new flow chart, not the 1993-94 version. Fifteen years later, we have the 2009 version. Mr. Speaker, if you observe this, the white boxes are existing entities out there. Here is the private sector entity, private insurers. Here are the traditional health insurance plans that they produce. You can go on around and see what exists along here. The Office of Civil Rights is there. The Office of Minority Health is there. But there are at least 31 new agencies and now, on a more careful inspection, it grows this up to more than 50 new agencies created by H.R. 3200. This is a scary proposition. HillaryCare, scary in black and white, was scary enough to scare some of us into public life. It didn't scare me out of the private sector because this was killed. It was killed by the American people; but it helped motivate me to come into public life. I wonder if that had not been proposed to the American people whether I would be standing here opposing this or even in the United States Congress today. This takeover now of one-sixth of the American economy is a scary proposition. This takeover of a good share of our freedom, the freedom to buy the health insurance policy of our choice, the freedom to move to another State if we don't like the accommodations and the regulations that we have, the freedom to go without health insurance if we chose choose to do so, the freedom to take our risk and then be able to accept the profits that come from that, and pay the price if we take the risk. Here are the few premises that President Obama has hung his hat on as a means of counteracting the very active and informed health care approach in the primary that Hillary Clinton mounted. He was forced to take a position on health care, so here are the two conclusions that he drew. One is, we spend too much money on health care. We have to fix that. The other one was, we have too many uninsured. We have to fix that. So somehow they've morphed along and have gotten away from the idea that, you know, there are rights and there are responsibilities. It seems to be that the point that they would like to make is a point that you're more likely to hear of in Western Europe than you are in the United States of America, and that is an argument that people have a right to a health insurance policy. The policy. I mean, everybody has access to health care. It may not be the best. They may go into a public health clinic. I know some awfully good practitioners there that have committed themselves to working in that environment, and I see high-quality care when I walk into those in my district. So maybe they go into a public health clinic. Maybe they walk into the emergency room, and it does run up some costs. But everybody has access to health care in America. Whether they have a dime, whether they have $1 billion or whether they're in the hole and they have a negative net worth, they have access to health care. That is not the issue. So they make a new issue which is too many uninsured. I will go to that chart in a moment. But I want to make the other point and it's easier to make, and that is President Obama's premise that we spend too much money on health care in America. You can argue that, and you can debate it. We're at around 14.5 percent on up to maybe more than 16 percent of our GDP is spent on health care in America. They'll point to numbers that show that about 9.5 percent of the GDP of the other industrialized world is spent on health care, some above, some below that number. Well, you know, this is all in the eye of the beholder. Those that are receiving this health care that need it, the lifesaving procedures, they will tell you that it is worth the price. But I won't belabor that because we get into anecdotes to no end. I will just say this, if President Obama is right--and I am not conceding that point. But if he is right, for the sake of conjecture, I would make this point. His solution for spending too much money on health care is, spend more. Spend $1 trillion to $2 trillion more on health care, and then somehow it magically fixes the problem of spending too much. You heard the words from one of the gentlemen that spoke in the previous hour. It's counterintuitive. It's kind of hard to rationalize. Well, it is. It's not just counterintuitive. Mr. Speaker, it's completely illogical to make a point and take a drive for the presidency and seek to impose upon the American people through the leverage and the majorities in the Congress, the Pelosi majority here, the Harry Reid majority down that hallway, a $1 trillion to $2 trillion health care plan. Because we spend too much money, now we'll spend $1 trillion to $2 trillion more. And now one of the President's moving targets--I feel like a cat chasing a ball of string here--but one of the President's moving targets now is, Well, it's got to be under $1 trillion, in the $900 billion range. So write me a bill that does that because we can't take the political hit of something that's over $1 trillion. So they brought the doctors fix to the floor of the Senate the other day, and the doctors fix was $247 billion to try to fix the adjustment rates for our doctors that are underpaid in some of these cases. It failed on the floor of the Senate, and 13 Democrats voted with Republicans. How can this be? That was a way to take that $247 billion out of this government health care bill so that the bill didn't go over $1 trillion. If they would have passed that, the doctors fix wouldn't be a part of it, they wouldn't have to put it in there, and they could keep it all under the $1 trillion category. We're really here with AARP making a public statement that $500 billion is a very small percentage of the overall outlays, and they can take a hit and have their reimbursements reduced in the category I showed in this chart earlier, by $500 billion, and still their hearts are cold. How can they do that? I have a chart here that shows me a little bit about why AARP might do that. A couple of points here. One of them is that there is a section in H.R. 3200 that would exempt Medigap policies from new limits on preexisting condition restrictions. Well, AARP's Medigap insurance, which they sell and which they collect a good deal of premiums on--and it's the lion's share of the profits that AARP makes--continues to deny Medigap claims to individuals with serious health conditions. There is a preexisting condition clause written into Medigap policies, and H.R. 3200 would preserve the preexisting condition component for AARP. So I presume that is one of the reasons AARP can watch $500 billion be cut out of Medicare as long as they preserve their preexisting condition component of their Medigap insurance, which is so they can stay in that business. There are several others on the list, but that's the easiest one to understand. The President wants to solve a problem with spending too much money by spending more--$1 trillion to $2 trillion more. The Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid, sought to blur that and sought to exempt the doctors fix so that they could keep their, I'll call it, socialized medicine bill down below $1 trillion. The $247 billion piece of legislation that dealt with the doctors fix independently was shot down in the Senate, and it could not receive a majority vote. So let me get that other part of the President's position illustrated, Mr. Speaker. This is the other position of the President's. The first, remember, is that we spend too much money. Therefore, we'll spend more. It's not logical because it's not logical. Here is the other one. We have 47 million uninsured in America--too many uninsured. Thus, we must insure them all because people on this side of the aisle believe that having your own health insurance policy is somehow intuitively withdrawn from the Constitution as a right that comes down from God, that flows through the Declaration of Independence, that shows up somewhere in the Constitution and maybe in the Bill of Rights, and that now they can divine that and hand that over to everybody in America, legal and illegal, no matter who you are. I know that there are a good number of Democrats who have actually endorsed legislation that says that every human being in America--every person in America, would be the language--has a right to one's own health care, to receive it for free and that health care practitioners will be salaried employees who are working for the government. That would be a 1981 bill that I happened to read the other day, introduced by Ron Dellums and John Conyers. John Conyers is still here, and he's still pushing the same kind of issues. This is the 47 million, Mr. Speaker, the 47 million who are uninsured. Now, that's the highest number that anybody defends. We could take this on down to, maybe, 39 million, but here is how you do the math: These two categories right here are illegal aliens and immigrants. Add those both together, and it comes to 10.2 million. They're not part of the 47 million. They're not part of the people who, I think, we ought to impose upon taxpayers to fund their insurance. I want to take illegal aliens and immigrants out of this equation of those who would be handed gift-wrapped health insurance policies. I want to subtract from that list the Americans who have the means to provide their own insurance. Those Americans making over $75,000 a year can find ways to write checks for their health insurance premiums. They don't. Nine million of them who are making over $75,000 a year don't. Here, this is 9.7 million who are those eligible for a government program but who are not enrolled--mostly Medicaid. They don't bother to sign up. Why would they sign up for another program if we hand them silver-plattered health insurance policies? All they have to do is walk in and sign up, but they don't--9.7 million. Here are those who are eligible for employer-sponsored insurance but who are not enrolled--6 million. Hmm. They told their employers ``I don't want it'' or they don't bother to sign up. Now, all of these people who I've described are the people who, I don't believe, the American people want to hand silver-plattered, gift- wrapped health insurance policies. For the ones who are left, we do have some compassion. Those are the Americans without affordable options. That's 12.1 million people. They are the Americans without affordable options. Right before I yield to the gentleman from Texas, I want to show you what it looks like when you look at all of America. This is 47 million. This is 47 million in America's population. Here we are. Eighty-four percent are with health insurance. This is 306 million Americans in this circle. These folks in these categories here are the ones who I say I don't want to insure and that the Americans don't want to insure--illegals and those with the money and those who are already qualified, et cetera. Yet, as to this red sliver here, this tiny, little piece of the pie, that's 12.1 million people. That's less than 4 percent of the overall U.S. population--Americans without affordable options. Now, it would be nice to help these people. I'm open to doing some of those things, and we've got some proposals here on the RSC's list to do that. Yet the real bottom line is that Democrats and the President, behind closed doors, are putting together a policy that they want to ram down our throats which will maybe reduce this 4 percent number down to 2, but the price would be to transform completely 100 percent of the health insurance industry in America and to start down the path of a complete transformation of 100 percent of the health care delivery system in America. It's the best health insurance system in the world. It's the best health care delivery system in the world. We have a whole list of fixes, some of which we've passed out of this House but which were blocked by the trial lawyers and the Senate in the last few years. It's the Republicans who preserve your free enterprise; it's the Republicans who preserve our freedom, Mr. Speaker, and it's the Republicans who will reduce these costs in our health care and who will reduce this number of 4 percent slightly, not by a big amount, maybe by a percent or so or two. That's about half. All of this is coming out of the lists here of the Republican Study Committee and of the list of the 10 things that I carry around in my pocket which are the solutions that I propose. So, Mr. Speaker, I recognize that the most tenacious, resilient and, perhaps, entertaining Member of the United States Congress, who is from East Texas, is here tonight. Whenever I see Congressman Louie Gohmert on the floor, I want to hear what's on Louie's mind. I'd be so happy to yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from East Texas, Mr. Louie Gohmert, the judge.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Texas. I recall that conversation. And just to give a balanced view of this, the lady was with the British Embassy and had a Ph.D. in Africa studies and a delightful intellect. And I remember in part of that discussion and debate that I engaged with her, she made the statement that she believed that there was more freedom in China than there is in the United States. ``Why would you come to that conclusion?'' was my question. And her answer was, ``Well, because they have access to health care, free health care, in China.'' I don't know that it is free in China, but that's the difference in a British viewpoint and an American viewpoint. We know what our rights are. We established those rights in the matter of wresting our freedom out of the British Crown. They're still under the Crown, so theirs have evolved in a different way. But we received a lot of the underlying principles of freedom. And they are delineated in our Constitution and in our Bill of Rights, and the foundation for them is in the Declaration, the rights that come from God. So we see rights differently in America than anyplace else in the world, and it's awfully hard to talk about freedom with people who speak English that have a different definition of the word ``freedom.'' So if there is more freedom in China because they don't have to earn their own health insurance policy, I'd say there is less freedom in China because they don't have to. We get to struggle here. We get to try. The people that excel and take personal responsibility need to have an opportunity. Jimmy Carter would be the person I would quote on this. I don't know if he ever lived by it, but Jimmy Carter once said, and I think it was when he was in Iowa campaigning for the Presidency and establishing the first-in-the-Nation caucus. He said, I believe the people that work should live better than those that don't. That's Jimmy Carter. And I don't know that he lived by it, but I believe those words made a lot of sense. That's why I remembered them. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman. Reclaiming my time, I know that we are very near the end of this. But, Madam Speaker, the point that I would like to leave you with tonight is this: There was a time just 3 years ago when the American people rose up. They rejected a policy that was being driven through the House and the Senate, a bipartisan policy driven by the President and Democrats and Republicans that was called ``comprehensive immigration reform.'' I called it ``comprehensive amnesty.'' They rose up. They jammed the telephone lines, and they killed that bill. This bill, this bad bill, affects more Americans. It does not have bipartisan support. It has only Democrat support, and they're behind closed doors. The American people can rise up, Madam Speaker, and they can jam the telephone lines and they can stall the United States Senate and they can do so in the House of Representatives as well. They can convey this message to kill this bad bill so we can start all over with some real solutions, real solutions, among them the list that I have: tort reform, buy insurance across State lines, portability, full deductibility, association health care plans, health savings accounts, transparency in billing, electronic medical records, preserve catastrophic insurance, extend COBRA. That's just the top 10 on my list. And here's what I'd reject. I would say that if we are going to be able to opt out, as Harry Reid said yesterday, well, I'm going to opt out of this: I'll opt out of abortions. I'll opt out of funding illegal aliens. I'll opt out of the lawsuit abuses that are costing us billions every year. I'll opt out of the tax increases and the Medicaid cuts. Madam Speaker, I want to kill this bill, and I appreciate your indulgence.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a privilege to address you here tonight on the floor of the House of Representatives in this great deliberative body that we once were and sometimes are and perhaps one day will be again in honor of the traditions that we have in this Congress. It has been a difficult year for this deliberative body, and one of the reasons for that I believe is the leadership of this House and the leadership of the majority party seem to be quite concerned about open public debate, quite concerned about limiting the amendments that come to the floor, and quite concerned about pushing a new President's agenda. This new President's agenda follows through a whole series of major moves from a business perspective. Some of them actually started before his election and some of them happened after his election and many of them happened after the President's inauguration. But we have witnessed here within the last 15 months or so the nationalization of huge business entities in America. It is framed by the $700 billion TARP bailout and the $787 billion stimulus plan. In the middle of all of that came the nationalization of three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, and Chrysler. All of that adds up to about one-third of America's private sector being nationalized, much of it under the watch of this administration, but not all of it, in fairness, Madam Speaker. The American people are nervous. They know that free enterprise is the foundation of America's economic system. That is so basic to the American people, the value of free enterprise, and it is so basic to the values of, let me say USCIS, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, that they have a whole stack of flashcards that are prepared for those who would study for the naturalization test, those immigrants who go through the process to become American citizens, the people we celebrate as Americans by choice, a whole series of flashcards, the history of America is on those flashcards. They are stacked that deep, and you can turn one after another over and you can understand about what George Washington and the Constitution and the Declaration and the Bill of Rights and the Fourth of July and the list goes on and on. One of those flashcards, Madam Speakers, asks what is the economic system of the United States of America? You flip the card over and it says free enterprise capitalism is the economic system of the United States of America. Yet one-third of it has been nationalized by the Federal Government, and no exit strategy seems to be in sight. As the American people watch this rush towards the socialization/ nationalization of one-third of our economy, they also saw a cap-and- trade bill pushed through, about 12 hours from the time the bill was dropped until such time it was on the floor for debate without legitimate amendments. The American people watched this and they understood intuitively, if not articulated on the streets, that they understood that freedom was being compromised. The principles of our free market system were being compromised. They also understood that a prudent government with people that hold the gavels that are fiscally responsible and a future President that might be fiscally responsible, I believe I have given up hope on this one, could actually set things up so we could work our way through the trillions of dollars of debt that we now have and work our way through the nationalization and begin to privatize, sell those shares back to General Motors, sell them back to Chrysler, privatize Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and require them to be capitalized like other lending institutions, regulate them like other lending institutions and sell those shares back in the marketplace, and for the Federal Government to divest themselves from their investment in this huge nationalization, AIG included. Now, that could all happen under a future President and under a Congress that is dominated by people that just believe simply the opposite side of that flashcard that asks the question of anybody that wants to become an American citizen, what is the economic system of the United States? Flip it over, free enterprise capitalism. That compels the Federal Government to divest itself if, of course, we believe in the tenet that we require people to know if they're to become an American citizen and naturalize an American citizen. So the American people saw this rush, they saw this push that went towards this nationalization of our one-third of our economy and the rush through cap-and-trade in the House, and now it is stalled in the Senate, thankfully. I hope it doesn't get brought up again. It is a tax on all of our energy. It is cap-and-tax. But all of this went through in a rush, and the American people didn't have an opportunity to weigh in. Before they could catch up with what was going on, decisions were made. Those decisions were made behind closed doors--and sometimes the irrevocable decisions of the nationalization of these entities. And once they saw all that happen and they saw the President push hard for $787 billion in bailout money--and, Madam Speaker, they saw every Republican vote ``no'' on that $787 billion and they thought, at least there's a sign for hope here; Republicans are sticking together. But behind that came cap-and-trade, 12 hours from the bill drop until it was up on the floor for debate, no legitimate amendments allowed. And then they saw health care, a complete overhaul of the health care system coming at them as fast as a freight train of all the other things that came at them. Now, thankfully, there was a delay for the break in August and the American people came together. There were hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings that were held by many Members of Congress. I believe every Republican, and many Democrats, held numbers of town hall meetings and constituents filled the rooms. There is a case of a town hall meeting in Oklahoma that brought about 3,000 people. And there were many meetings around in my part of the country that brought in several hundred when a normal town hall meeting for a low intensity period of time might bring, oh, a couple dozen people in to talk to their Senator or their Congressman. But this was hundreds. And it's because the American people finally had an opportunity to step in and weigh in after they had seen this slide towards socialism that had taken place and the nationalization of these eight huge entities and one-third of our private sector economy nationalized. The American people stood up and they filled the town hall meetings. They had their say, and they rejected this idea of a government option that would go directly in competition against our health insurance industries. They said, We don't need it. We don't want it. We don't want the Federal Government taking over our health care. They understand what happens. When you have a government-run insurance system, it becomes, often, the only insurance system that's there. We've seen this happen, Madam Speaker, with the case of the national flood insurance. In 1968, the property and casualty companies were providing 100 percent of the flood insurance in America. Now, it wasn't a developed market like it is today, and I don't mean to characterize it that way because it wasn't. It was a lesser developed market. There was a lot less real estate in the floodplains in 1968 than there is today, a lot less developed real estate in the floodplains. But Congress decided that they wanted to engage in this to protect those homes and businesses that were occasionally flooded by high waters, so they passed the National Flood Insurance Act in 1968. Today, 100 percent of the flood insurance available for purchase in America is the Federal flood insurance program. There is not one single policy in the private insurance industry that you can buy flood insurance from. And the reason is because the Federal Government went in and dominated the market. They passed the National Flood Insurance Program--and I'm drawing this analogy, this comparison of what happens if we have a national health insurance public/government option, or, as Speaker Pelosi called it today, the ``competitive option,'' or as, let me see--no, I need to correct that. Speaker Pelosi called it the ``consumer option.'' It was Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida who called it the ``competitive option.'' So you have a public option, a government option, a government-run health insurance, the consumer option by Pelosi's language, or the competitive option by Wasserman Schultz's language. But we know what happens when the Federal Government steps into an industry, as they did in 1968 in the flood insurance. In a few years, it had swallowed up the entire private sector flood insurance program and replaced it with the Federal flood insurance program. In order to compete, the Federal Government also passed legislation which required that anyone who was borrowing money from a national bank and had property that was anywhere in the floodplain, they were compelled to buy the insurance. So, in order to get the loan, the people that were investing had to buy the flood insurance. So the Federal Government set the premiums, set the rules, required that people buy the flood insurance, and they lowered the premiums out of proportion to the risk and they squeezed out all the private sector. Once the private sector was squeezed out, then the Federal Government sitting there, charging premiums lower than the risk, had to come back here to this Congress to get money to backfill the hole in their budget. So from 1968 until today, we've gone from no Federal flood insurance in 1968, at the moment the bill was passed, to 100 percent of the flood insurance in the United States is all federally owned and run. The premiums are lower than the actual claims, and so the Federal flood insurance program is $19.2 billion in the red, with no daylight in sight. That's the way the Federal Government runs an insurance program, and that's the way the Federal Government may well run this public option that was announced today. Now, I'm going to take you through a little bit of history, Madam Speaker, and then we will go to current events today. This is some history. This is 1993, 1994. This is HillaryCare. This is a chart that was in The New York Times back then, 15 years ago. And this is the government agencies that are created or linked by the Clinton health care plan, which was a takeover in our health insurance industry and would have resulted, I believe, in a complete takeover of our delivery system as well. All of these charts that are in here, you don't have to study them to understand. We should be very concerned. We should be very concerned about the kind of government and the kind of bureaucracy and the kind of hoops that patients would have to jump through in order to do business with the Federal Government that was going to step in and solve a problem that was urgent in 1993, supposedly so urgent that President Clinton had to come here to the floor of the House and from the well of the House address a joint session of Congress, September 22, 1993, House and Senate Members, gallery is full, pleading that they would adopt and pass HillaryCare. I will say, to President Clinton's credit, even though they met behind closed doors and even though there was a lot of suspicion and a lot of frustration and people got angry, they at least wrote a bill. President Clinton had a bill. And when you have a bill, you've got something that you can at least either support or shoot at. You have some specificity. But what we're dealing with now is still a matter of concepts. We have concepts. Now, we do have a bill, H.R. 3200, that passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee here in the House, but in the Senate they're still dealing with concepts. They passed concepts out of the Senate Finance Committee. And it's pretty hard to shoot holes in people's concepts, and it's pretty hard to support them because they are amorphous and they can change. So Harry Reid announced today that he will have a bill, and he told us a little bit about that, and the Congressional Budget Office is going to score it. But this is 1993. This is the black-and-white scary flowchart of what happens to our freedom if we turn our health care over to the government. Madam Speaker, this is the modern flowchart. This is the flowchart that was created at the direction of Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas, a Ways and Means Committee member who drilled down into this language word by word, line by line, sentence by sentence, concept by concept to verify that this flowchart is accurate, that it does reflect H.R. 3200, it does reflect the bill that passed out of committee in the House. When you look at the chart, Madam Speaker, you will see these organizations in white, these are existing, with the blue letters--the President, the Congress, Treasury, HHS, Veterans Administration, Defense Department, Labor Department, all of this exists. Any of these white boxes here exist, and those in color are all new. This is all new government agencies: The Advisory Committee on Health Workforce and Evaluation, new. Insurance mandate, health affordability credits, the Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund, the Clinical Preventive Services Task Force; new ideas that people get in there because they've got some leverage. Health Benefits Advisory Committee, the Public Health Investment Fund here. Anything in color is all new, Madam Speaker. So when the President says--and many of the Democrats say--that we need to provide competition in the health insurance industry, I would remind them, Madam Speaker, that this competition would be--the Federal Government would be one new health insurance company. Today, we have 1,300 health insurance companies in America. Now, some of them may be operating under multiple labels in multiple States, but we have over 1,300 health insurance companies in America, and they offer approximately 100,000 different varieties of policies that one can purchase. Now, that is a lot of choice and it is a lot of competition. So the President's argument that we need more competition in the health insurance industry, I think that is a legitimate criticism, especially in some of the States where there is almost, let me say, a de facto monopoly where one insurance company might provide 70 or 80 percent of the policies in that State. And so where that exists, it would be good to see more competition to help keep those prices down. But there is also a reason why a single company has gotten such a large market share, and that's because they have the leverage to be able to negotiate lower compensation rates because of the volume that they have. But the best solution to this is not for the government to create an insurance company and to write new insurance policies, Madam Speaker. The best solution for this is to adopt the John Shadegg policy, his legislation, which allows for people in America to buy insurance across State lines. Some of the data that came out used New Jersey, for example; very, very high insurance premium rates and a lot of unreasonable mandates have to be included in New Jersey's premiums. But a young man about 25 years old--in fact, exactly 25 years old--that would buy a policy in New Jersey that would be comparable--and I put that comparable, it has to be a qualified statement--but a comparable policy in Kentucky, a young 25-year-old man would pay $6,000 in annual premiums in New Jersey and $1,000 in annual premiums in Kentucky. Now, as it's envisioned by the federalist philosophy, each of the States would be incubators that would experiment. And in the real world, in an ideal world, people would look at the cost of that premium and they would move from New Jersey to Kentucky. John Shadegg's bill bypasses that and it recognizes that Congress has the constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce and to break down those barriers and allow people in New Jersey to buy insurance in Iowa or Kentucky or wherever they may decide. If we open this up so people can buy insurance across State lines, then you have all 1,300 health insurance companies competing against each other and you have all 100,000 policies that are all available for everybody in the United States. A simple fix. The legislation is here. It has a good number of cosponsors. I will say the lion's share of the Republicans, I am confident, are on that bill. Why couldn't we do the simple solution to this complex problem of how you create competition and allow insurance companies to sell health insurance across State lines? Fix this problem of some States that have a little bit of competition and others that have a lot of competition. Give everybody the same competition. That will drive insurance prices down. We don't have to create a government entity and stock it with billions of dollars in capital to get it jump-started and then undersell the premiums so they can pick up a market share in the Federal insurance plan; all we have to do to put competition in. If that's what the President sincerely wants, competition, then all he has to do is give the nod and tell the people who tend to follow whatever he might suggest, that he would like to see John Shadegg's bill move. We could do that in this House in a day, send it over to the Senate, and I think it could be passed over in the Senate in a short period of time, too. Although I won't say it's an emergency like a war, it's something that has come to the point where the American people understand the necessity of allowing Americans to buy insurance across State lines. Well, instead, here is what Democrats in Congress and liberals want to do instead. If you look at these boxes of private insurers--those are the 1,300 insurance companies that I mentioned, and they're producing to this box. These are 100,000 health insurance policies, traditionally health insurance plans. Well, if H.R. 3200 becomes law, or many of the versions that we've seen, including, I believe, the version in the United States Senate, then you get a Health Choices Administration commissioner. This commissioner will write the rules for all of the insurance companies and for all of the insurance policies in America. That just can't stand. That just can't hold, Madam Speaker, because then you have one of the competitors, which would be the Federal health insurance, this Health Choices Administration and the public option people, writing the rules to regulate their competition. Now, I would have liked that. Let's just say you're a football coach and you get to go out and recruit the players in the fashion you'd like and get to offer the scholarships that you'd like and get to keep as many people on the roster and on the team as you'd like and get to spend any amount of money for indoor practice and for travel and recruiting, but you get to write the regulations for your competition, which would be that you can't do any of these things. Who is going to win the tournament? Who is going to win the national championship? The entity which is competing and writing the rules for the people it's competing against. It goes on here. It's ever thus in this Congress. People come to this Congress, and they say, I seek a level playing field, but in fact, many of them are seeking an advantage. Well, I suggest the advantage needs to go to the people who are seeking more freedom, and that's what's being diminished by this health care endeavor which is unfolding. So briefly, Madam Speaker, before I yield to my good friend from Texas, who has been a relentless and undaunted opponent of, let me say, this government option that is coming at us, here are the things that unfolded in the Senate. Just to recap, at the press conference at about 3:15 today which was held by the majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, he said that, in the proposal that he has put together--and he has pretty much had an ability to mix and match and write his own bill in the Senate--the States would have the choice of opting out of the program. They would have the choice to opt out. I think I know how that works. Then the States have to pass legislation to opt out. There could be a debate in the State House and in the State Senate. They'd have to get a Governor's signature to opt out. Then let's just say, for example, a State like, oh, Texas or Minnesota or Iowa decided to pass legislation to opt out of the government option. Well, they don't get to opt out of the taxes that will be funding the government option. They would just opt out of being able to tap into the benefits that would be funded by the taxes. So it's unlikely anybody is going to opt out, because it's giving away something to other States, and it's subsidizing the other States. Then he also leaves it open for nonprofit co-ops to sell insurance in competition with private companies. We know how that will work. Nonprofit co-ops, I presume that's open by the State-by-State version again, and it's not the co-ops that we understand. These would be set up as nonprofit organizations, and they would still be, eventually, a camel's nose under the tent. Another component of this says it would require most individuals to purchase insurance, and large businesses would not be required to provide insurance to their workers, but they would face penalties of as much as $750 per employee if their employees qualified for Federal subsidies. Huh. So, if you don't provide the insurance and if you don't pay enough money to your employees so that they qualify, then an employer would be penalized $750 per employee who qualified for public benefits. It's a little murky, but it sure looks to me like this is a high amount of leverage. Then it also says that Harry Reid had a virtual free hand to craft this new measure. So, as I look at the things that unfold, they have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. I've continually heard, Madam Speaker, the criticism from Democrats that Republicans are obstructing and are holding up the show. Well, I would like to do that. I would like to kill this bill-- dead, dead, dead. I'd like to tell the American people that the entire framework is wrong-headed, that it's rooted in socialized medicine and that it's not rooted in freedom. I'd like to obstruct this bill. I will try to do that. If I can, I'll surely take the blame or even the credit, and I'd be happy to share that credit with all of the others who might step up. Truthfully, it's the Democrats' obstruction going on within their own caucus that's the problem. It's not a problem to me. I'm happy when they reach indecision because they will make a bad decision. They are determined to go down the path of socialized medicine, but they have a 79-vote advantage in the House of Representatives. There are 79 more Democrats than Republicans, and they're pointing their fingers at Republicans. The Democrats can't get their act together to pass legislation, but they point their fingers at Republicans. The Senate is the same way. Obstructing Republicans--with what?--40 votes on a good day? There are 60 votes of Democrats in the Senate. This scenario has never been reached in the history of the United States of America--massive majorities for either party. With Democrats in the House and with a filibuster-proof majority for Democrats in the Senate and with the most liberal President in the history of America, what possibly could come out of this that would be good for America's freedom? I pose that question not just rhetorically but literally, Madam Speaker. I would be very happy to yield so much time as he may consume to my good friend, Doctor and Congressman Mike Burgess from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, as I listen to my friend from Texas talk, it occurs to me that I had one of those last weekend. I sat down, and I did an odd, surrealistic thing. I read through President Obama's campaign speeches, as Senator Obama, which went through the summer of 2008 right on up to the election on November 4 of last year. It was soaring rhetoric. It was moving. I didn't quite have a tingle go up my leg, but I was moved by the language. I had to stop sometimes and mentally pinch myself to ask: What has happened now compared to what I heard then? Well, one of the things that really stands out is Barack Obama's pledge to unconditionally sit down with the Iranians--with Ahmadinejad. Without conditions, you know--dialogue is progress. That's what they think. So he made that pledge during his campaign. He has not backed off of that pledge to unconditionally sit down with Ahmadinejad. Yet I just ask the question: Is anybody sitting down with President Obama who has an ``R'' behind his name and talking health care? Is there anybody in the House of Representatives, out of 178 Republicans, who is in negotiations with President Obama and who is having a discussion on health care? Is there anybody really reaching across the aisle from over there to look for some Republican components and solutions? Is there anybody in the United States Senate with an ``R'' behind his name who has been invited to the White House or who is sitting down with Harry Reid, or is it all Nancy Pelosi's office, Harry Reid's office and the Oval Office--all Democrats--all clustered together? They do have the votes, you know, but this was the President who was going to bring in a new era of bipartisanship. When he found out that he didn't need Republican votes and that he didn't need Republican philosophy either, we ended up with this lurch to the left that continually comes at us over and over again out of this administration. The gentleman spoke about liability reform and the proposal of $54 billion in savings. Here are some numbers that stand out to me. I think those numbers are conservative. The lowest numbers that I have seen, as the percentage of the overall health care costs that are attributable to malpractice premiums, the litigation and defensive medicine that's a component of this, the lowest number I have seen is 5\1/2\ percent of the overall medical cost. Health insurance underwriters place that at 8.5 percent. That's $203 billion a year. Now you won't save it all, but that's how big the pot, I think, likely is. Other numbers go on up to 10.1 percent; and then talk to your orthopedic surgeons and they will take you right on up to 35 percent because they are faced with it, and the OB/GYNs, the highest level of malpractice. And we're losing places for women to have babies. The access to health care has been diminished because of the liability, but it's in the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars driven by the trial lawyers, and we can't find $1, not one mention of lawsuit abuse reform in any of the legislation that's passed out of the committees here in the House or in the Senate. I think that's the starkest component of this. It's the most obvious that this isn't legislation that's designed to be good for the American people, it's designed to be good for the American Democrat politicians and the people who are brokering this behind those closed doors. Again, I would yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. As I mentioned on Medicare reform, just briefly before I yield, and that is, the President and the White House have identified--well, they haven't identified, they have alleged, that there are billions of dollars that can be gathered together in savings in Medicare fraud and abuse. In order to gain those kinds of savings, they insist that the legislation be passed, H.R. 3200 or some version of that legislation. They also want to cut $500 billion out of Medicare reimbursement rates; and nationally, Medicare is underfunding the cost of delivery by, they pay about 80 percent of the costs of delivery. I happen to represent, I believe, the most senior congressional district in all of America. Iowa has the highest percentage of its population over the age of 85 of any of the States. In the 99 counties in Iowa, of those 99, 10 of the 12 most senior counties are in my district. I believe I represent the most senior district in America, and our Medicare reimbursement rates are last in the Nation. The President proposes to cut them another half a trillion dollars in order to pay for and fund this growth in this huge national health care plan that they have. Madam Speaker, America's seniors will not sit still for that kind of draconian cut into the health care that we have pledged to them. By the way, I will add one more point, and I think Congressman Burgess will recognize this. Essentially it is the President's position, you'll find out what the savings will be in Medicare fraud when you pass my legislation. Then we'll use that to fund it. That's what you call holding a right hostage to an ultimatum. We have a right to legitimate government. The ultimatum is pass my socialized medicine plan, and then we'll give you a legitimate government. We know where the secret is to all of this, but they won't happen to tell us. It's holding a right hostage to an ultimatum. I would be happy to yield to the gentlewoman from Minnesota, who has made her mark on this Congress and on this country, Michele Bachmann.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I embarrassingly, modestly thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for that delivery that covered so much territory and laid out so many facts. I would like to take us back to a couple of principles, Madam Speaker, and that is this: Why did we start down this path? What has been the objective? What was the objective back here when it was HillaryCare, and what is the objective here when it is the color coded jellybean chart that we have from the Ways and Means Committee? The objective was two things. Here are the problems that they wanted to address. The problems being--this is the President's position--health care costs too much money in America as premise number one; and as premise number two, we have too many uninsured in America. All right, let's take first the subject of health care costs too much in America. Well, it costs around 14.5 percent of our gross domestic product. Some have numbers that go a little higher, maybe 16 percent, or maybe a little more. Then we are advised, the most consistent data we see, the average for the industrialized world is about 9.5 percent of the GDP. Well, we get the best results, so it isn't too expensive when you need it to save the life of a loved one. And we produce more than anybody else, also, and once that is indexed back to the overall average gross domestic product of the American people, that adjusts that number a little bit. But be that as it may, Madam Speaker, do we spend too much money? That is debatable. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. But the solution is not, as the President proposes, to throw 1 or 2 trillion dollars at the problem. If you have a problem of spending too much money, it would go without saying that the solution is to spend less money, not more. So I will submit that they premised the analysis on spending too much money for health care. That, supposedly, is worthwhile to transform the entire health insurance industry and the health care delivery system in America, because they allege we are spending too much money. They have a point on the money that is being spent. We can discuss that. We can save a lot of that just within the lawsuit abuse reform. But, the American people know, if you are spending too much money, the solution is not to spend more. That should have never gotten a pass. As soon as a statement like that was uttered, it should have been cut off at the beginning, cut off at the pass, so-to-speak. So I hope that has dispatched that erroneous idea. If we spend too much money on health care, if that is the President's position, then let him propose a policy that spends less, not more. Then, the second premise is we have too many in America that are uninsured. Well, everybody in America has access to health care. Somehow we have traveled down this road where a position has been taken that everyone in America has a right to first-class, high-quality health care. Now, that is nice. If we decide to do that, then we should have an open, legitimate debate about it. But it is not a right. It is not a right. It is a benefit that Congress has agreed to make sure it was available for humanitarian reasons. We spend billions overseas in humanitarian aid, and we spend billions in this country to provide health care to anybody that shows up, because we don't want to turn someone away and have them get sicker or die. That is the policy in America, but it is not a right. Our rights are enumerated pretty clearly in the Bill of Rights. But when FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, gave his famous ``four freedoms'' speech, he was stretching the rights; the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The freedom from want and freedom from fear are not rights. They never were rights, and they never can be turned into rights, because if they do, can you imagine freedom from want? Well, if we lose all of our wants, we lose all of our desires to make the world a better place. We lose our desire to make our life a better life and that of our family. If you don't want for anything, you sit around and whatever you need shows up. Who is going to provide that? Our entire economy would collapse around that kind of thing. Freedom from fear. Fear of what? Freedom from want, perhaps. But those two were erroneous components of FDR's philosophy. But they live today, somehow, in the minds of the majority of the United States Congress and, it looks like, the majority of the United States Senate, but I don't believe the majority of the American people. But even though everyone in this country has access to health care, no one has a right to it. They are trying to argue that everybody has a right now to a health insurance policy of their very own. Now, imagine a society that gets to that point and what that does to a society. But the argument is too many in America are uninsured. So, Madam Speaker, here are the real numbers about those in America that are uninsured. This little pie chart shows the chart of 306 million Americans. Eighty-four percent, in this blue, those are those that are insured, that have a policy through their employer or they take care of it personally, whatever it might be. But they are insured. Then these little slots are the other categories. One would think that we were trying to address uninsured Americans without affordable options. Well, here is the list of those Americans that are in this 47 million uninsured. That is the number we constantly see, 47 million. In yellow, illegal immigrants, about 5.2 million. In black are the legal immigrants that are barred by law for a 5-year period. So you end up with 10.2 million of those. Then you have individuals earning more than $75,000 a year without health insurance that didn't bother to write a check for their premium. Presumably they could manage that with the money they are making. That is about 6 million. Then you have those eligible for government programs. That is in green. That is 9.7 million. Then you have those eligible for coverage under the employer but didn't sign up or opted out. That is 2 percent here. That number is actually 6 million. Then the other category, eligible for government programs, 9.7 million. We get down to this number. When you subtract from the 47 million all these categories that I have listed, those that would be covered under their employer if they would just sign up; those that are insurance eligible for government programs but don't bother to sign up; those that earn more than $75,000; those that are immigrants, that are legal and illegal, disqualified for one reason or other; you add that all up and subtract it from 47 million, you get over to this red. This would be the list, Madam Speaker, of the Americans without affordable options. That represents 12.1 million Americans, less than 4 percent of America's population, and that less than 4 percent are the people that presumably the President and the majority party, and in fact the minority party, would like to encourage that they get insured. But they would upset and transform and overhaul 100 percent of the health insurance in America and 100 percent of the health care delivery system in America for the purposes of reducing this 4 percent number down to what, 2 percent? Maybe on a good day. That is what is going on here. So, I believe it was Socrates that said if you start with a flawed premise, you end up with a flawed conclusion. If he didn't say that, Einstein did, or some other smart person. You don't have to be very smart to figure out that if you put the wrong formula in, you are going to get the wrong results out. Garbage in, garbage out. We have, Madam Speaker, we have got garbage here. The idea that first we spend too much money on health care, and being able to spend more, 1 to 2 trillion dollars more is a solution, that is garbage. The garbage underneath it, certainly there is truth to spending too much money on health care in America. Let's debate that. Let's debate how we address that. We don't address it by spending more money. We address it by ending the lawsuit abuse that takes place in this country. We have got to reform that. We passed that out of the House here in 2005. It came out of the Judiciary Committee where I and Mr. Gohmert sat. We passed that here on the floor, and it was limited, the noneconomic damages, to $250,000. That was a policy that was modeled after California at the time. Since then, Texas has adopted it and has seen their doctors that were leaving Texas turn around and come back, because now they can practice in Texas without a penalty. So, just the tort reform component of this would save at least $54 billion. But I am suggesting the numbers I am looking at show that lawsuit abuse costs in the neighborhood of $203 billion a year. Now, over a 10-year span where these bills are estimated, that would be over $2 trillion that goes to the trial lawyers and some of the plaintiffs, and also goes to the people that are doing the tests, the unnecessary tests that are part of the defensive medicine that takes place. So, if health care costs too much money, Madam Speaker, the first solution would be to address lawsuit abuse. That is number one. We should be able to agree on that. But there is not one word in any of these bills about reforming the abuse of lawsuits that could be somewhere between the $54 billion savings that was identified by Dr. Burgess a little earlier, on up to what I say is $203 billion, and probably more, and $2 trillion over the life of the bill. But not one dollar is going to be saved. In fact, there will be more spent because of this.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to have the privilege to address you here tonight on the floor of the House of Representatives. And having been privileged to listen to the gentleman before me speak of the energy issue, and not taking particular issue with the delivery that he has given nor the facts that he has such a good handle on, I would just make this point, Mr. Speaker, and that is that a little over 1 year ago, 1 year ago last August, many of us Republican Members stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and argued that we needed to expand the energy for the entire United States of America; all energy all the time. We started that debate before the adjournment for the August recess, and the Speaker didn't want to hear the debate on energy. And so there was a motion that was delivered to adjourn abruptly, which was passed on a purely partisan vote. We kept debating energy. We were geared up to come here and debate energy 1 year ago August. And as we debated energy, the microphones were cut off, the lights were shut down, and the House of Representatives would have been cleared by order of the Speaker except we do have enough sovereignty here to bring in the citizens of the United States and our constituents. And even though Speaker Pelosi shut down the microphones, turned the C-SPAN cameras off to the side and tipped them down and dimmed the lights--didn't shut them completely off--we continued to debate energy every single business day all the way through August and into September and after Labor Day and back again. Our argument was not to reject hydrogen. Our argument was to expand access to all energy in America. It was the case the American people wanted. It remains the case of what the American people want, and the American people want access to all energy all the time. We are a country that's blessed with a tremendous amount of energy. We can produce the nuclear energy that we need and more than we're using by far right now. We're blessed with a lot of coal. We have a lot of natural gas. If we would utilize the resources that we have, we could expand our ethanol, our biodiesel, our wind energy as we're doing. If we would develop the energy that we have, we would have a surplus of energy. It strikes me as a bit odd that the gentleman would focus exclusively on hydrogen. I don't take issue with his hydrogen argument; but I will say that, as the gentleman says, if we expand our hydrogen energy instead of importing a large percentage of our energy, we will be exporting renewable energy. That is a long, long way from a reality; and we will never be to the point where we can export renewable energy unless we're willing to develop all of America's energy. Here are some of the answers: All energy all the time. Let's drill in ANWR. Why would you leave hydrocarbons underneath Mother Earth? Why would we not go out into the gulf and drill for the natural gas and for the oil that's out there? Why would we not go up to ANWR and drill up there where we have proven on the North Slope that we can drill effectively and in an environmentally safe fashion and where the most extreme environmentalists can fly over the North Slope or walk across it or ride around on Todd Palin's snowmobile? They couldn't find an oil well if you directed them to it because they aren't big, wooden derricks with oil bursting into the air from a gusher or a geyser. They are submersible pumps in casings that are underground, and they are wells that are drilled on permafrost, and they are roads that are accessed only during the time of the many months when there's actually frost there for them to run on ice roads. You can fly over that countryside, and you can't see the wells unless you know exactly what you're looking for. We need to drill in ANWR. We need to drill in the Outer Continental Shelf, in all of our Outer Continental Shelf. We need to open up the leases on it. We need to drill it for oil. We need to drill it for gas. We need to expand our nuclear. John McCain, in his Presidential campaign, said we need to build 45 new nuclear plants in the United States in a short period of time. Now, I don't know if that's the right number, but I know that zero is the wrong number. The people on the other side of the aisle, the Pelosi majority, are opposed to nuclear; they're opposed to ethanol; they're opposed to biodiesel. They argue some food versus fuel argument that's completely specious, and they can't make the argument with me. I'd be happy to yield to any one of you who thinks you can. I'll take you on directly right now. The facts are in my head, and they're not even in your data because they don't exist. We need to expand more and more of this energy. They're opposed again to anything that is petroleum. They're opposed even to the expansion of natural gas, although the Speaker was informed a year and three or four months ago that natural gas is actually a hydrocarbon. It isn't one that puts as much CO2 into the air as burning oil or gas or diesel fuel does. I'm having trouble finding a source of energy that's suitable to the liberals and to the environmental extremists in this Congress, Mr. Speaker. I look across the spectrum of the energy that we have, and I'll tell you the energy that I'm for. I'm for hydroelectric. I'm for hydrocarbons of all kinds. I'm for drilling every place that I have said for gas and oil. I'm for coal. I'm for nuclear. I'm for wind, ethanol, biodiesel, solar. There are a number of them I'm probably forgetting. I want all energy all the time. I want the whole energy pie to grow, and I want to be able to use American energy. We can be energy independent. It doesn't necessarily have to be our goal, but we have to be where we have the capability to be energy independent. The idea that comes from the other side of the aisle is to make energy more expensive. I mean, I listened to the gentleman talk about let's follow the European model. Let's hurry up because the Germans are going to be ahead of us. Well, they are all right. Their $9 gasoline is ahead of us. They've had a policy that has been costly energy, fewer cars and more bicycles for a long time; and the Germans aren't the champions in Europe of bicycle riding. I will submit that the Danes may well be the ones in the running for first place in bicycle riding in Europe, but their idea is that there is no such thing as bad weather. It's just bad clothing. It rains 170 days a year in Denmark, and they ride bicycles 365 days a year in Denmark. That's all right. Ride those bicycles, but you don't have a mountain in that country, and you barely have a hill. In this country, we have long distances between places. Grandma is not going to put chains on her bicycle and ride it to town through the hills and through the mountains in America. We have a different lifestyle. We have different demands. We have different priorities. Let's let the markets decide. Let's not drive up the price of gas as they've done in Europe and make it scarce and costly, $7.50 to $9 a gallon. Let's keep it competitive, because energy, like money, Mr. Speaker, is fungible, and it takes energy to make anything that we decide to make. Whatever we decide to manufacture takes energy. Even if you sold a minimal amount of energy to manufacture it, it still takes energy to deliver. So every component of our economy is linked to the cost of energy; and if we're going to compete against the rest of the world, it's our responsibility to have a price of labor that's competitive, a lower regulation so the burden of government is not too high on our businesses that are producing products and services, and we have to have an intellectual property and know-how and low energy costs so we can compete with the rest of the world. If you look at America's industrial might, a lot of it grew during the period of time when we led the world in energy production. They discovered oil in Pennsylvania; and shortly after that, they discovered oil in Texas. They developed the ability to drill and to produce oil, which was a cheap, compressed, concentrated form of energy; and it remains that way. We developed the skills also, and those skills that we market around the world, this source of energy and the knowledge base that came from drilling and developing wells, is something we've sold to the rest of the world. It has had great profit to the United States. We simply cannot be a Nation, a huge Nation as we are, that is shifting over into this idea of green jobs. Green jobs are not green jobs. They're government-regulated, -created jobs. That means that they're not market-driven jobs, but they're jobs that are driven by government regulation. When you drive jobs by government regulation, that means they're more costly than the market would have them. The costs go up because of the regulation that's produced by government. So the argument that we will create green jobs is a false promise argument because it's the government that sets the regulations that produces the necessity to have green jobs. Now, I want renewable energy. I want it to compete with the rest of the energy in this country and on the planet. It's clearly true, in looking at my record, that I have been a long-time supporter of renewable energy. There are 435 congressional districts in America. I have the privilege and the honor to represent the Fifth Congressional District of Iowa. That is one of 435 districts, the western third of the State, roughly speaking. We raise a lot of corn and soybeans and cattle and hogs and eggs. When you add up the BTUs that are generated from ethanol, from biodiesel and from the wind generation of electricity and when you put it into the common denominator of British Thermal Units, the 5th District of Iowa, out of 435 congressional districts in America, produces more renewable energy than any other. Now, there are a few reasons that we've done that. One is to meet the demand. We have the resources, and we've created the know-how, and now we've become the knowledge base that can export that knowledge to the rest of the country and, one day, to the rest of the world. Even though I'm in the middle of renewable energy and even though I've been engaged in it for many, many years and even though I've watched, let me say, the successes, the victories and some of the calamitous defeats that have taken place and the resurgence of the business model that shows that they can compete against the other sources of energy, at least given the structure that we're working with today, I work with all of that. Mr. Speaker, I'll tell you that we have to have all energy all the time, not a simple focus on a single kind of energy, not a lockout of petroleum because some people say that it produces more CO2. I'll not argue the science of that, but this myopic belief that we can limit the emissions of CO2s and that somehow or another we can set the thermostat of the Earth is simply false. The premise of the science is wrong. Some will say, Well, just argue the economics because you can't win the argument on science. No, Mr. Speaker. When you have a huge policy like cap-and-trade that's built upon a flawed premise such as CO2 emissions by the United States have dramatically increased the temperature on the planet and if we significantly reduce the CO2 emissions in the United States it will turn the Earth's thermostat down, it's a false scientific premise, Mr. Speaker. And I have looked at this and asked some simple questions that aren't answered very well by the people who claim to be the scientists, and they fall into this category. How much volume is the Earth's atmosphere altogether? So if you would take the total metric tons of the volume of the Earth's atmosphere and draw it into a circle, a graph that would describe how much that is, and draw it into an 8-foot circle, because that is what fits on the wall, a foot higher than my hand, an 8-foot circle in diameter, and that represents all of the Earth's atmosphere, then Mr. Speaker, you draw how big would the circle be, the circle of CO2, carbon dioxide that has been emitted by U.S. industry into the atmosphere of the Earth and that is suspended in the atmosphere that might--might, but not certainly--but might affect the Earth's temperature, that CO2, the cumulative level of all CO2 emitted by the United States into the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, Mr. Speaker, how much is that? What have we done? And my data goes back 205 years. What has the United States industrial might and the totality of its emissions in burning all the coal and all the natural gas and all the crude oil in the form of gasoline and diesel fuel and other forms, kerosene and jet fuel, the other forms, propane, all of those forms of energy that have been burned and then the CO2 that has been emitted and suspended in the atmosphere, how much in 205 years, as compared to all of the Earth's atmosphere that you might draw in an 8-foot circle, how big would that circle be, the cumulative total of all U.S. CO2 in the atmosphere be in 205 years? Mr. Speaker, it is shocking to boil these numbers down to the real truth. An 8-foot circle of all the Earth's atmosphere, the cumulative, and that means 205 years' worth of CO2 from the United States put into the atmosphere, that circle is certainly not 8-foot, that is all the atmosphere, or 7 foot or 6 foot or 5 foot or 4, 3, 2 or 1. We might think that circle is a couple feet, if we listen to the environmental extremists. But the real size in relation to all the Earth's atmosphere as drawn in an 8-foot circle, the real diameter of the cumulative total of CO2 is .56 inches, Mr. Speaker. That is about like this, about the size of a bullet, the tip of my little finger. That is how big that circle would be, .56, just a little over half an inch in diameter. That is the cumulative total of all the CO2 in 205 years. The Waxman-Markey bill proposes that if we would just reduce one year of that, in annual figures that would be \1/205\ of the cumulative total, by 17 percent for a few years and then raise that up a little more and finally reduce it to 83 percent by the time we get to the year 2100, and by that year they believe that the Earth will have diminished its increased temperature by let's say 1.5 degrees centigrade. That is their calculus. And we here on the floor of the House of Representatives would conclude and America would accept the leadership of this Congress because they don't know and they don't have access to the truth, and they are certainly not hearing it from both sides of the aisle, they accept the idea that surely no person in this Congress and certainly not a majority would be cynical enough to advance some idea of science that was bogus in an effort to try to create a plan called cap-and-trade, which would be the largest and most insidious tax increase in the history of the world. And for every dollar it collected, only about one out of five would get into the United States Treasury, and the rest of it is wasted in the process like friction in a motor. That, Mr. Speaker, is what we are dealing with with cap-and-trade. And when I listened to the gentleman talk about hydrogen, I don't take issue with his data or his argument. I will just add that there is much more that we need to do to see the big picture. The big picture means all energy all the time, and let's go ahead and use it. There is no reason to store a lot of hydrocarbons underneath the crust of mother Earth in the territory of the sovereign United States of America and not use it. The only reason I have heard, and it is not a very good one, is the Speaker of the House's statement, ``I am trying to save the planet. I am trying to save the planet.'' And, yes, it was a broken record delivery, Mr. Speaker. So, that is the energy issue that needed to be talked about for a long time. We have talked about health care for so long we have about forgotten to take up the energy issue. I would take us then to a contemporary issue that emerged today in the news, and it is something that the American people do need to know about, Mr. Speaker, as any subject matter that comes up here on the floor, the American people need to know. There are more subjects than we can possibly have time to address. Mr. Speaker, at the end of my talk I will introduce this article into the Record, The Washington Times published at 4:45 a.m. and updated at 7:25 a.m. today, October 20, 2009, by Ben Conery entitled ``Justice Concludes Black Voters Need Democratic Party. I will make that available at the conclusion. Here is the article. The Justice Department concludes that black voters need the Democratic Party. This is a Washington Times article, and I will go through some of the highlights here and then seek to summarize it, Mr. Speaker. Voters in the small city of Kinston, North Carolina, have decided overwhelmingly to do away with party affiliation for their local elections for mayor and city council. They didn't want them to be labeled as Democrats or Republicans or Libertarian or Communist or whatever they might be--I don't know if there are any down there in Kinston, actually--but they wanted to eliminate the party label and just run candidates in a nonparty way. But the Obama administration overruled the overwhelming majority of the electorate of the city of Kinston, North Carolina, and decided that they couldn't offer ballots and elect their local candidates unless they had a party label. The Justice Department's ruling, and it affects the races for city council and mayor, went so far as to say this: Partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect ``candidates of choice'' identified by the Department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black. The Justice Department--I would say they are questionable in the way they are currently named--the Department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats. What that means, that is veiled language for, white voters that aren't Democrats are racists. That is what it says in this article. It is a conclusion drawn by the Justice Department. And I will say their conclusion and their decision on its face is racist, Mr. Speaker. It says, therefore, that the city cannot get rid of party affiliations, this is a Department of Justice ruling, for local elections because that would violate black voters' rights to elect candidates they want. What does this possibly mean? It doesn't fit the logic where I come from. It says that several Federal and local politicians would like the city to challenge the decision in court, and I would too. Mr. Speaker, I would call upon the city of Kinston to challenge this Justice Department decision in court. They have a right to hold their local elections, and the Department of Justice should not be making the presumption based on the racist presumptions that they are. The voter apathy, they say, is the largest barrier to black voters' election of candidates they prefer. A little code word, ``candidates they prefer.'' How do they know who these candidates are who are preferred? The way you have to register who you prefer is, go to the polls and vote. Voter apathy cannot be fixed by a wrongly made decision on the Department of Justice. There is some language here by Mr. Steven LaRoque, who led the drive to end the partisan local election. He called the Justice Department's decision ``racial as well as partisan.'' And he went on to say, ``On top of that, you have an unelected bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., overturning a valid election. That is un-American.'' Steven LaRoque, Kinston, North Carolina. Continuing on, the point is made that this is the Justice Department, the Eric Holder Justice Department, that ended and dismissed the voting rights case against the New Black Panthers Party in Philadelphia. Now, I have seen this film, and I've examined this case, at least to a respectable depth, where they have, let me say, as the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia, there is videotape that's in the possession of the Department of Justice, unless somehow they have destroyed the evidence on their hands, of four members of the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia in quasi-paramilitary garb standing before the polling places in Philadelphia, one of them at least wielding a billy club and intimidating white voters that came in to vote in the polls, and the video that I heard, one of those Panthers called a white voter a ``cracker.'' This was the most open-and-shut case of voter intimidation in the history of the United States of America, Mr. Speaker, and the Eric Holder Justice Department cancelled the case and dropped it even though there was, and I'll go down through some of the details of this, a judgment that was, I believe, agreed to. Now, going on, then in Kinston, here are some comments that come from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and this is Abigail Thernstrom, whom I know and whose judgment that I respect tremendously. She said, the Voting Rights Act is supposed to protect against situations when black voters are locked out because of racism. This is Abigail Thernstrom, Civil Rights Commission, U.S. Civil Rights Commission. She continues, and I quote, ``There is no entitlement to elect a candidate they prefer on the assumption that all black voters prefer Democratic candidates''; Abigail Thernstrom, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. So Kinston, the city that decided they didn't want to have partisan elections, now is essentially ordered by the Department of Justice to have partisan elections on the assumption of the Department of Justice that apparently black voters won't know who to vote for if they go to the polls and they don't have a Democrat label on the names of the candidates that are apparently black Democrat candidates. And that's been the history of what's going on in Kinston. They should have the right to select candidates without regard to race, and this is a decision that is based on race at its core. It says that the city had uncommonly high voter turnout in the last election with more than 11,000 of the city's 15,000 voters casting ballots, but Kinston's blacks voted in greater numbers than whites the last election, presumably because Barack Obama was on the ballot, where he won in that city by a margin of 2-1, and that was--excuse me. He won a victory in that city, but the election, the vote to determine that they would be electing their local candidates on a nonpartisan ballot passed by a 2-1 margin in Kinston, and yet the Justice Department overturned that decision because they concluded that black candidates--or, excuse me, black voters wouldn't know who to vote for unless they had a D beside their name. That is pandering. That is a racial decision on its face, Mr. Speaker, and America can't tolerate that kind of thinking from a Justice Department that shut down the most open-and-shut voter intimidation case in history, Philadelphia. And so I go on. One of the statements made is in a letter dated August 17. The city received this letter from the Justice Department. Their answer was elections must remain partisan because the change's effect will be strictly racial. In other words, if you don't label the candidates as Democrats or Republicans and you look at the anticipated result of the elections, there might be somebody that's not black that gets elected to office. This is the logic of the Justice Department. What happened to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ``I Have a Dream''? What happened to the content of the character rather than the color of the skin? We have come 180 degrees, Mr. Speaker, from the time when Martin Luther King, Jr. stood down here in front of the Lincoln Memorial and gave his ``I Have a Dream'' speech and inspired a people of this Nation, the people of this Nation and the people of the world when he talked about content of character, not color of the skin. That's the dream that I've had for America. I was inspired by that speech, and I don't know any American that wasn't inspired by the speech. But I'm now watching Americans in positions of significant power that have forgotten the philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and they have fallen back to a purely partisan philosophy. This is an Attorney General that declared people that were Republicans as not being willing to discuss the issue of race and being cowards when it comes to the issue of race. Well, Mr. Speaker, I've shown no reticence to discuss that. I think it's important for us to have those open discussions, and if we don't have the open discussions on race, we'll never get to the point where we can actually joke and laugh with each other and be people that are God's children pulling together in the same country for the same cause, which I believe we can and must do, and I think it's God calling to us. Continuing on in the article, and I will quote Loretta King, who made this, issued this statement from the Department of Justice, and she said, and I quote, ``Removing the partisan queue in municipal elections will, in all likelihood, eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office''; Loretta King, who at the time was the Acting Head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, wrote in a letter to the city of Kinston, North Carolina. She also wrote that voters in Kinston vote more along racial than party lines, and without the potential for voting a straight Democratic ticket, I quote again, Loretta King, ``The limited remaining support from white voters for a black Democratic candidate will diminish even more.'' Purely a bald-faced racial decision coming from the Department of Justice, and, by the way, from the very DOJ official that formerly killed the case of voter intimidation that was already made in Philadelphia with the new Black Panthers and their billy clubs out in front of the polling places in Philadelphia. That's tolerated by this Justice Department, but being able to go to the polls and vote for someone in a local city election like city council or mayor and not having a party label on them, Democrat and Republican, is not tolerated because this Justice Department does the calculus that somehow it will diminish the elections of Democrats if they're not labeled as Democrats, and they presume that African Americans can't make that decision without the label. And actually, looking at the Presidential results, you have to wonder, if 96 percent of African Americans voted for Barack Obama, one would be able to draw that as an indication that certainly ethnicity was a factor when they went to the polls. I don't think that can be denied. But again, Loretta King's statement that the limited remaining support from white voters for the Democratic candidate will diminish even more. Now, she is, as I said, the same official that put the brakes on the New Black Panther case of voter intimidation. And then we have a situation where, after a judge ordered a default judgment against the Panthers who refused to answer the charges or appear in court, the Justice Department dropped the charges against all but one of the defendants saying, and I quote, this is very likely Loretta King's statement, ``The facts of the law did not support pursuing them.'' Really? The most open-and-shut case in the history of the United States of America of voter intimidation, videotaped witness after witness, what facts were not there to support pursuing a case of voter intimidation? I recall the cases in Florida during the Presidential election of the year 2000 when the case was argued that a mile and a quarter away a traffic check was voter intimidation because some people were going to drive through the traffic stop and show up at the polls. That was the argument made by the party of the same people that have decided that you have to have a label of Democrat on the ballot so that African Americans know who to vote for. That's what's said here. That's Loretta King's decision. She's in the Department of Justice. Eric Holder is her boss; President Obama is his boss. And they are all accountable for this breach of a constitutional concept, if not the Constitution itself. Ms. King's letter in the Kinston statements said that because of the low turnout, black voters must be viewed as a minority for analytical purposes and that minority turnout is relevant to determining whether the Justice Department should be allowed to change election protocol. Really. Can't we get back again to the content of the character? Is it not possible for someone of good conscience and good character and good judgment to represent other people of good conscience, good character, and good judgment? It had better be, Mr. Speaker, because if we can't, if somehow skin color trumps good conscience, good character, and good judgment, this country is in a very sad shape indeed. How in the world with this logic did this Nation then elect Barack Obama as the President of the United States? And that would be my question. And I don't think it can be answered by the logic, if you call it that, that's been delivered in this decision that's imposed upon the City of Kinston, North Carolina. Continuing. Loretta King wrote: ``Black voters have had limited success in electing candidates of choice during recent municipal elections.'' Again, that's candidate of choice. Who's to determine what a candidate of choice is? That would be the candidate that was voted for by the people who went to the polls. And if people of one color show up in a lower percentage than people of another color, that doesn't mean that they're unrepresented; it doesn't mean that you're supposed to jigger the game in order to produce a different result. If you don't like the results, look at the way you're represented, make a decision upon the people that are elected to the city council and to the mayor's position in Kinston, North Carolina, and everywhere else in America. But don't base it on skin color as the basis. This is so un-American, so unconstitutional, and it echoes back to the majority decision that was written by Justice O'Connor in the affirmative action cases at the University of Michigan where Justice O'Connor looked at the formulas that were used to produce the proper color and gender of the people that got into the school in Michigan, be it the broad student body at the University of Michigan or the University of Michigan School of Law. And in her decision, her majority opinion, she wrote that, you know, the Nation wasn't--and I am paraphrasing here--the Nation wasn't quite ready for a colorblind admission process, that we really needed to have a quota system as long as that quota system was based on individual analysis of individual applicants rather than a broader application that would be used as a formula. And Justice O'Connor also wrote, and again this is paraphrasing, she also wrote that but even though that is the case today, perhaps we should come back and revisit this in 25 years or so. Maybe America will be ready for the kind of a policy that allows for merit rather than skin color or gender to be the qualifications that allows people into law school, Mr. Speaker. That is breathtaking to me to think that a Supreme Court Justice of the United States, with the support of a bare majority, but a majority of the Supreme Court, could write, could put in print something so utterly illogical that only one could conclude that the decision was if we're going to go back and revisit this in 25 years and determine if the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment actually will apply if society is ready for equal protection in 25 years, Justice O'Connor concluded that the Constitution itself needed to be suspended for 25 years and maybe we could come back and adhere to the Constitution if it was convenient at a later date in a subsequent generation. This is the rationale of Justice O'Connor that opens the door for this kind of rationale and Department of Justice, civil rights division, and you could have Loretta King write, Black voters have limited success in electing candidates of choice during recent municipal elections--even though the city is about 2-1 black in turnout--doesn't reflect that and she needs to rig the game so the candidates of her choice are more likely to be elected without regard to justice. And this is the Justice Department of the United States of America. Abigail Thernstrom of the Civil Rights Commission blasted the Department's interpretation of the law. And I would agree with Abigail Thernstrom when she said, ``The Voting Rights Act is not supposed to be compensating for a failure of voters to show up on Election Day.'' And she continues, ``The Voting Rights Act doesn't guarantee an opportunity to elect a candidate of choice. My candidate of choice loses all the time in elections.'' So does mine. Are we really going to rig the game because our candidate of choice didn't win? And then also continues, ``The decision that employs similar reasoning and language as in other cases of the Kinston ruling''--and here's the decision--"implementation of nonpartisan elections appears likely to deprive black-supported candidates of meaningful partisan- based support and to exacerbate racial polarization between black and white voters.'' What could more exacerbate racial polarization between black and white voters than a decision by the Department of Justice, Mr. Speaker, based strictly upon skin color that's designed to give an advantage based upon skin color that disregards the idea that a man or a woman can represent another man or a woman with logic and character and understanding and decency without regard to skin color? Martin Luther King has got to be rolling over in his grave to see where racial politics have taken the United States of America, Mr. Speaker. And now, Mr. Speaker, I would shift on to a few more subject matters. As I spoke about the energy issue and the Kinston, North Carolina, issue, I'll take up the issue of Kevin Jennings. Kevin Jennings, the appointee of President Obama to be the safe and drug-free schools czar. Now, paint that image out in one's mind's eye. All of the schools in America got along fine without someone who was in charge of safe schools. That was a local issue. Drug-free schools, local issue. Nancy Reagan said, ``Just Say No,'' and that got published through our schools and that was a good thing. But we didn't need a safe and drug free schools czar. Well, now we have one, one of 32--maybe as many as 47 czars--that have been appointed by President Obama. And, Mr. Speaker, these czars have not come under the confirmation hearings, open hearing scrutiny of the United States Senate even though a number of them have power that eclipses that of the Cabinet members themselves. No, these czars are appointed to sometimes circumvent the confirmation process and the vetting process that takes place and just simply give them a job and grant them a power and authority eclipsing, in some cases, that of the Cabinet members who have been vetted and had hearings and had been confirmed in the United States Senate. So we have Kevin Jennings, the safe and drug-free schools czar. Kevin Jennings, the man who--and I will go through a list of things--but the part that caught my attention the most and first was as a teacher in Massachusetts--and by law, Kevin Jennings, as a teacher in Massachusetts, was a mandatory reporter, which means under the laws of Massachusetts--and they may have had a different name for it--that is the name for people in Iowa who have to report--if a child that is in your care and custody and responsibility in the class is being abused mentally, physically, or sexually, it's the obligation of the mandatory reporters, which are listed, and all teachers are mandatory reporters, to report to--in Massachusetts, I believe it's their equivalent of HHS, Health and Human Services Department. Kevin Jennings had a student come in, whom he has written in his book in 1994 and addressed it in the speech in the year 2000. This is Kevin Jennings' words and his analysis, not mine, Mr. Speaker; but his speech and his writings are about a 15-year-old boy who came in and sought the counsel of teacher Kevin Jennings. He said, Well, I have been having sexual relations with an adult male in the restroom at the bus stop, and I want to talk to you about it. Kevin Jennings' advice was, I hope you knew to use a condom. It seems to be the sum totality of his advice, Mr. Speaker. And that is the focus of his repeated narrative of the 15-year-old boy. Now here are some problems. As a mandatory reporter, this child was being abused. It was a violation of the law. It was statutory rape under Massachusetts law. Kevin Jennings was compelled by law to report this as a teacher, a mandatory reporter. He did not. But he wrote about it in his book. He talked about it in his speeches. And some have argued, after the fact, that the young man was actually 16, not 15. But as long as Kevin Jennings argues that he is 15, then what he knew or what he thought he knew is a controlling factor, and he was obligated to report the sexual abuse of a child, the intergenerational sexual abuse, statutory rape of a child. He did not do that. And he has repeated himself up until recently, by my documentation, and probably after that, by the year 2000. Now he has been appointed the ``Safe and Drug-Free Schools'' czar, a man with such a colossal lack of judgment that he couldn't follow the law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to protect the safety of the children. The legislature of Massachusetts, as leftwing as they are, saw fit to put into the law guidelines for their teachers and their other mandatory reporters. And Kevin Jennings, the czar of ``Safe and Drug-Free Schools,'' couldn't see fit to even follow the law in Massachusetts, let alone possess a moral compass that would have been a prudent one. He has since said he could have made a better decision. Now I wouldn't argue that a man that made a single mistake in, I believe the year was 1988, should be punished for that in perpetuity. I would argue, though, that a man that made that mistake, that saw fit to highlight it in his book in 1994 or 1995 and highlight it in at least one speech in the year 2000--it happened to be in Iowa, by the way, Mr. Speaker--a man that has that kind of flawed judgment that is standing in front of groups that promote homosexuality and making the case that he has been a protector and advocate of that lifestyle was pretty proud of his decision to advise this young man whom he referred to as ``Brewster, `` I hope you knew to use a condom.'' That is a colossal lack of judgment. The momentary flaw in his judgment in his advice to Brewster, the colossal lack of judgment and repeating it as if it were a merit rather than a demerit in his book and in his speech in Iowa in the year 2000, and I would suspect many times before and after until he has been called on it, a single incident is not enough to judge a man by and not enough to disqualify him by, but it is something to get our attention. And then, Mr. Speaker, we can look at Kevin Jennings in a broader view. What has been the totality of his record as an adult professional? And his focus has been on the promotion of homosexuality. In at least four books and perhaps five that he has written, every single one at a very minimum touches on the issue. Most of the material focuses on the issue. He has written the foreword to a book called ``Queering Elementary Education.'' Now I will submit that kids that are in kindergarten, first-, second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade in elementary school don't need to be burdened with those kinds of decisions. They don't need an advocate for homosexuality or any kind of sexuality in those years. They need to be left alone to find their way, to study academically, to go outside at recess and play sports, and get to make friends and build an understanding of parental, adult and teacher guidance. They don't need to be burdened with the idea of trying to queer elementary education, to quote the title of the book that Kevin Jennings has written the foreword to. And by the way, on the back cover is William Ayers' comments on the value of that book, ``Queering Elementary Education.'' This is Kevin Jennings. Now, we can continue with Kevin Jennings, the hostility towards religion that he has demonstrated clearly. He has written about it in his book, ``Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son.'' He has written cavalierly about his own drug abuse. And rather than put that into the Congressional Record, Mr. Speaker, I will just say that if students read the language, the narrative that Kevin Jennings writes about his own drug abuse and being at the airport watching the planes land, they can only draw one conclusion: That it's all right to use drugs and probably won't end up in a bad result. In fact, if you use drugs, you can end up the ``Safe and Drug-Free Schools'' czar in the United States of America. That is the model that is there if Kevin Jennings remains as the czar of ``Safe and Drug-Free Schools.'' So what does he have to offer? What does he have to offer about school safety? Well, the only thing he has to offer is his relentless advocacy to pass anti-bullying laws in the State legislatures across the land. About 20 States have adopted some legislation to that effect. Anti-bullying laws are designed to exclusively protect kids who are viewed as homosexual kids. Now I want to protect all kids. And I don't want any children bullied. By the same token, I don't believe that we need to have special laws that are based upon the perceived notions that go on in people's heads. We can punish the overt acts that are used as violence or intimidation against these kids in school, and we can protect all kids. Kevin Jennings' advocacy has only been to protect those kids he views as homosexual. He has been offended by what he called the ``promotion of heterosexuality.'' And for want of finding the actual text, Mr. Speaker, I will paraphrase this, Kevin Jennings, in one of his speeches--and I actually typed this up with my hands from the YouTube-- said that every time kids read ``Romeo and Juliet,'' they are being aggressively recruited to heterosexuality. Kids are being aggressively recruited to heterosexuality by reading ``Romeo and Juliet.'' So here is a man who is now today the ``Safe and Drug-Free Schools'' czar who is opposed to ``Romeo and Juliet'' because the implication is it's a young man and a young woman who are attracted to each other and who are in love. And he objects because he believes they are being aggressively recruited to heterosexuality. What would please and satisfy Kevin Jennings if ``Romeo and Juliet'' are anathema to his beliefs? This goes on. But the lifetime career of 20 years and the totality of his professional engagement has been the promotion of homosexuality, much of it within our schools, and much of it that was within our schools was focused on elementary education. And some of the pamphlets that they handed out, one called ``Little Black Book,'' at Brookline schools in Massachusetts was referred to by then-Governor Romney as something that should never fall in the hands of school kids. This man would be a czar of ``Safe and Drug-Free Schools.'' And when I asked one of the top principals in the United States of America with the medal commemorating his achievement hanging around his neck if a man of the resume, the bio, of Kevin Jennings had been hired by his school inadvertently and the resume had been discovered and reviewed, could he continue to teach on the faculty of this top-notch principal's school? And the principal's answer was, No way. No way we could keep someone like that on our faculty. So, Kevin Jennings, Mr. Speaker, at least in the mainstream schools in America, couldn't teach in the classroom because he has been such a proponent of activism when it comes to dealing with a narrow component of sexuality in America. And he has been pushing it on our kids in this country. He has also been a supporter of and an admirer of Harry Hay. We saw the White House official just a few days ago who said she was inspired by Mao Tse Tung, the murderer of 70 million Chinese. Kevin Jennings has been inspired by Harry Hay, who is the cover boy for NAMBLA magazine, the North American Man Boy Love Association. That organization that promotes intergenerational sex between men and boys and says it's all right and it doesn't hurt them--in fact, it may give them pleasure and be healthy for them--this person who has been on the cover of their national magazine was lauded by Kevin Jennings, and Jennings said of Harry Hay, I am always inspired by Harry Hay. Astonishing. A man of this caliber and this philosophy cannot be the safe and drug-free schools czar in the United States of America. Surely, out of 306 million people, we can find one--can't there be one that has lived an exemplary life? One who wouldn't be objectionable to any parents? One who has advocated for the safety of all of the kids, not a narrow view of those whom he would label as a homosexual kid? Couldn't we find somebody that at least hasn't been public about their drug abuse so as to tell these kids to stay away from drugs, that drugs will ruin your potential, if they don't kill you and end your potential, they will ruin your potential? Can't we have somebody that hasn't been obsessed with sexuality, but someone who has been obsessed with the well-being of our children on the whole? Yes, we should. And the kids in this country do not have the ability to discern on a judgment call when you have an activist like Kevin Jennings as the czar of safe and drug-free schools. And those kids trust the adults that put people in positions of authority and power; they only discern that adults have made the decision to approve Kevin Jennings. The President of the United States needs to fire Kevin Jennings and put someone in place who is an example for parents and children or else eliminate the position entirely, Mr. Speaker. And now I have vented myself on that particular issue. I continue onward. And in my pocket, as I will carry for a long time until we get to the bottom of this, Mr. Speaker, is, out of one of the trees right here outside the United States Capitol, another acorn. Now, never fear, Parliamentarian, I'm not going to ask to introduce this acorn into the Record. I just point out that this is something that America needs to be focused upon. The ACORN organization and their 361 affiliates, headquartered at 2609 Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, originating in Arkansas and having powerful influence in cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, New York--Brooklyn, for example--Baltimore, Washington, D.C., San Diego--name your city, 120 cities in the United States, ACORN has a presence; ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. And these are the people that started out advocating for bad loans in bad neighborhoods under the Community Reinvestment Act, shaking down lenders and intimidating lenders to make those bad loans in bad neighborhoods; the people that came to the Capitol building and lobbied to reduce and lower the standards of underwriting for a secondary mortgage market for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, lowered their capitalization, their regulatory standards so that they could push these lenders into making more bad loans in bad neighborhoods. They criticized lenders for red-lining neighborhoods and refusing to loan into these neighborhoods that they had a red line drawn around. And then they had the audacity--that's the President's word, isn't it, Mr. Speaker? Then ACORN had the audacity to go back to these lenders, shake them down, demand a check so that they would move their demonstrations away from the doors of the banks so people would come in and do business. Once they were paid off, they left, but then they came back with another ruse, which is, you need to make more bad loans in these bad neighborhoods--that's the shorthand version. They didn't use that language, I'm sure. And ACORN got to the point where they drew their own red line. Instead of the lenders drawing a red line around areas and communities and refusing to make loans, ACORN drew a red line around areas and communities and demanded that the lenders make loans into that area, and they demanded specific dollar amounts of loans on real estate, in particular, going into those areas. And so then they positioned themselves to actually broker the loans. And ACORN Housing opened up, and people walked into those doors like Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe. They walked in with a video camera, and there they posed themselves as a pimp and a prostitute and said that they wanted to borrow some money to buy a home so they could set up a house of ill repute to put teenage girls in as prostitutes, 13-, 14-, 15-year-old girls from El Salvador, obviously illegal kids, in a sex slave arrangement being organized and facilitated by workers at ACORN in Baltimore, to start out--the film is in sequential order--then Washington, D.C.; then Brooklyn, New York; then San Bernardino, California; then San Diego, California. All of that unfolded, and what we saw inside the doors of ACORN was essentially the same thing. We saw the face of a criminal enterprise that was set up to draw down tax dollars of all kinds, primarily Federal tax dollars, in a corrupt criminal enterprise to help facilitate child prostitution and gaming the IRS for child tax credits, for--I didn't hear him say first-time homeowners credit, but I did hear them say earned income tax credit. And so the taxpayers of America are writing checks that are being brokered by ACORN in any way that they possibly can, passing that through into the hands of the individuals who are the beneficiaries of government largesse. And the administration of it is that it's ACORN that takes a cut out of the dollars that go through. Five cities we saw the film. I believe, tomorrow, we will see the sixth city, the film from the sixth city. And I believe that there are more beyond that yet, Mr. Speaker. And so this country has got to clean this up. We have an ACORN that has corrupted the home mortgage loan process. They have demanded and maneuvered for bad loans in bad neighborhoods. They have precipitated the decline, and the toxic mortgage component of this economic decline very much traces back to ACORN. ACORN has admitted to over 400,000 fraudulent or false voter registration forms turned in in the last election cycle. They have denied that that turns into fraudulent votes, Mr. Speaker. Now, why would anyone spend millions of dollars to register hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voters and at the same time argue, well, we paid for all of that--on commission, by the way, so many registrations per pay day--but we didn't get anything out of it because these 400,000 were fraudulent or false, so don't worry, nobody voted illegally? Not true. It is unconceivable, Mr. Speaker. And I have made that argument for months, but here and a couple of weeks ago the story hit the news about Troy, New York, bringing prosecutions against ACORN because of dozens of fraudulent votes that were introduced in Troy, New York, and the ones that I read about were absentee ballots. So we have the convictions of 70 ACORN employees. We have ACORN under indictment in the State of Nevada as a corporation to be in violation of the election laws in Nevada, and 361 affiliates. All of this we've got to get to the bottom of, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate your attention and your indulgence, and I yield back the balance of my time. [From the Washington Times, Oct. 20, 2009] Justice Concludes Black Voters Need Democratic Party (By Ben Conery) Kinston, N.C.--Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party. The Justice Department's ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their ``candidates of choice''--identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black. The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters' right to elect the candidates they want. Several federal and local politicians would like the city to challenge the decision in court. They say voter apathy is the largest barrier to black voters' election of candidates they prefer and that the Justice Department has gone too far in trying to influence election results here. Stephen LaRoque, a former Republican state lawmaker who led the drive to end partisan local elections, called the Justice Department's decision ``racial as well as partisan.'' ``On top of that, you have an unelected bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., overturning a valid election,'' he said. ``That is un-American.'' The decision, made by the same Justice official who ordered the dismissal of a voting rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, has irritated other locals as well. They bristle at federal interference in this city of nearly 23,000 people, two-thirds of whom are black. In interviews in sleepy downtown Kinston--a place best known as a road sign on the way to the Carolina beaches-- residents said partisan voting is largely unimportant because people are personally acquainted with their elected officials and are familiar with their views. ``To begin with, `nonpartisan elections' is a misconceived and deceiving statement because even though no party affiliation shows up on a ballot form, candidates still adhere to certain ideologies and people understand that, and are going to identify with who they feel has their best interest at heart,'' said William Cooke, president of the Kinston/Lenoir County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Mr. Cooke said his group does not take a position on this issue and would not disclose his personal stance, but expressed skepticism about the Justice Department's involvement. Others noted the absurdity of partisan elections since Kinston is essentially a one-party city anyway; no one among more than a half-dozen city officials and local residents was able to recall a Republican winning office here. Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar denied that the decision was intended to help the Democratic Party. He said the ruling was based on ``what the facts are in a particular jurisdiction'' and how it affects blacks' ability to elect the candidates they favor. ``The determination of who is a `candidate of choice' for any group of voters in a given jurisdiction is based on an analysis of the electoral behavior of those voters within a particular jurisdiction,'' he said. Critics on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are not so sure. ``The Voting Rights Act is supposed to protect against situations when black voters are locked out because of racism,'' said Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. ``There is no entitlement to elect a candidate they prefer on the assumption that all black voters prefer Democratic candidates.'' Located about 60 miles from the Atlantic Coast in eastern North Carolina, Kinston has a history of defying governmental authority. During Colonial times, the fledgling city was known as Kingston--named for King George III--but residents dropped the ``g'' from the city's name after the American Revolution. In Kinston's heyday of manufacturing and tobacco farming, it was a bustling collection of shops, movie theaters and restaurants. Now, many of those buildings are vacant--a few have been filled by storefront churches--and residents are left hoping for better days. In November's election--one in which ``hope'' emerged as a central theme--the city had uncommonly high voter turnout, with more than 11,000 of the city's 15,000 voters casting ballots. Kinston's blacks voted in greater numbers than whites. Whites typically cast the majority of votes in Kinston's general elections. Kinston residents contributed to Barack Obama's victory as America's first black president and voted by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 to eliminate partisan elections in the city. The measure appeared to have broad support among both white and black voters, as it won a majority in seven of the city's nine black-majority voting precincts and both of its white- majority precincts. But before nonpartisan elections could be implemented, the city had to get approval from the Justice Department. Kinston is one of the areas subject to provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, which requires the city to receive Justice Department approval before making any changes to voting procedures. Kinston is one of 12,000 voting districts in areas of 16 states, almost exclusively in the South, that the Voting Rights Act declared to have had a history of racial discrimination. In a letter dated Aug. 17, the city received the Justice Department's answer: Elections must remain partisan because the change's ``effect will be strictly racial.'' ``Removing the partisan cue in municipal election will, in all likelihood, eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office,'' Loretta King, who (at the time) was the acting head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, wrote in a letter to the city. Ms. King wrote that voters in Kinston vote more along racial than party lines and without the potential for voting a straight Democratic ticket, ``the limited remaining support from white voters for a black Democratic candidate will diminish even more.'' Ms. King is the same official who put a stop to the New Black Panther Party case. In that case, the Justice Department filed a civil complaint in Philadelphia after two members of the black revolutionary group dressed in quasi- military garb stood outside a polling place on election day last year and purportedly intimidated voters with racial insults, slurs and a nightstick. After a judge ordered default judgments against the Panthers, who refused to answer the charges or appear in court, the Justice Department dropped the charges against all but one of the defendants, saying ``the facts and the law did not support pursuing'' them. Ms. King's letter in the Kinston case states that because of the low turnout black voters must be ``viewed as a minority for analytical purposes,'' and that ``minority turnout is relevant'' to determining whether the Justice Department should be allowed a change to election protocol. Black voters account for 9,702 of the city's 15,402 registered voters but typically don't vote at the rates whites do. As a result of the low turnout, Ms. King wrote, ``black voters have had limited success in electing candidates of choice during recent municipal elections.'' ``It is the partisan makeup of the general electorate that results in enough white cross-over to allow the black community to elect a candidate of choice,'' she wrote. Mrs. Thernstrom of the civil rights commission blasted the department's interpretation of the law. ``The Voting Rights Act is not supposed to be compensating for failure of show up on Election Day,'' she said. ``The Voting Rights Act doesn't guarantee an opportunity to elect a `candidate of choice.' . . . My `candidate of choice' loses all the time in an election.'' When asked whether Justice had ever ``either granted or denied'' requests either ``to stop partisan elections or implement partisan elections,'' Mr. Miyar, the department spokesman, said it was impossible to retrieve past decisions on that basis. But he did provide, based on the recollection of a department lawyer, a single precedent--a decision during the Clinton administration denying a bid from a South Carolina school district to drop partisan elections. That decision employs similar reasoning and language as the Kinston ruling: ``Implementation of nonpartisan elections . . . appears likely to deprive black supported candidates of meaningful partisan-based support and to exacerbate racial polarization between black and white voters.'' But the 1994 decision doesn't mention the necessity of the Democratic Party and doesn't mention low turnout among black voters in that school district as a factor affecting their ability to elect candidates they prefer. Kinston City Council member Joseph Tyson, a Democrat who favors partisan elections, said nothing is stopping black voters in Kinston from going to the polls. ``Unfortunately, I'm very disappointed with the apathy that we have in Kinston among the Afro-American voters,'' he said. Mr. Tyson, who is one of two black members of the six- member City Council, said the best way to help black voters in Kinston is to change the council's structure from citywide voting to representation by district. Kinston voters currently cast as many votes in the at-large races as there are council seats up for election--typically three, or two and the mayor. ``Whether it's partisan or nonpartisan is not a big issue to me, whether or not the city is totally represented is what the issue is to me,'' he said. ``If you have wards and districts, then I feel the total city will be represented.'' Partisan local elections are a rarity in North Carolina. According to statistics kept by the University of North Carolina School of Government in Chapel Hill, only nine of the state's 551 cities and towns hold partisan elections. The City Council could take the Justice Department to court to fight decision regarding nonpartisan elections, but such a move seems unlikely. The council voted 4-1 to drop the issue after meeting privately with Justice Department officials in August. ``What do I plan to do? Absolutely, nothing,'' Mr. Tyson said. ``And I will fight, within Robert's Rules of Order, wherever necessary to make sure that decision stands.'' The Justice ruling and Kinston's decision not to fight it comes in the wake of a key Voting Rights Act case last year. In that decision, the Supreme Court let a small utility district in Texas seek an exemption from the law's requirements to receive Justice Department approval before making any changes to voting procedures. But the court declined to address whether the law itself is constitutional. Critics of the law argue it has changed little since its 1965 inception and that the same places the law covered then no longer need Justice Department approval to make changes to voting procedures. Proponents, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., said the law is still necessary to ensure equal voting rights for all Americans. In Kinston, William Barker is the only City Council member who voted to continue discussing whether to challenge the Justice Department's ruling. He said he voted against eliminating partisan elections because the proposed new system would declare a winner simply on who received a plurality of votes instead requiring candidates to reach certain threshold of votes based on turnout. ``Based on the fact that the voters voted overwhelmingly for it, I would like to see us challenge it based on that fact. My fight is solely based on fighting what the voters voted on,'' he said. ``It bothers me, even though I'm on the winning side now, that you have a small group, an outside group coming in and saying, `Your vote doesn't matter.' ''

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. Mr. Speaker, I'm here standing in support of Congressman Nunes and the California delegation that has spoken against this rule and for water for the valley. And as I watched this debate unfold here on the floor, something about the depth of the emotion in the voice and in the eyes of Devin Nunes told me I needed to go see for myself, Mr. Speaker. So in late August, I went down to the Fresno area and traveled the valley--most of the valley, not all of the valley--and I looked at 250,000 acres of man-made dust. And I know there are at least 600,000 acres of man-made drought in that Central Valley area, and then I went up to San Francisco with a heavy heart. And I can tell you what I saw when I looked at that dust in the valley. I felt like that Indian in the commercial that saw his river full of junk and tires and the tear trickled down his cheek to think that man could do that to man. And they're watering the lawns in San Francisco while we have a man-made drought and they're taking out dead trees from orchards in California in the valley. I also led a codel to go look at the swamp Arabs in Iraq, and there, Saddam Hussein, years ago we'll know, decided that he didn't like the politics of the people in the south, the Shias in the south that lived in that swamp, and so he shut off and diverted the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and shut off the water and dried out the swamp Arabs in the south. And I visited that area. It was a political decision and a man-made drought for the swamp Arabs in Iraq, and we're quite proud that we sent our American military in to turn on that water and reflood that swamp and give them back the lifeblood of the people in southern Iraq on the delta area there. Here, we have the valley, and this is a battle going on between San Francisco, the urban areas in California, and the most productive area in the world. And I'm from Iowa and I'm saying this. The most dollars per acre produced out of the valley of anyplace in the world, and we have a man-made drought. We're watering lawns in San Francisco and diverting more water to San Franciscans, who didn't look to me like they were very dry, and throwing dust in the face of the hardworking people in the valley. I can't believe we can have a man-made tragedy of this magnitude and we're told, check your guns at the door. Check your guns at the door when the cards are dealt, and we have a closed rule that shuts off any debate other than on the rule itself, no amendments allowed, no vote being able to be forced. We can't shape policy in this Congress if it's being shaped up there in the hole in the wall. I want to bring that debate down to the floor. And if you at least have enough courage to ask for an open rule and allow some amendments so the Members of this Congress can weigh in, then the people of the country can weigh in and they can have their voice heard. We can turn on the water. This is not about the minnow you'll find and other species. It's about a fight over the water. But a man-made drought and 600,000 acres, 40,000 jobs lost, shut off the water to the swamp Arabs, shut them off to the people down in the Central Valley. It is heartbreaking, Mr. Speaker, and this has got to stop. The voice of the people needs to be heard.