Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for holding this special order. And as I hear the word Iowa, I look across that list and I see $500 billion in Medicare cuts. And we know that nationwide, Medicare reimbursement rates, the services provided under Medicare, are only compensated under the schedule we have today at about 80 percent of the cost of delivering that care. And if you look around the country where you have concentrations of seniors, we know that's where the Medicare dollars go. And my district of Iowa, as a State, has the highest percentage of its population that's over the age of 85. And we're in the top six or seven over the age of 65. So we actually do pretty good on the longevity side. And in 99 counties in Iowa, 10 of the 12 most senior counties in Iowa are in my district, so I may well represent the most senior congressional district in America. And I'm standing here looking at this data that's been out here now for probably 2 months, a half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts, Medicare cuts. And the administration takes the position that they're going to find waste, fraud, and abuse. But it's odd that if they know where the waste, fraud and abuse is, why do you have to bargain to get a socialized medicine program in order go after the waste, fraud and abuse? If you find waste, fraud and abuse in government, don't keep it secret, Mr. President. Tell me where it is. We'll find it here in Congress. And that's one of my concerns is that you can't bargain that. If it's good policy, eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse is always good policy. You don't hold it out and say, I've got a secret. It's in the envelope--karnak predicts that if you pass my national health care plan, I can find you billions of dollars worth of savings. But taking it out of our senior citizens' pockets. And it's so interesting to me that I remember my junior Senator, Tom Harkin, had a political campaign that resolved around a statement that he made, he referenced $6 billion, and he said, Well that's just pencil dust. And so his opponent walked around with a man-sized pencil the whole campaign showing $6 billion is not pencil dust. But I recall the spokesperson for the AARP sitting on a national cable news program, referring to the half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts, now it does sound like more when it's $500 billion in Medicare cuts, referring to it as a small percentage of the overall outlays. Half a trillion dollars, a small percentage of the overall outlays. That's one of the pieces of the bullets that you have there.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Missouri, and I look at this data that is there. You didn't read the text below that, the success story here in America in proportion, but U.S. companies have developed half of all new major medicines introduced worldwide over the past 20 years. It happens to also be true that in the United States slightly more than half of the research dollars in the entire world are invested here. Those things are not coincidences. Those things come together. It's almost directly proportional to the research dollars. I'd like to think we are a little better than that. I'd like to think that we have innovative skills and there's something within our culture and our mindset that lets us push even a little harder than that. But what we're hearing from the gentleman from Indiana is that this policy punishes the very most successful among us in this country, and it's likely to drive them overseas. I had a long conversation with a representative from one of the large well-known medical industries in the country, and they've developed a technology, and I'm not going to define it any more than that it would be transformative from a cure standpoint. And they are looking at deploying that in other countries where they can actually get it deployed more quickly. If that happens, if they can introduce new cures in other countries, the research dollars will follow too, and they will set up shop in those countries. It won't be just customers; it will be our businesses that go, just as we heard from the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Oh, yes. I hadn't actually forgotten about that. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. When we look at the list of czars that started out with none and quickly became 32, and some say grew to 47 czars, Mr. Speaker, a number of these czars have gotten fairly notorious in the public eye. And this particular czar I will go to in a moment, but one that comes to mind is the green jobs czar, Van Jones--the former green jobs czar, Van Jones. We can't forget about him. He had a lot of things going against him. He seemed to be very active in the streets, a self-avowed Communist. And of all of the things that he did and said, he despised Republicans terribly to the extent that I can't quote him here on the floor or my words would be taken down. But he is no longer the green jobs czar, Van Jones. It was mysterious that he disappeared from the scene about 12:01 a.m. on a Saturday morning. It's also mysterious that the President could bring his focus on a small little law enforcement altercation that took place up near Harvard University, and we all know the name of Officer Crowley because of that, the Beer Summit. The President had a beer summit to deal with that, the Presidential illumination of a minor, a very, very minor, law enforcement issue; but he didn't have, couldn't take the trouble to say a few kind words on the departure of Van Jones, self-avowed communist, former czar for green jobs czar. Now we have another czar that comes into this same category, in fact a category that is more objectionable, I believe, and that's Kevin Jennings. Kevin Jennings is the President's appointment to be the safe schools and drug free schools czar. Now, as I noticed how President Obama dealt with Van Jones, and it was ignore him, and he went away in the middle of the night--I mean, literally in the middle of the night, Mr. Speaker, I am calling upon the President to simply fire Kevin Jennings. Kevin Jennings, the totality of his life has been the advocacy for his homosexual agenda. He has written a number of books. I have a list of them here, four or five. He has been fairly notorious for writing the foreword in the book titled ``Querying Elementary Education.'' Now, a statement that I put out here, as we all know, that what is really promoted in our schools-- this is a statement from Van Jones, We all know what is really promoted in our schools. Heterosexuality is primarily promoted in our schools. Every time kids read ``Romeo and Juliet,'' kids are aggressively recruited to be heterosexual in this country. That's Kevin Jennings. I mean, he takes offense at ``Romeo and Juliet'' and claims that it is an aggressive recruitment to heterosexuality. But 20 years, seeking the affirmation of homosexuality, four or five books, the foreword in the book, ``Querying Elementary Education,'' the way he has written in his book titled ``Momma's Boy, Preacher's Son'' about his drug abuse, his cavalier use of drugs, the message that kids would get on the drug-free school component would be that, well, I guess, drugs aren't so bad, you can become the drug-free school czar even though you have abused drugs and written about it in your book--not taking the responsibility, not advocating to avoid drugs but simply writing about it in a way that it is fascinating to be off the end of the runway watching the planes come in and out. This is what we get with Kevin Jennings. Kevin Jennings has said, of the individual whose name is Harry Hay, one of the strong advocates for the North American Man Boy Love Association, Kevin Jennings said of him, he always inspires me, always inspired by the person who was on the cover of the magazine for NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association. Now, I have just gone through some of these things that we know about Kevin Jennings, certainly not all of them. But we can see that the totality of his professional life as advocated, has advocated nationally against religion, again heterosexuality, at least resentful towards it, and in the discussion and promotion of homosexuality in our schools. Now, whatever a person's particular inclination may be, our preschool kids, our kindergartners, our first, second, third, fourth and fifth graders don't need to have that discussion. They don't understand it. They don't need that pressure on them. They need to be left alone to focus on their academics and their social adjustment. But this man is engaged in the single promotion, the promotion and the advocacy, I will say of--well, by the way, that is the record of Kevin Jennings. So I will ask the question. If he is going to be the safe schools czar, the safe schools and drug free schools czar, then he has to have something more to offer than simply, I will say, the promotion of safety for some kids that might be self-alleged homosexuals in our schools. That would be the only narrow part that you could say he has to offer. The balance of it across the spectrum of his job is simply nonexistent from his professional career. If he were teaching in elementary schools, and he had a record like he has with these books that he has written, the foreword that he has written in ``Querying Elementary Education,'' he has the endorsement of Harry Hay, one of the lead North American Man Boy Love Association people in the country, who is also a self-professed communist, by the way, this man would not be working in many of the elementary schools in America as a teacher. Yet he has been elevated to be the safe schools and drug-free schools czar for America. I call upon President Obama to simply dismiss Kevin Jennings. Go find somebody that stood up for kids and families and education, drug-free and safe schools all together. Surely there's somebody out there that's lived an example. I urge the President to remove Kevin Jennings. Put somebody in who can do the job.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas. Mr. Speaker, I can only reflect back upon the experience that Judge Carter has talked about. It would be interesting to see the actual numbers and data from across this country. This right now is the best cross-section I know of. I have not heard of another. In some jurisdictions it is called statutory rape.

Mr. KING of Iowa. The record that Kevin Jennings has put out is that as a teacher he counseled a young boy, whom he said was 15 years old, who had been having sexual relations with one or more men at the bathroom in the bus stop, and that makes him a mandatory reporter as a teacher. He didn't report until he wrote his book and talked about it in his speeches. So, that is a violation of the law and it is a responsibility that he shirked. And, yes, he said he could have handled it differently. Well, anybody could have handled anything differently. But he didn't. I can only question, if he hadn't focused his mind so much and his professional career so much on the homosexual side of this, wouldn't he have been appalled by the statutory rape of a young boy if it had been a young girl perhaps? Would he have then been the actual mandatory reporter and followed the law, if it didn't fit within his bias? I suspect he would have, if it had been a girl and a man rather and boy and a man. But this is intergenerational sex, and it is advocating for safe sex, not safe from sexual predators. So the school situation with the czar, the responsibility is to provide safe and drug-free schools. There is not very much at all in his history that would advocate for that. It is not very broad. It is very narrow. Many of these things that come out in his record are anathema to the mainstream of the American people, and the President should have had better advice when he made this appointment. Now he needs to take responsibility for his appointment, and that is why I have called for the President to fire Kevin Jennings, and let's find somebody that actually maybe is a parent and a teacher and somebody who has a life career advocating for the safety of all children and the drug-free nature of all children. If I could roll this back to a brief comment in the little bit of time that we have, about 5 minutes I see, there is another piece. Since we have that much time, I want to also point out that because of Kevin Jennings saying that he is always inspired by Harry Hay, let me say the icon of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, that doesn't necessarily mean he aspires to all the things that NAMBLA aspires to. But this icon also is a self-alleged Communist. So it doesn't mean also that he is a Communist, but it means as a fellow traveler, as a consistent commentator, as a writer and author and an individual who has written a forward on the queering of elementary education, he has traveled on that path consistently, and it has been the exclusive activity of his, the nearly exclusive activity of his entire professional life. And we can find somebody better, and we can find somebody that is not there with an agenda that he is seeking to drive, aside from safety for kids in school. I wanted to make a comment also that the CBO score on the Senate's health care bill, it includes 10 years worth of revenue and 7 years worth of expenses. When I listened to the gentlelady from Wyoming talk about being audited for a third of every year or a fourth of every year, none of us could get by with that. If I look back on my business career, if I could have had 10 months in every year worth of revenue and only 7 months worth of expenses, or 10 years worth of revenue and 7 years worth of expenses, I would have made millions and millions of dollars with that kind of bookkeeping. This is billions and hundreds of billions of dollars. They need to be held accountable. It has got to be 10 years of revenue, 10 years of expenses, and it has got to be legitimate expectations on how people will react when you fine them $700 a year as opposed to requiring them to buy insurance. I thank the gentleman from Texas. I yield back.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized to be able to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives and raise some of these issues that are so important and critical to the American people. As I have listened to the last hour, I can't help but bring myself to comment a little bit on that delivery, and I would speak to the last 50 minutes or so of it specifically, that is, that we are a great Nation because we have understood the principles that motivate the American people to come forward and do the right thing and to take personal responsibility and be productive and to negotiate for a good value for their health insurance dollar and to manage their health in a way and set up a system so that they are rewarded for high responsibility and that there is a penalty there for a low level of responsibility. Some of us, in fact a lot of us on this side of the aisle, have laid out data set after data set that shows what motivates the American people to do the right thing, and also provided the disincentives, described the disincentives when people don't do the right thing. It never ceases to amaze me how the other side of the aisle seems to want to focus on anecdotes, not facts, and we can reflect back upon the immigration subcommittee where we had hearing after hearing, witness after witness, anecdote after anecdote. Mr. Speaker, even in the perfect model of Utopia, there will always be an individual that slips through a crack, whether we can imagine what it was beforehand or not. We can always take that individual's story and use it and say, this illuminates the whole. The gentleman from Colorado has now delivered about 50 or 55 minutes of individual case after individual case, and I am sure every one of us in our district have dozens and hundreds of those kinds of cases. But as I have listened to this last hour, I have heard not one statistic, not one piece of data, nothing based on empirical information that one should be able to take and establish a national policy off of. Surely, as a nation, we are not the kind of people that listen to an anecdote and knee-jerk our way towards a national policy, believing somehow that if we can solve the problem of this individual, we can solve the problem of the whole. We do that with data, we do that with statistics, we do it with facts, and we do it with good, sound judgment that illuminates the facts that lie underneath those data points. But as I mentioned, in that immigration subcommittee, it went on for weeks of hearings, introducing study after study, data after data, and always calling for, where are your studies on the other side? Show me the data. Finally there was a report that was introduced into the record. And as the Chair asked unanimous consent to introduce the report into the record, I thought, finally, finally I am going to get my hands on a report. I am going to understand how they do an analysis and how they look at the data and how they come to a conclusion, because we come to opposite conclusions quite often. On the critical issues we always come to opposite conclusions. So I want to see the data. I got my hands on the data. This report that was introduced into the record as a response to my call for ``show me your report, show me your study, show me your data,'' when I got my hands on it, it wasn't a report at all. It was simply a critique that was written of a report that I had introduced into the record some weeks earlier. That was what substituted for facts. Now, here we have 50 to 55 minutes of individual anecdotes, sad as they may be. But there may well be other solutions, and there may be more people hurt off of this, rather than less people hurt, if we adopt the policy that is advocated by the President of the United States and by the gentleman from Colorado. So, Mr. Speaker, I do have some data, but I also first would like to lay a little backdrop of what we are talking about here, the health care reform debate. This is a little bit of the history of the health care reform debate. This is lifted out of the archives of the New York Times from back in 1993-94. It is a replica of the chart that I had on my construction office wall for some years, by the way, and this is a chart that scared the living daylights out of me. When I saw the government that was created by HillaryCare, we called it then, this is what scared the Senate and the House of Representatives off of a national health care act, creating all these new government programs. Just a look at the chart. You didn't have to study it, although I did study it, to understand how big of an impact it would have on our economy. Now, this economy, maybe 14.5 percent of our GDP is spent on health care. It might be higher than that. But this black-and-white chart, Mr. Speaker, is relatively mild, although this black-and-white chart, HillaryCare, is a complete government takeover of our health care system. This, Mr. Speaker, is a gradual complete takeover of our health care system in the United States. This lays out all of these new agencies and departments, all of those in color. Those in white are existing. Those in color are created by H.R. 3200, the House's version of the bill. It is scary in and of itself. The focus I would bring on this, Mr. Speaker, is here to the private insurers. The President has said we need more competition, more competition for the 1,300 health insurance companies in the United States; more competition for the 100,000, and that is this box here, different varieties of policies one can purchase here in the United States. Why would we need more competition if we had 1,300 companies and 100,000 policy varieties, unless you happened to just believe that the Federal Government should be running things? If that is the case, you would put them in the business to compete against them, and we would have in theory 1,301 health insurance companies and 100,000 and who knows how many policies. But truthfully, these two white boxes, the insurance companies that exist, the health insurance policies that exist, they would have to qualify. They would have a 5-year period of time, according to the bill, in order to qualify for the new qualified health benefits plans that would be established. And the rules that would be written for an insurance company to qualify and for their policies to qualify, it would be written right here in this box, in the health choices administration by the health choices commissioner, who would set the new rules for all of these policies and companies. And these policies and companies, all of them would not qualify. The companies wouldn't all qualify, the policies would not all qualify. If they did, there would be no reason to have the regulator write the new set of rules. So we do have an individual who has really driven this issue of how we set up competition between the health insurance companies, and that is to allow the American people to buy health insurance across State lines. I just have to thank and congratulate John Shadegg for being the driver of that idea and that issue for several years here in the House of Representatives. He is with us tonight, and I would be glad to yield to the leader of the Shadegg bill, I call it, to sell insurance across State lines and set up competition in that fashion, in the Federalist model of States competing against States from the private-sector perspective, the gentleman from Arizona, John Shadegg.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I am astonished to a significant degree here at the depth of this, and I didn't catch that article coming into it over the weekend, so this unfolds as new news to me, at least in the composite. Some of the pieces I picked up. It is breathtaking in its scope when you add up the billion of dollars, the audacity. The President likes to use the term ``audacity'': The Audacity of Hope. How about the audacity of political health care, the patronage that comes with this?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I pull this back and I look at item number one, the CBO scoring the bill in 7 years of expenses in 10 years of revenue in order to get it to turn out so it doesn't violate the President's pledge; and I am wondering if these carve-outs that come for these powerful Senators like Harry Reid and others when they're carved out from their Medicaid costs so that the Federal Government will have to pick up the tab for the Medicaid increases that come with the bill, and I am wondering if those increases are scored against this bill. I am going to suspect they're not because we're only scoring on concepts.

Mr. KING of Iowa. As I listen and I reflect back in those first years when I got to know who John Shadegg was--and I remember discussions here on the floor as I was watching on C-SPAN--and I believe one can go back and review the Congressional Record and be able to hear the criticism that you and others have made about Democrats declaring that a reduction in the anticipated increase was a cut. And so the reduction in the anticipated increase was called a cut by Democrats, and that was exposed--at least to thinking people in America--and now we have a CBO, the revered, nonpartisan CBO scoring an $829 billion bill and scoring that bill over a 10-year period of time by totaling up 7 years of expenses and 10 years of revenue. It's the same kind of sleight of hand, only this isn't just political sleight of hand; this is a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office sleight of hand. And it has to be, I think, with the directions that come from the White House and Max Baucus. And as I understand it, there still is not a bill. We've only amended the concept to the point where we have the amended concepts that were voted on today coming out of the Finance Committee in the Senate.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And when it comes to the Medicare as the proposal has been, as I understand the conceptual proposal in the Senate since there is no specific language to look at--and I've not looked at the line items that CBO is scoring, and there may not be any, actually--but the proposal here in the House was to cut Medicare about $500 billion over a period of 10 years. But there was going to be savings from waste, fraud, and abuse to the tune of some hundreds of billions of dollars. And it's almost as if we can't fix the waste, fraud, and abuse unless we first pass a proposal that will take us to a national takeover of our health care industry. One would think if you're going to be a responsible government, you wouldn't hold responsibility hostage to passing a bill that America doesn't want.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Since we don't have any specific language and we don't have any specific approach. So cutting waste, fat, fraud, and abuse will happen even less effectively than it has in the past. And the Medicare component of this, too, the reimbursement rates across the country unbalanced are only being reimbursed at about 80 percent of the cost of delivering those services.

Mr. KING of Iowa. It has to go to the taxpayers eventually; borrowed money is where it will end up. This bill--there's another component of this that is not going to be addressed. Now, they are scoring the waste, fraud, and abuse component part of this to get this up to meet the President's pledge. There is nothing in the bill, not one penny in the bill, of a reduction of the worst waste, fraud, and abuse, and that is lawsuit abuse that takes place across this country. The numbers that we have seen, the health insurance underwriters have put out a number--this is verbal, not in print--8\1/2\ percent of all of our health care costs are wrapped up in the costs of medical malpractice and defensive medicine, unnecessary tests, and also malpractice insurance premiums, 8\1/2\ percent. If you calculate 8\1/2\ percent across the cost of our health care, that comes to $203 billion a year, or CBO, if they were to score that revenue or expenses, I suppose--I don't know which--but let's say it's 10 years, that's $2 trillion that--that's on the way outside that could be saved if we address lawsuit abuse and reform it as we did in this House. And it failed in the Senate because the trial lawyers are able to block anything that comes through the Senate or the House today. There is also a number that came out from Pricewaterhouse Coopers that 10 percent, slightly more than 10 percent actually, of the overall costs of health care were being wrapped up in medical malpractice premiums and the litigation that's associated with that and the defensive medicine. So if we really wanted to fix some health care costs, we would go after tort reform.

Mr. KING of Iowa. To the Speaker, a parliamentary inquiry. I believe that we had a rule change a few years ago that amended that language in the rules that allowed an individual to address Members of the Senate by their name. Could you verify that, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry. I would just like to put into the Record I'm referring to the Feeney rule, and I think the Feeney rule should be upheld. And I know we can carry on this dialogue without referencing people specifically, but I believe the rules have been amended unless they have since been amended afterwards. Could you verify that?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, we will go up through these numbers. I want to agree with the gentleman with numbers as high as 35 percent or even higher that go into the tort reform, the lawsuit abuse category. The lowest number I pick up is 5.5 percent of all medical costs, then the 8.5 percent from health insurance underwriters, then the 10 percent of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and then there's an aggregate of providers out of Iowa that sat down and presented to me a 20 to 28 percent calculation that they had that was the cost of the lawsuit abuse and defensive medicine. And then those numbers go on up, as the gentleman from Arizona said, 35 percent. I talked to an orthopedic surgeon a week or two ago who told me that 95 percent of the tests that he runs, MRIs I believe he said, are unnecessary. And he knows they are unnecessary, but he has to order them on everyone, every injury, in order to protect himself from that single trial lawyer that will come in and file a lawsuit. Over the course of his practice, it was $1 million a year that was unnecessarily spent on tests in one single practice that he described as a small practice, that I see it as quite a respectably sized practice. But in throwing the baby out with the bath water, I'm going to see your doctor and raise you a nurse. This is very close to the family anecdote that took place just last weekend. A little child was sick, and his mother called in. We live in a rural area so we have hospitals in our county seats. She called the county seat hospital and said, here are the conditions of my child. Should I bring this child into the hospital or should I treat him with some aspirin and maybe watch his temperature? And the nurse that was on call said, I can't advise you because--she didn't go on much further than that, but we all know why. She couldn't advise the mother because of the potential for a lawsuit. Then the mother said to the nurse over the phone holding a sick child, who is the doctor that's on call? We don't always have doctors in great numbers, but we should know who the doctor is on call. And if that doctor is this baby's doctor, then the mother would have taken the baby in. The nurse was even prohibited from telling the mother who the doctor was that was on call at the hospital because I suppose of some imagined lawsuit abuse that is out there. This country has been so shut down by the abusive lawsuits. And we have lost our good judgment. We have the HIPAA Act now where we can't find out who is in the hospital so you can go visit them. You can go up to the visitors' center and ask and they can't tell you. And if a nurse can't tell a mother, bring the child in or not, what's its temperature, give the child an aspirin, call me back in 2 hours, tell me how you're doing, if a doctor can't even let his name go out that he's on call, you have to go to the hospital to find out where you walk into the confines of the hospital where apparently those confines then are more regulated, more controlled and more structured in order to prevent the lawsuit abuse. This $200 billion, $203 billion a year, and that's at 8.5 percent. If you run this on up to Mr. Shadegg's number of 35 percent, I don't have that number, but $200 at a little over 10 percent, so you would be somewhere around--could be as high as $1 trillion a year on the outside of the cost of litigation in this country. And it's being paid by people across this country, and not one dollar is being addressed by the Democrats. I would just suggest that we have a lot of solutions. One of the solutions that Mr. Shadegg has introduced about selling insurance across State lines, some of the data that came out of similar policies with different mandates in it, a young man, 25 years old, could buy a policy in New Jersey for $6,000 a year. A similar policy in Kentucky would cost him $1,000 a year. Where would you put your money if you had the choice? I would buy the policy in Kentucky. I want to be able to preserve the catastrophic insurance component of this. I want to be able to expand health savings accounts. But my list of things we need to do to reconstruct this health care system recognizes that we have consumers. We need to maintain personal responsibility. We've talked about fixing the tort reform component of this which we did pass out of this House at a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages modeled after California, modeled in Texas, I believe, modeled after that as well. They're doing well, especially in Texas. Buying insurance across State lines. Portability, so you own your policy and you can take it with you and you're not tied and strapped to your job. Full deductibility of health insurance premiums. How can it be that an employer, a large corporation, for example, can deduct 100 percent of the health insurance premiums even on the Cadillac policies--which I don't particularly object to--and ma and pa can't do that? If they're self-employed, if they're a sole proprietorship, if they're a partnership, if they don't have themselves set up on a wage and a benefit plan within a corporation, they can't fully deduct their health insurance premiums. If any entity can deduct a health insurance premium, every entity should be able to deduct a health insurance premium. And the numbers that I have seen on that is that it would increase our insured by about 1 million people a year. And we need to expand association health care plans, expand the health savings accounts. And we ran some numbers on that a couple of years ago. If a young couple had started with HSAs when we passed them here in 2003, maxed out at $5,150 for the couple a year, spent $2,000 a year out in normal health care costs, in accruing at 4 percent a year-- which will be logical by the time we get there; it may not be today-- they would arrive at retirement with about $950,000 in their health savings account, almost $1 million. Well, why wouldn't we let them buy a Medicare replacement policy and give them the rest of it tax free for their own retirement or to will to their children? We need to tie this together, health savings accounts with retirement accounts, and get people off the entitlement rolls. Transparency in our billings and electronic medical records.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would yield.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Arizona. And talking about the politicization of health care for perks and privileges, the part that's left out is the patronage. Patronage goes with perks and privileges. And when you see that happen in government, then it slows down the operations and it shifts the balance. And we're wondering, why isn't government logical? It's because perks, privileges and patronage take government off kilter. That's why we're a free enterprise system. That's why we have been a free enterprise system. And that's why this Nation has been strong and powerful and successful and our economy has eclipsed that of the world is because we left the standards of Adam Smith in place for dozens and dozens of years, for generations and generations. In this last year, we have given up to nationalization perhaps as much as one-third of our private sector. We are looking at 14.5 percent of our GDP being potentially nationalized in the sequence, all to reduce this. This is, by the way, 100 percent of the population of the United States of America. And here in the blue, that represents 84 percent in the blue of all. This is 100 percent, the circle. These are the uninsured, those Americans without affordable options right here, this little orange, less than 4 percent, about 12.1 million people. This is 47 million all together. And if you look at the color code on the chart, we have illegal immigrants there in the yellow. We have those that are yellow in the 5-year bar, no welfare for 5 years by law. That's another 5 or so million people. You have those that are earning more than $75,000 a year, Americans without affordable options. They can find a way to insure themselves. And then you've got those that are eligible for government programs, primarily Medicaid, that's 9.7 million. And then you have those eligible for employer offers that don't opt in or opt out of their employer's plan, that's about 6 million. And then we have the Americans without affordable options. So all of these folks here, there's another answer for that; less than 4 percent to change 100 percent of the entire insurance and health care delivery system. I thank the gentleman from Arizona and the Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 754, I was unable to reach the House floor to cast my vote before the vote was closed. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized and the opportunity and the privilege to come to the floor and address you here. It is also a bit nostalgic to step in behind Duncan Hunter. I remember many times standing here on the floor of the House debating issues, and a lot of them were national security issues, including our immigration issues, with Duncan Hunter's father. And this transition has been very good to see a young man, a young marine, stand here in the well and speak to you and talk to you about our national security issues from the experience standpoint of a marine who has served in Afghanistan and now one who serves in the United States Congress. I very much appreciate the addition to this Congress that he is. I lament what we have seen happen today, this activity that this Congress has gone through; the Department of Defense authorization bill that saw at least 144 or so vote against it. Most of those that voted against the authorization bill, including me, support, of course, the Department of Defense and our national security and all of our men and women in uniform and all of our veterans all the way back to many wars prior to today. The Department of Defense authorization bill was used as a political tool by the left to advance a left-wing agenda that should be appalling to the American people if they understand the motivation of this idea of inserting hate crimes into the Department of Defense authorization bill. It's a piece of legislation that had passed off the floor of this House a piece of stand-alone legislation. Many of us opposed it. It is activist legislation that sets up and creates sacred cows, people who get special protected status, people who are identified by their alleged, hopefully private, sexual behavior or thoughts. This is a bill that the United States Senate couldn't figure out apparently how to debate on its own and send back over here to the House amended or simply send it to the President. So they polluted the Department of Defense authorization bill with it. I would be very happy to yield so much time as he may consume to the gentleman from California who I think has an opinion on this matter.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I so much appreciate the gentleman from California. I'm looking to this new leadership that's emerged into the new Congress, and Duncan Hunter is one of those people. The statement that he has made, I concur with. I have looked at the Department of Defense authorization bill with hate crimes legislation, which is, in fact, thought crimes legislation, built into it, slipped into it as a, not quite a poison pill, because there were liberals over here today, and I would be happy to yield to any one of them that want to stand up and defend themselves, liberals over here today that maybe for the first time voted for the Department of Defense authorization bill because it had this hate crimes legislation in it, the thought crimes legislation in it. Their radical social agenda in some cases overcame their resistance to supporting our military. And so it was a double-edged sword that was put in here, a rotten sword, the wrong, wrong thing to do. I looked at it from this perspective: that if we are going to let them put into the Department of Defense a piece of legislation that's so contrary to the rule of law, so abhorrent to equal justice under the law, it turns out to be holding the Department of Defense hostage; it's almost like somebody kidnapped the Department of Defense bill and required that in order to pay off the kidnappers, the ransom note was the hate crimes bill. That's what happened. I don't think anybody is going to stand up and defend that today. They wanted to avoid that debate. They wanted to force a vote. And President Obama, of course, supports the hate crimes legislation. So he will sign the bill, and it will be law in the United States of America. And then we will be asking juries and judges to discern not the act that might be committed that's a crime, but the thought that was in the head of the perpetrator and the victim. And it is not the basis of the law going all the way back to English common law to determine what's in the head of the perpetrator or the victim when a crime is committed because an individual is a sacred life. All life is equal under the law. Whether you're a little-bitty baby or whether you are a senior citizen with a terminal illness, those that value those lives under the law are valued equally. The father of Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania as a Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania, said this: Human life cannot be measured. It is the measure itself against which all other things are weighed. We measure the life and say that it is the measure itself, and an act committed against a person's life, and it could be murder, it could be assault, it could be rape, it could be a number of different acts actually against a person's property, and now this hates crime legislation for the first time would increase the punishment against someone because the victim may have perceived that they were of a different sexual orientation. So for the jury or the judge to get into the head of the perpetrator and the victim for the first time and value the victim who might be, because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity, a special protected class of people, different from everybody else, so a crime committed against a self-alleged homosexual would be punished additionally. If there were, say, two people who were equally victims of a crime, one of them was a self-alleged homosexual, the other one was not, the penalty for the assault on the homosexual would be greater than the penalty for the assault on the person who did not declare their sexuality. Mr. Speaker, that's a principle that we should not cross. As we debated this issue in the Judiciary Committee, I brought an amendment. Now I will argue that the way the language reads and the definitions of sexual orientation and gender identity are so broad that anyone's proclivity could be included in this, whether they are crimes or whether they are not. So I brought an amendment that would strike out inclusion of special protected status for pedophiles. You would think it should be clear. We should be willing not to protect special protected status for pedophiles. The Democrats on the committee argued against it. And it went on a recorded vote to vote against excluding pedophiles as a special protected class. The result of it, Mr. Speaker, was special protection for pedophiles and all other paraphilias that are listed in the American Psychological Association. That came to the floor of the House of Representatives. We had a debate on it here. The gentlelady from Wisconsin (Ms. Baldwin) had a definition. She said it only includes heterosexuals or homosexuals. That was her language in the committee. That would not include then, of course, bisexuals. I think that might be trouble for her analysis. But Alcee Hastings, the gentleman from Florida, stood over at that microphone, and he read a list of about 30, I will call them paraphilias. And he said this language protects all of these behaviors, I believe all philias whatsoever, are protected. Alcee Hastings. I couldn't believe it, Mr. Speaker. I couldn't believe it, Mr. Speaker. So after the debate was over, the vote was over, I went over and I personally asked him, Did you really say what you said? Did I hear you right? Did I miss a word? Somehow is there a misunderstanding on my part? He said, No, that's what I believe. That's what is in the Congressional Record. It is in the Congressional Record in the Judiciary Committee. It is in the Congressional Record on the full record on the floor of the House of Representatives, in the debate and the effort to offer amendments that would exclude these behaviors. And some of these, many of these behaviors are crimes. Hate crimes legislation protects some acts that are criminal because they are under this list of paraphilias that are part of the sexual orientation or gender identity of the alleged victims or maybe even the perpetrators. It is a horrible piece of legislation. It addresses crimes of violence, which means an offense that has an element that threatens the use of force against property of another that might be the property of someone with a particular sexual orientation or gender identity. This is bad law. It is bad legislation. It is a bad, bad precedent for a country that has built its strength upon the rule of law, Mr. Speaker, and now this pill has been slipped into the Department of Defense authorization bill. And there were dozens and dozens of Members of this Congress that voted ``no'' on the bill exclusively because of the hates crimes legislation, the thought crimes legislation that was injected into it. And they will be characterized now in campaign ads as being against our national defense. We know, and the totality of the record of the Members of Congress here is understood, but it was a raw political move, and it was a bitter thing to see happen. I am not worried myself; I will speak up, Mr. Speaker, so I am not worried myself. I do have a couple of other subjects that I want to shift to. Mr. Speaker, I am shifting over to the health care debate. This is the chart of HillaryCare. This legislation emerged in 1993. At the time President Bill Clinton gave a speech on the floor here of the House, September 22, 1993. He laid out the principles for a national health care act, for a complete government takeover of all of the health insurance and the health care delivery system in the United States. This is the flowchart that came from that legislation. I will at least give him credit for honesty. And I will give he and Hillary credit for at least writing a bill. Some of us were nervous that a lot of it happened behind closed doors. But they did write a bill, and they tried to push it on Americas, and Americans rejected the National Health Care Act in 1993 and 1994. This is the flowchart that comes off of The New York Times that was published at the time. Black and white, a little fuzzy. They didn't have the graphics that we have now. They didn't have color in their newspapers like we do now. But I do have the chart that we have for the new bill now. This, Mr. Speaker, is the new chart. The black and white that is on this new chart for H.R. 3200, the black and white are existing programs. The color are the new programs that are created by H.R. 3200. So you can see some of the things that exist. Let's see, the Office of Minority Health exists. The Office of Civil Rights exists. The National Coordinator For Health Information Technology exists. But the new ones in color are created by the bill. There are a lot of them, and I can bog us all down in this, but I will take you down to the part of the bill that gives me the most heartburn. And there is no cure offered for my heartburn if this bill should pass. We have private insurers in America. This black-and-white box here, that represents 1,300 private insurance companies in the United States of America. It is a lot of companies, a lot of competition; 1,300 private health insurance companies. They are offering in the area, the best estimates we have, about 100,000 different policy variations. That is this box here, traditional health insurance plans. The private insurers and all of their plans in this box, under the bill they would have to qualify in order to be qualified health benefits plans. That is this purple circle here. It looks rather benign, but it is not benign. Getting qualified for all of these 100,000 policies with the 1,300 companies into these qualified health benefits plans will be done so by the rules of the bill, and the rules are written by the Health Choices Administration and the commission and the commissioner. This would be one of the most powerful positions in government, the health choices commissioner. And you're wondering why are they not calling him a czar? Mr. Speaker, that is because we are full up to here with czars. I am going to call him the commi-czar-issioner, the person who would be writing the rules, with his huge staff, and he would make the determination which, if any, of these 100,000 health insurance policies would qualify to go into the purple circle of the qualified health benefits plans. While those decisions are being made by the health choices commi- czar-issioner, we would also be creating under the bill a public health plan. That's the public option. That is the public option that--I believe today Speaker Pelosi said there are the votes to pass a public option plan here in the House of Representatives. If that is the case, I don't know why she is waiting. They will lose some Members I am convinced of that, Mr. Speaker, but the health choices commissioner will be writing rules that have to be met in order for the private carriers to qualify, all the while they are looking at setting up the Federal health insurance plan that will take billions of dollars of capital to get it established, and they will write their plans with certain restrictions and with certain premiums designed to compete with the private sector. Remember, the President said we have to provide some competition. We don't have enough competition in the health insurance industry. I would suspect that he couldn't answer the question how many companies do we have today? How many policy options do we have today? Mr. Speaker, I have just told you, 1,300 companies, 100,000 policy options, and the President's argument is we have to provide a little more competition so there is a little more variety. The government can do that because health insurance companies aren't doing that job? What would happen would be billions of dollars would go in to create this new Federal health insurance plan. And then if it couldn't compete with the private sector, the rules would be written differently for these private plans. Many of them wouldn't qualify. They would set mandates and require that policies cover a whole series of things. What about pregnancy for someone who is a grandmother? If everybody has to pay for those kinds of things, the premiums will go up. Those are the kind of mandates that make health insurance premiums go high. The government would write the rules so they can compete with the private sector is what would happen, and they would tap into the pockets of the taxpayers in order to have the capital to jump-start the health insurance plan. And then as they move forward, regulating private insurance companies and subsidizing the public option, the government plan, the Democrats' health insurance plan, it would squeeze out the private plans. Now, how can I say that this is what would happen with some confidence? None of us have a crystal ball. But I have a little bit of history, and I take you back to 1968 when, at the time, the only flood insurance in America was provided in the private market by the property and casualty companies. In 1968, this Congress passed the Federal flood insurance program. When that program was passed, in order to compete, they started to write regulations. The regulations that they wrote in part were requiring national banks who gave loans for real estate to require that those policies, the Federal flood insurance policies, be purchased by the borrower. So there was a mandate that people had to buy flood insurance. They wrote the rules, the premiums and regulations. And today, since 1968 when there was no Federal flood insurance program and all flood insurance was private on that day when they came to the House in 1968, today a person in America cannot buy a flood insurance policy from anyone except the Federal Government. The only thing left is Federal flood insurance. There are no private carriers out there. The Federal Government has swallowed up the entire private flood insurance industry. That is an example of what might happen with the health insurance industry, and what I think is likely to happen with the health insurance industry. In examining some of the policies around the world, I would point out that in Germany they tell us they have the oldest national health care plan in Germany, that they have provided health care for their people since Otto von Bismarck's time. I don't know whether they tell us that or I recall reading that from history. Ninety percent of the health insurance in Germany is the public option; 10 percent is the private option. The people that buy insurance outside of the government insurance plan are those that are entrepreneurs, self-employed, more well-to-do. They want a policy that gives them a little extra coverage and takes a little better care of their health. At least that exists; 90 to 1. Really, this is something that is the President's plan? He would like to have this public health plan swallow up 90 percent of the private health insurance in America? I think so. He is on record saying he wants a single-payer plan. When you think about how that goes, a single-payer plan, and if we provided, let's say, funding to buy insurance, to help people buy insurance that couldn't afford it, and that would perhaps be a voucher that goes in, that one can control to buy health insurance, the argument then becomes: How big should that voucher be? Let's just say poor people would get $3,500, and the more wealthy they were, the less money they would get. And if that were ever established, the next argument is: Where is the threshold? What is the means testing? Pretty soon the number would go from $3,500 to $7,500 to a $10,000 subsidy for people's health insurance premiums. And then at a certain point, I will hear the argument from over here, if we are still around on that day, we will hear the argument, well, it costs too much money to administer vouchers and to give refundable tax credits to people so they can afford to buy health insurance, why don't we wipe out that whole bureaucratic mess and simply have people show up at the public clinic and we will take care of them accordingly, and their medical records can be managed by the government along with their health care. I can give you some examples of what happens when you end up with a National Health Care Act, Mr. Speaker. That would be the average time waiting for a knee replacement in Canada: 340 days. The average time waiting for a hip replacement in Canada: 196 days. I talked to an individual, ran into him at a home improvement type of store. He is a legal immigrant from Germany. He told me he had a hip replacement. He waited in line for at least 6 months for a hip replacement. Finally, he was put in several lines around Europe. He went from Germany to Italy, where they gave him a hip replacement. That was one of the ways he could move more to the front of the line. We had an individual that made a presentation to us. He was a doctor from Michigan who practiced both in Michigan and in Canada. When he first went to Canada to work the ER, a young man came in with a torn meniscus and some ligament damage. The doctor looked at it and said, You need surgery right away. I will schedule you for tomorrow morning. He was used to working in the United States. Little did he know, and he found out quickly, he couldn't schedule him for surgery in Canada for the following morning. He couldn't even schedule him for an examination. The specialists that approve the surgery had to be scheduled first. So this young man, with his knee torn up, waited for 6 months for the specialist to examine the knee and approve surgery, which was scheduled another 6 months later. So the reconstructive surgery for this young man who was incapacitated, couldn't work, was 6 months for the exam, 6 months to get the surgery scheduled, and then all of the rehab that it takes after the muscles atrophy over a 12-month period of time. A full year from the injury where, this doctor, who has good credentials and has spoken to this Congress and I find to be a very credible individual, in the United States that surgery would have taken place the next day, in Canada, it took place 365 days later. We don't need this kind of health care in America. The argument that we have too many uninsured is something that we just simply need to address with some facts. I know it's hard on the people on the other side when they have to deal with facts. When the President says that we have too many uninsured, and the arguments that you have constantly made that there are 44 to 47 million uninsured. Sometimes you round it up to 50 million, but 47 million is the largest legitimate number that we hear that are uninsured in America. Somehow they have gone past the idea--first, they want to establish the idea that everybody has a right to health care. Well, that's not in the Constitution. We can make your argument as to this right to health care. Out of the compassion of the American people, we can decide that we don't want to leave anyone behind, and we can decide that we want to make sure that everyone has access to health care. In fact, everybody in America has access to health care. That question is answered. The only argument that remains is that there are too many that are uninsured, 47 million. So here are the enlightenment facts, Mr. Speaker: 84 percent of the people in the United States have a health insurance policy. In fact, they're happy with it. They don't want it changed. They don't want to lose it. This is the pie chart. All of the people here in blue are insured, and almost all of them are happy about the insurance that they have. All of these little slices here, these are the 47 million people who are uninsured, and they go down through these categories. I'm going to go from right to left--yellow, black, orange from the bottom. Illegal immigrants, 2 percent. That's part of that 47 million. I don't want to give them insurance off the back of the taxpayers, especially if we're borrowing the money from our grandchildren and the Chinese. Then we have legal immigrants. This is a slice in black. They are the ones that are, by law, barred for 5 years from being able to access public benefits. You come into the United States, you should be able to take care of yourself. That's one of the standards. That's another 5 million people, 5.2 million illegals, 5 million legals. Then you have individuals who are earning more than $75,000 a year. That's the list up here in orange. That number is a number that presumably, if you're making more than $75,000 a year, you can write a check for a health insurance policy. So they do have an affordable option. They just aren't exercising the option. Then in green, those eligible for government programs. That's 9.7 million. That is these people here, 3 percent. They're eligible most generally for Medicaid, but they don't sign up. But they're on the list, 9.7 million. We're adding up to 47 million as we go. Here are those that have coverage eligible under their employer. That's around 6 million people. These folks opted out or didn't opt in to their employer-provided health coverage, health insurance coverage. So all of these lists that we have, from illegal immigrants to new immigrants, $75,000 or more and could buy their own insurance, those who are eligible for government programs and don't sign up, those who are eligible for employer programs and don't sign up--all of that, you subtract that from 47 million and, Mr. Speaker, you come up with a number that is 12.1 million Americans who don't have health insurance and don't have affordable options. I have another little chart that shows this. This is the breakdown of this group here. This spectrum from yellow to--well, red or orange has been put now on a chart. This is 47 million. Here is how we show this. These are the different categories that I said: illegals, legals, those that are eligible for Medicaid, those eligible under employers, and that full list. But here in orange, 12.1 million people, less than 4 percent of the population of the United States, and we're going to change here in the House of Representatives, working with the Senate and with the effort of the President and likely his signature for less than 4 percent of the population? Let me look at this. This sliver right here, that's 12.1 million Americans, this piece, and that's less than 4 percent of the population of the United States. The President's proposal and the liberals' and the Progressives' proposal, the Democrats' proposal is to transform 100 percent of the health insurance industry in the United States and 100 percent of the health care delivery system in the United States to try to reduce this 12.1 million number down to something less than that, maybe something less than 6 million, but certainly not down to zero. The President stood here and tried to tell us that the proposal would not fund illegals, but his Democrats have voted down the amendments in Energy and Commerce and in Ways and Means that would have required proof of citizenship in order to access these benefits that are written into H.R. 3200, the bill. So it's pretty hard for the President to be critical of those who make allegations about his veracity when the facts show otherwise, Mr. Speaker. I hope that that dances along the edge of the rules adequately and still carries forth the message. I'm trusting the American people to be intelligent, well informed, objective, not selfish and be able to self- sacrifice, to reach out and help others, but remember to preserve our freedoms. If we sacrifice our freedoms, if we throw over the side that vitality that makes us great, the dependency takes away our vitality. Urgency and need add to our vitality. Free market capitalism has been a driving force in this country. Yet to date, according to The Wall Street Journal, a third of our private sector has been nationalized within the last year. A third of it. When you add three large investment banks that are nationalized, AIG, the large insurance company, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, Chrysler, eight large huge entities swallowed up and nationalized, which means the Federal Government controls them. That's a third of our private sector, and this health care industry here is between another 14.5 percent and 17.5 percent of our GDP. The range is somewhere between the two. But if you add those numbers up to what's already been nationalized, you are up to over half of the private sector of the United States. We need to remember that going to Western Europe and looking for ideas and seeking to conform to the ideas that are driven in Western Europe diminish our freedoms. They don't enhance our freedoms. We are a unique people. There is something unique about being an American. We aren't simply an extension of Europe. We are our own people. We're free people that came here to live free or die. I love the motto of New Hampshire: ``Live free or die.'' That has been the case for hundreds of years here in the United States. We've skimmed the cream off the donor crop from every civilization that sent us people. It was hard to get here. The people that had a dream got here. When they came here, they built on their dreams. They built on our dreams because we have freedom. We have got to expand our freedom, not diminish it. We shouldn't be expanding our government. Now we have got to shrink our government. We have got to find a way to have a private sector that can have the kind of growth necessary to ever pay off this national debt and save people their freedom so that they're not underneath the thumb of a national health care act. With that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding time. I want to thank my friend, Dennis Kucinich, for bringing this resolution to confer honorary citizenship on Casimir Pulaski. This is a rare honor and only having that happen a small number of times before in five separate incidents of people of the highest standard in the history of the United States and those that exemplified our values: Winston Churchill, Raoul Wallenberg, William and Hannah Penn--William Penn, of course--and also Mother Theresa and the Marquis de Lafayette. I think it's very interesting that this proposal comes before this Congress as--I'll put it this way--Casimir Pulaski was endorsed and recruited into the military by the Marquis de Lafayette, and he was endorsed and, of course, promoted by George Washington. Now, when you're endorsed and promoted by people of that caliber--and now here we are more than two generations hence--I think that's a very high standard. And I want to maintain a very high standard for honorary citizenship. It has been a slow process for me to get to this point of conviction on this because the standards are so high. When I see Mother Theresa, that's a really high standard. And I don't propose that Casimir Pulaski belongs in the league of any one of these individuals, but he belongs in this category of approval today. So we've heard much of the history: a ``freedom fighter'' is the best way to describe him, and the Father of the United States Cavalry; a person who was killed in battle, died 2 days later aboard a ship, the Wasp. And I would also submit that we are here at least within a short period of time at a low point in U.S.-Polish relations. I won't embellish that in this discussion any further, but I am hopeful that this resolution which I expect to pass today sends the strongest and warmest message to our friends in Poland that we are allies, we are all freedom fighters together, and we'll stand together. And we'll stand together in the spirit of the Marquis de Lafayette, George Washington, whose life was saved by Casimir Pulaski, and in the spirit of Casimir Pulaski himself. I thank my friend Dennis Kucinich for bringing this resolution.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege and honor of addressing you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. And I also appreciate the opportunity to listen to my good friend and colleague, Dr. Gingrey from Georgia. I think he's actually putting out a few more words per minute than he usually does. This is a passionate subject matter for him, and the bills that he's introduced and the foundation that he's laid, I think, is an excellent rebuttal to the statement that was made earlier in the 5 minutes by the gentlelady from California who said, Republicans, where is your plan on health care? Well, we have many, many plans on health care. And we have many, many ideas on how to address this. And they are consistent. They are consistent with human freedom and the instincts of humanity. They're consistent with the marketplace, consistent with the foundation of what has made this a great country. And on the other side of the aisle they seem to be consistent with managed economies and managed societies, the kind of societies that have always failed, the kind of societies that have drained away human ambition and put countries, entire nationalities in a position where, I believe it was Ronald Reagan that said, In the Soviet Union they pretend to pay people, and in the Soviet Union, people pretend to work. There's something about human nature that we understand over here on this side of the aisle, and we want the best out of all of us. And so I'd take us back to the broader structure of what has been delivered here on the House. There's really only one bill out here that has passed out of committees and is before the American people as the subject matter to be discussed, and that is, here in the House, H.R. 3200. And I have, first, Mr. Speaker, a diagram of the previous bill that came out in 1993 and '94 that was known in many ways as HillaryCare. And so I have an observation here that I will post. This, Mr. Speaker, is the flow chart of HillaryCare. This is out of the archives of the New York Times. And it also is very close, if not identical to the flow chart that was on the wall of my office back in the early and mid-nineties, actually all the way through the nineties. This is the flow chart that was laid out when the previous attempt to take over health care, for the government to take over the American health care system, was made. Here, on this floor, a few feet behind where I stand now, at the time President Bill Clinton came to the floor, September 22, 1993, and he did the unprecedented thing. He asked to address a joint session in Congress to speak of a subject matter that wasn't about war. That was the unprecedented component of it. But it was about the Federal Government taking over 100 percent of the health insurance and health care delivery system in the United States of America. That is a huge reach, and it was something that mobilized the American people in opposition. There were good reports on President Clinton's speech immediately after he gave it, because he, like our current President, had an ability and retains that ability to be a compelling speaker and to move people with the force of his words and not necessarily the force of ideas, but the tone and the force of the words themselves. So President Clinton, in the aftermath of that September 22, 1993, speech right here to this joint session of Congress, his numbers moved and it looked like he had perhaps broken the dam and there was going to be a National Health Care Act that would transform and take over the entire health insurance industry and the health care delivery system in the United States. We know how that came out, Mr. Speaker. We look back on that 15 years ago, we know how it came out. And that was there was a push-back across the land. I don't know that we actually used that expression in those days. But I recall Harry Louis and I recall Senator Phil Gramm, who, right down this hallway at the other end of the doors that you and I are facing, Mr. Speaker, at the other end of this Capitol Building, stood on the floor of the United States Senate and he said, This National Health Care Act will pass over my cold, dead, political body. That was Senator Phil Gramm. And a lot of people thought that his political body was going to be cold and dead and that we would have HillaryCare in America. It didn't take 15 years to find the results of that, Mr. Speaker, because the American people rejected the idea that the freedom that they had to purchase their own health insurance and the freedom that they had to make many of their own decisions with their doctor in the marketplace would be taken away, and it would be government run and government owned. This is the flowchart that described it better than anything else. I would submit as we look at these stacks of bills, an 1,100-page bill in H.R. 3200, the health care bill that has passed out of committee and is here waiting to come to the floor of the House, you can't understand the language; I don't care how good a lawyer you are if you have some diagrams. And you have to be able to look at the flowchart and track through the diagrams to find out what the language does, draw some pictures, so to speak. And even then I believe it is impossible for a single individual to analyze this legislation and be able to predict the pitfalls that are created by the vagaries in the language. There are many. But this was enough to scare the living daylights out of the American people and me. And in fact, Mr. Speaker, this flowchart was one of the significant components that drove me to take time away from my private business, the construction business that I started in 1975. And, Mr. Speaker, I seldom tell the story about that background, but I think for the sake of those who are listening--and we all want to evaluate the background of the people that are making recommendations for all 306 million Americans. For me, Mr. Speaker, I grew up in a lower-middle class family. My father was a law enforcement worker, a manager of the State police radio station, middle-level management. So he had pressure from the Governor on down and then he had some people who worked underneath him. Great reverence for the rule of law, a profound work ethic that something had to be going on all the time and you had to constantly be making progress. That was my background. No business background. But by 1975, Mr. Speaker, I had concluded that if I were going to control my destiny, it didn't pay for me to sit back and wait for the government to send me a check. The eagle wasn't going to fly for Steve King unless I did something to make the nest and get the eggs laid and hatch those eggs out. I had to take care of my own destiny. So one day in June of 1975, I decided that I didn't have a lot of alternatives, but one of those was to take a risk and a chance and start a business. And I decided it was the best alternative. And so by August of that year, I had borrowed a hundred percent and gone out and bought a bulldozer, and that was the business, it was the foundation of the business. I don't know how many hundred pounds of welding rods I burned on that machine and how much repair work I had to do just to put it out on the job for the first hour. By the way, it broke down again in the first half a day and back to the shop it went, and I had to tear it completely down, rebuild it again and try again. Many of us who have started businesses got knocked down over and over again, picked ourselves up again, and in the process of doing that were forced to learn the components of running a business. And anybody that started out with--I'll say for me it was a negative net worth in a highly capital-intensive business and had to meet payroll and meet the government regulations. And by the way, back then--I did a count. I had 43 government agencies that regulated my business. I had to answer to 43 government agencies, and if any one of them stepped in at any time and declared me to be out of compliance, they could either levy a fine or shut me down. Government was then the biggest fear that I had when I started the business. I wasn't worried so much about whether I could do the work or I could repair the machines or whether I could drive the truck. I wasn't even so worried about whether I could market the service that I had decided to provide. All of those things were going to take time and effort, and all of those skills had to be improved upon. But the one I was most concerned about was how do I possibly meet all of the government regulations that I don't even know. And there isn't any one single contact go-to point that any person who is starting a business to find out how many regulations you're going to have to meet, what will be the nature of that regulation. If you just stacked it all up, stacked up all of the paperwork and the regulations for 43 agencies that regulated me at that time, if I had known that, that would have been enough to scare me completely out of business before I ever went into business. I lay this background to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I met payroll for over 28 years, over 1,400 consecutive weeks, and I paid myself last, if at all; and I paid my employees first and then I fed the kids. But we got through those years, and we had our ups and downs. And I would never categorize it as a magnificent success except that being a business owner, a founder and a manager had laid the groundwork for me to understand the components of the other businesses in the country and gave me the tools that I had the flexibility to raise my family in a fashion that I thought was far more constructive than it might have been if someone else were telling me when and where I was going to show up to work. And it also gave me a burning desire to try to clear some of the path for others that might want to do the same thing. So regulation has always been, I'll say in the last couple of generations anyway, the number one concern of business. What will government do not for us, but what will government do to us. So this was 1975 when I began. We had our ups and downs, Mr. Speaker. I had barely gotten a position that I was even there to be a target of the farm crisis in the 1980s. But I went through all of that, and many of us got hammered flat over and over again and got back up. And some of my neighbors didn't make it. And some of them, their spirit was destroyed even though they made it. Those were tough years. And the floods in 1993 and the other experiences along the way that I could chart on my financial statements, the ups and downs, all are triggered with some kind of an event. But the experience of dealing with government and the experience of having to be my own accountant, mechanic, truck driver, my own sales manager, my own human resources manager, my own equipment operator, sometimes my shovel operator, sometimes the wrench operator, sometimes just the person who is the superintendent that steers everybody else when things are working and it's all in tune, that's when you're the least busy. I went through all of that. I had to also deal with lawyers and insurance men and also, of course, our bankers. All of that laid a background and I think a knowledge base that's been so very useful here in public life. But of all of the things that I mentioned, the one that's concerned me the most from the beginning, and the greatest impediment to people who might be entrepreneurs that want to establish and found a business, are government regulations. And this spider web of government regulations that were created by HillaryCare was enough to--didn't scare me out of business because it didn't pass over Senator Phil Gramm's cold, dead, political body, but it was enough to scare me towards politics, if not completely into politics. And I think it was enough to scare the living daylights out of the American people, and they killed HillaryCare. Now we have the modern era. Fast forward 15 years, Mr. Speaker. The previous chart, Mr. Speaker, was black and white. This is in full living technicolor. This is a 2009 version, the most recent version of a government takeover of the health care industry; and I mean, Mr. Speaker, the health insurance industry and the health care delivery industry in America. This 17\1/2\ percent of our Nation's economy and this flowchart with this full color is scarier yet. Now, I don't mean that it's actually scarier by functionality, because marginally it at least leaves the opportunity for health insurance companies to survive for a while. But, Mr. Speaker, it certainly sets the scene for the destruction of every private health insurance company in the United States and the elimination, potentially, of every health insurance policy in the United States. In fact, H.R. 3200 compels that every health insurance policy within 5 years be approved by the health choices administration commissioner. This bill sets up a new health choices czar. It calls him a commissioner because Americans are full up to here with czars, but this is a health choice administration commissioner. I don't know that he's a czar; I don't know that he's a commissioner; I don't know if he's a commissar. So I have called him the Health choice administration's commi-czar-issioner. And he would be the person who heads up this commission through which every health insurance company here, the private insurers, everything in white on this are existing. Those in color are newly created agencies, departments, and functionalities. Thirteen hundred private health insurance companies. That sounds like a big number. Some of those companies have names for the different States that they operate in. But, Mr. Speaker, 1,300 health insurance companies here and the 100,000 potential, I'll say existing, policy variations here, the traditional health insurance plans, would all have to be qualified by this new commi-czar-issioner's board in order to provide through this period of 5 years to qualify, in order to provide the qualified health benefits plans. So every health insurance policy in America would have 5 years to be approved by the new health choices commi-czar-issioner. And the regulations would be written by them. So we have a piece of legislation that sets up a commission that would write new regulations, the commission to be named later, to write regulations that would be named later that would control the destiny of 1,300 health insurance companies and 100,000 health insurance policy varieties, options that the American people have. All of that would have to jump through the hoops to be created later after the legislation has passed by people to be appointed later, including the health choice administration commi-czar-issioner. So for the President to make the promise to the American people that if you like your health insurance policy and your doctor, don't worry, you get to keep it--if you noticed, he had to change the language when he stood here and gave his address to the joint session of Congress--I believe that was September 8. That's within a day, Mr. Speaker, and his language changed to actually be: ``Nothing in this bill will force you to give up your doctor or your health insurance policy.'' Well, I don't know that that's true because something in this bill may force those companies out of business and may disqualify your health insurance policy, and it may discourage your doctor to the point where he decides that he wants to go drive a taxi cab like they do in Cuba. If you want to meet a doctor in Cuba, take a taxi. You'll get in the back seat of a 1954 Chevy with a five cylinder Russian diesel in it, and the guy behind the wheel might be a doctor. They have a lot of doctors in Cuba. It pays better to drive a taxi cab. So this reach that we have of taking the private insurance companies, 1,300, and force their 100,000 policies to go through new regulations to be written--and we know there are going to be fewer than 100,000 policies--so people will lose their policies. I hope the President, Mr. Speaker, turns on C-SPAN and understands what I'm saying. He can't say it any more, Mr. President. If anything more like this passes, people will lose their policies, and they're likely to lose their doctor. And you haven't told the Speaker of the House that she can't support something like this if she's going to be consistent with the intent of the language that she used herself. So, Mr. Speaker, I'll submit that this, the recharacterization, needs to revert back to the language of the bill. And we need to understand what happens when bureaucrats make decisions. And by the way, we sometimes just need to listen to the people on the other side of the aisle. They're for single-payer government takeover. A hundred or more of them have signed a letter saying they would vote against a health care bill if it didn't have a ``government option.'' Excuse me, that's not the right quote. The quote is a ``public option.'' Mr. Speaker, a public option is a government option. It is a government takeover of the health care industry eventually. And, by the way, this is the purple circle of the 100,000--it won't be 100,000--but those that are left of the original 100,000 policies and the 1,300 companies. This purple circle, the qualified health benefits plans, that will be the private sector that actually meets the regulations after 5 years. Fewer companies, fewer policies. We don't know how many, but we do know this: the government then would produce a public health plan. That's the second purple circle here. They would be under this health insurance exchange. So envision that as maybe an Internet site you would go to that had a series of bureaucrats behind there that would make recommendations, evaluate policies, and let you look at the government option versus the private sector option. But this public health plan, this government option, has to be set up with Federal taxpayer dollars. You can't start an insurance company without capital. Where is it going to come from? The American taxpayers. And where does our money come from now after we have long past burned through the tax revenue for the 2009 fiscal year? It comes from the Chinese and the Saudis. And we are borrowing money from foreign countries. We are borrowing money to buy things from them, and now we would be borrowing money to start up a health insurance company. In any case, it would be national debt money, billions that would be the capital foundation to set up an insurance company so that there would be conceivably 1,301 health insurance companies. One more company. The President's view was, we need more competition in the health insurance industry. So, if 1,300 companies is not enough, set up a Federal company. That will be the difference. And we will borrow money and put billions into it. And now this enterprise, this Federal enterprise that is in direct competition with the private companies has to succeed. Well, if it can't sell policies, it can't succeed. So how does the government go about doing this? Well, they set the premiums low enough and the benefits competitive enough that they can get people to buy the policies, otherwise they are an irrelevant entity. So I guess you would say that's fine, except we need to understand this. The regulations that would be written for the government plan would be regulations that are written so the government plan can compete with all of these private plans, which means that the regulations would be written to favor the government plan. And the premiums the government would charge would be premiums that are designed to be competitive, and I'm going to say likely cheaper than can be offered in the private sector. And so the result of that will be that either we are going to have to subsidize the government plan health insurance company, or we are going to have to regulate these private sector businesses out of business. It's how government operates. We have several models that we can look at. The simplest and most stark of them all is the National Flood Insurance Program. If you want to know, Mr. Speaker, how health insurance will go if we have the government option, look at the National Flood Insurance Program. We had a government option on Federal flood insurance. In 1968, this Congress passed legislation that established the National Flood Insurance Program. We had property and casualty insurance companies in the private sector that sold flood insurance. But when the government got involved, they set new premiums and new regulations, and they still couldn't crack into the market well enough. And so then they passed a regulation that required that a real estate loan through a national bank had to include flood insurance. And when they put that mandate on the national banks, they required the flood insurance to be purchased--from where? The Federal Government. With premiums set by? The Federal Government. Today, it is impossible to buy flood insurance in America from anyone other than the National Flood Insurance Program because the Federal Government has squeezed out all of the competition, and the Federal Government owns the entire territory. We have today--I say ``we,'' the Federal Government has a monopoly on flood insurance. And their operation is pretty wobbly because they are $19.2 billion in the red. That's billion with a B, Mr. Speaker. The National Flood Insurance premiums don't reflect the risk. They've pushed out all the competition. They've lowered the premiums. And now what are we doing as a result? We are building more and more and developing more and more real estate in floodplains because the premiums for the flood insurance are cheaper than the risk. And so people can do that, and we create more risk accordingly. The markets, Mr. Speaker, can restrain and bring about rational decisions. Bureaucrats make mistakes over and over again. That's the Federal flood insurance. That's what will happen to this Federal health insurance if it should get passed. In addition, we have the school loan program. Twenty-five years ago, that was completely private. The private lending institutions set up the school loan program. But today, thanks to some very liberal Members of Congress, it looks like the steps have been taken that will, within a very short period of time, squeeze out what is left of the private school loan program, the school loan program, where I will predict that within 5 years from today, if there isn't a dramatic difference in the elections that are taking place in this country, there will be nothing but government student loans. There will no longer be any private student loans. This is a country that was built on free enterprise. We are a proud and independent people. We are slowly settling into dependence. We have handed over the private sector flood insurance. And by the way, in the State of Florida, they have State hurricane insurance now that owns that market, because they decided government could do it better than the private sector. Over and over again, we give up our freedoms and we forget about the underpinnings of American exceptionalism and the markets and personal responsibility. I heard the gentleman from Ohio say last night, I believe it was, that if you get sick, you may have to go into bankruptcy to pay your bills. He then asked the question, is that freedom? Well, yes, actually. This is a country that if you're going to have freedom, you have to be willing to take some risks. You have to have the freedom to succeed, and you have to have the freedom to fail. Now, I'm all about, and many of us are about reaching out to our neighbors and our friends, and we don't want people that have been responsible to have to pay a consequence because they happen to be very misfortunate. But by the same token, I don't want to take away the personal responsibility from the American people. I remember when Jimmy Carter was running for President. He said this profound thing. Well, for Jimmy Carter, this was a profound thing. He said, the people that work should live better than those that don't. Now I don't know whether he actually lived by that or set policy by that. But I remember when he said that because it caught my attention. This was maybe 1976 or so. The people that work should live better than those that don't. The people who step up and take responsibility should at least have a modicum of benefit for taking that responsibility. But the effort over on the Democrat side of the aisle seems to be take all the responsibility away from the people because I think they disrespect the ability, the work ethic, the character, the morality, the discipline, the education, the intellect and the core values that we have as American people. We can rise above anything. Mr. Speaker, we are not a regular people here in America. We're Americans. We're not just an extension of Europe. That was the base of our original population. We are far different from that. We are a people that are the recipients of all the best that came from Western civilization. But we have got also the cream of the crop from every donor civilization. The vitality that it must have taken and the dreams that it must have taken to be able to get on a ship and find a way to barter your way for passage or pay the passage to come across here. My great grandfather multiple times over came over here in 1757 from England. He served as an indentured servant in a livery stable and paid off his passage. He was the father of 17 kids, and their dreams were realized. And multiple generations arrived here that way. That's part of what is the core of who it is to be an American. It is not a normal, regular thing. We're not just an extension of Europe or any other country. We have a special vitality, because it has been hard to get here, and you had to have a dream to come here. The people that didn't have a dream stayed home in their own country. And some of them sat back and didn't work and didn't excel. Many came here for religious freedom. Many came here for economic freedom. And many more came here for religious and economic freedom. That beacon of the Statue of Liberty was in the minds of the American people and an inspiration for the world long before the statute was put up at Ellis Island. We are a unique people that have relied upon this freedom. Our vitality has been an inspiration for the world. We sit in the Congress and we begin to erode these freedoms one after another after another and trade them off for a dependency. If we take this false clarion call that somehow we can push the expenses for this, the debt for this, off on to the succeeding generations, what moral standard would anyone have to make a declaration to the little kids growing up in America and those children not born, that we, our generation, in our time, have somehow a right to put them in debt in the first place? And secondly, what right do we have to put them in debt because we want to give everybody in America not health care--not health care--because everybody in America has access to health care. The argument is we want to give everybody in America a health insurance policy created by the government. Think how this works. This single-payer national health care plan is the goal of the President of the United States, the goal of the Speaker of the House and the goal of the leadership here. And I know that there is reference made to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Conyers. I went back and pulled a bill that he had introduced on health care in 1981. It's getting to be a while back now, 28 years ago. I know Mr. Gingrey referenced him in his earlier speech. But I read the bill. That bill I read. It was about 167 pages. It sets up a United States health services department, an agency. It says in there that every human being, every person, in the United States, legal and illegal, whatever their status might be, whatever their proclivities might be, has a right to quality, timely and respectful health care, a right to this in 1981. It's pretty astonishing to read that. Now you can have that concept, I guess, and that is the concept of the chairman. But to follow this thing along, he also declares that everybody has a right to this health care, legal and illegal, but in addition, all health care workers will be salaried employees. So he sets up a national company to manage all the health care in America, and no worker can be there working off a fee for service. The brilliant surgeons that are creating new ways to save lives and improve the quality of lives, and new surgical techniques and new equipment, they would all have to be paid at the end of the month just like the person who is, let me say, maintaining the building. It takes away the incentive. You have forgotten completely about the difference between being an American and being a regular dependent soul in a social democracy in Western Europe, for example. We have got to remember: We are Americans. We are a distinct group of people. That kind of idea of socialized medicine is anathema to freedom-loving, freedom-breathing people. If we bargain it away, it's never to be retained again, not in this generation, not in any other. I will conclude and go to the gentleman from Missouri. There's a lot at stake here. The future of America is at stake. And it is not just this national health care act. It is the socialized medicine that lies underneath it. It is the cap-and-trade which pushes our industry to India and China. It's the comprehensive amnesty policy that they are preparing to deliver. If any combination of these three should become law, they will try to ram the rest of them through. And that, Mr. Speaker, sounds to me like the end of American freedom. I will stand and fight it every step of the way, as will my friend from Missouri (Mr. Akin) to whome I will be very happy to yield whatever time he may consume.