Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentleman would yield, how would you compare those results to the results of dealing with the Pelosi Congress today?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time and thanking the gentleman from Missouri, and I hope we can continue this dialogue. You've inspired me to go with this other chart. Some say 50 million uninsured. The highest number I generally hear is 44 million to 47 million, but this is the 47 million uninsured chart. Now, the President has said there are two things that are very compelling that cause us to have to go down this path of a national health care plan. One is we spend too much money. We spend about 14.5 percent of our GDP on health care. The average of the industrialized world is 9.5 percent. So we may spend too much. We could fix almost all that with tort reform and allowing people to buy insurance across State lines. The too much question, spending too money can be fairly easily resolved. The other component of this is too many uninsured. The gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I'd suggest it's probably the predecessors to Merkel, Sarkozy, and Gordon Brown, or maybe even they, themselves. In fact, I heard an actual dialogue with Chancellor Angela Merkel, We spend too much on health care. They have that look-over-our-shoulder tendency, as if global norms would be right. I remember one of those contributors to global norms would be the health care industry in Iraq. When we went in there in March of 2003, the average annual expenditure for health care per person in Iraq was fifty cents per year. So I suppose you could add that into the global average. We do spend a lot of money. We get great results. And I haven't heard the American people complaining all that much about their results, because they are great results. But if we want to take the cost down, then we take care of medical malpractice. I talked to an orthopedic surgeon--and my days blend together, but I believe it was yesterday--that out of his small little operation they spend more than a million dollars a year in premiums for malpractice and in unnecessary--unnecessary tests in order to avoid the litigation. Defensive medicine, over a million dollars a year out of what he considers to be a small practice; what I consider to be he's a great contributor to our society and to our civilization. That's multiplied across the country. When I hear numbers that come from representatives that are part of the health insurance underwriters in America and they tell me that 8.5 percent of the overall health care costs are malpractice premiums, litigation, and defensive medicine, those three things in that category, and I multiply .085 times the gross receipts for the cost of health care, that comes to $203 billion a year unnecessarily spent because the trial lawyers have that corner of the market fixed, and there's no will on Harry Reid's side of this Capitol building or Nancy Pelosi's side of this Capitol building. In fact, there's a huge will to resist addressing malpractice and the reform of lawsuit abuse. That's the best and most important thing we could do. We evaluate these bills on the part of a 10-year plan; $203 billion a year. If we could fix it all, that's over $2 trillion. The President, in fixing the health care industry that he says costs too much money, only proposes to fix it by putting another $1.6 trillion into it. So we simply fix the malpractice and we have been able to fund all the other ideas which I don't agree with. That's a component of this. It needs to happen. And then we have the uninsured, Mr. Akin. I would like to raise the issue about the uninsured. These 47 million--now, this chart has got somebody else's software that did it, so I will tell you the numbers that I remember that I have vetted to be accurate. Starts out with 47 million uninsured. We need to fix this because there are too many uninsured in America. So what are they comprised of? All people who don't have affordable options? No is the answer, and here's what it's comprised of. These are the illegal aliens. This chart says 6 million. Mine said 5.2 million. Then you have those that are here in the country legally that the law bars from benefits. That's the 5-year bar. It's a matter of solid Federal practice. They add up to 10 million--10.2 million, actually. Then you have those who earn more than $75,000 a year. That's about 9 million people. And, presumably, they could write a check and buy themselves at least catastrophic insurance. They are not in a position where we need to tax somebody that makes less to take care of those people that are making more. Then you go on down the line. Those that are eligible for government programs; that number is actually 9.7 million. Most of that is people that qualify for Medicaid but don't bother to sign up. And then you have those that are eligible for employer insurance, roughly 6 million people, that either opt out or don't opt in to their employer-offered plan. So once you add up all of these people and you subtract these numbers that I believe are not the target of this dialogue and rhetoric or the bill, you end up with 12.1 million Americans that don't have affordable options. That's less than 4 percent of the population. This is what it looks like, Mr. Speaker. This is the entire population of the United States here, 306 million people, maybe 307 million by now, and these are the categories that I have mentioned: illegals/immigrants; those with $75,000 a year; those that qualify for, generally, Medicaid; those under an employer's plan. But over here, this little sliver in red, those are the Americans without affordable options. Less than 4 percent; 12.1 million people. All of the rest of these people, not only are they insured, but they're happy with what we have.

Mr. KING of Iowa. A tiny little sliver. Even though 12.1 million people are a lot of people, they're still a small percentage of the American population. And to upset a hundred percent of the health insurance industry, perhaps destroy a hundred percent of the health insurance industry and change the delivery system for the best health care delivery system in the world, all of that--this is an excuse for a government takeover. It's not a reason. And if there's anything that my father taught me, he said, you know, Son, there's a difference between reasons and excuses. And I'm you're dad and I will tell you I know the difference. And I don't have to explain it to you. I will just label them as such. Well, this is an excuse, and I will label it as such. It's not a reason, not a reason to upset the entire industry, but an excuse because the people on this side of the aisle believe in Big Government. They don't believe in the American people, and they are sapping our vitality.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming, I thank the gentleman from Missouri. Initially, I put this concept out here, Mr. Speaker, that the circumstances that are going on this way are that for a long time those that are in the income-earning and productive years of their lives have been paying for the health insurance, the health care of those that are retired. We've decided to do that. It's a matter of public policy. And I don't hear an objection on the part of the people that are paying their taxes on their payroll to support Medicare. In fact, I don't hear a complaint very much on the funding that goes into Medicaid at the lower-income side. And, generally, the younger people are beneficiaries of Medicaid. So you have on the low-income side Medicaid funded by the working, producing, tax-paying Americans, and on the senior citizen side you have Medicare funded by the working, producing, tax-paying citizens. But in the middle, those working, producing, tax-paying citizens today at least have the freedom to choose a policy of their choice, buy a policy of their choice or not buy a policy of their choice. And this bill, H.R. 3200, takes that away. And the subliminal message that I have not heard articulated that seems to be viscerally understood is that the people that are paying for Medicaid and Medicare out of their paycheck because they're going to work every day and managing and planning, now the government is saying, You no longer have the freedom to choose your own. You have to pay for everybody else's. You've been doing that a long time, but now we want to take away your right to buy your own health insurance policy. And that sticks in the craw of the American people because it diminishes freedom.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming again, I completely agree. As I'm listening to the gentleman from Missouri, the engineer who sees things in black and white and finite formulas that work out or else they can be checked and balanced, a logical approach is, let me say, that's the engineering approach. As I'm listening to this, it's triggering in my memory some of the things about what it was like to start and run a business for 28 years and what the motivations are. Now my business, a construction business, seasonal business. I looked at it, and I look at it from this concept: I wanted to have people that I could rely on. I wanted it to be a career. So I set things up where we would keep people on all year long, even though it was a seasonal business. And when things freeze up in Iowa, and it gets cold, there is frost and the temperatures go down, we move people into the shop where we would rebuild our equipment. Sometimes we would take on some custom work, fixing somebody else's, but we kept them around. I kept people around 12 months out of the year. I want them to have a health care package. I want them to have a retirement plan. I want them to have a vacation plan. That's all fine when you pay the payroll, but when the government interferes--for example, the unemployment tax, and if they would offer unemployment benefits and sometimes they gave unemployment benefits to somebody that just didn't want to work. But it was sometimes impossible for me to fight it. So even though I had my reading at zero, if you're not willing to fight that, many others would see it go up to 9 percent, and they'd pay the percent of their payroll to unemployment because government regulation had decided they knew better than the marketplace. As I said, the year-round work part of this, keep people working year round. Well, the incentive is, if you're going to pay unemployment at the top rate anyway, you might as well lay people off rather than keep them working when you don't really need them. So instead, they become piecemeal workers rather than career employees. Then the Federal Government decided, you shall pay union scale, Davis-Bacon wage scale, and we'll decide what those categories are. Now you have people jockeying for a position, undermining the efficiencies, and the Federal Government looking over your shoulder, telling you how to run your business. All of that still has created inefficiencies by government regulation that bring about the illogical, irrational business decisions until you consider the government regulation. Then it becomes rational within those rules. To throw this health care thing on top of it, employers that have capitulated and decided they're going to use people as piecemeal workers rather than career employees because of too much regulation, they're going to also decide, I'm not going to pay this health insurance. I am just going to pay the premium. I'm going to add it on to the price of the work I'm doing, and it undermines the relationship between employers and employees. That's a component of all this. I wanted to throw out before our time ticks down, in what I believe is about 6 minutes, a little subtle segue, Mr. Akin. I think most of America should know what this little subtle segue is. This is a pervasive influence of the corrupt criminal enterprise ACORN. ACORN has developed since 1970, 39 years, to be this insidious operation of now, according to a Government Reform report issued by Mr. Issa of California on July 23, 361 affiliations, affiliations that have been engaged in shaking down lenders across this country in 120 cities. Put this in your mind, Mr. Speaker. This of Chicago, Chicago politics, Chicago hardball politics. The make-a-deal--this is shakedown. The head of ACORN who recruited President Obama and is proud of their relationship has bragged about going into lenders' offices and shoving the banker's desk over against the wall and surrounding him with ACORN people and intimidating that lender into making bad loans in bad neighborhoods.

Mr. KING of Iowa. These are the people that are undermining American freedom more aggressively than any other. They're in many, many walks of life. Their influence is pervasive. They are at the core of the mortgage meltdown crisis. The intimidation factors, the shakedown in the cities of the lenders and at the same time the lobbying effort where they spent millions in this Congress to push to lower the underwriting standards on the secondary market of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The chairman of the Finance Committee, Mr. Frank, has been engaged in lowering and fighting off the increased capitalization requirements of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and that was lobbied by ACORN. If you look back through the financial crisis in the community level, it is ACORN at the core of that. The President of the United States has been at the beginning of this. His entire political career he has been part and parcel, tied to ACORN, and he has said so, and the videotape is available.

Mr. KING of Iowa. The crimes that they were promoting and supporting in those five major cities, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Brooklyn, San Bernardino, California, and San Diego, California. All of that at an organization, and the President claims that he is not paying attention to this. I will submit, he knows who Joe Wilson is. He knew who Professor Gates was. He got involved in Officer Crowley's law enforcement up near Harvard, but he says he doesn't know what's going on in ACORN, even though I have seen the videotape of the President speaking to ACORN, telling them, We walk this walk together. ACORN was involved in promoting a whole series of crimes within these five cities, including: promotion of child prostitution; illegal immigration; violations of the Mann Act; helping to facilitate mortgages for a house of ill repute and telling them how to avoid taxes, report only 10 cents on the dollar and then qualify for the earned income tax credit, tapping money out of the taxpayer; and the child care tax credit for little children prostitutes. And were these mothers that were sitting behind the desk at ACORN when we saw the face of them? I heard children playing in the background. They're recruiting girls to be prostitutes while girls are being raised in the background. Those things happened, and there are some similarities in five cities across America. And that's not the full spectrum. The voter-registration fraud, the voter election fraud. Today in the State of Nevada, ACORN, as an entity, is under prosecution right now. The trial is going on right now about ACORN's fraudulent voter registrations, and Troy, New York, fraudulent votes--Mr. Speaker, this has got to stop.

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 gentlelady from Florida for yielding. This is one of these privileges in serving in the United States Congress to come to the floor and join together as a State delegation, our entire Iowa delegation, to celebrate a life so well lived as that of Dr. Norman Borlaug. I believe all of us knew him in some capacity or another, and we certainly watched his career. I want to say this about Dr. Borlaug. First, he did go to school at the University of Minnesota, and for my Minnesota friends, I can't even imagine what it would have been like if he would have had a full Iowa education. That's part of the banter that goes back and forth across the State lines. He was also an NCAA wrestler, which is something that goes along with I can't imagine if he had actually wrestled for the Hawkeyes and what that might have been. However, where are the Aggies today? They've got some bragging rights, too. Minnesotans have bragging rights, Aggies have bragging rights. Dr. Borlaug was on the faculty of Texas A&M for 20 years. They all deserve credit for helping shape the life of Norman Borlaug: his birth and his upbringing in Iowa, his education in Minnesota, his faculty involvement at Texas A&M, and his global reach upon starting the Green Revolution; and, as a couple of Members have said, saved the lives of a billion people, a billion people with a ``B.'' Dr. Norman Borlaug swept aside the fears of the Malthusians and proved that this planet will produce a lot more food than was previously imagined, and that was before we got to this point of some of the genetic tools that we have within the laboratory today. So, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that you cannot overemphasize the impact of Dr. Norman Borlaug's life. He is a treasure, and his life and his commitment is a treasure for the entire United States, for all of us. I join Mr. Latham, and I believe the Iowa delegation, in calling upon the State legislature and the Governor of Iowa to request that his statue be placed in the United States Capitol where it most rightfully belongs, and it would stand there in good stead with any other statue from any other State and the entire United States of America, a life well lived; and we are here celebrating that life of Dr. Norman Borlaug.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor and a privilege to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. And having listened to the dialogue that was presented by my colleagues, often I will be able to see them on C-SPAN and then I'm inspired to come over here and take up the other side of the argument. They have inspired me for a number of years now, especially the gentleman from Ohio, who has headed up some of the dialogue that has brought, I think, significant philosophical disagreement, although personal disagreement seems to be nonexistent, at least from my part. And the strong sales pitch that they've given on the government option compels me to lay out the facts on this case; and I'll say present it to you, Mr. Speaker, from a different perspective. The first perspective is this: this is, this perspective, Mr. Speaker, is the old HillaryCare perspective. This is the flow chart that is the basis of the facts on the original national health care act bill that was put together as a result of President Bill Clinton's speech here in the well on September 22, 1993. And out of that came sometimes closed-door meetings, some would say secret. I really just think they were just closed-door meetings that were headed up by Hillary Clinton, now Secretary of State. And as that plan to take over the entire health care system in the United States in 1993 and '94 took shape, this is the flow chart that grows from it. This is the flow chart, this is actually out of The New York Times, Mr. Speaker, is the source of this document. But I had a similar one that I hung in my office for quite a long time. And to see this government that was created by that proposal back in '93 and '94 was enough to scare me out of the private sector and into politics to try to engage in saving Americans from this disaster that was coming, that was delivered to us and served up by at that time President and Mrs., I'll say the first man and the first lady of America, for that period of time in the early nineties. Now, when you have the living daylights scared out of you and you're scared out of the private sector and into politics, it's kind of good to be in a position to seek to, let me say, put the brakes on such a disastrous policy. This is a black and white policy, Mr. Speaker. It was back in those days when we didn't have newspapers that were in full color. The Internet was just forming in a way, but we see all of these new government agencies that are shaped here. And we have some of the things that stand out on it. Let me say, two cases of ombudsmen that are there to be liaisons between people and government because government is so impossible to deal with we have to give them ombudsmen. And then each one of these is a government agency. The acronyms, many of them I don't recognize anymore. I knew most of them, probably not all of them at the time because this is such a maze and a menagerie. HMO provider plan is one of them. And the accountable health plan. Accountable. So this, black and white, not full color version, is a pretty scary proposition; and Harry and Louise and others scared this right out of the United States Congress. When Senator Phil Gramm stepped out on the floor of the Senate right down that hallway and he said, this legislation will pass over my cold, dead political body, he meant it. A lot of people thought that it wouldn't hold up to be true and that Phil Gramm would get run over. Instead, the American people stood with Phil Gramm and many others and they rejected this national health care plan. Well, fast forward 15 years, Mr. Speaker. Here's the black and white version, rejected. Here is the modern technicolor version. And I expect that we will have an opportunity to defeat this scary legislation. It's scarier because we can see it now in full color. In the black and white are existing government agencies and programs. And so we can see as we look across here, these are existing Departments, Treasury, Veterans, Defense Department. Here are existing, well, let me say government-run operations. Here are CMS, Congressional Medicaid Services, here is Medicaid. There's SCHIP. Big debate we've had on that. Here's Medicare. Down here are where I'd bring your focus. Let me predict also that we have a chance to kill this, and in about 15 years we'll see the 3-D color version of this. It will come up and it will be you'll put on your 3-D glasses and there will be the display, and government will be so big and complicated you can't understand it in two dimensions. It's multiple dimensions. But this is for us to be able to understand. And anybody that read the bill and didn't look at the flow chart is a brilliant person if they can track all of this. If you read the bill, follow the flow chart you have to still be a brilliant person to understand what they're doing. But I'd direct your attention down to the private insurers, Mr. Speaker. This is 1,300 companies today. The President has said there are two principles that we need to address and fix in this health care in the United States. One of them is that we don't have enough competition among health insurance companies. So we have 1,300 health insurance companies. The gentleman from Ohio said we just need to have the government option, one more. I haven't quite heard the President say; 1,301 companies selling insurance is the magic number. In fact, he would cringe if he had to be confronted with such an idea that adding one more, it being government, to 1,300 companies is somehow constructive. It's not. It's destructive to the private sector and the American people know it. But these are the private insurers in this little white box existing. And they would be, under this bill, forced into--all of their health insurance policies would have to meet the traditional health insurance plans. In order to qualify, these traditional health insurance plans would have to meet the new government standards. There are approximately 100,000 different varieties of health insurance policies available in the market across the 50 States. Now, you can't buy them from State to State. We need to be able to buy health insurance across State lines. That would put all 1,300 companies in competition with each other, and it would put all 100,000 policies within reach of any American. But instead, they want to shut that down and set up a government-run option, government regulated health insurance company, and that is these two purple circles here to bring your focus, Mr. Speaker. The qualified health benefits plans. And this would be these 1,300 companies, 100,000 policies that would have to be approved by the new government agency called the Health Choices Administration. Yeah, they're all about choice and all about change. Health choices administration commissioner. The commissioner, he's not called a czar. He's called a commissioner. The reason he's called a commissioner is because we're full up to here with czars. And so he would be the central planner for all public health insurance and private health insurance in America. A czar, a commissioner, a ``commissar,'' I call him a ``commi-czar-issioner.'' He would be the guy with all the juice that could make all the rules if he could just direct his new Health Choices Administration that would be empowered by legislation proposed by the people on this side of the aisle that the President will find he gets anything in it, a title that looks like a national health care plan of any kind, a path to his goal, which is single-payer, and we know it and we've seen the video tape. The videotape doesn't lie. It might get edited slightly, but the President's for a single-payer plan. That is the socialized medicine model. We know that. Why don't we just be honest about it? I mean, if the President would step up and say I think that the United States of America can actually run socialized medicine better than any other country in the world, better than any country ever has, then he could make his case as to why. But instead they want to say it's not socialized medicine, just the same way they wanted to argue that amnesty wasn't amnesty. Well, even if you're the President of the United States, you don't get to redefine the English language. This is about the health choices commissioner calling these shots, Mr. Speaker, and the very idea that socialized medicine could be called something else. In fact, when we declared it to be the House Democrats' health plan, the public option--they want to call it the public option plan, we want to call it the government plan. The government plan is the government health insurance plan that would eventually replace most, if not all, of the private health insurance in America. They wanted to censor that. In fact, this chart was banned from being mailed out under our franking mailing privileges because it was deemed to not be accurate because it called it the ``organizational chart of the House Democrats' health plan.'' So I just posted it on my Web page and said, Come and take it. This is the truth. By the way, this has been clearly and carefully vetted. Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas on the Ways and Means Committee, he went down and carefully examined every component of this bill, put his staff on it, and challenged them to make sure it was all correct. This chart has withstood all criticism. This is a chart that shows what's going on with health care here in the United States. The points that come from the President are health care in America costs too much money, and we have too many that are uninsured, and that we need more competition in health insurance. I think I pointed out that competition is not what we need more of, but if he's right on that, we can provide the maximum amount if we just simply allowed everybody to buy health insurance in America wherever they choose and simply go around these State mandates. So, for example, a similar policy in New Jersey that would cost a young man, 25 years old, $6,000 a year can be bought in Kentucky for $1,000 a year, and that's the difference in the mandates. So yes, vote with your feet. Surely you'd think about moving to Kentucky. Business will go there. They need to come to Iowa, too, by the way, Mr. Speaker. But we can solve a lot of this health insurance competition simply by allowing insurance to be purchased across State lines by providing for the portability so people can take it with them. That solves the problem of competition in a far more effective way than the President's proposal of starting up and running and putting taxpayer dollars into a Federal health insurance policy. The best example I know of to describe what will happen if we have a Federal health insurance policy can be what happened with the flood insurance in America. In 1968, this Congress passed a National Flood Insurance Act, and what it did was it put the Federal Government in competition with the property and casualty companies that were selling flood insurance at the time. And then the Federal Government decided we need to be able to compete in this marketplace and so we'll keep low premiums and we'll require the loans on real estate that are given through national banks to include Federal flood insurance. That was 1968. This is 2009. There is no private property and casualty flood insurance property available in America because the Federal Government has crowded out all the competition, and now they own the flood insurance in the United States. It has been nationalized, and the flood insurance program has a $19.2 billion deficit--in the red. The only way to get that back--well, they can't get it back. They just simply borrow money from the Chinese or the Saudis and drive us further into debt and pay the deficit of a bad business model. That's what's going on with health insurance. Now I'm going to make just one more brief point, and I see that the gentlelady from Minnesota has arrived to add her dynamics to this debate. These are the uninsured in America, Mr. Speaker. I have to edit this a little bit because my numbers aren't all the way I'd like them: 47 million uninsured. I have 44 to 47 million. So I simply start out with a high number, 47 million of those uninsured, and then said, Let's break this down. Let's break this down and find out who really are these people? And do we really want to provide for a government plan out of the taxpayers' dollars to fund this universe of 47 million who don't have health insurance? So we start around the top. These are the illegals. That number is 6 million in this chart; it was 5 million in my other chart. These are the people that were here under the 5-year bar. Noncitizens who were barred by law from public benefits, that number was 5.2 million. But they add up to 10, 10 million people, the legal and illegal who are disqualified by law from public benefits. Then you go to those who are earning more than $75,000 a year. That's 9 million. Presumably they could write a check for a premium for their own health insurance but they've opted not to. Then you have those eligible for health insurance under their employer, roughly 10 million--9.7 is the number I recall. They've opted out, perhaps. They're eligible and didn't sign up, or they opted out. Then we have those that are eligible for government benefits. That's generally going to be Medicaid people. And that's actually the 9.7 million, and it's 6 million that are eligible by employers but don't sign up. Now, take all of these numbers that come pretty fast, Mr. Speaker, and I can just tell you what the math is: 47 million minus those that are disqualified for the reasons that I've given leaves us this number: It's actually 12.1 million people that are Americans without affordable options. That's the universe of people that really we're trying to address. Here's the real chart. This is all of the American people right here, 306 million people, and here are all of the categories of folks that I've listed that I don't believe we should be subsidizing their health insurance: the immigrants, the illegals, those that are already qualified under Medicaid and don't bother to sign up, those that are making over $75,000 a year, those that qualify for an employer plan and opt out. That's all of these people along this spectrum from blue to yellow. Then we have all of these covered Americans here which are 84 percent of the American people. Who are we really trying to address? Americans without affordable options. Here they are. Less than 4 percent. And for less than 4 percent, the proposal from the people on this side--and I am not going to accuse them of being rational, Mr. Speaker--the proposal is that we tear asunder the entire health insurance industry in America and the entire health care delivery system in America--the best in the world by many standards--in order to get at this less than 4 percent that are Americans without affordable options. There would not be a rational person that would declare that to be rational behavior, Mr. Speaker. I would be happy to yield to the gentlelady from Minnesota to pick up from wherever it is I might have left off.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I just so appreciate the analysis that's been delivered, Mr. Speaker, by the gentlelady from Minnesota. I think about what this is like to be a parent and to deliver your child to a public education system that had this kind of a Federal mandate laid out. I think back to the days when education was actually local. I often think about where I live. There's a country school just across the road from my house. I actually missed going to the country school by about 5 weeks because of the circumstances involved. And I regret I didn't have that experience. But I grew up around people that did--many of them. At that time, it was about four miles by four miles, the school district, and the people that owned the land paid the taxes and they hired the teacher and they approved the curriculum. And they bought the coal and hauled it in and carried the ashes and clinkers out. And if they didn't like the job the teacher was doing, they fired her and hired a new one. And if they weren't happy with the curriculum, they changed it. That was local control. And it reflected the values--the moral, academic, and religious values of the people that were paying the taxes. Today, we have a growing Federal reach that reaches way down into the heart of our educational system from K through 12 and wanting to get into preschool--and is, in some ways--and they want to go clear back to the womb and they want to inject themselves into the unborn children as well with Planned Parenthood, to set them up as somehow the protectors of young children, when they're the people that abort little babies. We had a debate and a vote here on the floor of the House, and it was an amendment offered by Congressman Pence of Indiana that would have unfunded Planned Parenthood. And that's what this Congress has an obligation to do. We've got to get there. We've got to get there eventually. No organization that provides abortion services or counseling should have Federal taxpayer dollars involved. $300 million, as Mrs. Bachmann has said, $300 million out of a billion in receipts, fungible money, poured into, you might as well say, one pot of money and sets them up with clinics in our schools so the young girls can go in and out of there and be recruited in the hallways by an organization that's vested in what? Promiscuity. Promiscuity is what Planned Parenthood is invested in. If you doubt that, Mr. Speaker, I would just submit this proposal. Pull promiscuity out of the equation and see what's left of Planned Parenthood? See what they call for services that are there. There's very little that's left. Without promiscuity, you don't have a birth control program and you don't have an abortion problem and you don't have all of this counseling that goes on with it either. They are a destructive purpose in this society, and it is something that no taxpayer should be compelled to fund, whether it's in this country or whether it's overseas. I yield to the gentlelady.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I agree with the gentlelady from Minnesota. I regret that I didn't bring a similar sign for Planned Parenthood, but I did bring one for ACORN. As we talk about 501(c)(3)s, not-for-profit organizations, ACORN might claim that they are filed as some kind of a not-for-profit organization. That was one of their reports. We see at least 45 of their affiliates that are filed as 501(c)(3)s, not-for-profit organizations. We see that ACORN's money flows into a central account, and then it's distributed from that central account out to the entities as ACORN needs them. One big pot of money, one big cookie jar with a lot of Federal dollars involved, State dollars involved, donor dollars involved, tax avoidance dollars involved, and what is ACORN involved in? Other enterprises that are--I'll call them unethical and immoral, Mr. Speaker. And I will go down the list of some of the things that I recall that ACORN has been involved in. By the way, the linkage with some of what's coming out of Planned Parenthood I think is useful. And I think that's a constructive linkage to make. This segue from Planned Parenthood to ACORN is one that is a natural segue. Never was it envisioned by a limited government to be funding such huge, behemoth national and international organizations for the purposes of breaking down the core of our society and turning it into an immoral mass of people. They have attacked our institutions, and they have worked within our schools and the educational institutions and the institutions of government and the institutions also of the media.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I did happen to bring my poster of the President and ACORN to help add some clarity to this matter. As critical as the United States Senate, the United States House of Representatives, and the public has been of ACORN--and they deserve every bit of it and a lot more, Mr. Speaker--there hasn't been enough focus on the involvement of the President with ACORN. His political start was with ACORN. That's by his own self-admission. He said, You've been here from the very beginning. I've been with you from the beginning. Some of the statements from the leader of ACORN ties that back in. I believe her first name is Madeleine, the last name is Talbot, the head organizer of ACORN in Chicago; she has said that she and Obama were working together in this cause from the beginning. President Obama headed up Project Vote. Project Vote is indiscernible from ACORN. They are one in the same. And that's ACORN's position on it as well as any objective analysis that's taken place. So he made his reputation with ACORN. ACORN was ``Get Out the Vote for President Obama.'' He paid them to get out the vote even though they registered it as--let's see-- as production and lighting.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Clearly, according to law, they cannot be a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization if they advocate for candidates in a partisan fashion. One might argue that some of the activities were not partisan. I will make this argument. This is a picture I took at ACORN's headquarters in New Orleans; 2609 Canal Street in New Orleans. This is the weekend before the Fourth of July. I stood across the street with a 300-millimeter lens.

Mr. KING of Iowa. It was this year. It was after the election in the fall of 2008. So this would be on or about July 1st or 2nd, 2009. I took this shot of the window. This is about the second floor of this most fortified building in the neighborhood in New Orleans, the ACORN headquarters, and in the window is this huge--we call them barn signs-- this huge campaign poster: Obama for President '08. Easily it can be seen right here. This no Photoshop, Mr. Speaker. I mean I'm here on the floor of the United States Congress. I took the picture personally. Hanging over on this side is the ACORN banner that one can easily see. This is ACORN's headquarters. The doors are barred, the windows are barred, but you can see through the bars to see that they're still advertising for the election of 2008, and that is a violation of their not-for-profit status. That picture itself, Mr. Speaker, should be enough to get the IRS to go in and do a complete forensic examination and audit of ACORN and all of their 361 identified and other unidentified affiliates if we're going to have any integrity in this country. When you are a partisan organization and you are collecting donation dollars, Federal tax dollars and political subdivision grants that are coming in, and they are coming in to a series of affiliates, maybe as many as 361 different ones, you commingle that into accounts, and you deploy thousands of people across the country to register voters and you brag about it--an issue in a press release that ACORN did says that they registered 1.3 million new voters when, in fact, the number of actual legitimate voters was closer to 450,000.

Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentlelady will yield, I will lay out the picture of this of the way I think it is in America with the ACORN investigation. There have been investigations going on within some States for voter registration fraud primarily. Now, those States string up to--we used to have a total of 12, then 14, and now as many as 20 States over time. In only one case do we have an investigation of ACORN as an entity.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me reclaim and capture the breadth of what is going on here in America, and then I will yield to the gentleman from Texas. Mr. Speaker, it's this: In over a cumulative period of time from about 1990 until today, which is coming to be almost two decades, there have been a string of smaller investigations that took place within the States. As we speak, though, ACORN is under trial in Nevada for direct violations of Nevada's voter registration laws that prohibits paying commissions for registering voters. So, for the first time, ACORN, as an entity, is on trial in a State. It looks like there is a very strong case on the part of the prosecution. There have also been as many as 70 convictions of ACORN employees, for election fraud, mostly. There are new indictments in Florida, 11 individuals indicted that worked for ACORN; six were arrested, five were on the loose. I haven't heard if they collected them or not. Those are some of the things that are taking place. But now this Congress fully understands, having voted twice in the United States Senate and once on the floor of the House to reject funding to ACORN, fully understand that ACORN is a corrupt, criminal enterprise, almost an economy unto itself that draws in money from many different sources, the fungibility of it poured into usually a central account and distributed out to the active entities of the 361 affiliates of ACORN to conduct partisan political exercises, shake down lenders. Madeline Talbott has bragged about that, who is the mentor of President Obama as he went into ACORN and Chicago politics back in the early nineties, as the gentlelady from Minnesota said. So they have been involved in shaking down lenders and using the Community Reinvestment Act, which was written to prohibit lenders from drawing a red line around certain districts that they didn't want to loan money into. And ACORN has been involved with red-lining themselves and shaking down bankers to force them to loan money into their red-lined districts. They contributed significantly to the mortgage lending meltdown that we had. They have been corrupting the election process. They're promoting child prostitution. In five cities, we have them on videotape. And by the way, $1 million of embezzlement covered up for 8 years by Wade Rathke, whose brother was the embezzler in-house. And when the board rose up to make an issue of it, they fired the board of directors. This is a completely corrupt, criminal enterprise.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And I'm advised that the Catholic Church has ceased their contributions into ACORN. I'm very happy about that. It's easier for me to put money in the collection plate on Sunday. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas, who always has a unique and accurate viewpoint, my friend Louie Gohmert.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Gohmert, can you draw a distinction between this language that you read in H.R. 3200 in the health care bill and the language that would perhaps enable ACORN to be the ones that are counseling on, let me say, mortgage loans for houses of prostitution, or how to avoid taxes by underreporting income that might come in as cash by the work of a prostitute, or an ability to file a tax return that would qualify someone who underreports their income for their earned income tax credit, or the ability to claim child prostitutes as dependents? Do any of those things seem to also fit in this similar authorization language that allowed ACORN to do all those things that I listed that might also qualify them to be the loan counselor as well as now the health insurance counselor under this exchange that is here?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I will pick up on that. This part that I think is not understood by the White House is that this economy that we have is not simply a giant chain letter that is generated by government borrowing and government spending. A chain letter is a Ponzi scheme, and underneath it there's not substance there. We have an economy that's based upon our natural resources and adding value to our natural resources, and the intellectual basis that contributes to the value that we add to our natural resources, you have to produce things that have value. The most essential ones are the things that are necessities for life, and the services that build around that are the services that make it more efficient to produce the necessities for life. The recreational spending is disposable income. All of this is real, and it's founded on production. But government, government has no ability to do that. Government obstructs production, and they add a weight on to the legitimate economy. We have two sectors of the economy: the productive sector, which is the private producing sector I have described, and then in my less charitable moments I describe it as the parasitic sector, the sector of the economy that sucks the lifeblood out of the producers. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And that is as if it's a bargain. And there are some better ways of saying that out there, and they don't come to me immediately, but if it has to be the bargain that we have to adopt a national health care act in order to get the waste, fraud, and abuse cleaned up, if the American people's demand that Congress clean up corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse has to be held hostage to somebody's government medical plan, I think that tells you what's going on. This operation has got to go. That is the ACORN logo. And this man has been part and parcel of it for nearly 20 years. And his political life, his public life cannot be separated from ACORN and from Project Vote and from the full continuum of history of his political life, including having been hired by ACORN, worked for ACORN, done so as a pro bono attorney for ACORN, been a trainer of ACORN's workers, having hired ACORN to get out the vote but it was misrepresented in his document and, additionally, having hired ACORN, move the Census to the White House from the Commerce Department, then back from the White House to the Commerce Department when the public outcry got so great, but left a link and a liaison so that they have oversight in the White House anyway. And twice now the Census Bureau has said, well, we're not going to use ACORN with our census workers. I didn't believe them the first time. I don't know that I believe them the second time. But it's certain that they must have confessed they weren't telling the truth the first time or they wouldn't announce the second time that they were going to sever their relationship. The U.S. Treasury has now said that they don't want to use ACORN to counsel them for the tax services that are out there. The list goes on and on and on. ACORN and all their affiliates are a pariah. This is their logo on the shirt of the President of the United States. He is part and parcel. And we've got to dig through this all the way. This United States Congress and four to six committees in the House and committees in the Senate have to launch complete investigations and hearings. The IRS has to do this. The Department of Justice has to do this. The American people demand it, and so do I, Mr. Speaker, and so do the speakers here on this floor. I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota and the gentleman from Texas for their contribution.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas and the general from Georgia for their leadership on these issues. And once a week, at least, we see the judge from Texas down here laying out the conscience of the Congress. And this ACORN issue is something that has burned within me for several years. I looked back through some of the Records, and I introduced an amendment to unfund ACORN in 2007. Back then, we couldn't get any traction. And as much as has been filled out on the case of ACORN, as much as we learned about ACORN during the last Presidential election-- and I think it was very useful because that was a time that America started to pay attention, Mr. Speaker. And we remember that ACORN announced that they had filed 1.3 million new voter registrations during the Presidential election cycle in 2008. And now they're advertising that people should send them a check and help fund their operation to go down there and demonstrate against Sheriff Judge Arpaio, the tent city, pink underwear Sheriff Arpaio. I think that that is a persecution that's going on. But they're trying to raise money to do that. And the mailing that they have--and it's an Internet document. They still claim that they registered 1.3 million new voters. Well, the numbers are closer to 450,000 legitimate voter registrations. And ACORN has admitted to over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registrations. Now, one is too many for me. And we've seen the hue and cry of somebody who was in 2000 driving to vote in Florida, and perhaps they were going to vote for Al Gore, and a mile and a half away they went through a checkpoint to see if they were sober and had a driver's license, and they claimed that to be voter intimidation. If one person lost their nerve and didn't want to go through the police checkpoint because they were drunk or didn't have a license, that was a voter intimidation on the part of the folks that were on Al Gore's side back in the year 2000. ACORN can produce over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registrations, and America can't get up in arms until we see child prostitution promoted in five ACORN offices across this city, in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., in Brooklyn, in San Bernardino, and in San Diego, California, and more to come. And now they're under a lawsuit. ACORN decides they're going to go out and punish people that have brought out the truth if they can and use the court to intimidate. Now, when ACORN makes a statement that, well, we only produced over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registration forms, never fear, it was all in the exercise of trying to get somebody's good vote in there, but no bad votes came out of that, no fraud came from that. Oh, really. They're being investigated. You say 12 States, then 14 States. Today it came out 20 States. Today the trial of ACORN started in the State of Nevada. ACORN, as an entity, has been indicted by the prosecution in Nevada, and they have their chief organizer in Nevada is testifying against ACORN saying, Here's our pamphlet, our policy. We were paying commissions and paying a bounty for voter registrations. And, additionally, it came out in the news that in Troy, New York, they have dozens of fraudulent votes that were cast on absentee ballot that were promoted by ACORN. Now, if there's anything that chisels away and cuts off the underpinnings of our Constitution it is fraudulent election process. And when the American people lose their faith that we have a legitimate process, the result of that will be, then, nothing holds together. You can't expect the President, the United States Senate, the United States House, or any system of government to be consented to by the people if the people don't believe they've consented in a national, legitimate ballot. That is the Banana Republic measure. And there is no entity in America that has been more active or aggressive in the history of this country and undermining the underpinnings of our Constitution than ACORN, a criminal enterprise and an entity in and of itself in many other enterprises than the fraudulent votes. But I think at that component of this, I would yield back to the gentleman from Texas. I have a little bit more to say about ACORN hopefully a little bit later.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas. I was thinking about the description of what is big money and what is $1 trillion and how do you put that into a concept now. Some of us from the part of the country I come from, we think in terms of corn. So to put that into perspective, the State of Iowa, the lead State in corn production, is going to have a good crop this year. It's going to have the best average yields that we have ever had, probably a few less bushels than we have produced though in the past, and we are going to raise about $10 billion worth of corn, maybe a little less than that, but about $10 billion. Now all the corn that Iowa raises, just the value of that $10 billion, if we do that for 10 years, that's $100 billion. We do that for an entire century, that's $1,000 billion, $1 trillion. So 100 years of all the corn we can raise in Iowa is $1 trillion. A full century of all the corn that we can raise in what it's worth today, or what it was worth when I figured this, the markets have gone down a little bit, that is $1 trillion. Now to take care of Obama's deficit created by his budget this year, that is $9.7 trillion. You can just think, 970 years of all the corn that Iowa could raise committed just to taking care of the deficit created by his budget would be just about right. And if you want to look at the deficit that exists today, and you add that to Obama's budget, that's over $20 trillion between the existing national debt and the debt created by President Obama's budget. So that would be all the corn that Iowa could raise at today's production in market values from the birth of Christ until today, and you would fall a little bit short. That's how much money the United States Government owes as a result of this profligate spending that is going on. And the Federal Reserve component of this, I am very happy to see there are 290 cosponsors of Ron Paul's bill, H.R. 1207. I am among them, and I'm confident that my colleagues on the floor are as well. There is a hearing coming up on Friday to dig into this. That is a step along the way. From my standpoint, I would be very happy to sign a discharge petition. I don't think that things move very quickly through this Congress. When you have the most ethical Congress in history, I don't know how that could be defined that way, but there's a lot that doesn't happen around here. There's a lot of deliberation that doesn't take place around here, a lot of debate that doesn't take place. The rules are written in the Rules Committee up there in that tiny little old room that doesn't leave room even for our staff to come in. We have to go up there and genuflect before the Chair of the Rules Committee and ask if we can bring an amendment down here to debate it on the floor of the House. They will say ``yes'' if they think it embarrasses Republicans. That's the only way they will say ``yes.'' The deliberate destruction of the greatest debating body in the history of the world here in the United States Congress has taken place because of the rules that have been ripped asunder by the Speaker of the House after 221 years. And the gentleman from Georgia has a sign: ``This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history, Nancy Pelosi, November 16, 2006.'' I don't know how you say that in Georgia, say what? This is the least deliberative body it has ever been. An open rules process that we had for 221 years that allowed every Members of Congress to force a debate and a vote on a subject matter of their choice within the appropriations process has been utterly suspended since 2007. The American people deserve better. We deserve, yes, a hearing on H.R. 1207, on the Federal Reserve. But we deserve also to have open debate and force votes so Members have to go on record, because the wisdom of America is processed through 435 congressional districts. And we all have our networks out there. If that debate is stifled here, if amendments are shut off by order of the Speaker, then the wisdom of America is shut off by order of the Speaker. This country cannot reach the next level of its destiny if it denies the wisdom of its people, and that is the wisdom of its people as processed through this Congress is how it was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. I yield back to gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas. I would submit this idea, I would rather call it the Geithner corollary than the Rangel rule because it gets deeper, and when you think about how much deeper it gets, it doesn't quite show on this poster. And I'm reaching back and dusting off my memory But it strikes me that the employment that Tim Geithner was involved in reimbursed him for the taxes that he was going to have to pay from income tax liability, for the payroll tax, the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid taxes, for the several years that are listed there. The reports that I have read--I believe it will also include The Wall Street Journal report--that Tim Geithner was written a check by his employer to be reimbursed in advance for the tax liability he would incur and signed an agreement multiple years in a row that he understood that he had this tax liability. So not only did he not pay the taxes until the pressure was on--and they waived the penalty which, apparently, they pre-applied the Rangel rule with Tim Geithner, but he had actually profited by not paying his taxes because he had been reimbursed by his employer in advance for the liabilities that you see on the poster that Judge Carter has put up. So this is a bridge too far from my standpoint. If you have a tax liability and your employer's writing you a check to pay those taxes, you cash the check, put it in your kids' retirement fund--I'm going to presume that's what happened. That's any equity that we don't spend when we die goes into our kids' retirement fund. And so you profit from this and avoid the taxes; that's a double operation there. So I will label that Geithner corollary to the Rangel rule, and that would be if you're nominated for a high position of, let me say, confirmation position before the United States Senate, and you find yourself, you have a tax problem, if you are able to settle this issue out of court and do so without interest or penalty--he owed $17,230 in taxes but they waived the penalty, so apparently he paid the interest, not the penalty, from that language. I want to make sure that is clear. If you get that all done, and if America's patience and appetite will believe the idea that Tim Geithner is so smart that we can't get along without him regardless of whether he could remember to pay his taxes and regardless of whether it was an ethical decision or not, if we remember America's appetite for that was completely satiated by the time Tom Daschle was appointed and his tax problem emerged, then America said, Enough, I can't tolerate anymore of these appointments by the President that will be confirmed by the Senate that have people that have been avoiding taxes. So now we have the lead tax writer in the United States Congress, Chairman Rangel, that has stimulated a bill that's been introduced by Congressman Carter, the Rangel rule, precedent that if any taxpayer admits their mistake and pays their back taxes, no penalty or interest should be assessed, especially if you're up for an appointed position to be confirmed by the United States Senate, especially if America can be convinced that your skills are so valuable that out of 306 million people there isn't a single soul that can match up to the job that you might do, regardless of the problem you might have of being paid in advance to pay your taxes, cashing the check, putting into the equity account for your kids' inheritance, and then along comes the old ``uh- oh'' from Georgia, that is, the ``I guess I better pay my taxes'' Geithner corollary.