Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always, it's an honor to address you on the floor of the House of Representatives. Having listened to some of the dialogue of my colleagues that have been here just prior and hopefully will join me in the next hour, I think it's important that the American people return their focus again to the values that made this a great Nation. We're a country that needs to be cognizant of our history. And that's why we teach it in our public and our private and parochial schools. It's why we teach it in our families. We pass the lore of the American Dream and history of the United States of America on down to our children, and we ask our children to pass it to their children, and on and on. And to make sure that there is a consistent continuity, we teach the history of the United States in the context of the world. And so something that seems to be missing from the awareness of the people on this side of the aisle that are advocating a national health care act, a socialized medicine plan, is the foundation of the greatness of America. And I could go off into a lot of different tangents about the pillars of American exceptionalism, but central to those pillars is the idea of freedom--the freedom and the free markets and the freedom of the markets to make a decision on what they want to provide to the consumers. And so this is Adam Smith. This is Adam Smith that laid this out. Even though you can read through all 1,057 pages of The Wealth of Nations, you'll not find him use the expression ``the invisible hand.'' But it's the invisible hand, indeed, that best describes the vision of Adam Smith in 1776, having printed and published his book The Wealth of Nations. It's the very foundation of free enterprise. And centuries later we come up with Keynesian economics. The idea that there is no basis for the economy. That the economy is just a great big huge national or global chain letter. And that if the government would just print a lot of money and spend the money a lot of ways and maybe go drill some holes in an abandoned coal mine--this is according to Keynes--and bury that money in those holes and then fill the abandoned coal mine up with garbage and turn the entrepreneurs loose to go dig up the money, he said he could solve all of the unemployment in America. I know, it sounds bizarre, Mr. Speaker. I am not making this up. This is the characterization of John Maynard Keynes and the difference between the Keynesian approach, President Obama's approach to economics, and this approach from the free market side of this, where the consumer makes the demand by pulling with its invisible hand the loaf of bread off the shelf. Let's just say there's a good loaf of bread for a buck. And the invisible hand will pull that good loaf of bread for $1 off that shelf over and over again and the shelves will be bare. And somebody else comes in and they say, Here's a loaf of bread that's not quite as good for a buck and a quarter. Well, they might just pass up that purchase, even though they need the bread, and wait until the fresh ones come from the bakery that provides the good bread for a dollar. And so the bakery that provides the good bread for a dollar is filling the shelves up with their product and selling a lot of volume. And the bakery that sells the not quite so good bread for a buck and a quarter doesn't sell very much bread, if at all. And, over time, the company that's being out-competed with the higher-priced, lower-quality bread either learns how to make good bread for a competitive price or they give up the market to the company that makes the good bread for the competitive price. And it isn't the end of the world if we end up with one company producing bread in that fashion. What if we get down to where only one company is baking bread, and it's for a dollar and it's a good price and it's high quality and it's a value to the consumer. Not so bad. But if that company realizes that they are running a monopoly and they decide to jack the price of their good loaf of bread up to a buck and quarter, buck and a half, $1.75, maybe lower the quality, pull a little wheat out, put a little something else back in there, then what happens? The consumer gets dissatisfied. And the dissatisfied consumer then either bakes their bread at home to get the quality and the cost that they want, or they open up their own little bakery. Maybe they bake that bread at home and they decide, I'm going to provide a little bit for my family. Then it's so popular that you provide a little for your neighbors. And then the family and the neighbors decide, I want mom to keep baking bread. So they want to pay her so she keeps baking that bread. Now, high-quality bread that was now a buck and a half because you had a monopoly. The price of that is competitive because the homegrown business begins to compete into that volume and quantity and the cost of the marketplace and pull the cost back down. That's the difference between the free enterprise system and central command, central planning, the 5-year planning, the Federal Government deciding what's going to be made and what the price will be. And if it doesn't work, you subsidize the people making. And if that doesn't work, you subsidize the people buying it. Sound like the car industry? Yes, it is, Mr. Speaker. This is the difference between the philosophy on this side of the aisle. They think that they are smart enough to make all of these calls for all of the consumers, except for perhaps the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker.

Mr. KING of Iowa. A moment here before I yield. On this side of the aisle are the people that believe in free enterprise, the invisible hand, Adam Smith's vision, Adam Smith's dream, and the idea that you cannot manage an economy. You have got to let the supply and demand manage the economy. That's the difference. We believe in free enterprise. You folks do not. And if you disagree, I will certainly yield to you, but not one of you is going to stand and take this argument on. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, the statement that was made on the floor of the House the night before last by the gentlelady from Minnesota, Michelle Bachmann, the analysis of a lead economist in the country that had done the analysis, what is the percentage of the private sector profits that now have been nationalized by the Federal Government? If you add that up, if you add up the three large investment banks that have been nationalized, if you add up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG, General Motors and Chrysler, look at the profits that come from that, roll that up, and compare that to the net profits of the private sector overall, this Federal Government--most of it under the administration of President Obama--has nationalized 30 percent of the private sector profits in the United States.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thirty percent of the private sector profits have been nationalized, most of it by this administration, of those corporations that I have mentioned, those eight entities.

Mr. KING of Iowa. When you add health care to it, that's 17\1/2\ percent of our overall economy, round it up to 18 because I can do the math--30 plus 18 is 48 percent. If they succeed in passing socialized medicine, 48 percent of the private sector profits in the United States will have been nationalized, most of it by this administration. This free country, this country that has built upon free enterprise, in part--and one of the pillars of American exceptionalism is free enterprise--will have had almost half of it swallowed up by an aggressive appetite of the White House without justification but only because we are in a time of an economic crisis. Magically, the solutions that have been advocated by the President and the hard-core, left-wing, jump-off-the-cliff liberals in this Congress and across the country, those solutions that they've been advocating for 20 years magically become the solution for the economic crisis that we have been in over the last year.

Mr. KING of Iowa. It is, for me--and reclaiming from the gentleman from Missouri, it is astonishing to get a look inside the offices of ACORN in four cities in America. And I ask the question, is this the culture of ACORN? And I don't know how you argue that it's not. But each of them were so willing and so eager to be complicit in helping to set up a house of ill repute, as the gentleman from Missouri said. I have different names for it. A brothel would be another one. For them to go in and pick out this outrageous--I think it was really a far- reaching scenario. I'm the pimp and this is the prostitute and we want to set up this house of ill repute and bring in 13- or 14-year-old girls from El Salvador so that they can turn tricks and we can take the profits and use some of the profits to put into the political campaign so that the pimp can run for Congress? I mean, I don't know. I would have a hard time holding myself in if somebody came into my office and said such a thing. But in each of those cases that have been published--in Baltimore, in Washington, D.C., in Brooklyn, in San Bernardino--in each of those cases, Mr. Speaker, ACORN reacted as if that was the business that they were set up to be in. We will help you facilitate a loan for the house of ill repute and we can get you good terms. And furthermore, don't report more than about three of those illegal girls that are illegally here, and that are most likely illegally here and in the business of child prostitution, a slave sex ring before their very eyes. They also advocated that they could provide the childcare tax credit and qualify for that, that's $1,000 per child per year, and the earned income tax credit as well. So the numbers work out to about this: ACORN being complicit in drawing down, fraudulently, Federal dollars while helping to facilitate evasion of income taxes and child prostitution. But the Federal taxpayers, if they're successful in what they proposed at least in Baltimore, then the child care tax credit and the earned income tax credit would add up to, for a family of--let me say a family of five, if the prostitute is the mom and the pimp is the dad and three of the underage 13- or 14-year-old girls were qualified under the child tax credit, that would be about $6,000 from the taxpayers that goes in to subsidize the house of prostitution. And this doesn't cause anybody to bat an eye at ACORN in four cities in America. That's the culture of ACORN. That's this right here.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would yield.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming from the gentleman from Missouri, I so appreciate the analysis and the way that you've delivered this. I think that this goes deep. And I think because I've had to live, and I know the gentleman from Missouri has had to live, and been fortunate to live with the underpinnings of what has been the greatness of America, these checks and balances that come in not just between the three branches of government, the checks and balances that come in between our moral values, our values of faith, the laws that we have passed that reflect the moral values of our faith and the reverence for the rule of law, the letter and the intent of the law that is so necessary if we're going to have a civil society. And then we've watched, if we go back to Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Great Society, they made a decision that they were going to take from one economic sector and they were going to pass it along to another. I remember seeing a film of hungry children in Appalachia--I don't know that they were actually hungry, but they needed some dental work. That's what I remember was in the pictures. They weren't dressed all that well. Some were barefoot. Some didn't have a shirt on. It was summertime in Appalachia. But they kept running these images over and over again. And we passed the Great Society right into the middle of the Vietnam war and we set up a dependency class of people, this dependency class of people that rewarded mothers that had children that didn't have fathers in the home. And if you will pay mothers to have babies if they don't have fathers in the home, women will have babies to become mothers without fathers in the home. And if you punish them if there's a father in the home, the father won't be around anymore. He might stop by and visit, but he's not going to be a resident, not one that can be caught there because it will cut the government welfare check. And slowly over time, we created a dependency class of people that was dependent upon the Federal welfare check to come in. And now I look at the inner cities in the United States of America and I ask the question, when I see the film within the offices of ACORN and I think, what wealth is created in these cities? What is coming out of the inner city that is rooted in new wealth? I know what it is that comes out of the land. All new wealth comes from the land. You can mine it out of the earth in gold or platinum or gravel or limestone, or you can raise it out of the soil in corn or beans or--I'll say rice or rutabagas. You can actually sing some fish out of the sea. You can cut some timber. But all of those resources that I've talked about become the foundation of new wealth, that wealth that's necessary if you're going to provide the essentials of life that we've long called food, clothing and shelter. Food, clothing and shelter comes out of the soil. And we do that as productively as we can and we value add to that as many times as we can, and that's the wealth that pays for--the adage is the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. It pays for the accountant, the doctor, the lawyer, the school teacher, the pastor. Everything that grows out of this economy in a legitimate productive sector can be traced back to our land, our earth, our soil. But in the inner city, their new wealth doesn't come out of the soil. Their new wealth comes from the taxpayers of the United States of America, and it's brokered by ACORN. And the benefits are distributed back out through the city, and some of it goes into prostitution, some goes into illegal drugs. The culture that you saw in ACORN is a culture that promotes and supports, as a matter of fact, illegal behavior, including prostitution, child pornography, and helping to enable bringing in illegals into the United States to commit illegal acts. And no one batted an eye. So the astonishing thing to me----

Mr. KING of Iowa. I will yield to the gentleman.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman. I would point out my view on this that you'll never get the people on the other side into that particular debate. They don't want to go down that path because, first of all, they don't like the result that one logically gets. The other component of it is that I think they actually hide their own eyes from the result of what they're seeking to do. I think that their endeavors are incremental endeavors to expand the power base and to expand the political base, which is the power base, and I don't think they've gamed this thing out to what America will look like if they succeed in these endeavors--if they expand ACORN, if they succeed in writing into law cap-and-trade, if they succeed in writing into law a socialized medicine plan or if they succeed in writing into law a comprehensive amnesty for illegals. In the end, what does America look like? They can't bear the thought of having to admit the logical conclusion of the policies that they propose, but they're certainly for the things that give them a short- term power base. I put the poster of ACORN up here because, I think, they are the largest cancer America has ever seen. They're in over 100 cities in the United States. They have divisions within the cities. They've drawn down over $53 million. They qualify into pots of money of up to $8.5 billion. They won't draw it all, but they do. It's the pressure that has come from the houses of prostitution that they're seeking to help fund, from the criticism that has come from the Community Reinvestment Act, from shaking down lenders, from over 400,000 fraudulent voter registration forms, from the prosecutions and convictions of ACORN people--up to 70 in the United States, another 11 indictments in the State of Florida with six of them arrested and five they're on the hunt for, and convictions of, or I'll say at least indictments of ACORN as a corporation in Nevada, from their policies of directly violating the election laws, and from setting up quotas for people who are registering people rather than hiring them by the hour or by salary. Now, here is the latest news flash. First, before I do the news flash, I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that there has been some backing off from ACORN, and it's the vote that took place on the floor of the United States Senate. There were seven U.S. Senators who voted to defend ACORN. Two of them are from Illinois, by the way--the President's home State, Rahm Emanuel's home State and David Axelrod's home State. Those two Senators continue to defend ACORN. It is Rod Blagojevich's home State, I might add, and he has also been a beneficiary of ACORN's work. They defended ACORN. The other Senators voted not to fund ACORN through ACORN housing. Then we know about fraudulent votes and about a whole list of things that are going on. We also know that the U.S. Census Bureau finally announced a couple, 3 days ago that they were not going to continue with their relationship with ACORN and that they'd already signed off a month or two ago. I don't believe them yet. This is a news flash that came while the gentleman from Missouri was speaking, and this is an article that tells about it. It says: Days after the Census Bureau announced it would cut ties with the organizing group ACORN and barely 24 hours after the Senate voted to withdraw funding from the lightning rod activist group, the White House, which is speaking for the President of the United States, expressed support for measures to hold the group accountable for unacceptable behavior. Mr. Speaker, listen to this. This is a Jeremiah Wright moment. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs alluded to video taken by the conservative site biggovernment.com showing ACORN employees giving advice to individuals posing as sex traffickers. We've just talked about this. The quote from Robert Gibbs: Obviously, the conduct that you see on those tapes is completely unacceptable. I think everyone would agree to that. Gibbs said, The administration takes accountability extremely seriously. That's good because I will tell you I want to make sure that is the case with the President. Then it goes on and says, Characterizing the Census Bureau's decision as a move based on a lack of confidence in ACORN's ability to perform its expected duties, Gibbs said he was not sure whether the President would ask Democrats to pull back from any campaign year collaboration with the group. A quote from Gibbs: I don't know that I've had any discussion with him about that, Gibbs said. So, Mr. Speaker, what we have here are a few more platitudes, a little more word processing that's going on here that would indicate that the President is a little concerned and that maybe Robert Gibbs is concerned about some fraud and corruption and blatant violation of a whole series of laws that seem to be apparent if you watch the film of ACORN, but we have yet to hear the President do, let me say, a mea culpa. I have not heard the President say, Even though I played for ACORN as a young man, even though I coached ACORN employees, even though I headed up Project Vote, which is indistinguishable from ACORN, even though I'm part and parcel of ACORN--and where is the ACORN logo on his shirt? Oh, by the way, I happen to have a little visual of this, Mr. Speaker. Even though this is all the case and it's a fact, we still don't have the President saying, Well, let's do what we did with Jeremiah Wright. Let's get ACORN out of our lives. Let's go investigate them with the FBI, with the Department of Justice and with every possible committee in the United States Congress, giving them a complete forensic analysis and coming back for every dollar that flowed through ACORN and all of their affiliates to the extent where we can purge the poison from that corrupt enterprise, ACORN. That needs to happen, Mr. Speaker. It needs to be directed by the President, or this ACORN albatross hangs around his neck until he does.

Mr. KING of Iowa. In reclaiming my time from the gentleman, I have to agree. I don't know that that money is in that fund, but if one were going to do a search, I'd look for the number $1.6 million. That seems to be the number that I recall. I'm not sure which bill that was in, but that sticks in my mind. I remember numbers better than I do names. Thanks to Congressman Darrell Issa from California, who is a ranking member of an Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee, they produced a nonpartisan report that came to a whole series of conclusions about ACORN. In that report, they list 361 ACORN affiliates. Now, I don't know that all of those are live, active ACORN affiliates. I suspect some of them are defunct at this point. The pattern looks like whenever ACORN had a new project, they created another corporation, but many of them--I can't say all of them--a majority of those corporations are housed and reside in this place on Canal Street in New Orleans. Now, can you imagine as many as--and probably not quite that many-- but as many as 361 different corporations and affiliates inside these doors? This is a four- or a five-story building. It's not that big. In there, the finances that come are commingled through one single corporation that handles all of this. Now, money is fungible, and if there's a single Federal dollar that goes into any of these and it goes into a centralized account and gets redistributed out of that central pot, you can't sort that. There are not firewalls in that. It is a fact that there are not firewalls in that, which means that any of the money that's used in any of the 361 corporations is used for political purposes, and it's a violation of Federal law. This, itself, is a violation of Federal law, Mr. Speaker--``Obama '08'' right in the window of a 501(c)(3). There it is blatantly for all to see. We do need to do a complete investigation. We need the President of the United States to come forward and to come clean. This is what the President has been. He is the consummate community organizer. He has risen to the top of his profession. He has done it through the path of ACORN, through the path of Project Vote and through a series of other organizations, all of them affiliated within. This isn't a man who has come up through the free enterprise system, who has signed the front of the paycheck. He has signed only the back and has worked within these community organizers who are sitting there; and Chicago politics, Chicago politics that are steeped in the Rod Blagojevich and steeped in the Rahm Emanuel and in the hardball politics where he would tell the supporters during the campaign, Get in their faces. He stood here at the rostrum in the House of Representatives and said, ``We will call you out,'' because he disagreed with what turns out to be the fact that is in the bill H.R. 3200. This country has never been to this place before, Mr. Speaker. We have never seen this level of audacity, and we've never seen this level of a criminal enterprise that's so pervasive tied up into the United States of America. We haven't even gotten to the SEIU and to a number of other affiliates that are part of all of this political agenda. It is something the American people are going to have to spend a lot of time working at studying and understanding and being outraged about because, in the end, we can't sustain it here on the floor of the House of Representatives if we don't have the support outside in America, Mr. Speaker. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Missouri. In about, oh, the 8 or 9 minutes that, I think, we have left, Mr. Speaker, I would seek to just transition this just a little bit and take the segue on the ``government that we can't afford'' and address this issue. The President has laid out an argument. The argument is that we have to fix health care before we can fix the economy. The economy is in crisis, but it can't be fixed without fixing health care. When answering the question of What's wrong with health care in America?, he came back with two responses: one is it costs too much money. The other one is we have too many uninsured. Well, costing too much money, we can discuss that. It costs about 14.5 percent of our GDP. In other industrialized countries, by their analyses, it costs about 9.5 percent of their GDP. So half again more for health care in the United States. I'm not sure we're half again richer than they are. We are richer than they are, and we can afford a little more, but we can have that discussion, and we can take a lot of it out if we would just simply do tort reform. Buying insurance across State lines and having a full deductibility for health insurance premiums could deal with some of this. I want to, Mr. Speaker, make this point, which is, those uninsured-- that being the biggest situation that is not resolved here by Democrats or Republicans. Democrats want to do socialized medicine, and Republicans have some other solutions. So I began to ask the question: Of the 47 million uninsured--that's their number, not mine. I don't know that it's high or low. You hear lower numbers but not higher, so take the higher number. This number is supposed to be here. It's not on my chart, but I can tell you, this is 47 million. I know that. And, as you subtract from those lists of those that are uninsured in America, you start with the undocumented noncitizens, that's the illegals. Well, this is a new chart, so it doesn't say the things that I remember. I am going to go off what I remember, and these are new numbers, 5.2 million illegals are part of the 47 million. This number has been 4 million who are here that have arrived recently that are under the 5-year bar by law. These two categories of immigrants, the illegals and those disqualified legals becomes 10.2 million. This number shows 10. And those that earn more than $75,000 a year, Mr. Speaker, presumably they could resolve this out of the their own checkbook. Then you go for the Americans that are eligible for a government program but not enrolled. Now I see what's going on, this software has rounded it out to even millions. That number is 9.7 million. Those Americans that are eligible for government programs but not enrolled, usually Medicaid, didn't sign up. That's this number. Now we are subtracting from 47 million. This number is those eligible for employer-sponsored, but didn't bother to sign up or opted out. That's 6 million, and that is the actual decimal point. This number here comes down to 12.1 million Americans without affordable options. Now, we have too many uninsured in America, 47 million, according to people over on this side. But 47 million includes all these categories that we don't want to include in a new bill. They don't either, for the most part, or at least they won't admit it. So you are down to 12.1 million people, and that's less than 4 percent of the population. Now, what does that mean? We are going to try to solve the problem by transforming 100 percent of the health insurance in America and 100 percent of the health care delivery system in America to try to reduce a 4 percent number down to something less. Now, what is 4 percent, 12.1 million, that's these people right here, these are the whole uninsured. This is the whole population of the United States. We are a lively bunch of people in the United States. It's hard to get a handle on us. But you can get a handle on this. This is 306 or maybe 307 million people. These are the categories in that other pie chart that includes the coverage for those eligible by employer in blue; those insurance- eligible for government programs, usually Medicare, Medicaid, in green; the orange are those earning over $75,000; and the black, those are legal immigrants that are on the 5-year bar and are not eligible. And the other 2 percent are the illegal immigrants. This is the 12 and 1.1 percent right here. This little orange sliver, that's the percentage of the population that we want to address, because they are Americans without insurance who do not have affordable options. And the proposal is to transform all of the rest of this, the best there is in the world in insurance and delivery of health care, in order to reduce this sliver of 4 percent down to something, maybe around 2 percent. Now, I think that Einstein would have a way to define this thing, and I think it would come down to something such as, if you have a flawed premise, you will have a flawed conclusion.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me conclude. I reflect upon a pair of auto mechanics that run a repair shop in my hometown of Kiron called Sandberg Brothers. They have a sign behind their counter that says, ``Complicated, difficult, technical nearly impossible jobs are our specialty. Simple jobs are beyond our comprehension.'' I think that's what we have here. We have taken a simple job and turned it into a complicated, technical, difficult problem. And I think it falls back to the wisdom of Congressman Tom Cole, who said one day that highly intelligent people will always overcomplicate things. If they didn't, there wouldn't be any particular advantage to being highly intelligent.

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 come to the floor today to make the point that last Wednesday night during a joint session there was a very brief breach of decorum here by Congressman Joe Wilson, someone who is a true consummate Southern gentleman, an officer and a gentleman. He immediately called the White House, the White House immediately accepted Joe Wilson's apology, and that must be the end of it. A gentleman that conducted himself as a gentleman immediately in the aftermath, without putting his finger to the political winds, he did the right thing. No one has a claim to any further redress if the President of the United States accepts an apology, and he did. So I stand with Joe Wilson. Let's get on with the business of this House, and let's start running this country instead of doing cheap political points, which I expect will be coming to the floor of this House sometime about tomorrow.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman and the judge from Texas. I thank you, Judge Carter, for your leadership on this issue. And I know that it's hard for a lot of Members to come down to the floor and raise an issue that has to do with the ethics of any other Member. Whatever party they might be, if they're a Democrat or if they're a Republican, there's a certain restraint that exists in this House Chamber. And sometimes it's because Members are afraid that they or their agenda will be punished by a powerful committee Chair who holds a gavel. There are some, though--as you have done for 12 or 13 or more weeks-- that have stepped up here and stood on principle and talked about real ethics and talked about the standards of this House and the standards that we need to hold the other Members to--and ourselves to for that matter--regardless of the consequences that might come along within this circle of people that work together every day. We've got to be the ones that raise the standard of this House and hold it up. Now, if you have someone who is in charge of the IRS who doesn't pay their taxes, immediately they lose the moral authority to claim anyone else's tax money. That's the case with Tim Geithner. And it's a point that I think has been alluded to at least by the gentleman from Texas. And if you have the chairman of the most powerful committee in the House of Representatives, the Ways and Means Committee, and the lists of these questions, the ethical questions and the problems with his own taxes gets longer and longer after this--happy birthday, Chairman Rangel--a year since The New York Times called for the chairman to step down, Charlie Rangel to step down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. And I can remember the excoriation that took place when Republicans were in the majority and Democrats were looking for anything that they could fabricate to allege against the people in power on this side. I remember constant attacks on Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who had something like 74 charges brought against him; every one of them specious, none of them substantive, and none of them stuck during all that period of time. But it was designed to focus on the person that held the most power here in the House of Representatives. And so that taints this. And people think that it's purely a political battle that's going on. Well, it's political in a lot of ways. Judge Carter talked about how political it is with 119 Members of the Democrat Caucus in the House of Representatives having received a campaign check from Charlie Rangel. When you have a majority--close to it anyway--near the majority of your own caucus that you've contributed to their campaign, somehow they just magically, over time, lose their conviction to stand up for pure ethics. And it's a shame, but the reality of the political world today is that it isn't just a matter of altruism, it isn't just people that come here--and many do come here to do the right thing; many come here because they want to help America; many come because they believe-- they're either liberals or conservatives or someplace in between, but they believe in what they do and they stand up and speak out about it. That sense of conviction, that sense of altruism is something that should be applauded and honored and respected whatever that judgment is, whether they're liberals or whether they're conservatives. I think a lot of America believes that that's what drives this House. I'd like to think it is, it's part of what drives this House. But another part that drives this House is political power, political patronage, campaign contributions. The influence that comes from being able to direct policy as chairman of a committee is a powerful thing, it's an influential thing. And why does Chairman Rangel have all that money to give to 119 Members of his own caucus? Because he controls the tax-writing committee. He controls a lot of the regulations that control the economy of the United States of America--at least the free market economy and what's left of it. And so there are those who disagree with the philosophy and the policy that Charlie Rangel drives as the man who holds the gavel chairing the Ways and Means Committee. And there are many people in this country, many companies, many corporations, many entities that will find a way to get checks into that campaign fund because they don't want to be punished. And that money gets delved out to Members of their own caucus. And the chairman forgets to pay his taxes and underestimates his liabilities and assets by more than half, including forgetting to report the income off of his villa property in the Dominican Republic and forgetting to report that he is receiving rent subsidy on apartment houses for years in New York City. The failure to report and pay taxes on rental income from the villa in the Dominican Republic is as clear as it can be. And was it an attack of conscience that Chairman Rangel had when he finally amended the statement? I think not, because to falsify those statements is a felony. But when the issue was raised by Judge Carter, by The New York Times, by a number of others, then the chairman stepped forward and amended his returns, and then amended them again--I actually don't know how many rounds it's been that those ethics reports or financial reports have been amended. But they're not, I can't envision, being amended because of an attack of conscience; they're being amended because the news media, John Carter, other Members have stepped forward and laid the facts out before the American people. They're being amended to avoid the embarrassment and perhaps the prosecution in order to comply with and hopefully avoid an Ethics ruling when it comes out of the dysfunctional Ethics Committee in the House of Representatives. So I think it's pretty interesting that there is an alleged--this is one of the list of things that have emerged in the last year--an alleged quid pro quo of trading legislative action in exchange for donations to a center named for Charlie Rangel at City College of New York. I remember one of our Members, John Campbell from California, in particular, came down to the floor and offered an amendment to strike $1 million out that was earmarked for a center that was named after Charlie Rangel. And he asked Mr. Rangel, would you really ask that they name a center after you? And the answer was, essentially, I wouldn't want it to be named after you, Mr. Campbell, but yes, I've been here a long time, it's okay, I think we're allowed to do that. House Members don't do that. There are posthumous names for Federal buildings for Members of Congress, but it's very rare to find a Member of the House of Representatives to ask for real estate to be named after them; kind of a self-glorification. Quid pro quo? Possibly. It certainly raises a question. But trips to the Caribbean, this is something that's fairly astonishing. The gift rule violation, the trips to the Caribbean that were sponsored by the Carib News Foundation in 2007 and 2008, raised all kinds of questions. Now the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee--which, by the way, shouldn't be in the business of trying to direct the IRS to examine anybody; he should be worried about national policy and how that affects on a broad perspective, not micromanaging and focusing on an IRS investigation. But he had the audacity to push for a crackdown on U.S. taxpayers who make honest mistakes on their own returns, and then on the heels of Secretary Geithner's crackdown of UBS depositors for failing to pay their own taxes. The timing of this couldn't be worse. And it goes on. The statement that I thought was really interesting was the Democrats' House of hypocrisy. They made a lot of allegations, but the House of hypocrisy--the IRS should investigate both Charlie Rangel and Tim Geithner. And the problem is Tim Geithner controls the IRS. And so if you control an entity, it's pretty unlikely that they're going to do a vigorous job of investigating the people that actually decide what's going to go on within the operation. The House Committee on Standards hasn't produced anything yet--that's the Ethics Committee. It's been dysfunctional for a long time. It took place that the former ranking member of the Ethics Committee, who is now the chairman of the Justice Appropriations Committee from West Virginia, funny--under investigation himself. And he holds the gavel that controls the appropriations to the people that are investigating him and he controls their purse strings, Alan Mollohan. Interesting. House of hypocrisy: Geithner controlling the IRS; Charlie Rangel controlling the Ways and Means and the tax code; the House Committee on Standards can't seem to move; the chairman, Charlie Rangel, has given campaign donations to three of the five Democrats on the Ethics Committee. Now, it should be unethical to make contributions from the House to Members on the Ethics Committee because, after all, especially if you're under investigation, surely that would turn the focus on him. And the other interesting thing--this is one that really stands out-- we had a little investigation going on on these Caribbean trips that are in question that Mr. Rangel was on. Well, it turns out that the chairman of the investigation of the Caribbean trips was also along on the trip, so he knows what was going on there. If he would have thought there was a problem, he would have blown the whistle at that time, one would think. This isn't the America that the people in this country pay for, that they want to have. It's not the America that the people I know deserve. This country is full of hardworking, honest, decent people, white collar and blue collar people, people that get their hands dirty every day, people that keep their hands clean and use their brain and their fingers and their computers or calculators, their telephones and their steering wheels, people that are down in the trenches, people that are in the meatpacking plants, people that are producing a product every single day, and they give up time away from their families and their homes and they pay their taxes and they comply with the regulations. And they fear the IRS coming into their kitchen or their office and doing an audit of them. And they respect the government. And we have a House of hypocrisy here where the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee can't seem to get his own filings right on his own accounting forms, the rules that he writes, and has the audacity to turn up an IRS investigation on people that may not be. 119 Democrats have received money from Charlie Rangel. Funny, the Ethics Committee can't move. Three of the five Democrats on the Ethics Committee seem to have received money from Charlie Rangel. So I would just say this: that we've got to clean this House up. We've got to end this House of hypocrisy. If anyone is under investigation, under question, and if the chairman of a committee and if the Speaker of the House can't see fit to bring the right kind of decorum and the right kind of decency and when a liberal newspaper like The New York Times is indignant at this House of Representatives--the House of hypocrisy run by Speaker Pelosi--and is thumbing its nose at the people of the United States of America, if The New York Times can see it, I guarantee you the people in my district can see it. They know it in Iowa. They know it in Texas. They know it in the heartland of America. They know it across the red zones of America. Everybody who gets up, who goes to work, who punches a time clock, who earns a salary, who pays his taxes, who carries his weight, and who contributes to this country understands that we've got to have a Nation that's a rule of law. You can't write enough laws to make a decent people out of an indecent people. You can't cure hypocrisy by covering it up. At some place, at some time, somebody has got to dig up that rotting corpse, and it's going to have to have the light of day shine upon it. When that happens, we'll learn the truth, and there will be a day when the American people rise up again as they did last Saturday, when they came into this city by the hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of people came to Washington, D.C., on Saturday and registered their rejection and their contempt for the profligate overspending that has taken place in this Congress, for the corruption that's here and for the House of hypocrisy that it is. They want clean, decent people, like they are, representing them in this Congress. Between them, they have the solutions to everything that's wrong with America. They aren't all good ideas, but among them are all the ideas that we need to solve the problems that we have. We need to listen to the American people. We need to listen to the Founding Fathers. We need to be re-anchored back to the Declaration and to the Constitution. We have got to reform our fiscal responsibility. We have got to take this IRS out of our lives and get back our freedom. We have got to give people school choice. We have got to make sure that the younger generations learn it right and that they learn about God and country--our true history--and about our Founding Fathers, about personal responsibility and about the price for freedom and what freedom is and about the pillars of American exceptionalism. This House of hypocrisy is not a pillar of American exceptionalism. It is a corrosive entity that undermines the pillars of American exceptionalism. We must clean it up. It needs to happen now. Why not on the first anniversary of The New York Times' calling for the resignation of Charlie Rangel as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee? As my father always said, there is no time like the present. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge from Texas. And listening to the dialogue here on floor, I have to also rise in defense of the individual that everybody knows here is a true gentleman, a true Southern gentleman, and that's Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina. Anybody that knows Joe knows that he is the consummate officer and a gentleman. He comes from generations of military personnel. He has four sons that have served in the military. And Joe spends his life and his time respecting others, respecting our military people who serve this country. And I have never known Joe to be anything other than a respectful, polite, gentleman, and, yet, duty, honor, country. He was offended by what he heard here in the House of Representatives. And, for me, so was I. The President of the United States came into the House of Representatives, as our guest, and stood here at the podium, here in the well, from the rostrum of the Speaker, and he threw the first stone. And he said, the prominent politicians had lied, and he began to tell how. That's how this was set up. The President threw the first blow in here as a guest of the House of Representatives. And Joe Wilson, a man of honor, was offended at that, instantaneously. It was an instinctive thing, if you know the man. And, also, so was the instinct to go to the phone immediately after the speech and call the White House and do what he did. That's enough. There doesn't need to be more, and the people in this House that are seeking to gain a partisan advantage and turn this into a circus over two words that probably were said a lot of other times that night here in the House of Representatives too, but they were covered by the other chatter, that happened to be two words that went into a pause of silence, and the timing of it really was unfortunate. But I don't think Joe Wilson was unique in his emotion. It just happened to be made clear and embellished by the press. And so I don't make excuses for that and neither does he. But if the President of the United States accepts an apology, no other person has any grounds to request redress beyond that point. And this House of Representatives shall not be turned into a circus to deal with minutiae because Democrats in this country have decided to run this country over the cliff into socialized medicine. And they can't sell it to the American people, so they want to change the subject. That's what it is. And, by the way, the President of the United States injected himself into an incident that took place up in Boston when a professor at Harvard was breaking into his own house and the neighbors, out of good will, called the cops and Officer Crowley showed up, and the President himself made intemperate remarks. They were emotional, they were knee-jerk and they show his bias--no really bias in Joe except duty, honor country, truth, justice in the American way. That's not a bias; that's an altruistic belief system that's in the gentleman Joe Wilson. But the President injected himself and injected race into that situation up in Boston with the professor and the police officer, and he invited them out to the White House for a beer. And so it became a global story about how the President's masterful diplomacy brought everybody together at the White House. And we all knew what kind of beer everybody drank sitting there at the picnic table sitting outside--I actually don't know if they drank any. We know that they served it. Well, so the President has accepted Joe Wilson's apology, and we are watching, through the majority whip, drive a resolution towards the floor tomorrow to try to excoriate a Southern gentleman. And the President is sitting there now, having accepted the apology, and all he has to do is tell Rahm Emanuel, pick up the phone, call up there and talk to Clyburn or Pelosi or Steny Hoyer, the majority leader, and call off the dogs. We don't need this circus on the floor of the House of Representatives over something that may or may not have offended the President of the United States. But that's over because he has accepted the apology. So now if we have a circus on the floor of the House, and the President doesn't come in and be a referee--and maybe call for a beer summit, so invite Joe Wilson out to the White House, that's what I would like to see happen-- if the President doesn't call for that you have to wonder if he isn't secretly sitting there watching the fight, enjoying it, enjoying the circus that they are staging for tomorrow. The circus itself will bring disgrace on the House of Representatives, and it's designed to cover this House of hypocrisy that we have. But instead it will illuminate it. And as the judge was saying about the rule of law, when I write rule of law, I capitalize it. Rule of law, R and L, capitalize it, in everything I write. Sometimes the staff slips by, but I get it in there, because I have such reverence for the rule of law. And if we are going to be a Nation that functions, we all have got to have reverence for the rule of law. And if you look at some of these other countries that have some gifts and some blessings that look like they might be comparable to that of the United States and you wonder what's wrong, why can't Russia get their act together. Why can't Mexico get their act together and go there and look. I can go almost anywhere in the world and tell you what I think we ought to do at least to fix it. But I can go to those places, and I can't tell what you ought to do. Because I don't know how to fix corruption. When corruption is endemic in the culture of a country, you cannot have enough law enforcement officers. You cannot clean it up. It's got to be something that is a habit of the heart of the culture of the people. We have had that throughout these centuries in the United States of America. And the things that threaten it, it isn't just a reflection of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that has this whole list of ethical problems, including tax avoidance, and that's the nicest way I can say that. It isn't just that. It's the culture that supports it. It's the Speaker of the House that enables it. It's the majority leader that backs it up. It's the fact that we are dealing with this House of hypocrisy while we are trying to set standards for the people of the United States of America and saying be altruistic, pay your taxes, follow through and do your part. And if you do that, we are a greater country. But if people decide to take the Charlie Rangel/Tim Geithner route, we can't have enough enforcement officers out there working for the IRS to go out and collect enough taxes to go out and run this government. It's got to be because people have great respect and reverence for the rule of law, and it should start here. This should be the highest standard in the House of Representatives. But if I go to Mexico or if I go to Russia, I see there are natural resources, I see a good labor force, people that are pretty good workers--more so I think in Mexico than Russia from my observations, but they also were used to payola. They are used to payoffs. They don't think they can make a difference. They don't think their voice matters. And when it gets to that point in the country where people don't believe any longer that their voice matters, and if they don't believe in the people that are making the decisions for them, and if they don't willingly comply with the laws and pay their taxes, then it all becomes a whole nation of gotcha, and who was the victim of enforcement, and who knew how to pay somebody off that had influence so they can avoid doing the right thing. And that might be paying taxes. It might be completely violating it in a violent way, just plain out and out theft. If they can get by with it, if they have influence, the rule of law. The rule of law is the central pillar of American exceptionalism. Without it, we would have never become the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world. But we are, because of that central pillar, the rule of law. Now, there are many other pillars, but the central pillar is a rule of law, and we have got to respect it. And if you don't like the law, we will run for office or support somebody that does and ask them to change it. That's why we have this system. We have amendments to the Constitution. We don't like the Constitution, find a way to amend it. If the people speak, we are supposed to listen here. Hundreds of thousands showed up in Washington D.C. over this past weekend. And we need to hear what they have to say. But they want to respect their elected Representatives. They want the rule of law to adhere to. They don't want to see this country flooded over with the level of corruption that we have seen in places like Mexico and Russia, or I go there and I think, what can be done? I can prescribe the solutions that I think are very constructive to those countries, but if you could snap your fingers and get rid of the corruption in those countries, that would be the biggest thing that could be done. And then the people would have hope; they would have faith again. They would believe again that their government was responsible and responsive to them. But the rule of law--and I think about how important it is to comply with the letter and the intent of the law, not just avoid prosecution, not just find a way to skirt around the edge of it, respect and revere the law and comply with the letter and the intent of the law. And I had this little thought that popped up into my head--I was listening to the judge talk about this--this little phrase recurs back to me: no controlling legal authority. Do you remember that? The Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, said, well there is no controlling legal authority. So, therefore, if there isn't any way that you can control his activities by enforcing a law that one can point to, therefore, whatever he might do apparently is acceptable or maybe even moral. In the absence of prohibition, things become moral in this era of morals relativism. I reject that. We have got to have high standards, high standards of conscience, high standards of morality, and our laws uphold those standards. And the people on the left will constantly argue you can't legislate morality. Well, but if you de-legislate the morality that others legislated, now you have, now you have lowered the standard. Now you have lowered the bar. And now people believe it's acceptable, and it has happened over and over again. Our legislation is morality. Our legislation, the laws of America, the laws of our States and our local subdivisions uphold the moral standards of the people that pass them. It's often our faith; our Judeo-Christian values are what shaped this country. The Declaration and the Constitution are infused with Judeo- Christian values. And those values are part of the culture reflected in the documents, not the documents that drove the culture. And if we lose our culture, the documents will become meaningless to us. That's why we have got to stand up for the rule of law here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and everybody in America has to stand up for the rule of law, the letter and the intent of law, and the moral and ethical foundation that underpins it, or we lose our way, and we lose our country.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always, it is an honor to have the privilege to represent my constituents here on the floor of the House of Representatives and convey the thought process for myself and a good number of my colleagues about the issues of the day. And hopefully we will be able to cap off this evening and send some people to bed with some thoughts that they'll wake up in the morning supporting or else have good reasons to oppose. A lot has transpired here since the August break began, and we only have 1 week behind us here in the House of Representatives since we have returned. That deep tradition has been that Members of Congress would leave Washington, D.C. in the hot, humid month of August. This tradition began before air conditioning. It's a good tradition, and I think we should keep it because we saw something phenomenal in America this past August, and it seemed like a never-ending series of townhall meetings that took place in community after community. Nearly every congressional district held something. Some held many, many meetings. I don't know the record on the number of the townhall meetings that were had, but I'm sure it fell in the dozens of meetings for a single Member. For myself I represent 32 counties in western Iowa, the western third of the State, that's sliced from Minnesota down to Missouri, 32 counties, 286 towns. I held a good number of townhall meetings, and it was a very rewarding experience. The thing that I take away from it, Mr. Speaker, and there are many-- I got some ideas on the health care issue that are on my list that I will talk about here in a moment, Mr. Speaker. But the thing that I will remember the most, it isn't a single issue or a single individual or a way an argument was phrased or worded or how compelling they were, and there were many that were compelling arguments, but it was the image of town after town, meeting after meeting, rooms full of people, often people in standing room around the outside, some people standing and looking in the doorway. We always found a way, I think, though, where everybody could hear. If they wanted in, they could get in. We couldn't always hear the comments of everyone because there were just too many. But the dissenters had their say. And they actually had, I think, a disproportionate amount of voice within the meetings that I had, but that's all right. We got to hear from both sides of the argument. We got to hear from more of those that oppose a national health care plan than those that support it. Those that supported it were a distinct minority in my district, but they had more than their fair share to say. So I weighed those issues, and I watched their reaction. But the thing I remember the most were hundreds of attentive people sitting there with focused attention, listening to every word, listening to the words that were spoken by their friends, their neighbors, their family members, listened to the responses that I gave, and weighing this and putting it into their calculator for what America is going to look like. I will never forget those faces, those eyes looking up to the front of the room, paying attention to every word, taking notes. Some of the questions were so well worded, so carefully phrased, you could tell that there was a deep amount of research that went into the questions. I wondered if some of them didn't stay up nearly all night long to be ready just for their chance, their chance to have that moment to have their say. And I'm so encouraged by their commitment, and I wish they had more voice. I wish we could hear them now, Mr. Speaker. I wish we could fill this Chamber up with the people that filled up these townhall meetings, and especially the leadership, but the rank and file of all of us that have the privilege here to serve in the House of Representatives could hear those voices again in here. I hope when we debate a health care bill here on the floor of the House that this gallery is full of people. I hope the C-SPAN camera, Mr. Speaker, represents millions out there that are watching every move, listening to every word, people that are taking notes, people that are tape-recording our actions and our words and carefully analyzing, and I hope we're held accountable for the decisions that are made in committee where generally it doesn't get the press that it gets here on the floor. But when the day comes, the American people need to know that they have been heard, that we went home, that we traveled our districts, we did our townhall meetings, and that we came back and conferred with each other and arrived at a decision that's the right decision for the long-term best interests of our descendants, our progeny and their descendants as well, Mr. Speaker. So I hope that's what happens. And I don't know that it will. I don't know that it will because there are forces at play, and some of the people, especially in the majority, have voiced this, that their townhall meetings with their constituents are just one of the places where they get the information to decide. Other places might be the lobby. It might be their coffers. It might be their leadership. And it could be just simply a deeply entrenched philosophy that favors Big Government over freedom. So for me in my townhall meetings, if there was one position that I took that I was clear on that had the most support of all, it was I will not support a bill that diminishes the people's freedom in the United States of America. That's my pledge, Mr. Speaker. I will not diminish our freedom. It's my freedom too. And I have taken an oath to uphold this Constitution, and it's our Constitution and it's about freedom. It isn't just about individual freedom. It's about the 10th Amendment. It's about the freedom of the States to control those things which are not specifically designated and enumerated for the Federal Government. This Federal Government has reached across the 10th Amendment and violated at least the spirit and I will say also the letter of the Constitution over and over again. And if this United States of America passes a health care bill that looks anything like H.R. 3200, it will be a violation of our Constitution consistently in several different ways. So I'm very concerned about where we go with this: the disregard, the cavalier attitude that many Members of Congress have towards the Constitution, towards their oath to the Constitution, towards its meaning and towards its content. And this drive to create this single-payer system, you know, you just couldn't drive the wooden stake in the heart of HillaryCare back in 1993 and 1994. When Senator Phil Gramm stood on the floor of the United States Senate right down this hallway where I'm faced right now and he said this health care bill, this national health care bill will pass over my cold, dead political body, a lot of people thought that Senator Phil Gramm was going to become a cold, dead political body and that HillaryCare was going to pass. But it has not. It's been 15 years and more since Phil Gramm made that statement, and he has held off this nationalized health care, this socialized medicine juggernaut. He has and many others have too. It has been a national effort. Yes, there are people out there that think that they'd be better off if somebody else would take the responsibility for their health care, and they are large in number but small in percentage, Mr. Speaker. Now, I will make this point that we have constantly heard the words and the statistics that are over 40 million people that are uninsured in America, that we have got to do something about the uninsured. And this number of 40 million usually rounds up to around 44 million. Now it has kind of crept up to 47 million and probably the most reliable number is close to 46 million people uninsured in America. Now, that's a pretty large percentage of our population. We have about 306 million Americans, and if 46 or 47 million are uninsured, that's, let's see, one-sixth or a little bit less of our population. It's funny that the uninsured is about the same percentage of our population as the GDP is consumed by health care. But if that number is 47 million, and that's the highest number that's consistently delivered by the other side, and sometimes they stretch it and round it up to 50 million, but if the uninsured in America are 47 million, they would have us believe that these are chronically uninsured people that are stuck on these uninsured rolls year after year after year. Well, that's not the case, Mr. Speaker. A lot of these people are just temporarily uninsured and they're in transition between policies. So as those policies change, occasionally they find themselves without coverage. But I began to ask this question a little more carefully, and that is, Who are the people with affordable options? If somebody's uninsured and they're making a million dollars a year, I'm sorry, my heart doesn't bleed for them. They have decided that they don't care to have a health insurance policy and they're willing to take the risk with their equity. So that's not my concern. In fact, the United States Senate Republican conference staff set the bar at $75,000 a year. If you make $75,000 or more a year and you don't have health insurance, we are not going to put you in the category where you get a lot of our governmental compassion to extract dollars out of somebody else's labor to provide that person making over $75,000 a year with health insurance. Now, the President has decided to do class envy at $250,000; but let me just say that if you're making more than $75,000, you can find a way to pay for your own health insurance even if you just buy catastrophic, and you should get a health savings account and grow that health savings account and buy a major medical policy, a catastrophic health insurance policy, take care of your own incidental health care bills. But 47 million uninsured at any given time, the biggest number that we get. Now, to boil this down, Mr. Speaker, to who are the people without affordable options, you take the 47 million and you subtract from it those that we really don't want to provide health insurance for out of the taxpayers' pocket at least, and that's going to be those that are in the country illegally. Even the President of the United States doesn't insist that we insure illegals under this policy. It was a new position that he took the other night. I'm not sure that he's as serious as we would like, but I was encouraged that right back here a few feet behind me, the President of the United States said, no, we are not going to fund illegals. Well, H.R. 3200 does. The Congressional Budget Office thinks so. The Congressional Research Service thinks so. The vote that took place in the Ways and Means Committee that voted down the citizenship standard requirements in order to qualify for under H.R. 3200, this health care bill. That partisan vote. Or Democrats voted down the language that would require proof of citizenship that's tried, tested and true, and used to be part of our Medicaid policy from the beginning, was voted down by a vote of 29-28 in the Ways and Means Committee. Democrats then wanted to leave a door open, at least in committee, so illegals could be funded under that newer policy. That also was the case in the Ways and Means Committee, right down the party line exactly. They voted down the effort to try to raise the standard and require proof of citizenship. But the President is now taking the position he doesn't want to fund illegals in this. I think he got pushed into that pretty hard. So 47 million uninsured at a given time minus 5.2 million illegals, this is according to the Republican Conference in the United States Senate. I think there are a lot more than that, Mr. Speaker. They use 5.2 million. I'll use that for the sake of our discussion. Subtract that from 47 million. We also do not want to--and cannot under current law and should not-- fund those who are new immigrants here. They're under the 5-year bar; no welfare until you've been here 5 years, take care of yourself for half a decade, and then you can qualify if you come legally. Under the 5-year bar, another 5 million. Now we're adding this up. So you have 5.2 million illegals, 5 million new immigrants, but legal, under the 5-year bar, now we're at 10.2 million. Those making $75,000 a year or more, I mentioned those, there are 9 million of those. Those who qualify for government programs, all part of the 47 million, 9.7 million Americans qualify for government programs but don't sign up, mostly Medicaid, Medicaid eligibles but not enrolled. They don't know that they didn't enroll in anything--and if we take it and hand deliver it to them. So we're adding up some numbers here. Then, those Americans who are eligible with their employer but they've either opted out or not bothered to opt into the employer- offered health insurance. So those numbers, 5.2 million illegals, 5 million legal here under the 5-year bar, 9 million making more than $75,000 a year or more, 9.7 million eligible for government programs, mostly Medicaid, but not signed up, and 6 million eligible for employer programs not signed up. That comes to 34.9 million Americans of the 47 million that we don't want to cover with this new policy under H.R. 3200, this health care plan. There is a consensus out there that says we're not really worried about these categories. The one we're worried about are the Americans without affordable options. That number is not 47 million any longer. If you've done the math, Mr. Speaker, you will have subtracted each of these categories from the 47 million. All these categories add up to 34.9 million. Take that from 47 and you come to 12.1 million Americans without affordable options. That is the universe we're trying to fix. The President has said we have two problems with health care in America; the first one is the economic crisis that we're in--it's a year long now, still a crisis--well, it's a problem; the stock market was good today, I might say. And he says we can't fix the economy unless we first fix health care. In fact, the cost of health care is the problem with our economy. And he would tell us if we could fix the health care problem, we would fix the economy. Well, what's the problem with health care? According to the President of the United States--mostly as a candidate, but also as a President-- we spend too much money. Health care costs too large a percentage of our gross domestic product. There's a problem. We have to fix it, otherwise we can't fix the economy; the President's position. The other position that he has, the two points on health care, is that we have too many uninsured. Well, let's deal with the big problem first. We spend about 14.5 percent of our gross domestic product on health care in America. That's premiums and the care and the litigation and all of those things. The average of the industrialized world is about 9.5 percent of their GDP on health care. Well, we spend a high percentage on recreation and a high percentage on other things too. We are a rich nation. One of the reasons we spend that kind of money on health care is because we do have the wealth in order to distribute it to the health care industry, to that one-seventh of the economy that is our health care industry. So we have wealth, and we decide to spend it on health. It's not the worst thing, but we should examine it objectively. I do think we spend too much, too large a percentage, but by the same token I don't think they get very good health care in those countries that spend a lot less. But we spend about half again on health care in the United States as a percentage of our GDP as they do in other countries, but we produce more per capita than most of those countries too. And I need to pull that back and equate the two, and I haven't done that yet. I hope somebody does and gets me the information, otherwise I will sit up some night and do the doodling, Mr. Speaker. But we spend too much money on health care. What would you do about that? If you have a problem in your family budget and you are spending too much money, you don't solve the problem by going out and spending a lot more money. The score on this bill is someplace between $1 trillion and $2 trillion; on the low side it's $1 trillion. The most consistent number that has been produced, the analysis of it is $1.6 trillion. So according to the President, we spend too much money on health care. And I don't necessarily disagree, but his solution is to spend another $1.6 trillion on it. That's not a solution. It doesn't solve the family budget to spend more money when you're spending too much, and it doesn't solve the government problem to spend more money when you're spending too much. And so even if the President identifies the problem correctly, he has the erroneous solution to apply to it: Voila, we spend too much money, therefore, the solution is spend more. This was the approach he brought to this economic crisis to demand more money through the stimulus fund, too, when we came to our conference and said, FDR lost his nerve, he should have spent a lot more money. He convinced us that the President of the United States wasn't going to make that mistake, he was going to spend a lot more money. He was going to be FDR/Keynesian economics on steroids. And that's what we got, Mr. Speaker. And the White House made a $2 trillion mistake on their projections, $2 trillion. I remember when the junior Senator from Iowa, Tom Harkin, made the statement that $6 billion was just pencil dust. And his opponent here walked around with a man-size pencil to talk about pencil dust. Well, I don't know that $6 billion was pencil dust--in that context it can be questioned. But I can tell you that $1.6 trillion is not pencil dust. Getting within $2 trillion of the target is not pencil dust. That's real, huge money. But if we're spending too much money on health care, then why wouldn't we address the things that fix the problem? Why don't we come at this in a different way and go after those most obvious things that we can use to fix the problem? Now, for example, how much money does defensive medicine cost? What does it work within the macro economics of the health care equation? And there are some numbers that will rattle on down to around 5.5 percent of overall health care costs. The health insurance underwriters, the top legislative officer gave me a number of 8.5 percent, the cost of medical malpractice premiums and litigation and defensive medicine. Those three things together, 8.5 percent, are overall health care costs. If you take the 8.5 percent and you apply it to the 14.5 percent of our GDP, you can come up with a number of about $203 billion a year that's going all for defensive medicine and malpractice premiums and trial lawyers and litigation. In other words, it isn't being spent on good health care; it's money that's being churned up in the system to pay other people to do other things other than deliver a product to people for the benefit of their good health. Defensive medicine. Some of the providers got together and advised me in one of my meetings that their consensus was between 20 and 28 percent of the tests that they do are for defensive medicine purposes. In other words, get the test, get it on the record to protect them in case somebody files a malpractice lawsuit against them. They can always roll out the test and go to court and say, Well, I did this and this and this, and I ran this test, and these were all negative, so therefore our medical conclusion was thus. And of course we all know there are anomalies when it comes to health. Defensive medicine. Twenty to 28 percent of the tests, the unnecessary costs in health care that have to do with malpractice and premiums and in litigation and in defensive medicine, perhaps 8.5 percent, I see numbers to 10 percent, numbers up to 16 percent of the overall health care bill. I'll settle on that 8\1/2\ percent number--perhaps it's slightly less--but if it's the 16 percent, as a number of doctors have pointed out, then you're looking, roughly, in the area of $400 billion a year. Over 10 years, there's the $4 trillion, Mr. President. I remember his speech, and I know there were some folks who saw the humor when the President of the United States said, If you adopt my policy, over time, it will save $4 trillion. Over time. How long is ``over time''? Is that right before the end of infinity? Is it 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? a generation? a half a century or a century? a millennia? Over time, his policy would save $4 trillion. Now, there is an ambiguous statement. You know, if you'd invest a penny and drop it in your passbook savings account, over time, you'd be worth $4 trillion, too, Mr. Speaker. I think you wouldn't want to wait that long. So, as to the high cost of health care, if it needs to be addressed-- and I think it does--let's go where we can get the most money, the best results the quickest. Let's do lawsuit abuse reform. Let's adopt the California policy. Let's adopt the Texas policy. We passed it out of the House of Representatives about 4 years ago. We passed it out of the Judiciary Committee, where I sat; brought it to the floor; passed it here; messengered it over to the Senate. The wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trial Lawyers Association decided to kill our malpractice reform, our lawsuit abuse reform, that passed this House under the leadership, at that time, of the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jim Sensenbrenner. So it's the simplest thing we couldn't do, the most effective thing we couldn't do. If you do the scoring on this--now, I don't think we're going to get it all. I don't think we'll fix all of those problems, but if we did, it would be around $203 billion a year, just by my little back-of-the- envelope calculation. Over a decade--we do our calculations here on a 10-year budget--that's $2 trillion. We could save as much as $2 trillion from health care just simply by cutting the trial lawyers out, still letting people get whole and letting the doctors do their doctoring without having to do defensive medicine, and it would reduce dramatically their malpractice premiums. As I say, they passed medical malpractice reform in Texas, and the doctors who had undergone an exodus from Texas began to come back to Texas again. It's interesting. So, if health care costs too much, why don't we address the problems of costly health care? Why don't we put more competition in it? In some States, as much as 80 percent of the health insurance that's available to them is offered by one company. One company so dominates the market that it's 80 percent. In my State, one company dominates the market up to 70 percent. Why don't we let the people in New Jersey buy health insurance in Kentucky? Why don't we let the people in New York buy health insurance in Texas? Why don't we let them buy it in Iowa for that matter? We have pretty good policies available in Iowa. If we'd let people buy insurance across State lines, that would solve another allegation of the President of the United States. He has said that they need to inject competition into the health insurance industry because too few companies dominate the market so much that they can dictate premiums, and that probably is true in localities. In fact, I just won't take issue with that statement. Yet the solution is not to establish a Federal government-run health insurance policy. We know how that goes. Many of us have made the argument: If you do that, if you set up Federal health insurance, it will swallow up the rest of the private insurance companies in the country. We have 1,300 health insurance companies in the United States today that are selling a possible combination of 100,000 policies. If we get ObamaCare, we're going to get a national health insurance system that will be subsidized by the taxpayers, and all of our private insurance companies will also have to meet new standards written by the new Health Choices Administration, czar-issioner. That's what we'll see happen. The result of that will be the pattern that is out there for us. Here is one pattern: In 1968, they passed National Flood Insurance. Yes, there were private property and casualty insurers in the business of selling flood insurance to people who lived where they could be flooded. That happened. It wasn't a great big market back in those years, but we didn't have a great big infrastructure to protect either back then. We do now. The Federal Government stepped in and passed the National Flood Insurance Act, and in a short period of time, all property and casualty flood insurance companies dropped the selling of flood insurance, and today, you can only buy one kind of flood insurance. That is the Federal Government's. They have the monopoly now. They dominate the market. They have squeezed everybody else out, and they have destroyed the private market in flood insurance. Well, you don't have to just buy that model. You could think that's an anomaly. We could look at another situation that's going on. How about the student loan program in the United States with all of the private companies, the private banks and the lending institutions that manage the student loans and the good competition that we've had? Now we have George Miller, who's deciding that he wants to replace it all with Federal. A smaller and smaller percentage of our student loans are provided now through the private sector. They want to eliminate it all. If George Miller has his way--and I'm confident the President would sign whatever George Miller puts on his desk--you won't be able to go to a bank and borrow money to go to college. It will all be through the Federal Government. The Federal Government will control it all. Oh, by the way, Federal flood insurance is a monopoly. The only flood insurance you can buy in the United States is from the Federal Government. The owned, operated, managed, marketed premium is set by the Federal Government. Federal flood insurance is $19.2 billion in the red, and there's no way to get it back. So do we want more of this? Let me throw another concept out here. Here is another interesting thing that comes out in listening to people at townhall meetings. Mr. Speaker, some proponents of ObamaCare would say, Well, listen. We have Medicaid and we have Medicare and we have Social Security, and they're all government programs. You like those, don't you? Well, yes. The people who are receiving the benefits like them better than nothing, and some parts of them are pretty good, but there's a big difference between what they're proposing here and Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. In all three of those categories that I've mentioned, of those government programs that we have, the people receiving the benefits are predominantly not the ones paying for them at the time they receive them. They are the beneficiaries of someone else's labor and largesse. The highest producing people in America are paying the most taxes, and now the President and the liberals in this Congress are determined to tell the freedom-loving, top-producing Americans that not only are they going to have to continue to fund somebody else's Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, but now they're going to have to fund a whole lot of other people's health care, those who are in the most productive years of their lives, and by the way, you're going to fund everybody else's, but your choices are going to be diminished because the Federal Government has to be able to compete and push out a lot of the private providers. I guarantee you, if they pass this bill, there will not be 1,300 health insurance companies any longer. There will not be 100,000 possible policy combinations any longer. That number will diminish overnight and over time, and we'll see how long it takes before there's the same number of private health insurance companies in America as there are property and casualty companies that are selling flood insurance. I see my friend from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, has arrived at the floor--persistent, relentless and ever on the ball. I would be so happy to yield as much time as she may consume to the gentlelady from Minnesota.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota. I was just listening to the General Motors part of this discussion, and I am thinking about the components of General Motors, Government Motors, and how this all transpired. And it first came about with the first little dialogue going on. And some of us said put them through chapter 11. We are not going to be without cars. Somebody will take up those assets and turn them into a competitive company. Speaker Pelosi said, I am not going to get the unions--I am not going to let the car makers get bargaining leverage over the unions. So you had the bond holders, the secured creditors involved in this. And then the President effectively fired the CEO of General Motors.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And hand-picked his own guy to go in there as the CEO of General Motors and over, close, near that period of time, picked, hand-picked all but two members of the board of directors on General Motors. And the Federal Government ended up with 61 percent of General Motors. That's the U.S., the Federal Government, the Canadian Government, 12.5 percent, the unions, 17.5 percent. Now I didn't do the math on what's left. It's not much. And then on top of that you have Cash for Clunkers that goes out and buys these cars or puts the down payment down. And the Federal Government guaranteeing some of the loans for the cars, it is the perfect circle of socialized economy. It's astonishing to me. Now what do you do if you are out here making a car that you can't sell, and you need to pay the scale for the workers that didn't give up anything if we pass a national health care act? The unions didn't give up anything in this deal, but they got 17.5 interest in a company.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. I believe it says in the book of John that if you forgive men's sins, they are forgiven them. If you hold them bound, they are held bound. President Obama said he accepted the apology. That's forgiveness. Because the President accepted the apology from the officer and the gentleman, Joe Wilson, no one else in the country has a claim to any other redress whatsoever.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me just roll this question back across your analytical accountant, CPA, tax lawyer mind, and that is, if 30 percent of the private profits today are controlled by the Federal Government, and if another 18 percent would be swallowed up in a national health care plan, taking us to 48 percent of the private, what if all private interests were rolled up in shares, and you could buy derivatives of those shares of the private sector? What if you could do that? And what if the Federal Government then controlled 48 percent of all the shares of the private sector? Because that would be the equivalent, I would think. They would almost be to the point of having controlling interest over the private sector of the economy of the United States of America. Is that how the equation works out?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, you triggered something in my memory here, Mrs. Bachmann, and that would be the hearings that we held before the House Agriculture committee. This would have been March 13, 2007. It has to do with what people should be eating and what is healthy, and how we're going to legislate that from the Federal level. There were those on that committee that thought that we should increase food stamps substantially. In fact, they were pushing to increase food stamps 46 percent. For the most part, they got that job done.

Mr. KING of Iowa. But, how do you justify that when you can't find people that are suffering from malnutrition or people that are actually hungry, chronically hungry. There are people that miss meals. I'm among them. But we don't have chronic hunger in America. In order to justify the expansion of food stamps, they brought before us the president of La Raza, that's the organization that stands for The Race. Her name is Janet Murguia. And in that testimony she said this--and this is a quote, ``There is also mounting evidence that the overweight and obesity trends in the United States are due, in part, to high levels of food insecurity.'' So we have a situation where the argument is being made to the United States Congress that we have fat people in America that are overweight because they were worried about some meals that they might miss one day in the future, and they tended to overeat in the present tense. So if we would just give them an unlimited supply of food stamps, then they would eat less, lose weight, and live healthy and happy thereafter, that's what she's telling us. Food insecurity. So I'm wondering, Where has this world gone, George Orwell? How did we get to this place? And I remember walking down along Franklin Delano Roosevelt's monument and looking at the symbols that he has of the speech that he gave that is sort of the idea of the four freedoms. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion--I'll stand and defend those. They are rights. They are freedoms. They are guaranteed. But freedom from want and freedom from fear can't be guaranteed by anybody but God. And I'm not sure it's healthy to have freedom from want, because want is what drives us to produce and be better. And then our philanthropy that comes from the times we're short causes us to help other people that are short.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mrs. Bachmann, why didn't you do something about it?