Steven LaTourette

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank my friend from California for yielding. I want to thank the Chair and ranking member of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee for moving this bill in such an expedited manner. I want to thank my friend and colleague from Illinois (Mr. Davis) and from California (Mr. Bilbray) for bringing this bill to the floor today. I am proud to be the lead sponsor of H.R. 3788. It is going to honor a marine and native of Stow, Ohio, who gave his life in the line of duty, Corporal Joseph A. Tomci, and I urge my colleagues to support the bill. This bill will name the post office at 3900 Darrow Road in Stow as the Corporal Joseph A. Tomci Post Office Building. As has been mentioned, Joe Tomci, a graduate of Stow-Munroe Falls High School, was killed in a roadside bombing on August 2, 2006. It was his second tour of duty in Iraq, and he happened to be only 21. While I didn't have the pleasure of knowing Joe Tomci when he was alive, I have been awed by the impact that he had on those who did have the privilege of knowing him, loving him, and calling him a friend. There were thousands of people, Mr. Speaker, at his funeral. And every year since his death, friends and family have gathered to remember Joe on the anniversary that he died. There is also a tree planted at Fish Creek Elementary School. And you may think, well, maybe that's where Joe went to school, but the reason the tree is there is that Joe was a pen pal of the students for 2 years, and the students would chart Joe's progress in Iraq on a map to reflect his experiences. Joe Tomci was a great son, a great friend, and a great leader. And I honestly can't think of many people at the age of 21 who have made such a mark on the world in such a short amount of time. He loved his family and his friends, he loved serving his country, and he loved being a marine. He told his mother, Gayle, that he believed in what he was doing and that he believed that his service was a benefit to the world. I've had the privilege, as most of our colleagues have, of travelling to Iraq to witness firsthand the important work of servicemen and - women like Joe and what they're doing every day, as well as the selfless sacrifices that they and their families make. Some, like Joe, have made the ultimate sacrifice, but their deaths have not been in vain. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the work of the committee in approving this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, it is nice to see you in the Chair again, and I think you are getting the short straw in your caucus when we give these 1-minute speeches. It is always nice, Mr. Speaker, when the veil lifts and you finally get to understand something. I have been puzzled since 2007 when the Democrats became the majority party in the House of Representatives, when gas prices went from $2.22 to $4.14 over the summer. I was puzzled why they passed such meaningful legislation as National Train Day and so forth and so on. But two that caught my eye was the bill honoring cats and dogs and then the Monkey Safety Act. I thought they were chastened in this Congress, as we saw the unemployment rate go from this level to this level, and if I had a bigger chart, it could keep on going up. But again, there is sort of a theme. While people are losing their jobs in America, they again passed the Monkey Safety Act and the Shark Conservation Act. I am thinking to myself, What's their fascination with animals? And it wasn't until I read Speaker Pelosi's government takeover of health care bill, if you go over to page 1,255, it makes veterinary students eligible for up to $283 million in Federal scholarship and student loan forgiveness. What's with the animals?

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank my friend for yielding. I want to commend Chairman Dicks and Ranking Member Simpson for putting together what I consider to be a fine bill. Like most bills around here, it has some warts, but overall, this is a good bill. Particularly, I want to highlight what I think is good for the part of the world that I live in. I want to thank the President, President Obama, for putting in his budget request for the first time since I have been here real money for the Great Lakes; $475 million is included in the conference report. I also need to thank Delia Scott, the clerk of the subcommittee, for working with us on report language to make sure that that $475 million, which is primarily given to the Environmental Protection Agency, doesn't get stuck to the sticky fingers sometimes here in Washington and that it actually gets to the Great Lakes to improve water quality, habitat restoration, and things of that great nature. As we all know, those of us that live near the Great Lakes, it has 20 percent of the world's fresh water. I can remember a couple of years ago when we put real money into the Everglades, and it really was the Great Lakes' turn. The President deserves credit and so do the crafters of this conference report. I am also grateful that included in here are some things that we worked on in a bipartisan fashion, some land acquisition for what used to be called the Blossom Music Center. I'm grateful for that. I am grateful for the work of the full committee chairman and chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in solving the difficulty that we had with some EPA regulations for Great Lakes shipping, and it was their leadership that, in fact, fixed that. I would just say to my good friend the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, when I was the ranking member on the Coast Guard Subcommittee and this pollution on ships legislation came up last Congress, I said, ``I told you so.'' And now those chickens have come home to roost. But I am grateful for that. If there were disappointments with this conference report, one is, which I expressed during the conference, in the House bill--there is wonderful water infrastructure in this bill. If you represent an older group of cities, you know that we have pipes in the ground that have been there since 1920, 1930. Water infrastructure is greatly needed. I was pleased to join with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) in offering an amendment that would have attached prevailing wage requirements for that infrastructure construction. The House bill had it, and it was accepted. But a funny thing happened over in the conference. The Senate said they couldn't do it. So now you have this sort of unique situation where you only have Davis-Bacon protection for fiscal year 2010. Now the EPA says they can handle it. I guess that you could handle it--but this pipe was laid in 2010, this pipe was laid in 2011. I think it's difficult, and I guess I am disappointed that we couldn't prevail on that issue. The last source of disappointment is that this legislation carries the continuing resolution. I don't object to the fact that there is a continuing resolution. We need to keep the government operating. But the attachment, which has been done in the past--it was done earlier this year, it was done in 2006--to this legislation prevents the minority from having a motion to recommit on the continuing resolution. And the last time that we had this discussion, I was sort of chastened. The full committee chairman said, Well, you don't necessarily need a motion to recommit; we made in order hundreds of Republican amendments during the appropriations process. So I actually had my staff look at it, and in fact, that's right. There were 714 amendments made in order to the appropriations bills that we considered this year, but sadly, 688 of them were authored by only three Members: Mr. Flake, Mr. Campbell or Mr. Hensarling. So that means that 26 substantive amendments by everybody else over here are the only amendments that were made in order. That's disappointing. I hope that, if we need another CR, we can have it be freestanding so we at least have the opportunity to make a couple of observations.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, it's my privilege to be here during this Special Order, talking about our friend John McHugh. You know, when somebody retires or leaves or goes on to something else, you miss him. People talk about the gym. I remember, and I miss, that on a pretty regular basis you would go out to the fireplace out here in the Speaker's Lobby and John would have the biggest cup of something with ice in it. He was a constant fixture out there, and you could talk to him on a regular basis. People will talk about his service on the Armed Services Committee, but that isn't how I knew him. I'm going to talk a little bit about the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and his work on postal reform. I know John's office, for some reason in the last three Congresses, has always been either next to or across from mine. His commitment to the military was always evident. He always had more brass in his office than a Sousa band. They were always coming and going, and they wanted to make sure that John McHugh understood where they were coming from. I met John when I came here in 1995. Our service was on the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. John's post, when we were in the majority at that time, was as the chairman of the Postal Service Subcommittee, which no longer exists, but it was the Postal Service Subcommittee. The hot topic was postal reform. Postal reform hadn't been accomplished in about 25-30 years in this country, and there was a reason for that--it wasn't an easy thing to do, but John stayed at it in Congress after Congress, and suffered mightily because all of the stakeholders had a different view; you had the private shippers; you had the postal unions; you had the people with the postage meters. Everybody sort of had a dog in that fight, and it was John's job to sort of guide that through. I'll never forget. I was a member of that subcommittee, and I wasn't so crazy about his first draft. I think it was called H.R. 22, his first piece of legislation. I sent him a strongly worded letter, reading, You know, how could you do this on postal reform? Well, John sent me a letter back, and just about took the skin off the back of my hand. It was the most pointed letter I'd ever received, and so I trotted right over to his office because I wanted to make sure he wasn't mad at me. We all send letters. We make points, but I wanted to make sure John wasn't upset. In the end, H.R. 22 did, in fact, become law, and John modernized through postal reform and helped take the United States Postal Service into the 21st century, and that was no small feat. I know that he will do the same for the President as the Secretary of the Army. You know, I happen to belong to a group of moderate Republicans. Some of us have sort of suspected that the President and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have devised a scheme to completely denude the House of Representatives of moderate Republicans. You know, first they started with my classmate, Ray LaHood, and they made him the Secretary of Transportation. Then they took McHugh, and made him the Secretary of the Army. At the time that they made that choice, I said--and I'll say again during this Special Order honoring John--that the President couldn't have made a better selection. We are the poorer here in the House without the benefit of his wisdom, experience and guidance, but I know he will well serve the men and women in uniform, and he will well serve his President of the United States. Lastly, I would say that John and I also parked near each other. John did have a really sweet parking space in the Rayburn garage on G-3, and if there's only one good thing that has happened in the House as a result of his departure, it's now that I get to park in his parking space. So I thank you for organizing this Special Order, Mr. King, and I yield back to you.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, all throughout history, there's been the big lie, and we've got the big lie going here again. It goes like this: Republicans won't let us have health care reform. Republicans are the Party of No. Why are Republicans stopping us from reforming health care? Well, I'm going to tell you something--the Democrats have won the last two elections because we did such a bang-up job. But the fact of the matter is, there are 257 of them. There are only 177 of us, although it looks like a bigger number over here today. We couldn't stop a one-car parade. This health care discussion is a fight between the left and the far left. And sadly for the Democratic majority, they've got people in their party that think that this health care proposal proposed by the far left is wacky. It takes $500 billion out of Medicare. You do nothing with the lawyers as they file lawsuits and cause doctors to practice defensive medicine. This is a bad bill. They can't even get their own team to row the boat, but they want to say, Republicans don't want to reform health care.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank my friend from Alaska for yielding. I want to commend our good friend and colleague, Ms. Herseth Sandlin, from South Dakota, for her hard work in bringing this bill to the floor today. I understand she has been delayed by travel difficulties, but I am honored to be the lead Republican on this particular bill. I am also pleased to indicate that the lead sponsor in the 110th Congress was Ralph Regula, Representative Ralph Regula. It was his vision that really started this program as ``Ohio View'' in 1998. It began as a pilot program through a partnership between the United States Geological Survey and several universities in the State of Ohio. Originally called ``Ohio View,'' the program expanded nationwide beginning in 2000 and is currently active in 35 States across the country. The AmericaView program helps States and territories access the Federal Government's nonclassified satellite and airborne imagery. It provides remote sensing data to communities in order to manage resources, plan for natural disasters, and respond to security threats. The National Land Remote Sensing Outreach Act will maintain a nationwide AmericaView program and advance the availability of distribution and use of remote sensing data in each State. This bill will also expand remote sensing education as well as award grants to educational institutions and State and local governments to develop these programs. There is a growing need for geospatial technology professionals, and this funding will bring remote sensing into K-12 classrooms across the country, strengthening students' science skills. The AmericaView program has been valuable to communities across the Nation. I believe it is an effective use of taxpayer money. Again, I want to thank Congresswoman Herseth Sandlin for introducing the bill again this Congress, and I appreciate very much the work of the Natural Resources Committee in improving the legislation. I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Madam Speaker, I rise to object to the process by which the majority has brought the continuing resolution to the floor of the House of Representatives. While we can all agree that it is sometimes necessary to adopt a continuing resolution to keep federal government programs running in the new fiscal year as the respective Appropriations Subcommittees finalize their conference reports, attaching the resolution to the conference report for appropriations for the Legislative Branch is inappropriate and a direct attempt by the majority to stifle debate in this House. Further, Madam Speaker, the majority's action in this instance is just one more swipe at the minority in a pattern that began at the start of this body's deliberation on Appropriations bills earlier this summer. It has continued to stifle debate throughout the process by restricting the minority's ability to offer amendments to these important funding bills. Over the summer months in which we considered all 12 appropriations bills, the majority's structured rules permitted the minority to offer just over 100 amendments, of which only approximately 50 per cent were on substantive issues directly impacting policy and/or program funding levels. That's just 50 amendments on real policy, impacting government spending on specific programs across the entire federal government. Following on this abysmal stifling of Republican amendments on these bills, Madam Speaker, next the majority has again found a way to prevent meaningful debate on the funding resolution which continues to keep the government open by attaching it to the conference report on the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill. Since the conference report cannot be amended, there was no opportunity for another point of view in continuing the government's operations. Madam Speaker, this behavior is not merely frustrating, but it also works directly against the very backbone of our nation--a democracy with free and open debate on issues. It is my sincere hope that in the future, Madam Speaker, regardless of which party holds the majority in the House, we can change course from this current process and instead open these important spending bills, including the continuing resolution, to amendment through an open process.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the chairman for yielding. This is my 15th year in the Congress, and I am constantly amazed at how both parties are able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. When the new administration came into office in January, I was excited as a Republican when he and our former colleague, the Secretary of Transportation, said we don't want to deal with infrastructure for 18 months. We are going to kick this thing down the road until after the next election. I thought, my, what a wonderful opportunity for the Republican Party to regain its leadership role in transportation. And when I say ``historical,'' I talk about Abraham Lincoln and the Transcontinental Railway, about Dwight Eisenhower and the National Highway System. The chairman referenced President Ronald Reagan. George H.W. Bush signed the first comprehensive highway bill in 1991 called ISTEA. We only ran into a problem during the reauthorization of what is now known as SAFETEA-LU, when, sadly, a Republican administration decided we only needed $256 billion out of a Highway Trust Fund that had more than that to solve all of the problems in this country. So, as a result, we argued, we wrangled, and we finally compromised, but the bill was 2 years late. And when it was 2 years late, we didn't deliver the money to the States to do the projects, and people couldn't have jobs. Now, for my good friend the new Member from Illinois, I just want to set the table. This debate today, there are only a couple of games in town. One is the President has said he doesn't want to deal with this for 18 months. That will cause a loss of jobs. Our friends on the other side of the Capitol, they don't want to deal with it for 18 months. My friends who object now to this 3-month extension, what they are objecting to is not a 3-month extension. As the chairman correctly pointed out, we do this like changing our socks around here. This is not a big deal. But by passing the 3-month extension, you would give the only person in town who believes, and I got a bet on him, I got 10 bucks bet on the chairman, that he can get a highway bill done in 3 months. And if you don't like taxes, you argue against it later. You fight about it later. But all this says is the only guy that is willing to do a full 6-year bill and will figure it out to put people back to work and do infrastructure in this country, Jim Oberstar, the chairman of the committee, we are not going to let you do that. We are going to take the 18-month extension from the Senate and we are going to be done. I am telling you, it is just wrong. It is just wrong. The chairman needs to have the ability to put this forward. And the Republican Party, despite some members of our leadership, needs to stand up and say, you know what? Republicans, unlike what my friend from Oregon said, Republicans believe in infrastructure. We helped build this country. And to turn our backs on that now to try and score some cheap political point, as the gentleman said, is outlandish. You need to vote for this thing. Get over it, and let's do the extension.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the Speaker for the recognition and thank the minority leader for this hour. I'm going to be joined by my good friend, Mr. Nunes, from California and Mr. McCotter, who is on his way. I want to talk tonight, Mr. Speaker--most folks in America recognize the picture to my left. It's Larry the Cable Guy. And if you watch Larry the Cable Guy, his line is get 'er done. And get 'er done is a good way to entertain somebody in a movie. I would suggest it's not such a good way to run the United States of America. Sadly, since the beginning of this year, we have had a majority in this House and in the other body and at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that has taken the attitude of just get 'er done. And that can lead sadly to some unfortunate consequences. The first get 'er done was we were told we had to have an economic stimulus package spending $789 billion of taxpayer money by President's Day. It was very important that the President of the United States have the opportunity to sign this bill by President's Day. So the White House's message to the Congress was get 'er done. And the leadership of this House got it done. Sadly, they were embarrassed because included--and we're going to talk a little bit later in the hour--in the bowels of that stimulus package, which, by the way, was 1,100 pages long and Members of the House got 90 minutes to read it so I doubt many people read it--so people were embarrassed because they didn't read the bill to find out that in the bill was an authorization to give the insurance company AIG, which has received more, billions and billions of dollars, from the taxpayer, bonuses totaling $173 million. Well, then the next get 'er done came along--and everybody knows we have a problem with the automobile industry in this country. And rather than wrapping up their affairs and going through a bankruptcy the old fashioned American way, the message from the White House was we gotta get 'er done in 40 days. Can you imagine a 40-day bankruptcy for Chrysler, the third largest automobile manufacturer in this country and for General Motors, the largest. And the get 'er done there has been a lot of collateral damage. We have seen plants all across the country closed; we have seen about 50,000 auto workers about to be thrown out of their jobs. We have seen parts suppliers not get paid for manufacturing and making the parts that go into the cars. And we will talk a little bit later about the car dealers. Some brainiac decided that car dealers were a problem in this country and so therefore we have had to get 'er done; we had to close about 3,000 auto dealerships in this country, and we're going to talk about that, too. But, again, just like the economic stimulus bill, get 'er done is not really a good way to run the country because the other collateral damage that has occurred here recently is there are about 50,000 people that didn't work for General Motors, worked for companies like Delphi, that had their health insurance through General Motors, and guess what? Nobody cared at all about what happens to their health care. So while some of the UAW members that work for General Motors and Chrysler are now secured by stock ownership in the new companies, these 50,000 workers don't have any health care. Then we came along to what at least in my State is a pretty controversial issue, the cap-and-trade legislation. Some folks on my side called it the ``cap-and-tax'' legislation. And basically, when fully implemented, I believe it will drive any job that's left in the State of Ohio out of the State of Ohio. But, again, there's a way to do things here. I've been here for 15 years, and the way legislation usually works is somebody has an idea. We talk about it. We have hearings. They bring it to the floor. Members who have other good ideas have the opportunity to amend that legislation, and then we vote on it. Well, cap-and-trade, sadly, came to the floor, and at 3 o'clock in the morning--I think we voted on the bill on a Friday, and at 3 o'clock Friday morning, in a 1,200-page bill--which, again, nobody had read. They put in 309 new pages at 3 o'clock in the morning, and then we voted on the bill later in the day. And, again, get 'er done. But we were told we had to get it done by July 4. So the White House called up the House, said get 'er done. Leadership said to their troops, get 'er done, and they got it done. But just like in the stimulus bill, people are embarrassed, because in those 309 pages, which nobody read, they have found out that this cap-and-trade legislation, aside from dealing with carbon emissions and setting up a whole new speculative system, derivative system to trade carbon credits, it regulates water coolers. If you have one of those water coolers in your house or at the office with the big jugs you've got to tip over, that's going to be subject to regulation. If you have a hot tub or spa outside your house, that's regulated under the cap-and-trade legislation. And people were really surprised that Christmas lights are regulated under the cap-and-trade legislation. Now, listen, all of us want to deal with climate change, but you're going to have to go a long way to convince me that Christmas lights are somehow leading to global warming. So that's in the cap-and-trade bill. So get 'er done isn't really a good way to run the country. And now this week, thankfully, they were not able to get 'er done on health care. The proposal going through the committees of this House-- again, the White House said we've got to get 'er done by August 1, which is tomorrow. Everybody began moving around. But a funny thing happened on the way to get 'er done. Some conservative Democrats, Blue Dog Democrats, said, We don't think the government should be in the business of running the health care system and we should have a United States health care policy in this country. And the previous speaker, Mr. Price, was talking. This bill, again, get 'er done won't take care of it because there are some scary things in this legislation. One piece of it is, for the first time in our Nation's history under the national policy, end-of-life counseling will be available. Well, that's good. I happen to be a big supporter of hospice and all the wonderful work they do at the end of a person's life. But the problem with end-of-life counseling in this bill is that to get the cost savings that they want to achieve, you have to control cost. And so many of the models are taken from Great Britain and Canada, and in those systems there is a board, as the President wants to set up, that determines what procedures are covered, what drugs are covered, and what are not. And just by way of example, the same board over in the United Kingdom, it's called NICE. So who could be against something nice? But NICE doesn't cover drugs for people with Alzheimer's, doesn't cover drugs for people with breast cancer, doesn't cover some drugs for people with prostate cancer. And the best one was macular degeneration, which is a degeneration of the eye and can lead to blindness. They won't approve the most effective drug. They approve the second-most effective drug, but this NICE board has determined that you can only get treatment in one eye. And so if you go to Great Britain in about 5 years, you're going to see a bunch of folks running around that look like pirates with eye patches because the NICE board is only going to let them take care of one eye. I will yield to my friend from California.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank my friend very much. You make a great point, and I think I want to reinforce that point. There have been some speakers that have come to the floor during the last few days saying that somehow Republicans are the Party of No and we don't want to reform health care and we're blocking this great health care proposal that they have. Well, that's not true. There are 178 Republican Members of the House of Representatives, 247 Democratic Members of the House of Representatives, and they can do whatever they want, whenever they want.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, they got more.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. That would be 218. So 47 people can leave the reservation and you still have a piece of legislation. So we're not preventing them from doing anything. As a matter of fact, we have four or five good pieces of legislation on health care that solve the problems of the doughnut hole and Medicare part D, take care of the uninsured in this country that don't have insurance. And not only that, it's a sad situation that leads to a lot of cost shifting for people who do have insurance, deals with making sure that you can't be excluded from health care if you have a preexisting condition. But nobody will talk to our side of the aisle. And the attitude since the beginning of this year has been, we've got 258 votes, and we're going to do what we want when we want, and when we want your ideas, we'll ask you. And it's unfortunate that we haven't been asked. But we are certainly not blocking what it is they're attempting to do. They are, at the moment, having a fight amongst themselves. You have conservative Democrats versus liberal Democrats, and they can't figure it out. And once they're all on the same page, they can pass it, and pass it in the Senate, and the President clearly wants to sign it.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. And the gentleman is hiding his light under a bushel basket because the other thing that his piece of legislation does that this piece of legislation that's being debated now does not do is that you bend the cost curve. Two of the reasons that we're having a health care debate in this Congress are, one, to get better quality health care and take better care of people in this country, but two is to rein in the cost. Now, one of the reasons that we don't have a bill this week and that they couldn't get 'er done was that the Congressional Budget Office came back and scored it, at one point, that this didn't save money. It was actually going to add $1.6 trillion to the debt. And to be completely bipartisan, because my friend brought up the Wall Street bailout, that was George W. Bush. That was Hank Paulson, his Treasury Secretary, that came to Capitol Hill with a three-page bill--can you imagine, a three-page bill--and said, you've got to give us $700 billion to go to Wall Street or the world is going to come to an end. So you take that $700 billion, you take the $700 billion--

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Right.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I do.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Right. The gentleman is absolutely right. But if you take the $700 billion from the Bush administration, $789 billion from the stimulus package, you take the auto bailout--which is tipping $60 billion, $70 billion--you take the budget that the President sent up here that the majority passed of $3.5 trillion, you really are talking real money. And a lot of folks come to the floor and talk about, well, this is a debt that's going to be passed on to our children and our grandchildren. That's true. But even those of us in our middle age are going to have a problem with this because we have to borrow it, and you have to borrow it from places like China, and you borrow it at higher and higher interest rates. And so it's not only a debt that needs to be repaid some day, the interest on the debt is eventually going to strangle this budget.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I would be happy to yield to my friend from Michigan.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I'm happy to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Wow.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Reclaiming my time, it's my understanding that the Web site has crashed at least twice.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. It's a great program.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman has just indicated why they can't ``get 'er done.'' They want to get all these things done, but the fact of the matter is they're not getting them done. And the figures that I saw, there are 16,000 dealers across the country that have entered into this program; so you're not talking about millions of applications that need to be processed. You're talking about 16,000 dealers, and even if the entire billion was exhausted, that's 200,000 cars, and they can't get it done. So if this health care thing gets out of here where the government runs health care, I really don't want to have any heart problems, because you might wind up with a '57 Chevy engine in your chest.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. That will be comforting. I want to get back to AIG for just a second because that was the first ``get 'er done,'' the stimulus package. Folks were embarrassed that they actually found out that they had authorized, by voting for the stimulus bill, these exorbitant bonuses going to AIG executives. And just a week ago Saturday, it's been like 3 weeks now, this was the headline in the Washington Post: ``AIG Plans Millions More in Bonuses. Troubled Insurer is in Talks With U.S. Over Another $250 Million in Bonuses to Their Executives.'' And why it's important that we follow things like regular order, and people say nobody pays attention to process here, but why you can't have an 1,100-page bill filed at midnight and expect people to know what's going on and why goofy things happen is because that's not the way we are supposed to govern. ``Get 'er done'' is not a way to govern. So in the stimulus bill, this chart shows the paragraph that was included in the stimulus bill that specifically, these 40 or so words, specifically said that any bonus that was agreed to before February 11 of this year, which was the day the stimulus bill passed, was protected. And then the $173 million in bonuses were paid to AIG, and I saw the President on television. He said, I'm shocked. We had people on the floor on this side of the aisle, I'm shocked. Well, you shouldn't be shocked. If you had done the bill in the way that the Founding Fathers intended it to be done and if you gave people more than 90 minutes to read 1,100 pages, they wouldn't have been shocked. They would have known and they would have had a choice: Do you want to authorize $173 million for bonuses? If you do, vote ``yes.'' If you don't, why don't you fix the thing?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Sure.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Yes.