Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, you know that I consider the gentleman from Colorado to be a good friend of mine. I find myself, after that presentation, though, wondering if that was a cloud of smog over Denver or if it was another cloud of smoke over Denver in these days. That is just not true. It is just not true. I will start with what I am proud about because I think we do focus too often on divisions. Mr. Speaker, you know that we wanted to hold the Obama administration accountable for sound science. And now that there is a Republican in the White House, we want to hold a Republican administration accountable for sound science. So often in this town, we see one set of rules when you agree with the person in office and another set of rules when you disagree with the person in office. I don't think that is the right way to govern a country. I am proud that we are not falling into that trap. If it is good for the Obama administration, it is good for the Trump administration. Number two, there is no smoke-filled backroom deal here. Number one, there is no smoke-filled room anywhere on Capitol Hill. Speaker Boehner is gone, and smoking is banned from all of our spaces. This bill went through a full committee hearing, the full committee process. So often, Mr. Speaker, you know at the beginning of a year like this one, we are trying to move legislation to the floor quickly. Some things that we have already had hearings and debate on, like this bill, from last Congress, we bring to the floor outside of regular order, and we skip the committee hearing process. Not so with this bill. It went through the Science, Space, and Technology Committee for a full hearing. Mr. Speaker, we talk about transparency as if it exists at the EPA. I will remind my friend from Colorado, Mr. Speaker, we have to issue subpoenas from the United States Congress to get the EPA to share its data with us, notwithstanding to get them to share it with the University of Georgia or Georgia Tech or Caltech, or wherever the best scientific minds of the day are. We have to issue subpoenas to get them to share that information. Clearly, transparency is not the norm, it is the exception. We talk about costs. My friend references $1 billion in costs from some study, apparently, not a peer-review study. I have not seen the data backing up this study. But the good news is I don't actually need the study. I have the bill itself, Mr. Speaker, and I will turn to the relevant part here. Paragraph 5, clarify that the administrator shall implement this section in a matter that does not exceed $1 million per year from the amounts otherwise authorized to be appropriated. Now, you don't have to spend the entire million dollars, Mr. Speaker, but in the name of transparency, to make sure that folks have access to the data, we have said it is worth investing resources but not to exceed $1 million. Finally, Mr. Speaker, we talk about the burden of red tape. I don't know if you have had to deal with the EPA or the DOT or the DOD or the DOE--insert DO acronym here--red tape is abundant in this Federal Government, and asking the Federal Government to be transparent is the antithesis of red tape. Since when did it become a burden on the institutions of government to be transparent with the American people? Since when, when you are making rules and regulations that affect the lives of every single American, did it become a burden to share the data on which those regulations are based? I will say to you, Mr. Speaker, we get wrapped around the axle so often here that we end up getting further and further from our goals. Sharing data, getting peer-reviewed comments on that data, and having folks come out in support of the conclusions reached on that data are going to make us stronger as a nation not weaker. If you are proud of your underlying data, you should be proud to share that data. If you are embarrassed of your underlying data, I understand why you might want to keep it a secret. We have an opportunity not to hide from science but to embrace science, we have an opportunity not to reach political conclusions but scientific conclusions, and we have an opportunity to restore the American people's trust in the institutions of government that are issuing these regulations. This is a small step in the right direction with the HONEST Act, Mr. Speaker, but it is an important step in the right direction. I hope my colleagues will support it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate all the hard work the Rules Committee chairman has done in this bill. Mr. Speaker, I have the great pleasure of serving on the Rules Committee, but I am the designee to the Budget Committee. This whole process that we are going through is a Budget Committee process. It is called reconciliation. And as folks have talked about it, they have talked about what the Ways and Means Committee has done and what the Energy and Commerce Committee did. But then those two bills come together in the Budget Committee, and we move the process forward. I can't help but notice my colleagues' frustration with the amendments that have been made to this bill along the way. Generally, we celebrate amendments that are made along the way because they improve the work product. We do them together. I point here, Mr. Speaker, to a tweet that the President sent out the day the healthcare bill was introduced. The President said: ``Our wonderful new HealthCare Bill is now out for review and negotiation.'' And that was true. It was out for review so everyone could read it, and it was out for negotiation so that everyone could improve it. We did that in the Budget Committee. We had four motions to instruct that passed in the Budget Committee to provide Medicaid flexibility, to make sure the tax credits were targeted to the right populations, to ensure that able-bodied, working Americans had those incentives to both get health care and be able to go back to work. Now, every committee didn't have that experience. As my colleagues have asked for a bipartisan process, you will remember that the Energy and Commerce Committee spent 10 hours debating the title of the bill. They spent 10 hours debating Democratic amendments to change the title of the bill. Folks, we have opportunity after opportunity to make things better, but it is incumbent upon us to choose that opportunity to make things better. So often we get wrapped around the partisan action. Folks let that opportunity slip away. I am glad that we didn't do that. Mr. Speaker, when I talk about what we did in the Budget Committee to make it better, I am talking about focusing on the real problems. There is not a member in this body that doesn't understand that what is contributing to the ObamaCare death spiral is that young people are not enrolling. Young people are not enrolling. More Americans rejected ObamaCare and filed for an exemption or agreed to pay the penalty than enrolled in ObamaCare. I don't care how big your heart was when you passed the bill, you have to concede that wasn't what you intended. And we can do better. My friends are talking about the essential health benefits plan today. Young people are particularly sensitive to that. They are price sensitive in that way. We are talking in the Budget Committee about how to preserve that flexibility for States to design plans that are right for them. How many times today have we heard folks say that prices are going to increase for Americans between the age of 54 and 64? I have heard it at least a dozen times. At the same time, my friends are demanding that every healthcare plan in the State of Georgia cover maternity benefits for those women between the age of 54 and 64. At the same time, my friends are demanding that every plan in Georgia cover pediatric benefits for those empty nesters between 54 and 64. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. We in Georgia know it doesn't make sense, and we can do better. Mr. Speaker, 45 percent of the almost 20 million people who rejected the Affordable Care Act and agreed to pay the fine or file an exemption instead were under the age of 35. There is not a serious thinker in this room who believes we can solve the insurance crisis in this country without getting these folks back into the marketplace. And that is what we did in the Budget Committee. That is what we have done throughout this entire amendment process, and that is what the amendments we considered in the Rules Committee this morning did as well. Mr. Speaker, since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, many States have had to pass a lot of legislation in order to conform their plans to new one-size-fits-all Federal mandates. But that is not the story. The story is that, at the same time, States were passing their own benefit mandates to serve their constituency better. Mr. Speaker, Chairman Session's State of Texas passed a mandate that orally administered anticancer medication be covered. The gentleman from Texas has seen those groups in his office. He has seen those families struggling. And what Texas said is: To respond to our people, we are going to require every plan sold in the State of Texas cover these issues. In my home State, Mr. Speaker, we created a commission to look at annually how to add more benefits, change those benefits, make sure we are being responsive to folks in the best way that we can. The gentleman from Colorado, his State did the very same thing. They required coverage for acupuncture services. They required the selling of child-only plans. They required coverage for fetal alcohol syndrome. We do these things collaboratively, and we do these things together. Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of the rule and passage of the underlying legislation.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your agreeing to be down here with me tonight. I came down to talk about health care, but I actually have a personal story I want to tell before that begins, right there in the middle of the realm of health care, a friend of mine back home in Georgia. His name is Jon Richards. Mr. Speaker, you have folks like Jon Richards in your district, people who just believe that, if only they work hard enough and long enough, they can make things better for their entire community. Jon is one of those folks. And what I love most about Jon is he looks for those things that other folks aren't doing. You know, there are those folks back home. Everybody wants that glamorous job. Everybody wants to do that thing that comes with the perks or the fringe benefits. Jon Richards was attracted to those jobs that he knew would matter, that he knew needed to get done but other folks weren't filling those shoes. Mr. Speaker, I tell you this about Jon because Jon was diagnosed with liver cancer; and as is always true when you have a friend get diagnosed with cancer, you believe that they are going to be better. I learned this week that Jon has been moved to hospice and isn't getting better. Mr. Speaker, Jon was one of the first folks to give me even the time of day when I thought about seeking this opportunity to serve. Jon was the first person there every Saturday morning when breakfast was getting started for the Gwinnett County Republican Party, and he was the last one to leave when the Young Republicans down at the University of Georgia were finishing up. It was young people that were his passion, Mr. Speaker. Jon saw a Republican Party that he worried was going to become more closed. He worked to open it up. Jon saw a Republican Party that was getting grayer. He was working with young people who were our future. Jon saw a Republican Party that had an opportunity to make a difference, and he seized that opportunity every single day. In 2014, Mr. Speaker, the entire State of Georgia, Georgia Republican Party, named Jon Richards the Volunteer of the Year. Truth be told, he would have won that honor every single year, you just can't give it to somebody over and over again. I think Jon appreciated that. If you go back and try to look for pictures of Jon so you can put a name with a face, Mr. Speaker, you are likely not to see too many. He was also the guy who had the camera around his neck taking pictures of everybody else, making sure that everybody else had something to remember the day by, making sure that everybody else was involved and appreciated, making sure everybody else was served. I have known Jon Richards for a long time. I have never known him to do a single thing to benefit himself. Time and time and time again, he did the things that others wouldn't do. Time and time and time again, he would pull me aside and say: Rob, I know how we can be better together. There is no replacement for Jon Richards--not in our county, not in our State, not in my life. Mr. Speaker, I haven't had much experience saying good-bye to folks over the years. I have been extremely blessed in that way. But I hope that you will join me as you say your prayers tonight in praying for my friend in hospice, Jon Richards, and for his family as he enters what will be a very long weekend for him. Mr. Speaker, Jon would be the first one to be standing outside these doors pushing us forward on healthcare reform, and he would be doing it because he sees the human condition that is affected by health care. He sees the families that have expectations, families to whom promises have been made, families to whom promises have been broken. And he knows that we can do better. Mr. Speaker, what he and I would often sit and talk about is that there are challenges in this country that absolutely, positively have to be addressed. I have friends on the right, I have friends on the left, and I often believe that if we could just sit down in a room together, we would solve them if we could agree on what the problem was. Mr. Speaker, I have a chart here. You can't see it from where you sit, but it shows you where America gets its healthcare coverage. I bring this up because that is the crux of the healthcare debate that we are having here. About 46 percent of Americans, Mr. Speaker, get their coverage from their employer. When the President was pushing the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010, he was talking about the uninsured Americans, and surely we can do more for those families who don't have access to health care. But 46 percent of Americans had access to health care, had it through their employer, were not seeking help or improvement, but in an effort to make a difference for the small percentage of Americans who are uninsured, the President and my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle chose to reregulate all health care across the country. It wasn't just the lie of the year, as the newspaper PolitiFact called it, Pinocchios--if you like your doctor, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep it. It wasn't just that that promise was broken; it is that folks who weren't seeking any help at all got caught up in this net of a new Federal regulatory scheme. Mr. Speaker, about 46 percent of Americans get their health insurance from their employer. About 17 percent of Americans are on Medicare. We have got another 17 percent of Americans that are on Medicaid or CHIP or those safety net programs. Even here today, after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, 8 percent of Americans are uninsured. Now, we have folks who are in the exchanges--they are represented here--that is about 12.4 percent of the population. We have folks who are on Medicaid represented here; that is about 11.3 percent of the population. And we have folks who don't have any insurance at all. Mr. Speaker, if we would come together to solve the problem for folks who didn't have access to health care, I believe we could have found a solution together. Instead, what we tried to do was reregulate the entire healthcare system, even for all of the Americans who were perfectly happy with their care. And it didn't work. You don't have to take my word for it, Mr. Speaker. I can quote from my big newspaper back home in my district, The Atlanta Journal- Constitution: ``Aetna to pull out of Georgia's ObamaCare insurance marketplace.'' Many counties in Georgia now, Mr. Speaker, only have one insurer to choose from. Humana has announced it is pulling out. Union Leader in New Hampshire: ``Another ACA failure Bad idea keeps getting worse.'' Over in Kaiser Health News in Arkansas: ``Largest U.S. Health Insurer Pulls Out of Health Exchanges in Georgia, Arkansas.'' From The Washington Post: ``Aetna chief executive says ObamaCare is in a `death spiral.' '' And from the Courier-Tribune in North Carolina: ``Blue Cross projects $400 million loss in NC on ACA in just two years.'' Mr. Speaker, while we can argue about whether we correctly identified the problem to begin with, while we can argue about whether or not we crafted the right solution to begin with, what is undisputed is that the Affordable Care Act is failing, and it is taking American families down with it. That is not just the newspapers talking, Mr. Speaker. I will quote from former President Barack Obama. In August of last year, he says: ``Despite this progress''--he is talking about the progress of the ACA--``too many Americans still strain to pay for their physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles, or pay their monthly insurance bills; struggle to navigate a complex, sometimes bewildering system; and remain uninsured.'' Twenty million Americans remain uninsured. After all of the President's efforts, he still recognized in August of last year there was much more to be done because the efforts that he tried failed. Governor Mark Dayton, a Democrat from Minnesota, in October of last year, he says: ``The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable. . . . '' The aspiration was that premiums would come down by $2,500, but the reality is that premiums were going up by double digits, and in some cases triple digits. The Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable. And former President Bill Clinton, in October of last year, Mr. Speaker, he said: ``So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world.'' There is a group of people, mostly small-business owners and employees, who make just a little too much money to qualify for Medicaid expansion or for the tax incentives who can't get affordable health insurance premiums in a lot of places. Mr. Speaker, I don't believe health care is a partisan issue. Regulation and how we use it may be a partisan issue. Federal control of whether we should use it may be a partisan issue, but providing Americans access to health care is an American issue, and every one of these Democrats I have just cited recognize the failures of the current system. I don't say that, Mr. Speaker, to try to point the finger of blame. I say it because either we believe that everything is working just great and we should all pack our bags and head back home to the district, or we believe that there are American families in crisis that are calling on us to serve them. You can't see this map, Mr. Speaker, but it shows some of that crisis. In just 1 year, from 2016 to 2017, Mr. Speaker, the number of counties in America that only have one insurer to choose from quintupled. I will say that again. In just 1 year, from 2016 to 2017, so severe is the death spiral of the exchanges across the country, the number of American counties that no longer have choices and are limited to a single insurer has increased 500 percent. Mr. Speaker, the number of counties that only have one insurer is represented here in the color of orange. You see it in 2016, you see it in 2017. Five entire States, Mr. Speaker, in a healthcare system that was designed to provide consumers with choices, have no choice of insurer whatsoever. I say that because we have gotten wrapped around the political axle here, Mr. Speaker, as if somehow if you are on the Republican side of the aisle, you cannot recognize that the Affordable Care Act achieved any successes whatsoever, and if you are on the Democratic side of the aisle, you can't recognize that the Affordable Care Act has failed anyone in any way whatsoever. Both of those positions are nonsense. I tell you that if you have spent a trillion dollars on this program--and you have--I hope a family has been helped. I know some families that have been helped. But I also know families that have been crushed. We need to repeal the Affordable Care Act for those families that have been crushed, and we need to replace the Affordable Care Act for those families that have been helped because that help is rapidly eroding. Mr. Speaker, I want you to think about the thought, the idea that is the Affordable Care Act. The idea is we are going to provide these choices, and then we are going to provide these government subsidies, and folks are going to have access to health care for the very first time. It is a wonderful idea: provide choice, provide support, provide access. The reality is, though, Mr. Speaker, with those choices, with those subsidies, with that offer of access, almost 20 million Americans said: Forget it, I am out. Now, you remember this whole plan was put together where the IRS comes and fines you if you are out. So what began as an idea that said, ``We are going to provide you with choice, we are going to provide you with support, and that is going to get you your access,'' 20 million Americans have decided that plan has so failed them, they would rather pay the IRS a penalty to the tune of $4 billion last year--rather, pay the IRS a penalty than access the Affordable Care Act. That is a failure. It is a failure. Who is it failing most, Mr. Speaker? If you look at those folks who are in this almost 20 million pool, 45 percent of them are age 35 or younger. I don't fall under the age category of 35 and under, Mr. Speaker, but I can tell you that folks who are 35 and under cost less to take care of than folks who are my age bracket and older. So if you are going to try to craft a national insurance system, you need these people who are 35 and under to be involved--enthusiastically involved. Rather than getting involved with the choices and with the subsidies to get the access, 20 million Americans have said: It is not for me. I will pay the fine instead. Most of them young people. If we can't agree that that is a failure, Mr. Speaker, if we can't agree that the system can't stand in that way, we are going to have a tough time finding a solution. What you heard so often today about the solution that is being proposed in this body is that older Americans are getting the toughest end of the deal. There is a little truth to that, Mr. Speaker. What the Affordable Care Act did is it said you have young, healthy people; you have older people who are likely to be sicker. The law of the land at the time was that the cost spread between the youngest and the oldest could be 500 percent, 5 times more for the oldest, highest risk people than the youngest, lowest risk people. Sure, it is insurance, right? Older cars, different pricing than newer cars. Houses with sprinkler systems, different prices than houses without sprinkler systems. It is just actuarial experience. But the Affordable Care Act says we are going to compress that from one to five, a 500 percent spread, down to one to three, a 300 percent spread. What that did was lower rates below the actuarial experience for older Americans--that was great for older Americans--and, at the same time, raise rates for younger Americans, which forced all the younger Americans out of the marketplace, which then raised rates for all Americans. I will quote from Grace-Marie Turner. She is the president of the Galen Institute. She testified in front of the Committee on the Budget this year on this issue. She said this, Mr. Speaker: `` . . . young people purchasing individual policies in or out of the exchanges are required to pay much more for their policies than their actuarially-expected costs because of the law's required 3:1 age rating band. Forcing the young to pay more drives costs up for everyone. ``The average 64-year-old consumes six times as much health care, in dollar value, as the average 21-year-old.'' Insurance is about experience. There is a 1 in 100 chance of something bad happening to you, you pay 1 one-hundredth of the price of that bad episode, 100 of you get in the pool together, you share the risk. Actuarially, a 64-year-old consumes six times more health care than a young person. But we compressed that to three times in terms of the billing. Dr. Turner goes on to say this: ``Under the ACA's age-rating requirements, insurers cannot charge their oldest policyholders more than three times the price they charge their youngest customers.'' If every customer were to remain in the insurance market, this would have the net effect of increasing premiums for 21-year-olds by 75 percent, and reducing them for 64-year-olds by 13 percent. Now, think about this. This is the system that we have created. If you can get the young people to stay in the system--which you cannot--the young people are paying rates 75 percent higher than they should so that older Americans can pay premiums 13 percent lower than they should. But we are losing all the young people because 77 percent is forcing these folks out. They are not dumb folks. They are making good choices about their own self-interests. If their insurance prices are too high, they reject the insurance. An individual in my district, Mr. Speaker, from Buford, Georgia, wrote to me and said: Rob, I am a full-time student with a part-time job that doesn't offer health or dental insurance. I can't get health insurance through my parents because they are on Medicare. I shop for health plans, but most are out of my budget. I shouldn't have to pay a fine if a healthcare plan is not in my budget. There should be alternatives to this plan. Please help. Say young people don't want insurance. I don't believe that is true. I do think young people believe they are going to live forever and they are never going to get sick. But they do worry about that rainy day, forbid the thought, should something bad happen. But you can't buy a policy you can't afford, and we have priced these young people out of the marketplace. When we price young people out of the marketplace, rates go up for everybody. When rates go up for everybody, more young people drop out of the marketplace. And that death spiral that Aetna's CEO recognized, grows faster and faster. Which brings us to the solution that we are working on here together. I don't know what you thought of President Trump when you first met him, Mr. Speaker. I don't know what you thought of the campaign and how things were going to transpire in these first 60 days of a new administration. But I think a lot of folks in my district imagined the President as a take-it-or-leave-it kind of guy, my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy. I think you would agree with me that nothing could be further from the truth in our experience. This is what he tweeted out. As you know, that is our new method of communication here in Washington, D.C. This is what he tweeted out when this House dropped its healthcare bill. He said: ``Our wonderful new healthcare bill is now out for review and negotiation. ObamaCare is a complete and total disaster--is imploding fast.'' It is out for review and negotiation. And those weren't just words, Mr. Speaker. You have seen it. You have seen it going on this week. You have seen it going on even to the eleventh hour. The President has never said: My way or the highway. He has brought people in from every end of the political spectrum to work with them on their ideas, to work to see what we could do more for children, more for the near elderly, more for families, how do we get the incentives in the right place. Day in and day out, 16, 17, 20 hours a day, the President has been working to make this better. I could not feel better about the process. I don't believe any particular party has a monopoly on good ideas. I don't believe any particular Member has a monopoly on good ideas. I believe we work best when we work collaboratively. And I am so proud of our President for embracing exactly that--the art of a deal. Mr. Speaker, there are four main parts of our replacement plan, four main parts. Number one, Medicaid reforms to allow States the freedom to run their own Medicaid programs. I serve on the Rules Committee with Liz Cheney from Wyoming. I promise you, the rural nature in the low-population area of Wyoming means she needs a very different Medicaid program than the high- density, high-population area of metro Atlanta that I serve. So often, the State programs dictated by the Federal Government lock States in to a one-size-fits-all solution. Or the States can come begging to Washington, D.C., for an exception or an exemption or a waiver. You shouldn't have to come beg Washington, D.C., to best serve your constituents, Mr. Speaker. We give folks the flexibility to run these State-based programs to serve the most vulnerable of State populations. Number two, a patient and State stability fund. Mr. Speaker, the challenge at any insurance pool is what do you do with the sickest of the individuals in that pool. If I buy insurance today and I am not yet sick, well, now I am in the insurance pool and I am paying for whatever my actuarial risk is. But forbid the thought if somebody has already gotten sick, they have been fighting illness their entire life, they are trying to run their small business, and they show up to buy a new insurance policy, they have struggled mightily throughout my lifetime to get access to coverage. Now, in 1996, President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, right here on this very floor of the House, passed a bill that abolished preexisting conditions for every federally regulated plan. Those are the plans that the big companies use, like Coca-Cola, Home Depot, or Walmart. All of those plans, those big employer-based plans, the Federal Government abolished preexisting conditions in those plans decades ago. But States have moved a little bit slower. And the mechanism that many States are trying to use as high-risk pools to say that when folks find themselves ailing and trying to find insurance for the first time, perhaps they need a different kind of medical home, perhaps they need a different incentivize to get into the insurance pool. These high-risk pools are funded in order to make insurance available, accessible, and affordable for folks who have preexisting conditions and are outside the insurance pool today. We have got to get them on the inside. We provide money to do that. Personal tax credits, Mr. Speaker. Refundable, advanceable personal tax credits. What we say in this bill is, you don't have to pick a plan off of an ObamaCare exchange that isn't right for you and your family. You don't have to wait for the government to approve what your choices are. You can pick any plan, anywhere that serves your needs that you believe is best for your family. And if you are a middle-income or low- income American, we will help you defray the cost of that insurance policy. Now, everybody has got skin in the game. There is no free lunch here, Mr. Speaker. Everybody has to have skin in the game. We are putting people in charge of their own choices. But if you are a 63-year-old couple and your kids have left the house, we ask: Do you need to buy a policy that covers maternity care? Is it important to you that you have a policy that covers pediatric care? Or, because you are in that older American status, you are in that age bracket where the actuaries say you are likely to consume six times more health care dollarwise than young people do should you be able to pick and choose those benefits so that you get the policy that provides the best value for you and your family. These personal tax credits go to the individual, so the individual can make choices about what is best for them. And it creates health savings accounts. Oh, Mr. Speaker, I did not understand the economics of health care until I got my first medical savings account. I thought health care costs $50 a visit, because that is what my copay was. When I got my first medical savings account, my insurer sent me a list. And they said: Rob, if you want to go to the doctor for a CT scan, you can go to this one down the road that charges $200, or you can go to this one down the road that charges $2,000. You just do whatever you think is best. I went and looked last night, Mr. Speaker. If you want to go in for a CT scan in Washington, D.C.--we have fabulous hospitals here--you can go to George Washington University right down the street here in Foggy Bottom, and if you have a United plan, the cost is going to be $1,500 for your CT scan. If instead of driving west to George Washington University, you drive north to Howard University, you can go to Howard University hospital and get the same CT scan for $200. Mr. Speaker, I can't bring down health insurance costs unless I bring down healthcare costs. And I can't bring down healthcare costs unless we have transparency in healthcare pricing so that you and I and 300 million Americans become more active consumers of these products. Health savings accounts give us that opportunity. But I can't solve all of our healthcare problems in one bill. And shame on this Congress for having created the expectations across a decade of stuffing giant bills through this body at one time, that we have come to set expectations that we can do everything for everybody in a single bill. We can't. And even if we could, we shouldn't. Taking issues one at a time leads to better legislating. So we have a three-phase approach here, Mr. Speaker. First, we are going to pass the American Health Care Act, which repeals the Affordable Care Act taxes and penalties, it replaces the mandates with policies that will stabilize markets and increase individual choices. We are going to do that tomorrow morning. Then comes the administrative action: What can we do through the White House? You will remember when they passed the Affordable Care Act, they delegated much of that authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Today, that Secretary is my good friend from across the river in Georgia, Dr. Tom Price. So the second phase is for Dr. Tom Price to grab ahold of those dials that he has at Health and Human Services and make those changes that will encourage choice and lower prices, stabilize markets. And then third, we are going to come back to this body, back to this floor, back to the United States Senate and pass stand-alone legislation that authorizes association health plans, that promotes competition in insurance, that deals with the IPAB repeal, and on and on. In fact, we have begun that this week, Mr. Speaker. There are two legislative processes. There is the process where you can pass something in the Senate with 51 votes. That is called reconciliation. And there is the process where you have to deal with the filibuster in the Senate. That is for everything else. Mr. Speaker, right now, we are still getting the rust out of the gears here in this body. There are lots of new Members here. We have got a chance to pass a bill tomorrow morning that can move through the Senate with 51 votes. But then we are going to be back. Like I say, we have started this week. We have already passed, in a bipartisan way, legislation to increase competition in the insurance market and legislation to allow small businesses to band together so that they can provide better plans at lower costs to their constituents. Mr. Speaker, there is some suggestion that fixing a failing ObamaCare, an ObamaCare that is in a death spiral, is somehow a partisan issue. Again, as I began, I said there are folks on the Republican side who sometimes say nothing good ever happened in ObamaCare and folks on the Democratic side who sometimes say nothing bad ever happened. But the truth is, 20 different times, this Republican-controlled House passed bills that President Obama signed into law to fix problems in the Affordable Care Act--20 different times. One of the first bills I voted on when I came to Congress was one of those bills. The President signed it into law. The Affordable Care Act--I don't need to go through the whole history with you, Mr. Speaker. You remember. It was jammed through the Senate on Christmas Eve. It moved through the House on a Sunday night at midnight with no amendments and no changes. It was not ready for prime time. It needed these fixes. And even with these fixes, the death spiral continues. But we needn't say to one another that collaborating to solve a failing ObamaCare system is anathema to what anyone believes. We have done it not once, not twice, but 20 times during the Obama Presidency alone. Mr. Speaker, I will close with this tonight. It is a Kaiser Family Foundation study. They went to folks who have policies in the Affordable Care Act exchange system, and they said: Are you better off today than you were before the passage of the Affordable Care Act? Again, these are folks who have enrolled in the Affordable Care Act. What they found is it is about 50/50. It is just this small red and green sliver, Mr. Speaker, of the entire healthcare market in this country, just this small sliver that enrolled in the Affordable Care Act. Again, almost twice as many people rejected the Affordable Care Act, are paying penalties to the IRS, and are staying out of the system as got into the system. But of those people who got into the system, about 80 percent of which are receiving Federal subsidies to stay in the system, only about half said that they are better off today than they were before. That is $1 trillion that we have spent--borrowed from our children and spent--to reform health care for 300 million Americans even though most Americans valued the plan they had, created a system where more Americans opted out and decided to pay a penalty than agreed to take the free health care that was being offered. And of those who agreed to take the health care, more than half of them believe things were better before. Mr. Speaker, I will stipulate, if it is valuable, that folks who passed the Affordable Care Act before you and I got here were trying to do the best they could to serve their constituency the best they know how, but it didn't work. Insurers are leaving the plan. Families are losing their policies. Premiums are skyrocketing double and even triple digits annually. We can do better. We can do better, and we have an opportunity to start that process tomorrow. I regret that even the word ``ObamaCare'' has become so toxic that it divides people even upon its mention. But families are being caught in that divide. Families are being caught in the political crossfire as we discuss this. The President has said: Send me a bill because I want to put a stop to that uncertainty. I want to put a stop to that insecurity. I want to put the American healthcare system back on track. We can do it together tomorrow. America needs us to do it together tomorrow, and I hope that we will. Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for agreeing to be here with me during this time tonight, and thank you for agreeing to keep my friend Jon Richards in your prayers as you lay your head down this evening. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I rarely come down during the 1-minute time of the day, and I am glad I came down this morning for Father Conroy's prayer because there really is a lot of anxiety in this country as it relates to health care. Every family in this country has health care on their mind. The gentleman from Rhode Island is exactly right. We have an opportunity to work together to fix it because we all know the ObamaCare system is failing. That is why we talk about how to fix it because we know that it is failing. President Trump said on Monday that the Republican alternative is now open for review and negotiation. He didn't say take it or leave it. He didn't say pass it before you can read it. He said open for review and negotiation. I challenge my colleagues to think about our opportunity to serve not just one constituent, but all of our constituents. Think about our opportunity to come together and put this healthcare discord behind us for a generation. I thank Father Conroy for that admonition this morning. I hope we will rise to that challenge.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, we see so much on TV. I was watching the President's press conference a little while ago. We see so much discord out there, and this opportunity that we have in the afternoon to really delve deep into the issues is so valuable to me. It is one of the only opportunities that the American people get to see us delving deeply into the issues. You and I know that we are in the committee room, we are behind closed doors in a bipartisan way grappling with all of the hardest issues that face American families, but folks don't see it and they don't feel it. Why it is we celebrate the discord instead of celebrating the discourse is a mystery to me. I bring, Mr. Speaker, today some stories about the Affordable Care Act from my district at home. It is not going to be a surprise to you that these are stories of challenges. In Cumming, Georgia--it is up in Forsyth County, Georgia, just north of Atlanta--I heard from a single mom. She has two kids, ages 11 and 13. They have a family physician that they want to hang on to. She says: I work part-time as a paralegal. I earn $25,000 a year, and I also receive child support payments. She said that she was encouraged by a health insurance company to go out and enroll in Medicaid instead, but neither of her children's doctors accept Medicaid. How often do we hear that? The solution for everything is to dump everyone into Medicaid. Medicaid is not a healthcare system. It is a healthcare payment system. You have to find a doctor who will accept a payment. This young woman's doctors do not. She said she went on healthcare.gov, filled out an application, and was offered a plan for $464 a month with a $12,600 deductible. She makes $25,000 a year, and what we have offered her is a $500-a-month policy, $464 a month, with a $12,000 deductible. That is not affordable, she said. She called an insurance broker and looked for a similar policy. They were priced the same way. She said: I have decided to pay the ObamaCare fines instead. Mr. Speaker, I tell this story because I know that every single Member of this body wants to serve the constituency that sent them here. Every single Member of this body wants to find solutions for folks back home. As we look at the numbers across the country, we find that more Americans that we purported to help with the Affordable Care Act have decided to pay a fine instead of join the exchange system. Mr. Speaker, we have more Americans opting out of the system than opting into the system because we have failed those very people we purported to help. From Buford, Georgia, Mr. Speaker: I'm a full-time student with a part-time job that doesn't offer health or dental insurance. I can't get health insurance through my parents because they are on Medicare. I shopped for health plans, but all of the ones on the exchange are out of my budget. I shouldn't have to pay a fine because I can't afford health care. Now, think about that, Mr. Speaker. This young student says: I shouldn't have to pay a fine because I can't afford the health care. If I can't afford the health care, I certainly can't afford the fine. These are the people that we purported to help with the Affordable Care Act, and they are not being served. Back in Cumming, Georgia, Mr. Speaker: Today I have been in my office for hours trying to find affordable health care that accommodates my primary care physician. Prices start for me at $750-plus. Before ObamaCare, I was paying $365 with more access to doctors. It is not just about the money, Mr. Speaker. These networks, as you know, are closing. More than one-third of the counties in America have no choice of insurance whatsoever. The networks are narrowing. Folks are not just finding it hard to pay for care, but they are finding it hard to choose their physician. A retired couple in Peachtree Corners, Mr. Speaker: I retired last year, and my husband retired this year. Both of us are in our sixties. We knew we would have to pay a lot for health insurance, but I was stunned when we signed up for the Affordable Care Act to the tune of more than $1,200 per month. I recently received a notice from our insurer that premiums for 2017 will go to over $2,000 per month. This family played by the rules their entire life, Mr. Speaker. They retired, needed access to health care, and went to the exchanges that were purported to help people find affordable health care. They found a $1,200-a-month policy that this year rises to $2,000 a month. I say this to the young people planning for their retirement and thinking about putting something away for a rainy day: This couple pays $2,000 a month simply for their premium. Another family in Cumming, Georgia, Mr. Speaker: Six years ago, we had a perfectly acceptable high-deductible plan with an HSA for $300 a month. As ObamaCare has been implemented, it has gone from $300 to $450 to $950 per month, and our only remaining option is a $1,450-per-month plan that provides effectively the same coverage. Mr. Speaker, I added that one because these folks weren't looking for help. These folks weren't uninsured. These folks didn't have a problem finding insurance. They had it under control themselves. In the name of helping the uninsured, the Affordable Care Act came in, re-regulated the entire insurance industry, even for people who already had health care, and drove this family's premiums from $300 a month to $1,400 a month. Mr. Speaker, who defends these things? Who defends these things? I tell you, I will not have a colleague from the Democratic side or the Republican side who would say that any of these consequences were intended when the Affordable Care Act was passed. They might have been inevitable, but they were not intended. So we can agree there is a problem. We can agree there is a problem. And if you don't think that we can agree, let me refer first to former President Barack Obama. Just last fall, he said this: Despite this progress, too many Americans still strain to pay for their physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles or pay their monthly insurance bills. They struggle to navigate a complex, sometimes bewildering system, and they remain uninsured. That's right. They remain uninsured. The trillion-plus dollars that we spent to solve the issue of the uninsured solved nothing. We continue to have a problem with the uninsured, yet we have added problems to those who are insured. Democratic Governor Mark Dayton from Minnesota in October of last year, Mr. Speaker: The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable. The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable--these are words of folks who supported the Affordable Care Act. Former President Bill Clinton: ``So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled with their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world.'' There is a group of people, mostly small-business owners and employees, who make just a little too much to qualify for Medicaid expansion or for the tax incentives who can't get Affordable Care Act premiums in a lot of places. Former President Bill Clinton says that there are guys out there busting 60 hours a week trying to make it work for their families, and we have failed them. It is not that they had a problem to begin with. Many of these folks had insurance that they liked to begin with. We failed them when we re- regulated them into problems instead of solving problems. Mr. Speaker, the broken promises began right away. You will remember the fact check organization that named ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan'' as the Lie of the Year. Overpromising and underdelivering has been the nature of ObamaCare. We were promised premiums would decline by $2,500. The average family premium has increased by $4,300. We were promised the cost of health care would go down, but deductibles have risen more than 60 percent. We were promised you can keep your doctor, but 70 percent of us find ourselves in narrower networks today than we did before. Middle class Americans were promised we wouldn't see a tax increase, but as we just heard from this young student, when you can't find a plan that meets your needs, then you are fined by the IRS. You are paying taxes right then. Now, Mr. Speaker, I am not blaming these systemic problems on President Obama. I am not blaming these systemic problems on the Affordable Care Act. What I am doing is pointing out that we passed the Affordable Care Act with $1 trillion in new tax increases and with a re-regulation of all of the insurance plans that people liked before in the name of solving these problems, which we did not solve. I will take you to my home State of Georgia, Mr. Speaker. On average, 32 percent is the increase that we are seeing in premiums on our exchange--32 percent this year alone. Of the folks who are participating in the exchange, Mr. Speaker, 80 percent of them receive a government subsidy. Let me say that again: Of the folks who participate in the $1 trillion Affordable Care Act exchange program in the State of Georgia, 80 percent of them do so because the government is paying for their health care. That is a pretty good incentive to get in the system. If you're going to get a subsidy payment, folks are in the system. Eighty percent require that subsidy in order to be enticed into the system. As you know, Mr. Speaker, more people rejected going into the system opting instead for no health care than went into the system with the Affordable Care Act. The average wage earner in Georgia, Mr. Speaker, gets no subsidy from the government. Four hundred percent of the poverty line, as you know, is where that subsidy kicks in. That is about $48,000 a year in the State of Georgia. I am telling you, if you earn $48,000 a year, you have bills, obligations, and responsibilities, and you find yourself in one of these $2,000-a-month premium situations that this retired couple in Georgia did, you cannot afford health insurance--or at least you cannot afford the health insurance that the government today is requiring that you have. Let's think about those requirements, Mr. Speaker. The government, in its wisdom, decided it was going to force folks into plans that it deemed appropriate. Many of those came in the form of healthcare CO- OPs. It was certainly a reasonable idea: let's allow folks in States back home to join together and provide health insurance. We sucked folks into those CO-OPs, Mr. Speaker. Again, an unsustainable system, this death spiral of ObamaCare. One million folks were sucked into CO-OPs that went belly up, Mr. Speaker. They lost their insurance once when ObamaCare came into business, and they lost their insurance again when these CO-OPs failed. As you can see on this map, the orange CO-OPs have failed. Only a few remain in business today. It remains to be seen if they will make it through the year. When we talk about choice, Mr. Speaker, five States have only one insurer in the exchange. That was the whole point of the exchange. That is why we spent literally billions upon billions to set up these exchanges so that consumers could compare and choose. Now, two things went wrong. Number one, we set up this list of mandates that every insurance plan had to comply with, which disincentivized folks to join those plans to begin with. Then, number two, by setting up what you had to have in a plan, you, by definition, restricted the choice of individuals to choose what they want. So you end up with five States with only one insurer under ObamaCare. Now, that is before the announcement this week from Humana that it is withdrawing from all of the ObamaCare plans at the end of 2017. That was before the announcement this week from the Aetna CEO that he sees the death spiral that ObamaCare is involved in--his words--and it remains to be seen whether they will participate next year or not. I don't need to find consensus among 218 Members or even 435 Members about whether or not ObamaCare is succeeding or failing. What I need is for folks to look at the 19 million uninsured Americans who had an opportunity to go into this trillion-dollar system; an opportunity to reach for the golden ring, as it was described by its authors and its proponents, and they said: No. They said: It doesn't work for me. They said: It is not the right thing for me. They said: It doesn't fit into my families' needs and desires and expectations. Of these 19 million, Mr. Speaker, 6.5 million paid a tax penalty. That is 6.5 million Americans failed by their government in a trillion- dollar healthcare regulation, failed by their government in an expansion through ObamaCare and Medicaid, and failed by their government yet again when they received a bill because the trillion- dollar program we put together didn't work for them and their families. Can't we agree that if our goal was to solve the problem of the uninsured American, having 19 million Americans who would rather stay uninsured than participate in the Affordable Care Act is the definition of failure? We can do better. There is a better way, Mr. Speaker, let there be no mistake about that. I know there is a lot of anxiety out there. I don't want to minimize that. Fear is a corrosive emotion to have. I want to do my very best to allay the fear of anyone in America, Mr. Speaker, who is benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. As these numbers have demonstrated, there are not many. But if you spend a trillion dollars and re-regulate an entire industry, I certainly hope there is at least one family out there who got something out of it. I know that there are. I quote Greg Walden, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Speaker, who, as you know, has wide jurisdiction for re- regulating health care. He says this in January of this year: ``We want to make sure that people with pre-existing conditions continue to get covered.'' Mr. Speaker, it is a myth that Congress didn't care about preexisting conditions. It was Republicans in Congress, led by Republican Newt Gingrich of the great State of Georgia, who abolished preexisting conditions in every federally regulated plan back in 1996. He did that in partnership with Bill Clinton. What you have heard from our chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee is that we are committed to dealing with preexisting conditions. Take that anxiety off your list. From Tom Price, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services: ``Nobody is interested in pulling the rug out from anybody.'' We believe that it is absolutely imperative that individuals who have health care be able to keep health coverage and move, hopefully, to greater choices and opportunity for them to gain the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and their families. There has been a lot of talk about individuals losing health care. That is not our goal, nor is it our desire, nor is it our plan. The new Secretary of Health and Human Services said that this year. Now, Mr. Speaker, I don't want to overpromise and underdeliver. ObamaCare is failing. The exchanges are failing. Insurance companies are leaving. Plans are being canceled. I am not saying that if you like your plan, you can keep it. Your plan may be one of the overly regulated, overly priced plans that is collapsing across this country. What I am saying to you is, our commitment is to help and not hurt in that area. I cannot prevent ObamaCare from failing. I cannot prevent your plan from going away, but I can provide an off ramp for you and your family so that you can find, as Secretary Price says, better choices and better opportunities. From the United States Senate, Mr. Speaker, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: ``There will be a stable transition period, and once repeal is passed we will turn to replacement policies that cost less and work better than what we have now.'' Some contend that, by fulfilling our promise to the American people, we are somehow going to go back to the way things were before ObamaCare, which we all know is untrue. If your family grappled with preexisting conditions because your State didn't address it the same way the Federal Government did back in 1996--folks are committed, if you are playing by the rules, to stick with you and your family through this transition. If your family benefits from the raising of the lifetime caps that was a part of the Affordable Care Act, you have won that debate. You needn't worry as we go through this transition. If you like the fact that your kids are unemployed and staying on your policy until they are 26 years old, I think you have won that debate. I think that is absolutely going to be a part of that conversation in this transition. If you have a fear, if you have a worry, if you have a concern, I don't want to minimize it. I want to allay it. But come and share it with your Member of Congress, share it with your United States Senator. We have a group of leaders committed to addressing those concerns. Finally, Paul Ryan, our Speaker of the House: ``We can and should have a system in this country where everybody can have access to affordable health care, including people with pre-existing conditions.'' There are things that unite us in this body, and one of those things is caring for people, caring about people, wanting folks to get a fair shake. If you have played by the rules, you deserve a fair shake. That brings us all together in this institution. I don't want any family to find themselves in fear that they are being forgotten in this transition, but there is a very real fear that, if you are in an Affordable Care Act plan today, that plan will fail. Mr. Speaker, there are two things we can do. We can pretend that failure is not imminent. You can look at all the insurers withdrawing from ObamaCare, you can look at all of the rate increases going up in double digits, you can look at all of the folks who are opting out because it has gotten too expensive and doesn't serve their families' needs. You can see the failure of ObamaCare. But the number of options that we have, the number of plans under discussion to replace it is numerous, Mr. Speaker. We have got the Better Way healthcare plan, we have got the American Health Care Reform Act, we have got the Empowering Patients First, we have got our Rules Committee chairman's The World's Great Healthcare Plan Act, the Patient Freedom Act, the ObamaCare Replacement Act. Mr. Speaker, we have options. To begin to get to those options, we need to be honest with ourselves, whether we opposed ObamaCare from the beginning or whether we hoped it was going to be the best thing since sliced bread, that ObamaCare has failed. With that recognition, we can repeal those costly mandates, we can repeal those constrictive agreements, we can repeal those things that have isolated us from choice, that have separated us from our doctors, and we can begin to restore a patient-centered, family first system. Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that you are a smart man. I have no doubt that you work hard from dawn to dusk every day. But no matter how hard you work, I promise you that you will not know better than the families in my district which healthcare plan is best for them, and I appreciate you not trying to second guess them. I cannot make everybody in America happy, Mr. Speaker, but I can give everybody in America the choice to make themselves happy. I can't empower families in America to make their own choices, their own decisions about what works best for them. Put your mind at ease. For folks who have concerns, we hear you. For folks who have been hurt, we are coming for you. And for folks who know there is a better way, we stand with you. It is going to be a long spring and summer, Mr. Speaker, because this is only heavy lifting, but it is the right thing to do, and we have got the right group of men and women here to do it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I was not in Congress at the time the Affordable Care Act passed, but I remember it, watching from home. We talk about this as if it was some sort of thoughtfully crafted piece of legislation that folks are so tremendously proud of. I happen to have the numbers here, Mr. Speaker. It was H.R. 4872 that moved through the House, that was the authorizing part. We had three votes in the U.S. House of Representatives on that bill. We had a motion to recommit, as it was not actually a healthcare bill to begin with, and a vote on final passage. Then it went over to the U.S. Senate where they worked their will on it. They had 43 votes on it, amendments offered, ideas, and changes. Then it came back to the House where we changed it not at all. There was one straight partisan vote on the Affordable Care Act. Not one idea from the U.S. House of Representatives added, not one change from the U.S. House of Representatives, not one alteration of any kind. As you recall, Mr. Speaker, they had a filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate, so Democrats could work their will any way they wanted. When they lost that filibuster-proof majority--they only had 59 votes out of 100 instead of 60--they ended debate, they ended discussion, they ended collaboration and jammed what they had passed at midnight on Christmas Eve right on through the U.S. House of Representatives. I can't imagine who defends that as the proper outcome of the legislative process. We have a chance to change that, Mr. Speaker. I am glad that my friend from Connecticut has some constituents that have benefited. I have some constituents that have benefited. But I have constituents who are being failed, and I know my friend from Connecticut does, too. I am glad that my friends on the other side of the aisle are talking about all of their success stories, but I want my friends to join me and grapple with all of the failures. I will not deny the way the conversation about health care has changed since the passage of the Affordable Care Act--folks talking about preexisting conditions, folks talking about lifetime caps, folks talking about keeping young kids on their policies until they are 26. I just don't understand why my colleagues would deny that folks who used to have care, now don't. Folks who used to have affordable plans, now don't. Folks who used to be able to take care of their employees through their small business plans, now can't. This is undisputed, and we have an opportunity to do better. I hope my colleagues will join me in doing that. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to share with my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) that one is not entitled to their own facts, but one is also not entitled to share just half the story and leave it as if it is the entire story. Everything the gentleman from Massachusetts said was true, until the U.S. House abdicated any responsibility whatsoever and passed exactly what the Senate did with no amendment whatsoever. All of the work product the gentleman talked about, all of the work that the gentleman talked about went for naught in this U.S. House of Representatives. To deny that this is not the bill that folks wanted to have crafted is to deny reality. To deny that this is not the bill that folks wanted to have crafted is to deny the nine different times the Republican House and Senate sent to the President repeals of ObamaCare, things that were so broken even the President couldn't live with it and he signed those repeals into law. Mr. Speaker, I am not trying to denigrate any of the motives of my friends on the other side of the aisle. I just can't understand, for the life of me, why they don't want to try to do better. That pride of authorship, that arrogance, it has a real impact on the men and women that I serve, and I am asking my friends to partner with me to help me fix it. But if they won't partner with me, I am going to move forward and fix it anyway. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say absolutely none of that is true. Absolutely not one word of that is true. This bill does not one of those things. This bill does, in fact, nothing to change the law at all in any way, shape, or form. It is not true. This bill provides a process for debating the law, and I certainly hope we will pass it so we can have that debate. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am fond of telling folks back home, Mr. Speaker, when they tell me they know exactly what is going to happen over the next 2 years, that I don't think they are telling me the truth. Because I confess to you, I have absolutely no idea what is coming over these next 2 years. I think these next 2 years are going to be unlike any we have seen in the history of self-governance in this land; and, candidly, I am excited about that because the status quo isn't working for the 700,000 people that I represent. I don't know what's going to happen over these next 2 years, but I believe that, for the first time, we are going to grapple with some really, really, really hard problems that folks on both sides of the aisle have been ignoring for too long. Mr. Speaker, I don't question the commitment of my friends on the other side of the aisle to the American people. I question the legislation that they use to deliver it. You heard my friend from Oklahoma talk about premiums going up 67 percent for his constituents. That is indefensible. It is not okay. We can do better, and, with the passage of this budget resolution, we will have the tools to do that. I say again, the law will be the same tomorrow as it is today, but we will have the tools to grapple with these problems. Eight million Americans were so failed by the Affordable Care Act that they paid a tax penalty instead of accessing care. That is not okay. I don't believe a single Member on the other side of the aisle decided they just wanted to tax young people instead of provide young people with quality care. This budget will give us the opportunity to have the tools to fix that problem. Billions of dollars, Mr. Speaker, have gone into State-based co-ops that have failed, gone bankrupt, and terminated all of their plans which not only ripped health care out from under the American people, Mr. Speaker, but threw billions of dollars away in administrative costs at the same time. That is not okay. That is indefensible. We can do better. Passing this budget resolution will give us those tools. Mr. Speaker, I made a commitment in the Rules Committee last night to do everything I could to stop poisoning the well of public discourse. Then I re- upped for the Rules Committee, and I realized that is going to be a tough promise to fulfill. We have difficult work to do, and we are passionate about the quality of that work. But, Mr. Speaker, we all know the status quo has failed. We all know that we have the opportunity to deliver, and we all know that a vote of ``yes'' on this budget resolution will give us more tools to deliver that success than we have today. We need to do this. We need to celebrate doing this. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to support the rule and support the two underlying measures that it will bring to the floor.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), my good friend, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Reluctantly I recognize that we are, apparently, not going to have an end to divisive, self-serving rhetoric. I am still optimistic, as it is a long year ahead of us. What the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan) is suggesting, Mr. Speaker, is that we ensure the failure of Social Security going forward. The only guaranteed benefit in Social Security is that it is guaranteed to fail. Those are not my words. These are the words of the actuaries who are in charge of protecting Social Security. The nonpartisan actuaries who govern Social Security say that there is not enough money today to pay the benefits that folks are expecting. The law of the land, as it exists today, requires that, when that day comes, benefits will get cut dramatically. Only a 75 percent realization of benefits is what the law requires that befalls our senior citizens. If we pass the amendment that is suggested by my friend, we would be prohibited from considering any solutions to that problem. Means testing, which my colleagues have advocated for years, is off the table under that scenario. Mr. Speaker, to suggest that anyone on this side of the aisle wants to undermine the commitment that this country has made to our seniors is ludicrous; but to suggest that I go to a 22-year-old, whose polling today suggests he or she believes they are more likely to see a UFO in their lifetime than a Social Security check in their lifetime--to suggest that going to that 22-year-old and my thinking that maybe his retirement age would be a year or two higher than his great- grandparents' since he is now living decades longer--I will remind my colleagues we came together in a bipartisan way to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 in 1983, not because one of us hated seniors and one of us loved seniors, but because we all believed in our commitment to seniors. Mr. Speaker, don't let the Record reflect anything other than that this budget resolution provides the framework to begin this discussion, to begin the discussion of what comes next. There is not a single line of authorizing language in this budget resolution. Any suggestion that the law will change tomorrow because of this budget resolution is false. The law will be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday. The difference is we have begun a path--we will have created a framework; we will have provided the tools--to have a discussion about how to solve very real problems in this country. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman from Massachusetts said in his opening statement that he didn't come to Congress to hurt people; that he came to help people. I want to stipulate that that is 100 percent true. There is no one in this Chamber who I believe has a bigger heart for men and women than the gentleman from Massachusetts, which is why I know that he does not support what I see happening to my constituency. He says people are paying less for their health care today. I dispute those numbers writ large, but I know it is true in my district because the free healthcare clinic has doubled since the passage of ObamaCare. Folks once had access to small plans that they chose for their families. Those plans were outlawed. Now they have high deductible plans that are worthless to them, so they seek care at the free clinics. I know that ripping the plans out from under those men and women in my district was not the gentleman's intention when he passed the Affordable Care Act, but it is absolutely the result. I know that when the gentleman set up those exchanges, which all Americans were supposed to be able to go to to buy their healthcare plans, he did not intend for those plans to get canceled year after year after year after year, because they were unsustainable. We all know, of the constituents in our districts who did what the government told them to do, they lost the plans their employers used to provide; they went to the exchanges to buy a plan; and, 1 year later, those plans were canceled. They went through the process again: they picked out other plans; they went through the exchanges and paid their money; and, 1 year later, those plans were canceled again and again. We all know those constituents; so to suggest that the only reason someone would come to the floor today would be to solve a nonexistent problem is ridiculous. We all know that there are problems. What is ridiculous are the folks who would come and defend the status quo. The status quo is indefensible, Mr. Speaker. When we get together, we can do amazing things. There are vast experiences of the Members in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, and our bringing those to the table leads to better solutions. We have spent 6 years being stuck in the status quo, and this bill represents an opportunity to turn the page on that status quo, and I know every single Member has constituents in his district who will welcome it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I advise my friend from Massachusetts I do not have any further speakers and would be happy to close when he is prepared.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 48 provides for consideration of S. Con. Res. 3, the FY17 budget resolution, as well as consideration of a bill to move forward on the process of confirming our civilian Secretary of Defense, former General Mattis. Mr. Speaker, the rule is a structured rule today to move expeditiously on both of these measures, and in the time we have gotten to spend together, Mr. Speaker, you know I am a fan of the festival of democracy that can be the Committee on Rules process, particularly the appropriations process. But there are times where moving expeditiously is required, and today is one of those days. You are not going to see a rule like this come very often because we are considering the FY17 budget resolution today. Historically, as you know, in this Chamber, when we get ready to consider budget resolutions, Mr. Speaker, we are considering every single one that any Member of Congress would have an opportunity to write. That process takes place every spring to meet the statutory deadline of passing budgets by April. This is not that budget today, Mr. Speaker. This is a budget, as you know, to move us forward on a reconciliation process to finish up the FY17 budget process, and rather than considering all the amendments that one might have to offer, we have made in order just one. It is the Democratic substitute. It is offered by my good friend, the ranking member on the Committee on the Budget, Mr. Yarmuth, and it is absolutely worthy of the Membership's consideration. But it is not going to be a vote-a-rama on every budget known to mankind. It will be the underlying budget from the House Committee on the Budget as well as one substitute from the ranking member. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to consideration of the measure to waive a statutory prohibition on naming a civilian Secretary of Defense who has been out of the military for less than 7 years, we are also offering that under a closed rule today. No amendments are going to be made in order. You may not know, Mr. Speaker, but that is the only statutory change that has passed the United States Senate in 2017. When we talk about having to move expeditiously, when we talk about whether or not we are going to have an open process or a closed process, understand that while this body has passed dozens of statutory changes in just these first 9 days of legislative activity, the Senate has passed but one. This is in anticipation of an inauguration of a President on January 20. This is in anticipation of trying to fill out a Cabinet. This is in anticipation of trying to make sure that civilian leadership is in place on day one to lead and to serve the men and women of the United States military. This is not the time to have that vote-a-rama. This is the time to move expeditiously, again, with a bill that has passed in a bipartisan way in the other Chamber. I look forward to getting back into the business of leading the Senate, not following the Senate. I look forward to getting back in the business of voting on absolutely every idea that Members bring to this floor. Today, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule so that we can move expeditiously on two of our priorities: passing that FY17 budget resolution and ensuring the speedy confirmation of the civilian leader of the Department of Defense. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), who probably knows more about the Health and Human Services Appropriations bill than anyone else in this Congress, the cardinal from that committee in the 114th Congress.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to thank my colleague for her admonition to reject divisive and self-serving rhetoric because I think that is absolutely something we should take to heart. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Newhouse), a member of the Rules Committee and a new member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 48 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.