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HOUSE FLOOR DEBATE: The House meets for legislative business. Reading of the Constitution of the United States by Members of the House of Representatives / (Rep. Goodlatte) // Suspension (1 Bill): H.Res.22 - A resolution to Cut Congress's Budget (Rep. Walden - House Administration) 16:00:20Pallone (D-NJ):let me thank my colleague from california and each of the other speakers here for the contribution they have made tonight and particularly when they listen to my colleague from tennessee talk about those 16:00:33particular cases of individuals that were impacted because that's what this is all about. it is amazing to me the first act of this new republican majority is to try to repeal a bill, health care reform, that 16:00:49really is making a difference for people on a personal level, particularly with the patient protections and i thought to myself when i was coming down here, who benefits from repeal? who could possibly benefit from repeal? 16:01:05as many of you talked about the people who are going to be harmed by it, would who would benefit? and the only group that would benefit are the big insurance companies. because when you think about it, what do they want to do? they want to keep increasing 16:01:23premiums. in your state, you may have already mentioned it, blue cross/blue shield, 50-something percent increase. and we, of course, as this 16:01:38health care reform kicks in, it's going to be more and more difficult for the types of increases that we have seen in premiums that these big health insurance companies have put forward. and the reason they want to get -- the insurance companies want 16:01:53to get rid of the patients' bill of rights and re-institute these discriminatory practices whether denying care because of pre-existing conditions or re-instituting lifetime caps or the different protections that we have seen kick in, the reason 16:02:09they want to do that is money oriented. they have to pay out money. you talked about the cancer person. i was up in rules earlier and mrs. slaughter was talking about someone who had cancer and was treated and ran into the 16:02:26lifetime cap and the cancer re-occurred and didn't have any more coverage because she hit the lifetime caps. they want to have lifetime caps, don't want pre-existing conditions, don't want kids on 16:02:42your policy because it saves them money. that's the way they make profit and pay dividends by raising premiums and having discriminatory practices that eliminate people because they need health care. it's that simple. 16:02:57and just in the last few weeks, provisions have kicked in that go against that. we had the president announce or the white house announce around christmas time new regulations that say any premium increase that's over 10% will be 16:03:16scrutinized and they will try to -- under the provisions of this provisions, not allow the increase to go above 10%. january 1, the provisions kicked in that said 80% of your premium costs had to be used for 16:03:34benefits, couldn't be used for insurance company profits, couldn't be used to pay back dividends to the shareholders. all of these initiatives that are already kicking in, they basically make it more difficult 16:03:47for the insurance companies to make a big profit and the consquens -- consequence of that 16:03:57is health insurance becomes more affordable. i was up at the rules committee earlier and it was interesting because i think you mentioned my colleague from california that -- run of you mentioned that under the health care reform 16:04:12that's in place now that they want to repeal, we get the same insurance as congressmen as any other american. and you know, i still have people write to me and say, well, you have your own policy, but you want to give me this 16:04:28lousy coverage that i'm going to give me under the health care reform. i say that's not true. you may hear that on a tv station, but that's not true. we have to go into the exchanges just like everybody else. we will be different from 16:04:46federal employees because we go into the exchanges. at the rules committee today, one of the republican members who is very supportive of repeal said that he specifically wasn't going to take, you know, health insurance as a congressman and 16:05:02he wanted me to know that because he was voting for repeal. i said that's very nice and commendable for you but i think every member of congress who votes for repeal should say i don't want health insurance through the federal government, because if you are going to deny it to everyone else, you should 16:05:20deny it to yourself the same way we are going to get the same coverage as everyone else. if you don't want anyone else to have the coverage, you shouldn't get it yourself. there was one member from 16:05:35maryland who came to the ownertation who was a big advocate for repeal and he was inquiring because his federal health insurance didn't take effect until february 1. we were sworn in yesterday, but i guess it takes 30 days before 16:05:50the insurance actually kicks in and he was complaining about the fact that he had to wait until february 1 to get his health insurance as a congressman. well, again, if you are going to vote for repeal next week, you shouldn't be worried about when 16:06:05it's going to kick in. you shouldn't be taking it at all, in my opinion. there's a lot of -- i don't know what the word -- smoking mirrors or whatever is going on around other side of the aisle and my 16:06:24point is, there is a lot of protection here for people. don't deny them that unless you are going to deny it to yourself. who is helped by this repeal? only the big insurance 16:06:35companies. they are the ones who are going to benefit. i know you were the insurance commissioner so i know you know what i'm talking about. Garamendi (D-CA):i do have some experience on that. it's called the medical loss ratio and the insurance 16:06:53companies have cut a fat check for themselves over the years by taking a big premium and then paying a small amount of it out for the medical conference. and the patients' bill of rights and affordable health care act, 16:07:10they can't do that. they have to pay for the individual policies, 80% and for the group policies, 85% for medical services. so what was the very first thing they did after this bill was signed into law? we passed it last year and the 16:07:25president signed it. the very first thing they did was to run down to the health and human services department and say, oh, but our advertising ought to be included as a medical expense. and oh, these expenses for these kinds of employees, mostly 16:07:50statisticians, we think that is a medical expense. we are trying to make sure that when we pay a dollar at least we get 80 cents back in medical 16:08:01services. our friends on the other side would repeal that and allow the insurance companies to take that money or a larger portion of that money, put it in their pockets, give it to their c.e.o.'s, whatever, but not use it for medical services. medical loss ratio is important. 16:08:18and the other thing that needs to be understood is the ability of the government to review, not to say no, but to shine that big bright spotlight onto the insurance company premium 16:08:35increases. is it justified, yes, no, what are your costs, what ratios are you using for medical losses and the like. so that spotlight of information is required under the law. many, many things in the law. mr. cohen, i see you stood up, 16:08:52anxious to make a comment here and i notice behind you our colleague from maryland has joined us and i want to start talking about seniors. so, please, mr. cohen, i want you to go for it. Cohen (D-TN):i want to ask a 16:09:05question, the first thing that the republicans want to do is repeal the affordable health care bill. but the first thing they did was today and we joined with them and bipartisan was to cut 5% from our members' representational allowances, a 16:09:20small amount of money in the big picture. but the deficit was the issue they were highlighting. what would the repeal of the affordable health care act do to the deficit, that's the issue, because that's one of our big issues? 16:09:36Garamendi (D-CA):well, it just happens we prepared this little blue chart here and it ought to be in the red. the repeal of the affordable health care act, obviously deals with the patients' bill of rights but also deals with the 16:09:52deficit. this week, the congressional budget office, not republican, not democrat, they answer to neither party but to the general public. they said the repeal of the affordable health care act will increase the deficit by $230 16:10:11billion, $230 billion in the next nine years and in the out years, the next 10 years, well over $1,200,000,000. Cohen (D-TN):that's money we owe 16:10:31china and pay the interest to the chinese and our children and grandchildren will be paying this if they don't have pre-existing conditions where they can get insurance. Garamendi (D-CA):our children and 16:10:45grandchildren and those of us living for another 10, 15, 20 years, we are going to pay twice. we are going to pay the insurance costs, the health care costs that is not covered by the health insurance programs, the example you gave of the individual with two boughts of 16:11:02cancer and going to pay for the full costs of that because the limitation goes back into place. so you get to pay for your health care and you are going to have to pay off the deficit also. makes no sense whatsoever, but, hey, that's what they want to 16:11:18do, without one hearing by any of the relevant committees. Cohen (D-TN):consistency is the hob goblin. thank you sir. Garamendi (D-CA):i noticed that our colleague from maryland has 16:11:34joined us. ms. edwards. you were talking about it earlier today on the floor and in committee. Edwards, D. (D-MD):i feel very personally about health care, a person who went a long time 16:11:51without health care coverage and worried like most americans and they did prior to our investing in reform for the american people. so i know that anxiety. and i was thinking about some of our swepts, in maryland's 4th 16:12:10congressional district who today, because of what we did in the democratic-led congress in passing landmark health care reform legislation are better off today and we haven't fully 16:12:23implemented the benefits for the american people. i think about a letter that i got from a gentleman who lives in my district in olney, maryland. and he writes to me that his son mike was 25, going on 26 and he 16:12:40could receive health care insurance coverage when he wasn't able to get it and needed it and couldn't get it. he got a letter from blue cross/blue shield saying that 16:12:55his son could be covered until his 26th birthday. and what he did was he did what a lot of americans do, wiping the sweat from their brow because they know they can keep their young people on their health care plan until they are 16:13:1126. i have a 22-year-old and i was feeling the same way. i got another letter from a woman who actually does health care policies and lives in my district and what she said to me was that her daughter had a pre-existing condition and she 16:13:26was very concerned, but she was an older young person, 20 years old with a pre-existing condition, really worried that she wouldn't be able to provide health care and got the notice for cobra coverage and we said the backup is cobra. 16:13:42that was going to be an extra $400 to $500 a month to make 16:13:51sure she didn't lose her health care when she actually lost her job. now this parent, actually for the cost of about $70 or $80, as opposed to $400 or $500 can keep their child on their health care 16:14:06coverage. i think this is a great benefit for america's families, for families who work every day and actually have health care coverage. i heard discussion about premium increase hikes. and i want to tell you something. when we working on health care 16:14:22reform and many of us were concerned about people who don't have insurance and need coverage. but most americans all across the country do have some form of health care coverage and you know what they are worried about? 16:14:35they are worried about the premiums going up at astronomical rates. i have heard from my constituents, 20%, 30% premium hikes. because of what we did in this health care package, snirns commissioner, insurance 16:14:54commissioners across the country have the power invested in them and say we are going to put a check on these companies. a big state like california, connecticut, maine, colorado and maryland, and all across the 16:15:10country, that's what the commissioners are doing. it's the states. we heard this morning as we read the constitution a reminder that states are in a great position to look at what insurance companies are doing in their 16:15:26states to regulate what's happening in their states and to say to them, you have to stop taking money away from scummers and patients by raising your preliminary -- from consumers and patients by raising your 16:15:44premiums. this is important and i'm glad to be talking about these benefits with the american people. . Garamendi (D-CA):i thank you so 16:15:57very much. you reminded me of two very quick stories. on monday i was at the inaugural for the governor of california, jerry brown is back again, and a lobbyist that i knew when i was an insurance commissioner representing health insurance companies came up to me and he 16:16:13came up to me and put his finger in my chest and said, don't let them repeal the law. i'm not going to give his name, he'd lose his job immediately. and i said, i'll do everything i can, but why? you represent them, why? and he said, i have two children. 16:16:30both are type one diabetics. they're approaching 23 years of age. they will be out of luck. they will never be able to get an insurance policy if this bill is repealed. patient's bill of rights gives 16:16:48that lobbyist for the health insurance industry an opportunity to see his children get health insurance. i have six children of my own. patty and i do. all six of them have gone through that age of 23. it is the scariest time for a 16:17:06parent. you graduate, you get a diploma and you also get an exit from the insurance. that you've had perhaps for your entire life. this law provides another three years after you graduate, that 16:17:23period of time that's almost impossible nowaddais to find a job with a -- now a days to find a job with insurance. Scott, R. (D-VA):thank you very much. i appreciate your hard work and leadership on. 16:17:36this you've talked about the problems in health care with government. it's just not a government problem. you ask any human resources executive about what the -- one of the major problems they have and benefit package, it's the ability to afford health care. 16:17:52health care costs have been going out of control. if you have an employee with a pre-existing condition and he's in the group and they do the study, you start getting bills you can't pay. 16:18:07you ask any human resources what's happened to their insurance costs over the years, it's going through the sky. if you look at the employees -- employee portion of health care, it will go from zero participation to a little bit, more co-pays, more deductibles, more costs for the family, on 16:18:25and on and on. everyone has a great deal of insecurity about their ability to do health care. then you look at the idea of what happens if you lose a job, if you have a pre-existing condition you will not be able 16:18:42to get health care until this bill passed. with all this insecurity, your 16:18:49ability to get health care, your ability to be able to afford it in the future, all of these problem, all of these problems in the future, what is the response from the other side? about what to do about that kind of insecurity, they say, well, 16:19:02just be strong and go without insurance like me. well, that is not a particularly attractive solution for those that don't have an alternative, don't have a spouse who you can say, i'm not going to take 16:19:19government policy, i'm going to use another, or if they're so wealthy they don't need the insurance. most americans aren't in that situation. they need health insurance and this is what is provided, you have access to it and it's 16:19:35affordable. everyone in america will be able to afford health insurance in 2014 because those that can't afford it will have subsidies to make sure that they can. so everybody will be able -- again, if you make less than $88,000 you can get health care 16:19:50for less than 10% of your salary. that is not the case now. if you're in the $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year bracket, if you can get insurance it's going to be a lot more than that. so with this bill people have the security of health insurance 16:20:06that they don't have now and the bizarre suggestion, just go without insurance, is not particularly nice when you have children that may need -- have a little ear infection, rather than have them lose their 16:20:22hearing you can deal with it when it's a little infection. these problems don't go out of control. we need that security, this bill provides it. and in terms of seniors, seniors are particularly helped under this legislation. 16:20:38they can get -- those who can't afford the co-pays and deductibles can get their annual checkups without any co-pays and deductibles. we'll help fill in the doughnut hole. take a little time but eventually there will be no doughnut hole where they fall in 16:20:54and have to pay all of their drug costs. it would provide more community health centers so they'll have better access. we'll train more doctors and nurses so they'll have more professional -- you have a chart that extends medicare, medicare 16:21:12is extended. we know that medicare will go broke if we don't do anything. it extends the policy of medicare. so all of these, lower prescription drug costs, all of 16:21:26these things that seniors have a particular interest in, all of that will be lost if this bill is repealed. Garamendi (D-CA):if i might interrupt you for just a moment, mr. scott, you're into an issue, an area, that is profoundly important to the 16:21:41seniors of america. the discussion last year as this bill was passing was that somehow this piece of legislation would harm seniors by taking away medicare benefits. it was not true last year, it is 16:21:58not true this year. however if our republican colleagues are successful in repealing it, they, the seniors, will be seriously harmed. i want to make this point very, very clear and ask my colleagues to join us perhaps on their own personal experience in their 16:22:15districts, but you started going through this list here, this legislation actually extends the solvency of medicare. by reining in the cost and by giving seniors specific 16:22:36preillness care so they will be able to get preventative care free. free annual checkups. they can't get it today but under this legislation seniors can get preannual checkups which 16:22:50reduces the cost -- free annual checkups which reduces the cost because you get to the illness quicker. mr. scott. Scott, R. (D-VA):you said people were scared about what might happen. i also said things about small business, this would bankrupt 16:23:02small businesses. small businesses are exempt from the requires -- requirements under the bill. so it can't possibly hurt them. but those small businesses that want to provide health care for their employees are given tax credits to encourage them to do so. so they can't possibly be hurting small business. 16:23:17but for the senior citizens, they have all of the benefits that you've listed on the chart that will be lost if this bill is repealed. Garamendi (D-CA):you mentioned the doughnut hole. every senior that's in the prescription doughnut hole last year, 2010, received a $250 16:23:36check to help them pay for their drugs. in going forward the doughnut hole will be lessened and lessened and eventually nine years from now will disappear. there will be no doughnut hole. 16:23:48you look at the quality of care, extremely important quality of care, thank you for bringing that up. more primary doctors, more geriatric care of nurses and doctors, extraordinary important part of the legislation, not just only for seniors, you also 16:24:03mentioned the community-based and of course the preventative care. all of these things are there and all of them will disappear if the republicans are successful with their legislation, next wednesday that will be brought to this floor without one hearing to discuss 16:24:19any of these issues in a relevant policy committee. mr. cohen, please join us. Cohen (D-TN):let me ask a question. i was just thinking here, as i'm honored to be in the house of representatives, and with the constitution that's so beautiful that it says we're to promote 16:24:35the general welfare, we are among other industrialized nations on this earth. what are the other industrialized nations on the earth do about health care for their citizens? Garamendi (D-CA):i'm not sure i heard your question. so please say it again. Cohen (D-TN):what do other industrialized nations in the 16:24:49world do for health care? do they have program policies like ours with -- where 32 million people don't have health insurance and they're not mandated to get insurance? what do they do? Garamendi (D-CA):i think you're asking me a rhetorical question because you know the answer and i think most americans know the answer. 16:25:06all the industrialized nations, we're not talking about china here, but we're talking about korea, japan, the european countries, the european union, all of those countries provide universal health insurance conference. 16:25:23universal. everyone, including -- conversation. universal. everyone, including tourists who happen to show up and this i know from one of my daughters who fell off a stair at the leaning tower of piza. she fell, went into an michael jackson room, -- emergency room, 16:25:38they took an m.r.i., she said, i haven't paid. she said, you're covered much that was in italy. Cohen (D-TN):does the united states not have one of the greatest desscrepsies in wealth between the richest and poorest in the industrialized world as well? are we saying to our wealthy 16:25:54people, you can afford health insurance so you can get it but for those people that are poor, too bad. Garamendi (D-CA):the other countries of the world don't look at it that way. they look at it as a right for their citizens to have access to health care and they provide the health insurance. different ways of doing it. 16:26:09germany, france, britain, canada all do it differently. but they all do it and incidentally the health statistics in all of those countries are considerably better than america and america is placed at the bottom of the industrialized countries in 16:26:24terms of our health care, how healthy we are, how long we live, how sick we get. we're at the bottom. in fact, we are often with developing countries in the statistics, we spend almost twice as much as any of those countries. 16:26:41so the affordable health care act goes after many, many things beyond the patients' bill of rights and the senior issues. thank you so very much for raising that issue. we have about maybe 10 more minutes? 10. 16:26:58mr. pallone. Pallone (D-NJ):i just wanted to talk a little bit about prevention and particularly in terms of seniors, which you mentioned. and what it means in terms of the people's health and allegation the cost to the government. because -- and also the cost to 16:27:12the government. some of the things we've mentioned with regard to seniors have already taken place. this summer under the bill seniors who fell into the doughnut hole got ads 250 rebate. beginning january 1 they get a 50% discount on brand name drugs . 16:27:31you mentioned the co-pays for preventative care, whether it's your annual wellness treatment or other kinds of tests like mammograms or colonoscopies, for example. the reason we're eliminating the 16:27:4720% co-pay for these things, the reason we're trying to fill up the doughnut hole, it goes to prevention. if people don't get their drugs and they get sick and go to the hospital, they have the annual wellness checks, they stay healthy, they don't go to the 16:28:02hospital. and when they go to the hospital if they're on medicare it just costs the government more money. so this is the way we save money. we save money, what does that mean? it means that the debt is decreased, it means that the solvency of medicare you have on 16:28:19the chart is extended. i don't know if we talked much about that. one of my amendments in the rules committee today is, you know, a lot of seniors tell me, they come up to me and say they're worried about the fact that, you know, medicare may become insolvent and there wouldn't be enough money in the trust fund to pay for it. 16:28:35the bottom line is that the health care reform bill extends the judgment day, if you will, when the solvency problem becomes an issue much further and if you have the repeal, the 16:28:48solvency problem hits us six years from now, in 2017, from what i understand. so another problem with repeal is not only does it increase the deficit, but it also, you know, is only six years from now that 16:29:01we would have to deal with this medicare solvency problem. what is that going to mean? that's going to mean probably that cutbacks in benefits for senior citizens because if you don't have the money you're going to have to cut back on the benefits. it is amazing to me how they can 16:29:16continue to talk about this repeal. the other thing they keep saying on the other side of the aisle, the republicans say, well, the reason we want the repeal is because this health care reform is killing jobs. nothing can be further from the truth. 16:29:32i mean, the fact of the matter is that under this health care reform, because the costs of health care premiums for employers will be significantly reduced, they'll be able to hire more people. part of the problem that we have with competition of other 16:29:46countries, mentioned all these other countries, these other industrial countries that have free health care, universal health care, that meengs that -- means that the employers don't carry the burden of that. when they hire someone, if the government is paying for it, they don't have to worry about that for their employees necessarily. 16:30:04well, it's the cost of premiums go down, then people -- the cost of hiring somebody goes down in the united states. in addition to that there are all kinds of jobs created in the health care profession because as everyone gets covered and everybody needs a primary care 16:30:20doctor, well, you're going to need more doctors, more nurses, more health aides because people will get that kind of preventative care. so there are jobs created with the preventative care in handling people to make sure they stay healthy or they stay well. 16:30:40what the republicans should be doing is spending the first days of this session talking about how to improve the economy and create jobs not repealing health care. i think the american people have moved on. 16:30:52they don't want to hear this. they want to know what this congress is going to do to create jobs. we have dealt with the health care issue and they want us to move on. i yield back. Garamendi (D-CA):we have three minutes, four minutes and i'm going to turn to mr. cohen and 16:31:09ms. edwards. would you like to close? Cohen (D-TN):mr. pallone brought up an issue and he said it's not true it's costing jobs. there is some respected group. i think it is political fact check and they were on national 16:31:26news giving the biggest lies told in politics in the last year. and the number one biggest lie, this independent group was the republican mantra of government-mandated health care 16:31:41and it's just a fact, that's the biggest lie told the american public and it came from the leaders on the other side. it came from these halls where they are immune from defamation suits because it's not government-run health care and 16:31:57it's unheard that the other side would use the fact that they are immune from prosecution in the other jurisdiction or court for words that aren't true to do that and politics to say it was government-run health care, the biggest lie of 2010 and comes to 16:32:12the floor next week. Garamendi (D-CA):we will wrap this one up and mr. yarmuth will carry on with health insurance, but we really today focused on a broad range of issues, patients' bill of rights, the way in which 16:32:29the repeal would harm individuals. we also discussed a little bit about how this affects business and we went into some detail about senior citizens. 16:32:45all of these are critically important issues and will be discussing these in the days ahead and i hope the american public will really pay attention and this next week particularly wednesday, it's going to be absolutely critical to the american people. 16:33:00it's a question about will all of us in america be able to get health care coverage that is affordable and provide us with the opportunity to have the health care that we need. so with that, i will wrap this up and turn it over to whom ever is next. 16:33:17thank you, mr. speaker. i yield back my time. THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE:members are reminded that their remarks are properly addressed to the chair rather than any perceived television viewing audience. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the 16:33:36chair recognizes the gentleman from iowa, mr. king, for 30 minutes. King, S. (R-IA):thank you, mr. speaker. i can tell you that i am pleased to address you, mr. speaker, 16:33:47here on the floor of the united states house of representatives and welcome you to the great deliberative body which becomes instantly far more deliberative than it has been in the last four years. and this is part of it. as i deliberate and i listen to the gentleman from tennessee, i 16:34:02have to make a point that when you challenge the mendacity of the leader there is an opportunity to make a motion to take the gentleman's words down, however many of the members are off on other endeavors and the 16:34:20leader and the speaker have established their integrity in their mendacity for years in this congress and i don't think it can be challenged and those who do so are making aspersions by making wild accusations. 16:34:38i came to talk about the weather and as i listend to the speeches that have gone on before in the previous hour, it actually changed the subject for me. i think there are many things that need to be brought out and clarified, given this that we 16:34:55have debated this health care bill -- we debated this health care bill for oh, close to a year. and announced in rules committee earlier today -- i believe there were 100 hours of markup in committee. 16:35:09wasn't the bill they passed, 100 hours of debate and markup on a different bill and switched bills in the end. that's a matter of public record and fact. but the american public understands what happened. they understand that the speaker of the house said we have to pass the bill, meaning 16:35:27obamacare, mr. speaker, in order to find out what's in it. and when that bill was passed to set the record also straight, i don't think there is another time in the history of this congress that there was a bill of this magnitude that passed 16:35:43the house of representatives without the majority support of the house of representatives for the bill that was before us. it is a fact of record, it's a fact of judgment, a fact of history that there had to be conditions that were attached in 16:35:57order to achieve the votes necessary to squeak that bill by and pass o'bauma care here on the floor of the house last march. and if people forget, remember there was a switch on the bill. 16:36:13the bill that was marked up in committee was not the bill that came to the floor or had hearings on it, but there were also conditions. there were the stupak dozen who said we insist that there be an amendment brought forward that 16:36:31will protect so that the language that's in the bill doesn't fund abortion through a federal mandate. and they held out on that to get that vote. little did i know up until that saturday afternoon that the gentleman who was doing the 16:36:47negotiating already committed to vote for the bill. and the stupak people were anonymous people. and they negotiated with the president of the united states who made a commitment and followed through on it to sign an executive order that would pacify or nullify the anonymous 16:37:04stupak dozen under the presumption unconstitutionally and completely outside the bounds of the separation of powers that the president of the united states could effectively amend legislation by executive order and promise he is going to do so before the bill is brought 16:37:19to the floor for a vote. that happened in this congress. and another condition of that was, this is a condition that came after the then chair of the rules committee, ms. slaughter, had offered the idea that they should deem the bill passed so they didn't have to go on record 16:37:35for voting for this bill because they knew how bad it was. they knew how politically vulnerable they were. they knew speaker pelosi was making them walk the plank. a lot of them are not here because of that action. but as i talked about why this 16:37:51bill didn't have the support of the congress and in the form that was before us, why the majority did not support it. the majority vote that day in its form, because there had to be another deal on top of this. this was the deal that the senate had to pass a 16:38:07reconciliation package which was designed to amend the bill that had not yet been brought to the floor of the house for a vote. and i don't know if that is the first time something like that had been played but first time to my knowledge that there was a 16:38:22bill that came before this congress ta was not the bill that came through committee, that was pledged to be amended by a presidential executive order and further amended by a reconciliation bill that would later pass the united states senate. 16:38:36that's what we have before us with obamacare and it became the law of the land on that date of march 30, 2010, passed over here 16:38:46in the house if i remember correctly on the late evening of march 21 or early sunday morning. i remember telling myself i'm going to sleep and then wake up and figure out what to do. 16:39:01i didn't sleep very long and i couldn't sleep with that policy imposed upon the american people with the realization that it would become the law of the land. and about two and-a-half hours later, i got up and wept to my word processor and typed a 16:39:16request for a bill to repeal obamacare. and i filed that request at the opening of business that day, the first opportunity and the first minutes of that day. i want to thank and congratulate michelle balk man. 16:39:32i didn't know it, she was awake in the middle of the night and her bill came down within three minutes of mine and that draft was turned into a discharge petition with a huge pelosi majority in the 111th congress 16:39:50and discharge petition gathered 173 signatures bipartisan at least by the pelosi definition and part of the foundation that i think actually did shake this country. there was a statement made in 16:40:04the rules committee and they were deliberating on the rule for h.r. 2 that we had said that the sky would fall if obamacare became the law of the land and they said the sky didn't fall. chairman up ton and now chairman of the energy and commerce 16:40:22committee said yes, it did. yes, the sky did fall and when you look at the 87 freshman republicans that are seated over on this side, nine freshman democrats on this side rkts i think any --, i think any political pundit would say there 16:40:41was an earthquake in america that was brought about by the imposition of this liberty-stealing, unconstitutional obamacare bill that's before this congress now. this congress was elected to come here and repeal obamacare, get a handle on the debt and 16:40:59deficit and lay the foundation so that private enterprise can start to have faith in the future of this country again and they can create the jobs under the framework that we're hopeful we will be able to bring through. 16:41:13we aren't in a position where the house of representatives can play all of the economic foundation that's necessary for free enterprise to have enough faith and confidence to invest their capital in a robust fashion. what we are in a position to do now with a new congress and a 16:41:30new speaker is to be able to play an effective defense against the existing majority in the united states senate and the president of the united states who has been digging holes through his economic steroid 16:41:47theory and dug such a deep hole and we watched nancy pelosi preside over the debt and we watched the obama administration run that up under their term to about $3 trillion and got to 16:42:03stop. the american were looking at president gulliver obama and they came to the polls on november 2 and tied him up with their electoral ropes and said 16:42:20join the incumbents there. tomorrow and on wednesday, to repeal obamacare and take the shovel out of the hands of the president and take the gavel out of the hands of nancy pelosi. 16:42:34that's what happened. i take you back through this history because it's being rewritten again. how can they stand here, go before the rules of committee, before the american people, mr. speaker, and take the position that somehow if they just explain it one more time and one 16:42:50more way that the american people will now have some left-wing light bulb come on in their head. that's not going to happen. the american people have seen clearly. they washed the lenses off and looked down through the 16:43:05constitution and fiscal responsibility and common sense and they were appalled at that liberty-stealing bill of obamacare and they said repeal that monstrosity because the destiny of america will be 16:43:20diminished unless we do. this is a charge that this new congress has. it's the voice of the american people and it's the respect that we must have. and my gratitude for god's gift to america, the freshman class that was elected in 2010 and sworn in here right here on this 16:43:36floor yesterday afternoon. and they will affect the agenda of this country for many 16:43:44congresses to come and it will be a responsible agenda that brings us to a balanced budget and begins to reduce the deficit that this country has, not just the deficit spending, but reduce the national debt. we must get to the point where we can begin to pay down the 16:43:59national debt and we start with this congress. we start by rolling back the spending to 2008 levels and we started it today with a vote that cut our own budgets by 5%. it's not a lot of money and yes it's symbolic but the symbolism that compels us to follow 16:44:15through if it's good enough now for those of us in this congress that voted on that, it's also good enough to bring that policy through back to the united states of america. well, so what i have heard is, the members on the other side of the aisle that still stand here 16:44:31and defend obamacare, the ones that are left, they have four talking points about the bill that they think are compelling and they must believe that it offsets all of the horrible things about obamacare. first they say -- well, 16:44:47remember, the president had all of these promises about what he was going to do with obamacare and he attached obamacare to it at the blair house during the health care summit, february 25, 2010 when the president of the united states referred to his 16:45:03own bill as obamacare. that is the shorthand version for all this long thing. they don't want to say obamacare. that's how everybody knows it and understands it. . so under obamacare they give you 16:45:21the four, four redeeming components to obamacare that apparently offset all the horrible things about it. and these four redeeming conditions are this. that it requires insurance companies all across america with a federal mandate to 16:45:39provide for policies that must keep your children on there up until age 26. and they think that that's something that america has fallen in love with as a really good, brainy solution. i know there are republicans that support the idea of 16:45:52insurance policies being extended to age 26. but, mr. speaker, what a lot of people don't know in this country is that there are at least two members in this congress that were elected before age 26 and had obamacare been implemented before they were elected to office, they 16:46:08would have, could have been on their parents' health insurance plan. now isn't that a nice thing, when you wean them off of the parents' health insurance plan and you transition them over and say, now run the country, they haven't had a single minute of 16:46:24their own health insurance policy until they get here. they have a responsibility for it here. we pay our chunk of the premiums like any other federal employee, but i just think it's ironic that there would be such a strong argument that people elected to congress could come here, walk in that door, come 16:46:40down here before the speaker's ross trum, raise their hand and take the oath of office and at that moment still be on their mommy and daddy's health insurance policy. i wanted my kids to grow up. when they turned 18 i told them, 16:46:57my responsibilities are now done. i'm going to nurture you and give you advice and council you and i'll help you where i can. but i'm not obligated, guys. we did our best for the first 18 years, while do our best for every year, we'll love you all our lives but you got to start 16:47:11pulling your own load and now i look at three grown sons in their 30's, all married, five grandkids, each an entrepreneur in their own right, pulling their own load and i'm glad that they didn't have to stay unweaned until age 26. 16:47:27but if the insurance companies want to do that you should be able to buy the policy. if states want to mandate, i think it's not a good policy, but they can do so constitutionally and then if a person's tired of paying those kind of premiums you can move to 16:47:42another state and vote with your feet. there's some states in the union here that i would move out of because they can't afford the health insurance in them. there are other states one could think about moving to because of the opposite. here's a second point. pre-existing conditions. they always tie this 16:47:58pre-existing conditions in with the word discrimination. because it's like a civil rights code word so if an insurance company says, i don't want to buy, i don't want to provide insurance policies to people who have pre-existing conditions, who wait until they get sick 16:48:14before they buy a policy, the health insurance purchasing equivalent of waiting for your house to be on fire before you go buy property and casualty insurance, how many rational people, mr. speaker, in this country would make the case that we ought to have a guaranteed issue for our fire insurance on 16:48:31our house? couldn't we then just, you know, set up our little blackberry with an automatic send and wait for the fire alarm to go off and on the way down the steps to bail out of the burning house 16:48:43you could just click send, automatically they'd have to give you a policy so that your house could be rebuilt and -- if it's oth on fire. we wouldn't do that -- if it's on fire. we wouldn't do that. it's ridiculous because it defeats the logic of insurance. 16:48:59you want to be insured against a catastrophe and you want to share that riss wisconsin other people who want to be insured against catastrophe. it's true for fire insurance. it was true for flood insurance until the federal government took it over and it needs to be true of health insurance. but we will address pre-existing 16:49:15conditions and we'll have a legitimate debate on pre-existing conditions here in this congress, in committee hearings, hearings before committees, amendments offered, amendments allowed and amendments offered and debated and voted up and down. my position is that if the states want to prohibit the 16:49:31consideration of pre-existing conditions, they may do so. our state has a high-risk pool and we fund part of those proom premiums with the high-risk pool out of the state treasury. i think that's a good idea. i have worked to develop that 16:49:48and expand that in my time in the state legislature. i think it's worthy of consideration that the federal government can take a look at those state high-risk pools and find ways to help those states provide those kind of backstops. because there will always be 16:50:03people who are unfortunate. it won't always be those who are irresponsible, it will also be those who are unfortunate. so we need to take that into consideration. but to have the whole debate about just those that are unfortunate and not take into consideration those that are 16:50:20responsible, those that are taxpayers, those that are funding, those that are the engine of our economy that are being discouraged by these kind of big government socialized medicine, unconstitutional policies like obamacare. here's a third one, 26-year-old insurance, pre-existing 16:50:38conditions. oh, yes, the discriminatory pre-existing conditions policy. it's not discriminatory. it's logical and rational. would you say that it's discriminatory policy to not allow people to buy property and 16:50:55casualty insurance if their house is on fire? not discrimination, it defies common sense. so i'm not going to let them get by with that word. here's the third thing. doughnut hole. they say they've fixed the doughnut hole and we would unfix the doughnut hole. the truth is that low income 16:51:12people have that fix, there is a backstop for that doughnut hole. it's not the hole that they say it is. furthermore they raise fees elsewhere to fill the doughnut hole so it's not fixed, it's just another transfer so that some people are beneficiaries 16:51:25and others that pay the extra money. i'm not particularly animated about that although i thought we should not have had that doughnut hole created here in 2003. in any case, the next argument is against lifetime caps. if states want to provide lifetime capps let them do that. 16:51:42but if individuals want to buy policies that have lifetime caps because the premiums are lower, let them make that decision as well, mr. speaker. i envision a day that we have free markets that are engaged in this. we want to preserve the doctor-patient relationship. 16:51:58we want to preserve the free market effectiveness so when people make decisions about their health and their lives that they have some tools to work with. i want to be able to in this congress, this 112th congress, advance the idea and seek to pass legislation that is consistent with chairman 16:52:17dreier's -- i would expand it a little more. he advanced the medical savings accounts. i would add we need to advance health savings accounts, h.s.a.'s. in 2003 with the expansion of 16:52:31part d we put language in that established h.s.a.'s. health savings accounts. it allowed -- excuse me, in the first year for a couple to establish a health savings account with a maximum amount in it of $5,150. that's the calculus, from $5,150 16:52:51on up. well that's a good deal. obamacare slashed that in less than half and capped the h.s.a. maximum amount to $,500. why? because they don't want people to be independent and they don't want them to be able to make their own decisions. 16:53:05if they do that they might undermine this effort of expanding the dependency class in america, which is what obamacare is designed to do. because expanding the dependency class expands the democrat party and that increases the political base and it seems illogical to the american people, well, 16:53:22there's the logic i've just applied to it and now, mr. speaker, they do understand that this is about politics. it's about expanding the dependency class, and it's about diminishing the independence and the spirit of americans. and so the lifetime caps piece 16:53:40is a fourth one. 16:53:45fifth one that's it. do they redeem those 2,500 pages of disaster? do they then overrule and trump the constitution of the united states of america? i say no, mr. speaker. 16:53:57they cannot, they must not, they should not. and i hear this debate also about an increase in our deficit of the number i think was $332 billion, not if but when we repeal obamacare. 16:54:13well that deficit, and they want to know, well, you offset that deficit with spending cuts. yes, sir. we will be happy to offset a deficit with spending cuts but i would make this argument instead. 16:54:29when you have an unconstitutional bill in front of you and if you're debating whether or not that's a reason to repeal an unconstitutional bill, you can set no price on the constitution of the united states of america. if it's a trillion dollars you 16:54:47repeal the bill anyway because it's unconstitutional and you don't sit back and twiddle your thumbs and wait for the court to resolve this for you. 16:55:02i'm glad that there's litigation going on in the judicial branch. i'm glad that judge hudson found with virginia on the constitutional component of the interstate commerce clause. i'm glad there are efforts out there in the states to deny the implementation of obamacare. all of these things going on. but we took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united 16:55:18states here yesterday. we took it all in good faith. we said so. and when we have an unconstitutional bill before us, mr. speaker, it is our obligation to repeal that bill. our judgement of the constitution is not a judgment that defers across and down the 16:55:36line of independence avenue. we don't go to the supreme court and genuflect and say, if you change the meaning of the constitution my oath applies, our oath applies to our understanding and conviction of the text and the original 16:55:50understanding of the constitution and the various amendments as they were adopted. that's what the constitution has to mean or it is no guarantee whatsoever to the people in this country. they rose up and they changed this majority in this house and they did so because there are a whole group of millions of 16:56:10constitutional conservatives, including the tea party groups and they said, enough unconstitutional activity, enough of this theft of our liberty, we are not going to pass the debt and deficit on to this succeeding generations. so i notice, and it was $230 16:56:25billion was the point, not $232, to make it accurate but i noticed today in the republican study committee that chairman jim jordan read from an article written by tony blankly in the "washington times," december 20, 2010, and it caught my ear and 16:56:42so i looked it up and i'd like to just close with this concept that was delivered by tony blankly shortly before christmas this year. and he wrote about smeerns in china and how they're worried that if they don't keep the growth going in china that they 16:56:58will create expectations and then the peasants in china will be unruleble if you give them expectations, then you have to meet those expectations. well we in america, we trust in our expectations and so he writes this, what happened in 16:57:14november 2 was this, that the american people went to the polls and said, i want more liberty and less government. i want more liberty and less security about my future and he puts in these words and i think they're excellent words. quote, no other people in the 16:57:30world would have responded to economic danger by seeking more liberty and less government protection. no other people would have fought to -- thought to themselves, if i have to suffer economically in order to not steal from my grandchildren, so 16:57:48be it. i pray we would have come to that decision a generation ago instead of a couple of months ago, mr. speaker. but this congress has come to that decision at the direction 16:58:02and the effectiveness of the american people and we will follow through on that pledge. we'll ask them, keep sending us more people like this freshman class, to help get this job done so, that in our time we can hand the keys of this chamber and 16:58:19this government over to the next generation in sound fiscal fashion, sound constitutional fashion, not with diminished liberty, but with the expanded liberty and with the pillars of american exceptionalism 16:58:34refurbished by our generation thanks to the will of the american people. thank you, mr. speaker. i yield back the balance of my 16:58:41time. THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE:the gentleman yields back. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the chair recognizes the gentleman from kentucky, mr. yarmuth, for 30 minutes. Yarmuth (D-KY):thank you, mr. speaker. and congratulations on your election. 16:58:58it's a great pleasure to be here today and i could spend the next half hour responding to my colleague from iowa. i think it's fascinating that just one comment that he talks about reading the constitution and then talks about how this is 16:59:15an unconstitutional bill. well obviously he apparently stopped at article 2 and didn't get to article 3 which stipulates that the judiciary and the supreme court ultimately decides what is constitutional in this country, not members of congress. and the constitution was read 16:59:32today, i'm glad it was, it's always good to remind ourselves of this great foundational document that we all respect, that all of us, all 435 members of the house, swore to protect and defend yesterday. and in the constitution, in 16:59:48article 1, section 5 it says, each house may determine the rules of its precedings. and yesterday the republican majority in the house put forth a group of rules changes that will determine how this congress 17:00:05will operate over the next two years. and it was fascinating in light of our discussion of health care, in light of our discussion about the cost of health care that one of the things it did, these rules changes that republicans 17:00:21passed, basically divest extraordinary power in one member of the house of representatives to determine essentially what the cost, what the deficit or the debt -- the budget implications of a 17:00:38particular piece of legislation might be. and to the debate we are in now about republicans' proposal to take away all of the privileges and rights and benefits granted by the affordable care act that we passed in the 111th congress and i was proud to support is 17:00:55that one of the things it said was that if there's a vote to repeal the health care bill, the affordable health care act that we passed last year, that we basically decide that we don't have to abide by pay-go 17:01:14rules. in other words, saying that just because the congressional budget office determined that the affordable health care act will save the taxpayers $230 billion over the next seven or 17:01:29eight years and then another $1 trillion in the following 10 years that we don't have to make the same kind of adjustments that we do for other kinds of additional expenditures because the republican philosophy is if you 17:01:49reduce revenues in any way to the federal government that's fine and it doesn't affect the deficit. now, a lot of debate -- a lot of the debate we had last congress over the health care act i heard time after time 17:02:03after time, tax cuts and many other things that, oh, a business can't operate like this, a family can't operate like this. well, in fact, in this particular case that analogy are really relevant because if i have a family, two-income 17:02:20family and all of a sudden one of us loses our job and loses our income, it's really interesting that we could take the position that, oh, it didn't affect our budget. 17:02:33it didn't affect the family deficit. just that loss of revenue didn't matter. all we're concerned about is how much we spent. all we're concerned about is the expense. what the republicans have basically done is to say under this new regime, this new set 17:02:50of rules they passed yesterday that there are two separate ledgers. one dealing with exexpenditures, one dealing with revenue and they don't affect each other. it's an astounding philosophy of operation that we're about 17:03:06to embark on. under this new rule when the bush tax cuts for the very wealthy expire in two years, we would not have to account for that loss in revenue to the philadelphia deficit even 17:03:22though when -- to the federal deficit even though when we start borrowing money to pay for the deficit we're going to have to come up with that money. they say, no, it doesn't affect the deficit. if we repeal the affordable health care act, which the 17:03:37c.b.o. says will save $1.3 17:03:42trillion over the next two decades, that's money that we aren't going to have to borrow from somebody else. they say, oh, that's not part of the budget. we don't have to compensate for that. 17:03:55so it's fascinating that they basically set up these two sets of books and then they give the power to the chairman of the budget committee, who in this case is mr. ryan of wisconsin, a very thoughtful, very thoughtful, honest man. 17:04:10you give him the power, however, to make a decision that whatever the c.b.o. says doesn't matter, he can deem or decide exactly what the impact of any provision or any act of congress is on the budget. one person. 17:04:28now, i come from kentucky. we're a big basketball state. last weekend we had a game, big game rivalry, kentucky and louisville played. didn't come out the way i liked to, but i have to think when we set up these rules that that would be like louisville and 17:04:44kentucky playing and saying to coach pitino or louisville or coach cal periiperri, you get to make the calls in this game. coach pitino, we're taking the 17:04:59refs off the field. you are the one that will call fouls. you'll make all the decisions. that's basically what the republicans have done. and what they also said in this process is that they basically decided that the health care 17:05:16reform bill has changing it, repealing it will have no impact on the deficit, no impact on the budget. now, that's fascinating because for the last year and a half when we debated the affordable health care act they kept talking about how this was 17:05:30going to balloon the deficit, how it was going to explode the deficit, trillions of dollars it's going to cost the american taxpayer. well, now they say, no, has no impact at all on the deficit. because you have to understand 17:05:47if it costs nothing to repeal it, then there was no cost to passing it. so one has to question, who's been honest in this debate? who's been honest in this debate? 17:06:03i understand finding referees as to who's right and who's wrong and which facts are accurate has been a difficult process. and my colleague, mr. king, said that all of a sudden we keep talking about this expecting liberal light to go 17:06:20on in people's heads, well, we need some light on this subject because there's been so much attempt, billions and billions of dollars spent to create darkness about the impact of this bill and that process 17:06:34proceeds today. so i think as we debate this proposal the republicans to do away with many of the benefits which we are so proud of and which many americans, millions of americans are beginning to 17:06:49feel now, that we have the kind of discussion that is honest, that is open, that sheds light on the subject. and no one can do that better than my colleague from the great state of maryland, donna edwards. 17:07:05Edwards, D. (D-MD):thank you for yielding, mr. yarmuth. as i listen to this discussion i thought, i wonder what taxpayers are thinking about this discussion. i wonder about the taxpayers that go to work every day but through no fault of their own 17:07:20they can't afford to buy health insurance even though they work every day and they pay taxes every day. and i thought, well, under the affordable care act indeed those people -- we get to, you know, put a little bottom up under them so they can be 17:07:36covered, so that they can, you know, go to work, take care of their families but also have the security and knowing that their families are going to be covered with health care. i thought about the discussion earlier on this floor where our colleagues on the other side of 17:07:51the aisle talked, you know, somewhat disparagingly as a young person who maybe finishes college or trade school and goes to get a job but there's a gap in health care coverage because they've turned 22, 23 years old. 17:08:09they are working for a living, doing what they need to do, they've gone to school, they've gotten a trade maybe and they can't afford health care coverage. so their parents get to say, you know what, for all of our piece of mind and for your security, we're going to, you know, pay for that health care 17:08:28coverage under our plan. and so, you know, mr. speaker, as i stand here today i think about my son who's just gotten a job and there was this 17:08:39period, i remember when i received that notice from our health insurance company and that notice, you know, it was a shocker to me because it basically said, you're done. and had we not had this provision in our -- the affordable care act that 17:08:52enables parents like me and other parents around the country to have the piece of mind of being able to keep our children, our young people, our young working people on our health care plan, i don't know what working families would do out there. 17:09:09mr. speaker, i thought, also, about a conversation that i'm going to share with you with some seniors that i had with friends as i was spending new year's eve. and one of the seniors said to me, we were talking about health care and they said, you know, i have a medical 17:09:25condition and i'm spending thousands of dollars and i've fallen into the doughnut hole and it's really taking a chunk out of our pocket. and i had the privilege on december 31 of saying to this family, do you know that as of january 1, as of the next day 17:09:44in 2011, your prescription drug that's fallen into that doughnut hole will actually receive a 50% discount for that prescription drug? they had no idea. i was glad to be able to share 17:09:57it with them. they're not my constituents. they live in somebody else's state, but it was great to be able to share that with them, and that's the experience that many of our seniors all across the country are having right now as they realize that they won't have to bear the burden of out-of-pocket costs for 17:10:13prescription drugs that fall through a doughnut hole because they can't afford it any more. they're young people -- their young people. if you undergo domestic violence, guess what, that's a 17:10:31pre-existing condition. the insurance companies, as we move into the implementation of our health care bill, will no longer call that a pre-existing condition. i'll close and allow you some additional opportunity in your time, but i do want to say that it was really compelling to 17:10:47read the constitution here on the floor of the house of representatives today and, again, a very important reminder of our obligation as elected officials to look out for the general welfare of the people. and i can think of no better 17:11:02way to do that than making sure that we protect the health insurance, the health care that americans have been guaranteed because of what we were able to accomplish with the affordable care act. Yarmuth (D-KY):i thank the distinguished congresswoman 17:11:17from maryland for her comments. i'm actually kind of glad that congressman king brought up these major benefits which are now helping families across this country. ms. edwards talked about the 17:11:34benefit of adding your son or daughter under 26 to your policy, and mr. king basically pooh-poohed that. i don't know if that's exactly a good legislative term, but kind of ridiculed that. and then he talked about 17:11:49lifetime limits and how lifetime limits were not necessarily something that we should worry about in spite of the fact that almost a million americans a year historically over the last few years have gone bankrupt because they either had no insurance or 17:12:05their insurance was inadequate and they lost everything they had because of health care cost, because of a cancer diagnosis or a serious accident. these are real-life stories. these are not abstractions. and i understand that we have 17:12:21many colleagues on the other side of the aisle who believe in with almost a religious zeal in certain things like the perfection of the marketplace in spite of the fact that we've seen time after time after time in this country not the -- not 17:12:40too long ago with the financial system how our markets often fail, how we have created or allowed to be created enormous sources of power and concentrations of economic 17:12:53power in this country that have basically distorted the marketplaces. and that is true -- very, very true in the area of health insurance. we have many, many states in which one company, one company, 17:13:11one insurer will dominate the insurance market. 85%, 90% of the insurance in that state solid -- sold through one insurance company. that's not something that the drafters of the constitution 17:13:25envisioned. so it's nice to believe in free market principles, and i think democrats believe in free market principles as well as republicans do. but the fact is in real life, 17:13:39not in a history philosophy book, in real life markets fail, markets get distorted and that is when the government is responsible for protecting the general welfare of the population, as the constitution 17:13:53says. i want to return, because i've been joined by -- we've been joined by another colleague, i want to return to this issue of rules because, again, the budgetary rules that the republicans have set up to govern this next congress are creating some incredibly 17:14:11difficult situations for our states, our localities and our people. and one of those areas in which this has been particularly true -- i know i've been contacted by transportation officials in kentucky about how desperate they think -- how dangerous 17:14:27they think these new rules may be. and joe courtney from connecticut has joined us to talk about that implication of the new rules that we are going to be operating under, so i yield to the gentleman from connecticut. Courtney (D-CT):thank you, mr. yarmuth. i appreciate the fact that 17:14:42you're putting the spotlight on this issue which is really extraordinary in terms of what's just happened in the last 24 hours. as you know and as congresswoman edwards knows, the real workhorse, infrastructure, transportation funding in this country is the 17:14:59highway trust fund. that is a mechanism which is set up by the congress. it has a dedicated revenue source, gas taxes, and since 1998 there has been a rule which the congress has operated under which says that the five-year transportation plan 17:15:16authorized by the congress cannot be tampered with by a bill that's brought to the floor of the house. if it is, then that bill is ruled out of order. and the purpose of that is to make sure that the transportation plan, which is done in a five-year increment, 17:15:32has sanctity, has consistent is i, so that states like yours or maryland or connecticut can actually move forward on multiyear projects, which most roads construction, bridge 17:15:48construction falls within that timeline. this has been the operating rules of the house since 1998. yesterday, the republican rule, which was adopted, astonishingly, rescinded that protection for the transportation trust fund, the 17:16:04-- again, the mechanism which ensures that states get appropriate funding for highways, so a coalition grew up over the last three days, including labors international union, ironworkers, the u.s. chamber of commerce, the 17:16:19american trucking association, the motorcycle riders of america, people who actually care about making sure that our roads and bridges have the adequate support to make sure that, again, as a growing country we are going to be able to move people and goods from 17:16:35one place to the other in an appropriate fashion. by the way, our competitors around the world are moving past us at mock speed in terms of their transportation infrastructure investment. nonetheless, this coalition 17:16:49warned the new majority that this new rule was going to upset, again, the consistency which transportation funding requires the new majority went ahead with that rule, adopted it, claims that they in fact were not doing that to the transportation trust fund but 17:17:06interestingly the markets say otherwise. is payne webber issued a downgrade to construction companies on the wall street stock markets and stocks exchanges and their stocks 17:17:21declined yesterday in the wake of the adoption of this rule. again, i earlier today submitted press accounts that describe, in fact, the sequence of what actually happened. we are talking here about a sector of the u.s. economy that's not in a recession, it's 17:17:39in a depression. the construction trades right now are looking at unemployment rates of 25% rather than shrinking and inhibiting the transportation infrastructure of this country, we should be investing in it. let's be clear here. 17:17:54there's not going to be any public -- excuse me, private investment that's going to fill the gap that's being created by undercutting the sanctity of the highway trust fund. the fact of the matter is, this is done through public dollars and every generation, going 17:18:10back to really jefferson, has understood that this is essential to have an economy that can thrive and grow. as i said, we have now left the highway funding of this country, subject to the whims 17:18:25of the annual appropriations process that is not the top of horizon which planning can actually take place at state d.o.t.'s. 17:18:36it doesn't surprise me that the folks in kentuckys have contacted the people at d.o.t. in connecticut have done the same thing. again, management, labor, public sector groups that care about, they are just incredulous, particularly at 17:18:51this time work the weakness of this economy, that this house has adopted that type of rule. i thank the gentleman, reclaiming my time. the only ji i used earlier with 17:19:07was families. Yarmuth (D-KY):we know we're running huge deficits right now. we know that the money that we are spending, a large portion of it, we are borrowing because tax revenues can't support it. this republican majority now 17:19:22has basically take then position that they are going to strangle this government and put a cap on expenditures and that certainly is, i understand that's part of their honestly held philosophy. but if you're a family and you've got two kids, high 17:19:41school age, and one of -- you have two income earners, one of them loses their job, are you going to then say, under in circumstances am i going to borrow money to help pay for the college education of my two teenagers so they can have a 17:19:57better life and be prepared to meet the demands of the future? i'm just going to keep cutting expenses. that analogy seems to be working here particularly with regard to transportation as well and the investment we have 17:20:11to make. Courtney (D-CT):families make that decision to make capital investment along exactly the same lines whether to fix a roof, put a new driveway in, buy a house, again that's done few financing, debt financing, and again the way that 17:20:30particularly the middle class kind of deals with those challenges, there's no question that in terms of our own country's history, going back in time, even to the beginsing of our government, even during the civil war when the finances of this country were completely going from almost day-to-day, 17:20:48abraham lincoln did not pull back in terms of the need for us to invest in rail, land grant colleges, again, this is the middle of the worst conflict in the history of this country but he still saw the need for us as a nation to 17:21:02continue to invest in the future and with borrowed must understand. those type of investments, investing in people through education, comes back to benefit the economy long-term and the multiplier effect is much higher than the actual price tag of those initial 17:21:19investments. Yarmuth (D-KY):i thank the gentleman. again, i go back to these rules that have been adopted now in the house and they basically give extraordinary, unprecedented power to one person to set these budget limits, to decide the budgetary 17:21:36impact of an investment in infrastructure ohealth care law, the repeal of the health care law, or for instance the repeal of many advances we made in terms of education funding 17:21:49in the 111th congress. it seems to me that, as i read through the constitution, the founding fathers probably didn't anticipate that we would basically disenfranchise 434 members of congress in making 17:22:06these incredibly important decisions about how we raise revenue which is specifically power that has been given for initiation to the house of representatives, or to spend tax revenue, that that kind of power would vest in one person 17:22:25and you would set up a set of rules to set up two sets of books and say if you drop revenue you cut taxes, if you have a loss of revenue that has no budget implications but anything you spend has to be offset somewhere along the 17:22:39line. i think in terms of not just investment in infrastructure, but research, medical research which is the answer to our long-term financing of health care if we can control or cure diabetes, make an impact on heart disease, these will make 17:22:57a difference in the future, but to set up these kind of rules that will disenfranchise 434 members of congress and virtually every american citizen from deciding what money should be spent and invested in some very, very important aspects of the 17:23:12general welfare. i'd like to yield again to donna edwards of maryland. Edwards, D. (D-MD):it occurred to me as we heard this discussion, and thank you to mr. courtney for raising these issues with us, mr. speaker, because it occurred to me that while we 17:23:28should be spending our time focused on job creation and we know that a core for job 17:23:37creation for the 21st century for this country is in our investment and transportation infrastrurture -- infrastructure, putting people back to work and instead we are relitigating what the american 17:23:48people thought we had finished with health care. here we are with a rule that then says to us, even as the bipartisan commission on debt commission has said we need to invest in the nation's infrastructure, those are investments that create jobs, jobs with taxpayers are paying 17:24:05into the system so we have revenue so that we can invest in our infrastructure that we are going to be constrained from doing it and i'm reminded that in the last congress, in the 111th congress, every member, i believe, of our 17:24:21transportation and train structure committee, wrote to the president of the united states saying, we need to do a long-term transportation infrastructure bill so that our state can begin to really put people back to work and here we are in the 112th congress led 17:24:38by the republicans who have put forth a rules package that will constrain our ability to create jobs in this country. with that, thank you, mr. yarmuth, i yield. Yarmuth (D-KY):i thank you for 17:24:52that contribution. we have been joined by congressman cohen of tennessee, i'd like to yield time to him. Cohen (D-TN):thank you, mr. yarmuth. indeed, the issues mr. courtney brought forward in his one-minute today were alarming to me because my home to town of memphis depends on 17:25:07transportation, that's what makes it america's distribution cent, the roads, rivers, runways and rails, and if we don't have money to go into helping our airports, where federal express is located in my district, and in your district, u.p.s., that's how we move products all over the 17:25:23world from those hubs and move congress. that's why it's so important we have an f.a.a. re-authorization act passed, a lot of which will be expenses to modernize the structure and the transportation bills that mr. oberstar, who was one of the great members of this house, no longer a member, tried to get 17:25:40passed last year to both stimulate the economy in the short run and in the long run, as mr. courtney said work that multiplier effect, in the long run. i was hoping and co-hope we'll 17:25:54have bipartisan efforts to have transportation, f.a.a. re-authorization bills passed that will move this economy forward. the economy is still in a difficult spot. we can't really see that the economy improving if we 17:26:11continue to cut spending, particularly in places such as transportation infrastructure, and the airport infrastructures. that's so important. so it was distressing news to see this happen. it is difficult to see where we 17:26:26can get us out of this near-depression that was caused by the bush administration with cutting spending. i know paul krugman has people that don't think he's correct all the time. i happen to think he's correct 17:26:41most of the time, and the nobel prize people aren't always correct, but when they gave him the nobel prize for economics, some of the brighter people in the world thought he was pretty good on economics. it's his belief that we need to do more spending and i concur with him and i'd hate to see us 17:26:58leave this economy, that's about to get out of the ditch to put it back in the ditch by cutting spending on infrastructure that's so important. pll yarmuth i thank you for that.
Footage Information
Source | ABCNEWS VideoSource |
---|---|
Direct Link: | View details on ABCNEWS VideoSource site |
Title: | UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 1600-1727 |
Date: | 01/06/2011 |
Library: | ABC |
Tape Number: | DP0086-887 |
Content: | HOUSE FLOOR DEBATE: The House meets for legislative business. Reading of the Constitution of the United States by Members of the House of Representatives / (Rep. Goodlatte) // Suspension (1 Bill): H.Res.22 - A resolution to Cut Congress's Budget (Rep. Walden - House Administration) 16:00:20Pallone (D-NJ):let me thank my colleague from california and each of the other speakers here for the contribution they have made tonight and particularly when they listen to my colleague from tennessee talk about those 16:00:33particular cases of individuals that were impacted because that's what this is all about. it is amazing to me the first act of this new republican majority is to try to repeal a bill, health care reform, that 16:00:49really is making a difference for people on a personal level, particularly with the patient protections and i thought to myself when i was coming down here, who benefits from repeal? who could possibly benefit from repeal? 16:01:05as many of you talked about the people who are going to be harmed by it, would who would benefit? and the only group that would benefit are the big insurance companies. because when you think about it, what do they want to do? they want to keep increasing 16:01:23premiums. in your state, you may have already mentioned it, blue cross/blue shield, 50-something percent increase. and we, of course, as this 16:01:38health care reform kicks in, it's going to be more and more difficult for the types of increases that we have seen in premiums that these big health insurance companies have put forward. and the reason they want to get -- the insurance companies want 16:01:53to get rid of the patients' bill of rights and re-institute these discriminatory practices whether denying care because of pre-existing conditions or re-instituting lifetime caps or the different protections that we have seen kick in, the reason 16:02:09they want to do that is money oriented. they have to pay out money. you talked about the cancer person. i was up in rules earlier and mrs. slaughter was talking about someone who had cancer and was treated and ran into the 16:02:26lifetime cap and the cancer re-occurred and didn't have any more coverage because she hit the lifetime caps. they want to have lifetime caps, don't want pre-existing conditions, don't want kids on 16:02:42your policy because it saves them money. that's the way they make profit and pay dividends by raising premiums and having discriminatory practices that eliminate people because they need health care. it's that simple. 16:02:57and just in the last few weeks, provisions have kicked in that go against that. we had the president announce or the white house announce around christmas time new regulations that say any premium increase that's over 10% will be 16:03:16scrutinized and they will try to -- under the provisions of this provisions, not allow the increase to go above 10%. january 1, the provisions kicked in that said 80% of your premium costs had to be used for 16:03:34benefits, couldn't be used for insurance company profits, couldn't be used to pay back dividends to the shareholders. all of these initiatives that are already kicking in, they basically make it more difficult 16:03:47for the insurance companies to make a big profit and the consquens -- consequence of that 16:03:57is health insurance becomes more affordable. i was up at the rules committee earlier and it was interesting because i think you mentioned my colleague from california that -- run of you mentioned that under the health care reform 16:04:12that's in place now that they want to repeal, we get the same insurance as congressmen as any other american. and you know, i still have people write to me and say, well, you have your own policy, but you want to give me this 16:04:28lousy coverage that i'm going to give me under the health care reform. i say that's not true. you may hear that on a tv station, but that's not true. we have to go into the exchanges just like everybody else. we will be different from 16:04:46federal employees because we go into the exchanges. at the rules committee today, one of the republican members who is very supportive of repeal said that he specifically wasn't going to take, you know, health insurance as a congressman and 16:05:02he wanted me to know that because he was voting for repeal. i said that's very nice and commendable for you but i think every member of congress who votes for repeal should say i don't want health insurance through the federal government, because if you are going to deny it to everyone else, you should 16:05:20deny it to yourself the same way we are going to get the same coverage as everyone else. if you don't want anyone else to have the coverage, you shouldn't get it yourself. there was one member from 16:05:35maryland who came to the ownertation who was a big advocate for repeal and he was inquiring because his federal health insurance didn't take effect until february 1. we were sworn in yesterday, but i guess it takes 30 days before 16:05:50the insurance actually kicks in and he was complaining about the fact that he had to wait until february 1 to get his health insurance as a congressman. well, again, if you are going to vote for repeal next week, you shouldn't be worried about when 16:06:05it's going to kick in. you shouldn't be taking it at all, in my opinion. there's a lot of -- i don't know what the word -- smoking mirrors or whatever is going on around other side of the aisle and my 16:06:24point is, there is a lot of protection here for people. don't deny them that unless you are going to deny it to yourself. who is helped by this repeal? only the big insurance 16:06:35companies. they are the ones who are going to benefit. i know you were the insurance commissioner so i know you know what i'm talking about. Garamendi (D-CA):i do have some experience on that. it's called the medical loss ratio and the insurance 16:06:53companies have cut a fat check for themselves over the years by taking a big premium and then paying a small amount of it out for the medical conference. and the patients' bill of rights and affordable health care act, 16:07:10they can't do that. they have to pay for the individual policies, 80% and for the group policies, 85% for medical services. so what was the very first thing they did after this bill was signed into law? we passed it last year and the 16:07:25president signed it. the very first thing they did was to run down to the health and human services department and say, oh, but our advertising ought to be included as a medical expense. and oh, these expenses for these kinds of employees, mostly 16:07:50statisticians, we think that is a medical expense. we are trying to make sure that when we pay a dollar at least we get 80 cents back in medical 16:08:01services. our friends on the other side would repeal that and allow the insurance companies to take that money or a larger portion of that money, put it in their pockets, give it to their c.e.o.'s, whatever, but not use it for medical services. medical loss ratio is important. 16:08:18and the other thing that needs to be understood is the ability of the government to review, not to say no, but to shine that big bright spotlight onto the insurance company premium 16:08:35increases. is it justified, yes, no, what are your costs, what ratios are you using for medical losses and the like. so that spotlight of information is required under the law. many, many things in the law. mr. cohen, i see you stood up, 16:08:52anxious to make a comment here and i notice behind you our colleague from maryland has joined us and i want to start talking about seniors. so, please, mr. cohen, i want you to go for it. Cohen (D-TN):i want to ask a 16:09:05question, the first thing that the republicans want to do is repeal the affordable health care bill. but the first thing they did was today and we joined with them and bipartisan was to cut 5% from our members' representational allowances, a 16:09:20small amount of money in the big picture. but the deficit was the issue they were highlighting. what would the repeal of the affordable health care act do to the deficit, that's the issue, because that's one of our big issues? 16:09:36Garamendi (D-CA):well, it just happens we prepared this little blue chart here and it ought to be in the red. the repeal of the affordable health care act, obviously deals with the patients' bill of rights but also deals with the 16:09:52deficit. this week, the congressional budget office, not republican, not democrat, they answer to neither party but to the general public. they said the repeal of the affordable health care act will increase the deficit by $230 16:10:11billion, $230 billion in the next nine years and in the out years, the next 10 years, well over $1,200,000,000. Cohen (D-TN):that's money we owe 16:10:31china and pay the interest to the chinese and our children and grandchildren will be paying this if they don't have pre-existing conditions where they can get insurance. Garamendi (D-CA):our children and 16:10:45grandchildren and those of us living for another 10, 15, 20 years, we are going to pay twice. we are going to pay the insurance costs, the health care costs that is not covered by the health insurance programs, the example you gave of the individual with two boughts of 16:11:02cancer and going to pay for the full costs of that because the limitation goes back into place. so you get to pay for your health care and you are going to have to pay off the deficit also. makes no sense whatsoever, but, hey, that's what they want to 16:11:18do, without one hearing by any of the relevant committees. Cohen (D-TN):consistency is the hob goblin. thank you sir. Garamendi (D-CA):i noticed that our colleague from maryland has 16:11:34joined us. ms. edwards. you were talking about it earlier today on the floor and in committee. Edwards, D. (D-MD):i feel very personally about health care, a person who went a long time 16:11:51without health care coverage and worried like most americans and they did prior to our investing in reform for the american people. so i know that anxiety. and i was thinking about some of our swepts, in maryland's 4th 16:12:10congressional district who today, because of what we did in the democratic-led congress in passing landmark health care reform legislation are better off today and we haven't fully 16:12:23implemented the benefits for the american people. i think about a letter that i got from a gentleman who lives in my district in olney, maryland. and he writes to me that his son mike was 25, going on 26 and he 16:12:40could receive health care insurance coverage when he wasn't able to get it and needed it and couldn't get it. he got a letter from blue cross/blue shield saying that 16:12:55his son could be covered until his 26th birthday. and what he did was he did what a lot of americans do, wiping the sweat from their brow because they know they can keep their young people on their health care plan until they are 16:13:1126. i have a 22-year-old and i was feeling the same way. i got another letter from a woman who actually does health care policies and lives in my district and what she said to me was that her daughter had a pre-existing condition and she 16:13:26was very concerned, but she was an older young person, 20 years old with a pre-existing condition, really worried that she wouldn't be able to provide health care and got the notice for cobra coverage and we said the backup is cobra. 16:13:42that was going to be an extra $400 to $500 a month to make 16:13:51sure she didn't lose her health care when she actually lost her job. now this parent, actually for the cost of about $70 or $80, as opposed to $400 or $500 can keep their child on their health care 16:14:06coverage. i think this is a great benefit for america's families, for families who work every day and actually have health care coverage. i heard discussion about premium increase hikes. and i want to tell you something. when we working on health care 16:14:22reform and many of us were concerned about people who don't have insurance and need coverage. but most americans all across the country do have some form of health care coverage and you know what they are worried about? 16:14:35they are worried about the premiums going up at astronomical rates. i have heard from my constituents, 20%, 30% premium hikes. because of what we did in this health care package, snirns commissioner, insurance 16:14:54commissioners across the country have the power invested in them and say we are going to put a check on these companies. a big state like california, connecticut, maine, colorado and maryland, and all across the 16:15:10country, that's what the commissioners are doing. it's the states. we heard this morning as we read the constitution a reminder that states are in a great position to look at what insurance companies are doing in their 16:15:26states to regulate what's happening in their states and to say to them, you have to stop taking money away from scummers and patients by raising your preliminary -- from consumers and patients by raising your 16:15:44premiums. this is important and i'm glad to be talking about these benefits with the american people. . Garamendi (D-CA):i thank you so 16:15:57very much. you reminded me of two very quick stories. on monday i was at the inaugural for the governor of california, jerry brown is back again, and a lobbyist that i knew when i was an insurance commissioner representing health insurance companies came up to me and he 16:16:13came up to me and put his finger in my chest and said, don't let them repeal the law. i'm not going to give his name, he'd lose his job immediately. and i said, i'll do everything i can, but why? you represent them, why? and he said, i have two children. 16:16:30both are type one diabetics. they're approaching 23 years of age. they will be out of luck. they will never be able to get an insurance policy if this bill is repealed. patient's bill of rights gives 16:16:48that lobbyist for the health insurance industry an opportunity to see his children get health insurance. i have six children of my own. patty and i do. all six of them have gone through that age of 23. it is the scariest time for a 16:17:06parent. you graduate, you get a diploma and you also get an exit from the insurance. that you've had perhaps for your entire life. this law provides another three years after you graduate, that 16:17:23period of time that's almost impossible nowaddais to find a job with a -- now a days to find a job with insurance. Scott, R. (D-VA):thank you very much. i appreciate your hard work and leadership on. 16:17:36this you've talked about the problems in health care with government. it's just not a government problem. you ask any human resources executive about what the -- one of the major problems they have and benefit package, it's the ability to afford health care. 16:17:52health care costs have been going out of control. if you have an employee with a pre-existing condition and he's in the group and they do the study, you start getting bills you can't pay. 16:18:07you ask any human resources what's happened to their insurance costs over the years, it's going through the sky. if you look at the employees -- employee portion of health care, it will go from zero participation to a little bit, more co-pays, more deductibles, more costs for the family, on 16:18:25and on and on. everyone has a great deal of insecurity about their ability to do health care. then you look at the idea of what happens if you lose a job, if you have a pre-existing condition you will not be able 16:18:42to get health care until this bill passed. with all this insecurity, your 16:18:49ability to get health care, your ability to be able to afford it in the future, all of these problem, all of these problems in the future, what is the response from the other side? about what to do about that kind of insecurity, they say, well, 16:19:02just be strong and go without insurance like me. well, that is not a particularly attractive solution for those that don't have an alternative, don't have a spouse who you can say, i'm not going to take 16:19:19government policy, i'm going to use another, or if they're so wealthy they don't need the insurance. most americans aren't in that situation. they need health insurance and this is what is provided, you have access to it and it's 16:19:35affordable. everyone in america will be able to afford health insurance in 2014 because those that can't afford it will have subsidies to make sure that they can. so everybody will be able -- again, if you make less than $88,000 you can get health care 16:19:50for less than 10% of your salary. that is not the case now. if you're in the $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year bracket, if you can get insurance it's going to be a lot more than that. so with this bill people have the security of health insurance 16:20:06that they don't have now and the bizarre suggestion, just go without insurance, is not particularly nice when you have children that may need -- have a little ear infection, rather than have them lose their 16:20:22hearing you can deal with it when it's a little infection. these problems don't go out of control. we need that security, this bill provides it. and in terms of seniors, seniors are particularly helped under this legislation. 16:20:38they can get -- those who can't afford the co-pays and deductibles can get their annual checkups without any co-pays and deductibles. we'll help fill in the doughnut hole. take a little time but eventually there will be no doughnut hole where they fall in 16:20:54and have to pay all of their drug costs. it would provide more community health centers so they'll have better access. we'll train more doctors and nurses so they'll have more professional -- you have a chart that extends medicare, medicare 16:21:12is extended. we know that medicare will go broke if we don't do anything. it extends the policy of medicare. so all of these, lower prescription drug costs, all of 16:21:26these things that seniors have a particular interest in, all of that will be lost if this bill is repealed. Garamendi (D-CA):if i might interrupt you for just a moment, mr. scott, you're into an issue, an area, that is profoundly important to the 16:21:41seniors of america. the discussion last year as this bill was passing was that somehow this piece of legislation would harm seniors by taking away medicare benefits. it was not true last year, it is 16:21:58not true this year. however if our republican colleagues are successful in repealing it, they, the seniors, will be seriously harmed. i want to make this point very, very clear and ask my colleagues to join us perhaps on their own personal experience in their 16:22:15districts, but you started going through this list here, this legislation actually extends the solvency of medicare. by reining in the cost and by giving seniors specific 16:22:36preillness care so they will be able to get preventative care free. free annual checkups. they can't get it today but under this legislation seniors can get preannual checkups which 16:22:50reduces the cost -- free annual checkups which reduces the cost because you get to the illness quicker. mr. scott. Scott, R. (D-VA):you said people were scared about what might happen. i also said things about small business, this would bankrupt 16:23:02small businesses. small businesses are exempt from the requires -- requirements under the bill. so it can't possibly hurt them. but those small businesses that want to provide health care for their employees are given tax credits to encourage them to do so. so they can't possibly be hurting small business. 16:23:17but for the senior citizens, they have all of the benefits that you've listed on the chart that will be lost if this bill is repealed. Garamendi (D-CA):you mentioned the doughnut hole. every senior that's in the prescription doughnut hole last year, 2010, received a $250 16:23:36check to help them pay for their drugs. in going forward the doughnut hole will be lessened and lessened and eventually nine years from now will disappear. there will be no doughnut hole. 16:23:48you look at the quality of care, extremely important quality of care, thank you for bringing that up. more primary doctors, more geriatric care of nurses and doctors, extraordinary important part of the legislation, not just only for seniors, you also 16:24:03mentioned the community-based and of course the preventative care. all of these things are there and all of them will disappear if the republicans are successful with their legislation, next wednesday that will be brought to this floor without one hearing to discuss 16:24:19any of these issues in a relevant policy committee. mr. cohen, please join us. Cohen (D-TN):let me ask a question. i was just thinking here, as i'm honored to be in the house of representatives, and with the constitution that's so beautiful that it says we're to promote 16:24:35the general welfare, we are among other industrialized nations on this earth. what are the other industrialized nations on the earth do about health care for their citizens? Garamendi (D-CA):i'm not sure i heard your question. so please say it again. Cohen (D-TN):what do other industrialized nations in the 16:24:49world do for health care? do they have program policies like ours with -- where 32 million people don't have health insurance and they're not mandated to get insurance? what do they do? Garamendi (D-CA):i think you're asking me a rhetorical question because you know the answer and i think most americans know the answer. 16:25:06all the industrialized nations, we're not talking about china here, but we're talking about korea, japan, the european countries, the european union, all of those countries provide universal health insurance conference. 16:25:23universal. everyone, including -- conversation. universal. everyone, including tourists who happen to show up and this i know from one of my daughters who fell off a stair at the leaning tower of piza. she fell, went into an michael jackson room, -- emergency room, 16:25:38they took an m.r.i., she said, i haven't paid. she said, you're covered much that was in italy. Cohen (D-TN):does the united states not have one of the greatest desscrepsies in wealth between the richest and poorest in the industrialized world as well? are we saying to our wealthy 16:25:54people, you can afford health insurance so you can get it but for those people that are poor, too bad. Garamendi (D-CA):the other countries of the world don't look at it that way. they look at it as a right for their citizens to have access to health care and they provide the health insurance. different ways of doing it. 16:26:09germany, france, britain, canada all do it differently. but they all do it and incidentally the health statistics in all of those countries are considerably better than america and america is placed at the bottom of the industrialized countries in 16:26:24terms of our health care, how healthy we are, how long we live, how sick we get. we're at the bottom. in fact, we are often with developing countries in the statistics, we spend almost twice as much as any of those countries. 16:26:41so the affordable health care act goes after many, many things beyond the patients' bill of rights and the senior issues. thank you so very much for raising that issue. we have about maybe 10 more minutes? 10. 16:26:58mr. pallone. Pallone (D-NJ):i just wanted to talk a little bit about prevention and particularly in terms of seniors, which you mentioned. and what it means in terms of the people's health and allegation the cost to the government. because -- and also the cost to 16:27:12the government. some of the things we've mentioned with regard to seniors have already taken place. this summer under the bill seniors who fell into the doughnut hole got ads 250 rebate. beginning january 1 they get a 50% discount on brand name drugs . 16:27:31you mentioned the co-pays for preventative care, whether it's your annual wellness treatment or other kinds of tests like mammograms or colonoscopies, for example. the reason we're eliminating the 16:27:4720% co-pay for these things, the reason we're trying to fill up the doughnut hole, it goes to prevention. if people don't get their drugs and they get sick and go to the hospital, they have the annual wellness checks, they stay healthy, they don't go to the 16:28:02hospital. and when they go to the hospital if they're on medicare it just costs the government more money. so this is the way we save money. we save money, what does that mean? it means that the debt is decreased, it means that the solvency of medicare you have on 16:28:19the chart is extended. i don't know if we talked much about that. one of my amendments in the rules committee today is, you know, a lot of seniors tell me, they come up to me and say they're worried about the fact that, you know, medicare may become insolvent and there wouldn't be enough money in the trust fund to pay for it. 16:28:35the bottom line is that the health care reform bill extends the judgment day, if you will, when the solvency problem becomes an issue much further and if you have the repeal, the 16:28:48solvency problem hits us six years from now, in 2017, from what i understand. so another problem with repeal is not only does it increase the deficit, but it also, you know, is only six years from now that 16:29:01we would have to deal with this medicare solvency problem. what is that going to mean? that's going to mean probably that cutbacks in benefits for senior citizens because if you don't have the money you're going to have to cut back on the benefits. it is amazing to me how they can 16:29:16continue to talk about this repeal. the other thing they keep saying on the other side of the aisle, the republicans say, well, the reason we want the repeal is because this health care reform is killing jobs. nothing can be further from the truth. 16:29:32i mean, the fact of the matter is that under this health care reform, because the costs of health care premiums for employers will be significantly reduced, they'll be able to hire more people. part of the problem that we have with competition of other 16:29:46countries, mentioned all these other countries, these other industrial countries that have free health care, universal health care, that meengs that -- means that the employers don't carry the burden of that. when they hire someone, if the government is paying for it, they don't have to worry about that for their employees necessarily. 16:30:04well, it's the cost of premiums go down, then people -- the cost of hiring somebody goes down in the united states. in addition to that there are all kinds of jobs created in the health care profession because as everyone gets covered and everybody needs a primary care 16:30:20doctor, well, you're going to need more doctors, more nurses, more health aides because people will get that kind of preventative care. so there are jobs created with the preventative care in handling people to make sure they stay healthy or they stay well. 16:30:40what the republicans should be doing is spending the first days of this session talking about how to improve the economy and create jobs not repealing health care. i think the american people have moved on. 16:30:52they don't want to hear this. they want to know what this congress is going to do to create jobs. we have dealt with the health care issue and they want us to move on. i yield back. Garamendi (D-CA):we have three minutes, four minutes and i'm going to turn to mr. cohen and 16:31:09ms. edwards. would you like to close? Cohen (D-TN):mr. pallone brought up an issue and he said it's not true it's costing jobs. there is some respected group. i think it is political fact check and they were on national 16:31:26news giving the biggest lies told in politics in the last year. and the number one biggest lie, this independent group was the republican mantra of government-mandated health care 16:31:41and it's just a fact, that's the biggest lie told the american public and it came from the leaders on the other side. it came from these halls where they are immune from defamation suits because it's not government-run health care and 16:31:57it's unheard that the other side would use the fact that they are immune from prosecution in the other jurisdiction or court for words that aren't true to do that and politics to say it was government-run health care, the biggest lie of 2010 and comes to 16:32:12the floor next week. Garamendi (D-CA):we will wrap this one up and mr. yarmuth will carry on with health insurance, but we really today focused on a broad range of issues, patients' bill of rights, the way in which 16:32:29the repeal would harm individuals. we also discussed a little bit about how this affects business and we went into some detail about senior citizens. 16:32:45all of these are critically important issues and will be discussing these in the days ahead and i hope the american public will really pay attention and this next week particularly wednesday, it's going to be absolutely critical to the american people. 16:33:00it's a question about will all of us in america be able to get health care coverage that is affordable and provide us with the opportunity to have the health care that we need. so with that, i will wrap this up and turn it over to whom ever is next. 16:33:17thank you, mr. speaker. i yield back my time. THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE:members are reminded that their remarks are properly addressed to the chair rather than any perceived television viewing audience. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the 16:33:36chair recognizes the gentleman from iowa, mr. king, for 30 minutes. King, S. (R-IA):thank you, mr. speaker. i can tell you that i am pleased to address you, mr. speaker, 16:33:47here on the floor of the united states house of representatives and welcome you to the great deliberative body which becomes instantly far more deliberative than it has been in the last four years. and this is part of it. as i deliberate and i listen to the gentleman from tennessee, i 16:34:02have to make a point that when you challenge the mendacity of the leader there is an opportunity to make a motion to take the gentleman's words down, however many of the members are off on other endeavors and the 16:34:20leader and the speaker have established their integrity in their mendacity for years in this congress and i don't think it can be challenged and those who do so are making aspersions by making wild accusations. 16:34:38i came to talk about the weather and as i listend to the speeches that have gone on before in the previous hour, it actually changed the subject for me. i think there are many things that need to be brought out and clarified, given this that we 16:34:55have debated this health care bill -- we debated this health care bill for oh, close to a year. and announced in rules committee earlier today -- i believe there were 100 hours of markup in committee. 16:35:09wasn't the bill they passed, 100 hours of debate and markup on a different bill and switched bills in the end. that's a matter of public record and fact. but the american public understands what happened. they understand that the speaker of the house said we have to pass the bill, meaning 16:35:27obamacare, mr. speaker, in order to find out what's in it. and when that bill was passed to set the record also straight, i don't think there is another time in the history of this congress that there was a bill of this magnitude that passed 16:35:43the house of representatives without the majority support of the house of representatives for the bill that was before us. it is a fact of record, it's a fact of judgment, a fact of history that there had to be conditions that were attached in 16:35:57order to achieve the votes necessary to squeak that bill by and pass o'bauma care here on the floor of the house last march. and if people forget, remember there was a switch on the bill. 16:36:13the bill that was marked up in committee was not the bill that came to the floor or had hearings on it, but there were also conditions. there were the stupak dozen who said we insist that there be an amendment brought forward that 16:36:31will protect so that the language that's in the bill doesn't fund abortion through a federal mandate. and they held out on that to get that vote. little did i know up until that saturday afternoon that the gentleman who was doing the 16:36:47negotiating already committed to vote for the bill. and the stupak people were anonymous people. and they negotiated with the president of the united states who made a commitment and followed through on it to sign an executive order that would pacify or nullify the anonymous 16:37:04stupak dozen under the presumption unconstitutionally and completely outside the bounds of the separation of powers that the president of the united states could effectively amend legislation by executive order and promise he is going to do so before the bill is brought 16:37:19to the floor for a vote. that happened in this congress. and another condition of that was, this is a condition that came after the then chair of the rules committee, ms. slaughter, had offered the idea that they should deem the bill passed so they didn't have to go on record 16:37:35for voting for this bill because they knew how bad it was. they knew how politically vulnerable they were. they knew speaker pelosi was making them walk the plank. a lot of them are not here because of that action. but as i talked about why this 16:37:51bill didn't have the support of the congress and in the form that was before us, why the majority did not support it. the majority vote that day in its form, because there had to be another deal on top of this. this was the deal that the senate had to pass a 16:38:07reconciliation package which was designed to amend the bill that had not yet been brought to the floor of the house for a vote. and i don't know if that is the first time something like that had been played but first time to my knowledge that there was a 16:38:22bill that came before this congress ta was not the bill that came through committee, that was pledged to be amended by a presidential executive order and further amended by a reconciliation bill that would later pass the united states senate. 16:38:36that's what we have before us with obamacare and it became the law of the land on that date of march 30, 2010, passed over here 16:38:46in the house if i remember correctly on the late evening of march 21 or early sunday morning. i remember telling myself i'm going to sleep and then wake up and figure out what to do. 16:39:01i didn't sleep very long and i couldn't sleep with that policy imposed upon the american people with the realization that it would become the law of the land. and about two and-a-half hours later, i got up and wept to my word processor and typed a 16:39:16request for a bill to repeal obamacare. and i filed that request at the opening of business that day, the first opportunity and the first minutes of that day. i want to thank and congratulate michelle balk man. 16:39:32i didn't know it, she was awake in the middle of the night and her bill came down within three minutes of mine and that draft was turned into a discharge petition with a huge pelosi majority in the 111th congress 16:39:50and discharge petition gathered 173 signatures bipartisan at least by the pelosi definition and part of the foundation that i think actually did shake this country. there was a statement made in 16:40:04the rules committee and they were deliberating on the rule for h.r. 2 that we had said that the sky would fall if obamacare became the law of the land and they said the sky didn't fall. chairman up ton and now chairman of the energy and commerce 16:40:22committee said yes, it did. yes, the sky did fall and when you look at the 87 freshman republicans that are seated over on this side, nine freshman democrats on this side rkts i think any --, i think any political pundit would say there 16:40:41was an earthquake in america that was brought about by the imposition of this liberty-stealing, unconstitutional obamacare bill that's before this congress now. this congress was elected to come here and repeal obamacare, get a handle on the debt and 16:40:59deficit and lay the foundation so that private enterprise can start to have faith in the future of this country again and they can create the jobs under the framework that we're hopeful we will be able to bring through. 16:41:13we aren't in a position where the house of representatives can play all of the economic foundation that's necessary for free enterprise to have enough faith and confidence to invest their capital in a robust fashion. what we are in a position to do now with a new congress and a 16:41:30new speaker is to be able to play an effective defense against the existing majority in the united states senate and the president of the united states who has been digging holes through his economic steroid 16:41:47theory and dug such a deep hole and we watched nancy pelosi preside over the debt and we watched the obama administration run that up under their term to about $3 trillion and got to 16:42:03stop. the american were looking at president gulliver obama and they came to the polls on november 2 and tied him up with their electoral ropes and said 16:42:20join the incumbents there. tomorrow and on wednesday, to repeal obamacare and take the shovel out of the hands of the president and take the gavel out of the hands of nancy pelosi. 16:42:34that's what happened. i take you back through this history because it's being rewritten again. how can they stand here, go before the rules of committee, before the american people, mr. speaker, and take the position that somehow if they just explain it one more time and one 16:42:50more way that the american people will now have some left-wing light bulb come on in their head. that's not going to happen. the american people have seen clearly. they washed the lenses off and looked down through the 16:43:05constitution and fiscal responsibility and common sense and they were appalled at that liberty-stealing bill of obamacare and they said repeal that monstrosity because the destiny of america will be 16:43:20diminished unless we do. this is a charge that this new congress has. it's the voice of the american people and it's the respect that we must have. and my gratitude for god's gift to america, the freshman class that was elected in 2010 and sworn in here right here on this 16:43:36floor yesterday afternoon. and they will affect the agenda of this country for many 16:43:44congresses to come and it will be a responsible agenda that brings us to a balanced budget and begins to reduce the deficit that this country has, not just the deficit spending, but reduce the national debt. we must get to the point where we can begin to pay down the 16:43:59national debt and we start with this congress. we start by rolling back the spending to 2008 levels and we started it today with a vote that cut our own budgets by 5%. it's not a lot of money and yes it's symbolic but the symbolism that compels us to follow 16:44:15through if it's good enough now for those of us in this congress that voted on that, it's also good enough to bring that policy through back to the united states of america. well, so what i have heard is, the members on the other side of the aisle that still stand here 16:44:31and defend obamacare, the ones that are left, they have four talking points about the bill that they think are compelling and they must believe that it offsets all of the horrible things about obamacare. first they say -- well, 16:44:47remember, the president had all of these promises about what he was going to do with obamacare and he attached obamacare to it at the blair house during the health care summit, february 25, 2010 when the president of the united states referred to his 16:45:03own bill as obamacare. that is the shorthand version for all this long thing. they don't want to say obamacare. that's how everybody knows it and understands it. . so under obamacare they give you 16:45:21the four, four redeeming components to obamacare that apparently offset all the horrible things about it. and these four redeeming conditions are this. that it requires insurance companies all across america with a federal mandate to 16:45:39provide for policies that must keep your children on there up until age 26. and they think that that's something that america has fallen in love with as a really good, brainy solution. i know there are republicans that support the idea of 16:45:52insurance policies being extended to age 26. but, mr. speaker, what a lot of people don't know in this country is that there are at least two members in this congress that were elected before age 26 and had obamacare been implemented before they were elected to office, they 16:46:08would have, could have been on their parents' health insurance plan. now isn't that a nice thing, when you wean them off of the parents' health insurance plan and you transition them over and say, now run the country, they haven't had a single minute of 16:46:24their own health insurance policy until they get here. they have a responsibility for it here. we pay our chunk of the premiums like any other federal employee, but i just think it's ironic that there would be such a strong argument that people elected to congress could come here, walk in that door, come 16:46:40down here before the speaker's ross trum, raise their hand and take the oath of office and at that moment still be on their mommy and daddy's health insurance policy. i wanted my kids to grow up. when they turned 18 i told them, 16:46:57my responsibilities are now done. i'm going to nurture you and give you advice and council you and i'll help you where i can. but i'm not obligated, guys. we did our best for the first 18 years, while do our best for every year, we'll love you all our lives but you got to start 16:47:11pulling your own load and now i look at three grown sons in their 30's, all married, five grandkids, each an entrepreneur in their own right, pulling their own load and i'm glad that they didn't have to stay unweaned until age 26. 16:47:27but if the insurance companies want to do that you should be able to buy the policy. if states want to mandate, i think it's not a good policy, but they can do so constitutionally and then if a person's tired of paying those kind of premiums you can move to 16:47:42another state and vote with your feet. there's some states in the union here that i would move out of because they can't afford the health insurance in them. there are other states one could think about moving to because of the opposite. here's a second point. pre-existing conditions. they always tie this 16:47:58pre-existing conditions in with the word discrimination. because it's like a civil rights code word so if an insurance company says, i don't want to buy, i don't want to provide insurance policies to people who have pre-existing conditions, who wait until they get sick 16:48:14before they buy a policy, the health insurance purchasing equivalent of waiting for your house to be on fire before you go buy property and casualty insurance, how many rational people, mr. speaker, in this country would make the case that we ought to have a guaranteed issue for our fire insurance on 16:48:31our house? couldn't we then just, you know, set up our little blackberry with an automatic send and wait for the fire alarm to go off and on the way down the steps to bail out of the burning house 16:48:43you could just click send, automatically they'd have to give you a policy so that your house could be rebuilt and -- if it's oth on fire. we wouldn't do that -- if it's on fire. we wouldn't do that. it's ridiculous because it defeats the logic of insurance. 16:48:59you want to be insured against a catastrophe and you want to share that riss wisconsin other people who want to be insured against catastrophe. it's true for fire insurance. it was true for flood insurance until the federal government took it over and it needs to be true of health insurance. but we will address pre-existing 16:49:15conditions and we'll have a legitimate debate on pre-existing conditions here in this congress, in committee hearings, hearings before committees, amendments offered, amendments allowed and amendments offered and debated and voted up and down. my position is that if the states want to prohibit the 16:49:31consideration of pre-existing conditions, they may do so. our state has a high-risk pool and we fund part of those proom premiums with the high-risk pool out of the state treasury. i think that's a good idea. i have worked to develop that 16:49:48and expand that in my time in the state legislature. i think it's worthy of consideration that the federal government can take a look at those state high-risk pools and find ways to help those states provide those kind of backstops. because there will always be 16:50:03people who are unfortunate. it won't always be those who are irresponsible, it will also be those who are unfortunate. so we need to take that into consideration. but to have the whole debate about just those that are unfortunate and not take into consideration those that are 16:50:20responsible, those that are taxpayers, those that are funding, those that are the engine of our economy that are being discouraged by these kind of big government socialized medicine, unconstitutional policies like obamacare. here's a third one, 26-year-old insurance, pre-existing 16:50:38conditions. oh, yes, the discriminatory pre-existing conditions policy. it's not discriminatory. it's logical and rational. would you say that it's discriminatory policy to not allow people to buy property and 16:50:55casualty insurance if their house is on fire? not discrimination, it defies common sense. so i'm not going to let them get by with that word. here's the third thing. doughnut hole. they say they've fixed the doughnut hole and we would unfix the doughnut hole. the truth is that low income 16:51:12people have that fix, there is a backstop for that doughnut hole. it's not the hole that they say it is. furthermore they raise fees elsewhere to fill the doughnut hole so it's not fixed, it's just another transfer so that some people are beneficiaries 16:51:25and others that pay the extra money. i'm not particularly animated about that although i thought we should not have had that doughnut hole created here in 2003. in any case, the next argument is against lifetime caps. if states want to provide lifetime capps let them do that. 16:51:42but if individuals want to buy policies that have lifetime caps because the premiums are lower, let them make that decision as well, mr. speaker. i envision a day that we have free markets that are engaged in this. we want to preserve the doctor-patient relationship. 16:51:58we want to preserve the free market effectiveness so when people make decisions about their health and their lives that they have some tools to work with. i want to be able to in this congress, this 112th congress, advance the idea and seek to pass legislation that is consistent with chairman 16:52:17dreier's -- i would expand it a little more. he advanced the medical savings accounts. i would add we need to advance health savings accounts, h.s.a.'s. in 2003 with the expansion of 16:52:31part d we put language in that established h.s.a.'s. health savings accounts. it allowed -- excuse me, in the first year for a couple to establish a health savings account with a maximum amount in it of $5,150. that's the calculus, from $5,150 16:52:51on up. well that's a good deal. obamacare slashed that in less than half and capped the h.s.a. maximum amount to $,500. why? because they don't want people to be independent and they don't want them to be able to make their own decisions. 16:53:05if they do that they might undermine this effort of expanding the dependency class in america, which is what obamacare is designed to do. because expanding the dependency class expands the democrat party and that increases the political base and it seems illogical to the american people, well, 16:53:22there's the logic i've just applied to it and now, mr. speaker, they do understand that this is about politics. it's about expanding the dependency class, and it's about diminishing the independence and the spirit of americans. and so the lifetime caps piece 16:53:40is a fourth one. 16:53:45fifth one that's it. do they redeem those 2,500 pages of disaster? do they then overrule and trump the constitution of the united states of america? i say no, mr. speaker. 16:53:57they cannot, they must not, they should not. and i hear this debate also about an increase in our deficit of the number i think was $332 billion, not if but when we repeal obamacare. 16:54:13well that deficit, and they want to know, well, you offset that deficit with spending cuts. yes, sir. we will be happy to offset a deficit with spending cuts but i would make this argument instead. 16:54:29when you have an unconstitutional bill in front of you and if you're debating whether or not that's a reason to repeal an unconstitutional bill, you can set no price on the constitution of the united states of america. if it's a trillion dollars you 16:54:47repeal the bill anyway because it's unconstitutional and you don't sit back and twiddle your thumbs and wait for the court to resolve this for you. 16:55:02i'm glad that there's litigation going on in the judicial branch. i'm glad that judge hudson found with virginia on the constitutional component of the interstate commerce clause. i'm glad there are efforts out there in the states to deny the implementation of obamacare. all of these things going on. but we took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united 16:55:18states here yesterday. we took it all in good faith. we said so. and when we have an unconstitutional bill before us, mr. speaker, it is our obligation to repeal that bill. our judgement of the constitution is not a judgment that defers across and down the 16:55:36line of independence avenue. we don't go to the supreme court and genuflect and say, if you change the meaning of the constitution my oath applies, our oath applies to our understanding and conviction of the text and the original 16:55:50understanding of the constitution and the various amendments as they were adopted. that's what the constitution has to mean or it is no guarantee whatsoever to the people in this country. they rose up and they changed this majority in this house and they did so because there are a whole group of millions of 16:56:10constitutional conservatives, including the tea party groups and they said, enough unconstitutional activity, enough of this theft of our liberty, we are not going to pass the debt and deficit on to this succeeding generations. so i notice, and it was $230 16:56:25billion was the point, not $232, to make it accurate but i noticed today in the republican study committee that chairman jim jordan read from an article written by tony blankly in the "washington times," december 20, 2010, and it caught my ear and 16:56:42so i looked it up and i'd like to just close with this concept that was delivered by tony blankly shortly before christmas this year. and he wrote about smeerns in china and how they're worried that if they don't keep the growth going in china that they 16:56:58will create expectations and then the peasants in china will be unruleble if you give them expectations, then you have to meet those expectations. well we in america, we trust in our expectations and so he writes this, what happened in 16:57:14november 2 was this, that the american people went to the polls and said, i want more liberty and less government. i want more liberty and less security about my future and he puts in these words and i think they're excellent words. quote, no other people in the 16:57:30world would have responded to economic danger by seeking more liberty and less government protection. no other people would have fought to -- thought to themselves, if i have to suffer economically in order to not steal from my grandchildren, so 16:57:48be it. i pray we would have come to that decision a generation ago instead of a couple of months ago, mr. speaker. but this congress has come to that decision at the direction 16:58:02and the effectiveness of the american people and we will follow through on that pledge. we'll ask them, keep sending us more people like this freshman class, to help get this job done so, that in our time we can hand the keys of this chamber and 16:58:19this government over to the next generation in sound fiscal fashion, sound constitutional fashion, not with diminished liberty, but with the expanded liberty and with the pillars of american exceptionalism 16:58:34refurbished by our generation thanks to the will of the american people. thank you, mr. speaker. i yield back the balance of my 16:58:41time. THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE:the gentleman yields back. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the chair recognizes the gentleman from kentucky, mr. yarmuth, for 30 minutes. Yarmuth (D-KY):thank you, mr. speaker. and congratulations on your election. 16:58:58it's a great pleasure to be here today and i could spend the next half hour responding to my colleague from iowa. i think it's fascinating that just one comment that he talks about reading the constitution and then talks about how this is 16:59:15an unconstitutional bill. well obviously he apparently stopped at article 2 and didn't get to article 3 which stipulates that the judiciary and the supreme court ultimately decides what is constitutional in this country, not members of congress. and the constitution was read 16:59:32today, i'm glad it was, it's always good to remind ourselves of this great foundational document that we all respect, that all of us, all 435 members of the house, swore to protect and defend yesterday. and in the constitution, in 16:59:48article 1, section 5 it says, each house may determine the rules of its precedings. and yesterday the republican majority in the house put forth a group of rules changes that will determine how this congress 17:00:05will operate over the next two years. and it was fascinating in light of our discussion of health care, in light of our discussion about the cost of health care that one of the things it did, these rules changes that republicans 17:00:21passed, basically divest extraordinary power in one member of the house of representatives to determine essentially what the cost, what the deficit or the debt -- the budget implications of a 17:00:38particular piece of legislation might be. and to the debate we are in now about republicans' proposal to take away all of the privileges and rights and benefits granted by the affordable care act that we passed in the 111th congress and i was proud to support is 17:00:55that one of the things it said was that if there's a vote to repeal the health care bill, the affordable health care act that we passed last year, that we basically decide that we don't have to abide by pay-go 17:01:14rules. in other words, saying that just because the congressional budget office determined that the affordable health care act will save the taxpayers $230 billion over the next seven or 17:01:29eight years and then another $1 trillion in the following 10 years that we don't have to make the same kind of adjustments that we do for other kinds of additional expenditures because the republican philosophy is if you 17:01:49reduce revenues in any way to the federal government that's fine and it doesn't affect the deficit. now, a lot of debate -- a lot of the debate we had last congress over the health care act i heard time after time 17:02:03after time, tax cuts and many other things that, oh, a business can't operate like this, a family can't operate like this. well, in fact, in this particular case that analogy are really relevant because if i have a family, two-income 17:02:20family and all of a sudden one of us loses our job and loses our income, it's really interesting that we could take the position that, oh, it didn't affect our budget. 17:02:33it didn't affect the family deficit. just that loss of revenue didn't matter. all we're concerned about is how much we spent. all we're concerned about is the expense. what the republicans have basically done is to say under this new regime, this new set 17:02:50of rules they passed yesterday that there are two separate ledgers. one dealing with exexpenditures, one dealing with revenue and they don't affect each other. it's an astounding philosophy of operation that we're about 17:03:06to embark on. under this new rule when the bush tax cuts for the very wealthy expire in two years, we would not have to account for that loss in revenue to the philadelphia deficit even 17:03:22though when -- to the federal deficit even though when we start borrowing money to pay for the deficit we're going to have to come up with that money. they say, no, it doesn't affect the deficit. if we repeal the affordable health care act, which the 17:03:37c.b.o. says will save $1.3 17:03:42trillion over the next two decades, that's money that we aren't going to have to borrow from somebody else. they say, oh, that's not part of the budget. we don't have to compensate for that. 17:03:55so it's fascinating that they basically set up these two sets of books and then they give the power to the chairman of the budget committee, who in this case is mr. ryan of wisconsin, a very thoughtful, very thoughtful, honest man. 17:04:10you give him the power, however, to make a decision that whatever the c.b.o. says doesn't matter, he can deem or decide exactly what the impact of any provision or any act of congress is on the budget. one person. 17:04:28now, i come from kentucky. we're a big basketball state. last weekend we had a game, big game rivalry, kentucky and louisville played. didn't come out the way i liked to, but i have to think when we set up these rules that that would be like louisville and 17:04:44kentucky playing and saying to coach pitino or louisville or coach cal periiperri, you get to make the calls in this game. coach pitino, we're taking the 17:04:59refs off the field. you are the one that will call fouls. you'll make all the decisions. that's basically what the republicans have done. and what they also said in this process is that they basically decided that the health care 17:05:16reform bill has changing it, repealing it will have no impact on the deficit, no impact on the budget. now, that's fascinating because for the last year and a half when we debated the affordable health care act they kept talking about how this was 17:05:30going to balloon the deficit, how it was going to explode the deficit, trillions of dollars it's going to cost the american taxpayer. well, now they say, no, has no impact at all on the deficit. because you have to understand 17:05:47if it costs nothing to repeal it, then there was no cost to passing it. so one has to question, who's been honest in this debate? who's been honest in this debate? 17:06:03i understand finding referees as to who's right and who's wrong and which facts are accurate has been a difficult process. and my colleague, mr. king, said that all of a sudden we keep talking about this expecting liberal light to go 17:06:20on in people's heads, well, we need some light on this subject because there's been so much attempt, billions and billions of dollars spent to create darkness about the impact of this bill and that process 17:06:34proceeds today. so i think as we debate this proposal the republicans to do away with many of the benefits which we are so proud of and which many americans, millions of americans are beginning to 17:06:49feel now, that we have the kind of discussion that is honest, that is open, that sheds light on the subject. and no one can do that better than my colleague from the great state of maryland, donna edwards. 17:07:05Edwards, D. (D-MD):thank you for yielding, mr. yarmuth. as i listen to this discussion i thought, i wonder what taxpayers are thinking about this discussion. i wonder about the taxpayers that go to work every day but through no fault of their own 17:07:20they can't afford to buy health insurance even though they work every day and they pay taxes every day. and i thought, well, under the affordable care act indeed those people -- we get to, you know, put a little bottom up under them so they can be 17:07:36covered, so that they can, you know, go to work, take care of their families but also have the security and knowing that their families are going to be covered with health care. i thought about the discussion earlier on this floor where our colleagues on the other side of 17:07:51the aisle talked, you know, somewhat disparagingly as a young person who maybe finishes college or trade school and goes to get a job but there's a gap in health care coverage because they've turned 22, 23 years old. 17:08:09they are working for a living, doing what they need to do, they've gone to school, they've gotten a trade maybe and they can't afford health care coverage. so their parents get to say, you know what, for all of our piece of mind and for your security, we're going to, you know, pay for that health care 17:08:28coverage under our plan. and so, you know, mr. speaker, as i stand here today i think about my son who's just gotten a job and there was this 17:08:39period, i remember when i received that notice from our health insurance company and that notice, you know, it was a shocker to me because it basically said, you're done. and had we not had this provision in our -- the affordable care act that 17:08:52enables parents like me and other parents around the country to have the piece of mind of being able to keep our children, our young people, our young working people on our health care plan, i don't know what working families would do out there. 17:09:09mr. speaker, i thought, also, about a conversation that i'm going to share with you with some seniors that i had with friends as i was spending new year's eve. and one of the seniors said to me, we were talking about health care and they said, you know, i have a medical 17:09:25condition and i'm spending thousands of dollars and i've fallen into the doughnut hole and it's really taking a chunk out of our pocket. and i had the privilege on december 31 of saying to this family, do you know that as of january 1, as of the next day 17:09:44in 2011, your prescription drug that's fallen into that doughnut hole will actually receive a 50% discount for that prescription drug? they had no idea. i was glad to be able to share 17:09:57it with them. they're not my constituents. they live in somebody else's state, but it was great to be able to share that with them, and that's the experience that many of our seniors all across the country are having right now as they realize that they won't have to bear the burden of out-of-pocket costs for 17:10:13prescription drugs that fall through a doughnut hole because they can't afford it any more. they're young people -- their young people. if you undergo domestic violence, guess what, that's a 17:10:31pre-existing condition. the insurance companies, as we move into the implementation of our health care bill, will no longer call that a pre-existing condition. i'll close and allow you some additional opportunity in your time, but i do want to say that it was really compelling to 17:10:47read the constitution here on the floor of the house of representatives today and, again, a very important reminder of our obligation as elected officials to look out for the general welfare of the people. and i can think of no better 17:11:02way to do that than making sure that we protect the health insurance, the health care that americans have been guaranteed because of what we were able to accomplish with the affordable care act. Yarmuth (D-KY):i thank the distinguished congresswoman 17:11:17from maryland for her comments. i'm actually kind of glad that congressman king brought up these major benefits which are now helping families across this country. ms. edwards talked about the 17:11:34benefit of adding your son or daughter under 26 to your policy, and mr. king basically pooh-poohed that. i don't know if that's exactly a good legislative term, but kind of ridiculed that. and then he talked about 17:11:49lifetime limits and how lifetime limits were not necessarily something that we should worry about in spite of the fact that almost a million americans a year historically over the last few years have gone bankrupt because they either had no insurance or 17:12:05their insurance was inadequate and they lost everything they had because of health care cost, because of a cancer diagnosis or a serious accident. these are real-life stories. these are not abstractions. and i understand that we have 17:12:21many colleagues on the other side of the aisle who believe in with almost a religious zeal in certain things like the perfection of the marketplace in spite of the fact that we've seen time after time after time in this country not the -- not 17:12:40too long ago with the financial system how our markets often fail, how we have created or allowed to be created enormous sources of power and concentrations of economic 17:12:53power in this country that have basically distorted the marketplaces. and that is true -- very, very true in the area of health insurance. we have many, many states in which one company, one company, 17:13:11one insurer will dominate the insurance market. 85%, 90% of the insurance in that state solid -- sold through one insurance company. that's not something that the drafters of the constitution 17:13:25envisioned. so it's nice to believe in free market principles, and i think democrats believe in free market principles as well as republicans do. but the fact is in real life, 17:13:39not in a history philosophy book, in real life markets fail, markets get distorted and that is when the government is responsible for protecting the general welfare of the population, as the constitution 17:13:53says. i want to return, because i've been joined by -- we've been joined by another colleague, i want to return to this issue of rules because, again, the budgetary rules that the republicans have set up to govern this next congress are creating some incredibly 17:14:11difficult situations for our states, our localities and our people. and one of those areas in which this has been particularly true -- i know i've been contacted by transportation officials in kentucky about how desperate they think -- how dangerous 17:14:27they think these new rules may be. and joe courtney from connecticut has joined us to talk about that implication of the new rules that we are going to be operating under, so i yield to the gentleman from connecticut. Courtney (D-CT):thank you, mr. yarmuth. i appreciate the fact that 17:14:42you're putting the spotlight on this issue which is really extraordinary in terms of what's just happened in the last 24 hours. as you know and as congresswoman edwards knows, the real workhorse, infrastructure, transportation funding in this country is the 17:14:59highway trust fund. that is a mechanism which is set up by the congress. it has a dedicated revenue source, gas taxes, and since 1998 there has been a rule which the congress has operated under which says that the five-year transportation plan 17:15:16authorized by the congress cannot be tampered with by a bill that's brought to the floor of the house. if it is, then that bill is ruled out of order. and the purpose of that is to make sure that the transportation plan, which is done in a five-year increment, 17:15:32has sanctity, has consistent is i, so that states like yours or maryland or connecticut can actually move forward on multiyear projects, which most roads construction, bridge 17:15:48construction falls within that timeline. this has been the operating rules of the house since 1998. yesterday, the republican rule, which was adopted, astonishingly, rescinded that protection for the transportation trust fund, the 17:16:04-- again, the mechanism which ensures that states get appropriate funding for highways, so a coalition grew up over the last three days, including labors international union, ironworkers, the u.s. chamber of commerce, the 17:16:19american trucking association, the motorcycle riders of america, people who actually care about making sure that our roads and bridges have the adequate support to make sure that, again, as a growing country we are going to be able to move people and goods from 17:16:35one place to the other in an appropriate fashion. by the way, our competitors around the world are moving past us at mock speed in terms of their transportation infrastructure investment. nonetheless, this coalition 17:16:49warned the new majority that this new rule was going to upset, again, the consistency which transportation funding requires the new majority went ahead with that rule, adopted it, claims that they in fact were not doing that to the transportation trust fund but 17:17:06interestingly the markets say otherwise. is payne webber issued a downgrade to construction companies on the wall street stock markets and stocks exchanges and their stocks 17:17:21declined yesterday in the wake of the adoption of this rule. again, i earlier today submitted press accounts that describe, in fact, the sequence of what actually happened. we are talking here about a sector of the u.s. economy that's not in a recession, it's 17:17:39in a depression. the construction trades right now are looking at unemployment rates of 25% rather than shrinking and inhibiting the transportation infrastructure of this country, we should be investing in it. let's be clear here. 17:17:54there's not going to be any public -- excuse me, private investment that's going to fill the gap that's being created by undercutting the sanctity of the highway trust fund. the fact of the matter is, this is done through public dollars and every generation, going 17:18:10back to really jefferson, has understood that this is essential to have an economy that can thrive and grow. as i said, we have now left the highway funding of this country, subject to the whims 17:18:25of the annual appropriations process that is not the top of horizon which planning can actually take place at state d.o.t.'s. 17:18:36it doesn't surprise me that the folks in kentuckys have contacted the people at d.o.t. in connecticut have done the same thing. again, management, labor, public sector groups that care about, they are just incredulous, particularly at 17:18:51this time work the weakness of this economy, that this house has adopted that type of rule. i thank the gentleman, reclaiming my time. the only ji i used earlier with 17:19:07was families. Yarmuth (D-KY):we know we're running huge deficits right now. we know that the money that we are spending, a large portion of it, we are borrowing because tax revenues can't support it. this republican majority now 17:19:22has basically take then position that they are going to strangle this government and put a cap on expenditures and that certainly is, i understand that's part of their honestly held philosophy. but if you're a family and you've got two kids, high 17:19:41school age, and one of -- you have two income earners, one of them loses their job, are you going to then say, under in circumstances am i going to borrow money to help pay for the college education of my two teenagers so they can have a 17:19:57better life and be prepared to meet the demands of the future? i'm just going to keep cutting expenses. that analogy seems to be working here particularly with regard to transportation as well and the investment we have 17:20:11to make. Courtney (D-CT):families make that decision to make capital investment along exactly the same lines whether to fix a roof, put a new driveway in, buy a house, again that's done few financing, debt financing, and again the way that 17:20:30particularly the middle class kind of deals with those challenges, there's no question that in terms of our own country's history, going back in time, even to the beginsing of our government, even during the civil war when the finances of this country were completely going from almost day-to-day, 17:20:48abraham lincoln did not pull back in terms of the need for us to invest in rail, land grant colleges, again, this is the middle of the worst conflict in the history of this country but he still saw the need for us as a nation to 17:21:02continue to invest in the future and with borrowed must understand. those type of investments, investing in people through education, comes back to benefit the economy long-term and the multiplier effect is much higher than the actual price tag of those initial 17:21:19investments. Yarmuth (D-KY):i thank the gentleman. again, i go back to these rules that have been adopted now in the house and they basically give extraordinary, unprecedented power to one person to set these budget limits, to decide the budgetary 17:21:36impact of an investment in infrastructure ohealth care law, the repeal of the health care law, or for instance the repeal of many advances we made in terms of education funding 17:21:49in the 111th congress. it seems to me that, as i read through the constitution, the founding fathers probably didn't anticipate that we would basically disenfranchise 434 members of congress in making 17:22:06these incredibly important decisions about how we raise revenue which is specifically power that has been given for initiation to the house of representatives, or to spend tax revenue, that that kind of power would vest in one person 17:22:25and you would set up a set of rules to set up two sets of books and say if you drop revenue you cut taxes, if you have a loss of revenue that has no budget implications but anything you spend has to be offset somewhere along the 17:22:39line. i think in terms of not just investment in infrastructure, but research, medical research which is the answer to our long-term financing of health care if we can control or cure diabetes, make an impact on heart disease, these will make 17:22:57a difference in the future, but to set up these kind of rules that will disenfranchise 434 members of congress and virtually every american citizen from deciding what money should be spent and invested in some very, very important aspects of the 17:23:12general welfare. i'd like to yield again to donna edwards of maryland. Edwards, D. (D-MD):it occurred to me as we heard this discussion, and thank you to mr. courtney for raising these issues with us, mr. speaker, because it occurred to me that while we 17:23:28should be spending our time focused on job creation and we know that a core for job 17:23:37creation for the 21st century for this country is in our investment and transportation infrastrurture -- infrastructure, putting people back to work and instead we are relitigating what the american 17:23:48people thought we had finished with health care. here we are with a rule that then says to us, even as the bipartisan commission on debt commission has said we need to invest in the nation's infrastructure, those are investments that create jobs, jobs with taxpayers are paying 17:24:05into the system so we have revenue so that we can invest in our infrastructure that we are going to be constrained from doing it and i'm reminded that in the last congress, in the 111th congress, every member, i believe, of our 17:24:21transportation and train structure committee, wrote to the president of the united states saying, we need to do a long-term transportation infrastructure bill so that our state can begin to really put people back to work and here we are in the 112th congress led 17:24:38by the republicans who have put forth a rules package that will constrain our ability to create jobs in this country. with that, thank you, mr. yarmuth, i yield. Yarmuth (D-KY):i thank you for 17:24:52that contribution. we have been joined by congressman cohen of tennessee, i'd like to yield time to him. Cohen (D-TN):thank you, mr. yarmuth. indeed, the issues mr. courtney brought forward in his one-minute today were alarming to me because my home to town of memphis depends on 17:25:07transportation, that's what makes it america's distribution cent, the roads, rivers, runways and rails, and if we don't have money to go into helping our airports, where federal express is located in my district, and in your district, u.p.s., that's how we move products all over the 17:25:23world from those hubs and move congress. that's why it's so important we have an f.a.a. re-authorization act passed, a lot of which will be expenses to modernize the structure and the transportation bills that mr. oberstar, who was one of the great members of this house, no longer a member, tried to get 17:25:40passed last year to both stimulate the economy in the short run and in the long run, as mr. courtney said work that multiplier effect, in the long run. i was hoping and co-hope we'll 17:25:54have bipartisan efforts to have transportation, f.a.a. re-authorization bills passed that will move this economy forward. the economy is still in a difficult spot. we can't really see that the economy improving if we 17:26:11continue to cut spending, particularly in places such as transportation infrastructure, and the airport infrastructures. that's so important. so it was distressing news to see this happen. it is difficult to see where we 17:26:26can get us out of this near-depression that was caused by the bush administration with cutting spending. i know paul krugman has people that don't think he's correct all the time. i happen to think he's correct 17:26:41most of the time, and the nobel prize people aren't always correct, but when they gave him the nobel prize for economics, some of the brighter people in the world thought he was pretty good on economics. it's his belief that we need to do more spending and i concur with him and i'd hate to see us 17:26:58leave this economy, that's about to get out of the ditch to put it back in the ditch by cutting spending on infrastructure that's so important. pll yarmuth i thank you for that. |
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