Health Reform

Floor Speech

Health Reform

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Pingree of Maine). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is always and ever an honor to get to speak in this body. It touches the soul when you think about the freedoms that have been afforded to people in so many places that have been discussed right here on this floor.

Apparently, this is the last that we will be addressing the House before we break for what's considered the Easter break, and so it's time to pause for a moment and think about what we have been doing. We just passed the most incredible bill, not in a good way, that most Americans, a much bigger majority of Americans than voted for President Obama, had made clear that they did not want passed. We didn't pay attention to them. I say, ``we,'' collectively. I thought it was a big mistake, especially the more I read.

For example, this body, our friends across the aisle, pride themselves, they constantly talk about helping the little guy. Well, how about the little guy who is working, working, trying to get by. He doesn't make all that much, he doesn't make all that much, but they make just under 133 percent of the poverty level.

That means under the bill that has now been signed into law, that person, that person's family, are eligible for Medicaid, which means under this law that person, their family, will have to do one of two things, and this begins in about 3 or so years. They will either go on Medicare, which has got to be scary for them because, you know, Walgreens came out--I read somewhere that they were not going to be accepting Medicaid to pay for prescription drugs. Doctors all over the country have complained that Medicaid does not pay them for their own out-of-pocket expenses so they can no longer accept it. So doctors across the country are saying we are not going to take Medicaid.

Under this bill that has been passed, signed into law, even with the so-called reconciliation, what a misnomer. That poor working man, woman, family, they either go on Medicaid, with more and more people refusing to accept it, or get nothing in the way of insurance.

If their employer is providing it, they cannot accept it. They have to say, I am not allowed, under this punitive so-called health care bill, to accept the wonderful insurance that you have been providing. The law now says I take Medicaid or I take nothing. There is no in between. So much for helping the working poor.

And, heaven forbid, if you are working as hard as you can and you are not quite making enough to buy the level of health care that will now be mandated by the Federal Government. Well, we are going to help you. We are going to pop you with a fee or tax to teach you a lesson. That makes no sense. That just makes no sense.

So you have 14 States, as I last heard, who have said, We are filing suit. We are going to do what we can to stop it. Twenty-five other States that are looking into it, looking at whether they should pass a bill in their State to nullify or stop it or say we are not going to take it, see what they should do.

For the State of Texas, for example, we have been frugal. Our State leaders have done an admirable job. We have got, I think, $8 billion or $9 billion in reserve for a rainy day. You have States like California that are in the tank. You have other States that are just barely hanging in there. Well, I know it's Easter time, but it's time to say, Merry Christmas. You States, guess what you just got. You just got billions of dollars that you are going to have to pay in Medicaid in this bill.

Now, what we have done, since the country is about broke and we are selling bonds, printing money to try to keep from announcing that we are broke, we have decided, You know what? To try to keep Ben Nelson from looking bad, we're just going to pay all of the State portion of the Medicaid expense for a while, for a few years, and then you are going to have it. And the States will not be prepared for it.

You know, when Art Laffer was the economic adviser for President Reagan, he advised him when Reagan asked, How do we get out of double-digit inflation? They had way over 10 percent inflation, double-digit inflation; they had over double-digit employment, worse than it is now, coming out of the Carter years. There was double-digit interest rates. My wife and I, our first home we bought just off of post there at Fort Benning when I was in the Army and we had a 12 3/4 loan and some people were envious that we had such a low interest loan. Interest rates, some have told me they had 15 percent, 18 percent, just crazy. It was an economy that was a disaster.

So Reagan asked Art Laffer, What do we do to come out of this terrible economic mess? And Laffer said, You have got to cut taxes by 30 percent. That's how you stimulate the economy.

Well, the Democratic-controlled Congress at that time refused to do an automatic 30 percent tax cut the first year, 1981, so they phased it in, 5 percent the first year, 10 percent the second year, 15 percent the third year.

As time went on, Art Laffer became prophetic, because when President Reagan had called him, President Reagan said, Great news, Art. We've got the 30 percent tax cut, just what you asked. And he said, Well, that's great. And he said, Well, you ought to be ecstatic. This was your idea. He said, Well, I am happy. Fine.

He says, Why aren't you happy? He said words to the effect that, Look, I understand you are going to phase this in over 3 years: a 5 percent cut the first year, 10 percent cut the second year, 15 percent cut the third year. And President Reagan said, Well, that's right. The Democratic-controlled Congress said that's the only way they would do it. They weren't going to give us a 30 percent tax cut the first year.

And Art said, Well, Mr. President, let me put it to you this way. If you are going to buy something from the store and you heard they had a 5 percent sale this month, 10 percent sale next month, 15 percent sale the third month, when would you go buy it? And President Reagan responded after a pause, Are we going to have a bad couple of years, Art? He said, Exactly. And that's exactly what happened because they did not cut taxes 30 percent off the bat.

But once the 30 percent taxes kicked in, the economy turned around in such a dramatic and short period of time that President Reagan was elected to a second term, when in 1982 people didn't think that was going to be happening; but it did because he cut taxes.

Well, let's look at what the economic forecast is for the United States. We know that, come January of next year, we are going to have the biggest tax increase in the history of the country. The biggest tax increase in the history of the country.

Now, we know that when the Republicans had the majority, they didn't have 60 votes in the Senate, and so they were pushing and pushing trying to get the tax cuts to be permanent. But they didn't have the 60 votes in the Senate. The only way they could get it passed

because of the Democratic obstruction was to agree to have the tax cuts go away at the end of 2010.

I wasn't here. It was a year or so before I got here, but I personally believe they should have pushed, they should have gotten it done, they should have made sure those tax cuts were permanent so that nobody could come in here and have what we are going to have the end of this year, the biggest tax increase in the whole American history without even having a vote, just letting the tax cuts expire.

Well, since we know capital gains rates are going to shoot up, we know the marginal rates income tax are going to shoot up, we know that the estate tax is going to go from zero, shoot back up to 55 percent. Talk about socialist.

The estate tax, the death tax says: you've accumulated too much and you don't deserve it, so we are going to give you a little exemption and then we are going to take over half of everything else you have accumulated through the blood, sweat, and tears of you and your family.

That just doesn't seem right. It seems like some law that you would find in the old Soviet Union before they went broke because it does so much to discourage a family business or a family farm. But that's what is coming.

And now, on top of that, we have just had, as somebody said, the mother of all unfunded mandates on the States. Texas has done so well; it is going to have to come up with $25 billion under this bill over the next 10 years. So much for the money they had saved and tried to make sure was there for the rainy day. Here came a flood, and not from nature, not from nature's God, but from the hand of the President signing a bill that was rammed through against the will of the American people, through this House and through the body at the end of the Hall. Can you think of a worse time to increase taxes?

You know, we heard from Caterpillar this week; $100 million it's going to cost them just this year.

You wonder, well, why did they make that announcement? If you are a corporation and you know there is bad news coming, then you have got to get it out there; otherwise, somebody may come after you and say you artificially inflated your stock prices by keeping bad news secret. So we find out. I believe we saw John Deere may lose $150 million this year. I mean, devastating these businesses.

Well, perhaps there are people here in this body or down the Hall that thought Caterpillar, John Deere, these other companies just had too many employees, so they said it's time to go ahead and lay more people off. Let's put them on unemployment, let's extend unemployment, let's have more and more people without a job. Because that is what has happened.

I know I am being sarcastic. I know people across the aisle and down the Hall do not want to see more people lose their jobs. I understand that. But that is the effect of what is happening by the senseless stuff we are passing the last week, the last two weeks. And now we are going to take up cap-and-trade. As our friend, former Chairman Dingell, had said, It's not just a tax, it's a big tax. That's exactly what cap-and-trade is.

It's heartbreaking. People are going to lose their jobs right here around Easter time because of the senseless, hardheaded acts of this body and the one down the Hall: we don't care if the country doesn't want it; we don't care that the States can't afford it. We don't care that you couldn't pass the same bill right now through the Senate or through the House the way it was sent down here. We don't care. We are just going to pass it.

We're just going to pass it. It's unbelievable. Just unbelievable. We had friends here who thought that the Executive order would prevent and stabilize things so that you couldn't pry Federal money from people's hands; take their money, make it Federal money, and pay for abortions. But there are at least three ways under this bill that that's going to happen. Terribly unfortunate.

It was amazing, because it was as if someone was trying to trick America so you couldn't tell what was going to happen with abortion. Because I don't have the bill with me. I've got my copy back there in the cloakroom, but I've been through it. And you look, and at page 119, subparagraph B(i) it says, basically, you can't fund abortion with Federal tax dollars. If you had done a word search for ``abortion,'' you would not see page 122 come up, just three pages over. It wouldn't come up because ``abortion'' is not in that paragraph.

What it says is that people are required to make available health insurance policies that will cover abortions, but it doesn't say abortions. It says cover what is mentioned in B(i), that subparagraph, which is abortion. So you won't find it if you're doing a word search for ``abortion.'' Sure enough, that's what's required.

And then--I'm sure it's just out of ignorance--people didn't know what the Hyde amendment really did. It prevented appropriations through the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill from being used for abortion. But some people were bound to know. They're just bound to know. Somebody's staff. Somebody. Surely it just can't be me. There are bound to have been people who knew that this bill appropriated money. That money was appropriated, therefore, outside the Labor and HHS appropriations bill. Therefore, the Hyde amendment did not apply to it.

For those of us that know something about Executive orders, we know that an Executive order cannot be used--for one thing, you can't use to legislate. Another thing, you cannot use an Executive order to impound money that's appropriated in a bill that the House and Senate had passed. Number three, you can't use it for a line item veto to strike something you don't like. There's money in the bill for community health centers.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will suspend.

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