Inside the Obama Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. LaMALFA. I appreciate my colleague, Mr. Gohmert, here on pointing out really the hypocrisy of what's going on with the public's lands, the public's parks, the way this is being used as leverage by the folks higher up in this administration to try and extract from the American people, from those of us in this House, perhaps, what they want.

He mentioned the thing in South Dakota there. Now, there is a lot of suffering going on in South Dakota where a lot of ranchers have lost a lot of livestock. And if anything, if your government has the ability to do something, it should be finding ways to help people, instead of putting up cones where they aren't supposed to be on a State highway they claim is on Federal land.

So if all those cones are in the bottom of the canyon that they may have had to rent or what have you, similar to the barricades they are putting up around the monuments and memorials here in this town, where they have to go out and rent barricades on company time with furloughed employees even to set them up and put sandbags in place, this an insult to the American people. It is an insult to all of our Honor Flight folks that have been coming in to town, anybody that would use what would normally be 24-hour memorials, 24-hour monuments.

So what gives? I don't understand.

You know, getting to the bottom of this here, we have this impasse in the Congress here in Washington. Mr. Speaker, it is about time this is ended because we are hurting the American people by the actions of this White House, by the impasse, the Senate.

We have sent over various, either all-inclusive CRs, or the bits and pieces we are doing to try and fund things as a priority, one at a time, that are very important to the American people. Funding our veterans, funding the basic ability when we have had fallen soldiers come home here in this recent news story, that their families can't even go pick them up because of an unyielding-ness by this administration, by those in the various bureaucracies to instead work to help American people in a time of fiscal straits that we are in, to help as much as possible, they are looking for ways to instead hurt them as much as possible.

What is with this?

We can even go back to previous impasses where, at least, President Clinton would sit down with the Republican House or Republican Senate or, after a while, it was a Republican House and Democrat-controlled Senate. There has been a mixture, over time, of putting aside the bitter partisanship and figuring out how we are going to hammer this out.

If we can do it with President Clinton, we can do it in previous Presidencies. This isn't the first time there has been this kind of impasse or this type of slowdown or shutdown. Yet this time seems to be unique in the meanness and the bitterness that's coming down from the intractability at the White House level and over on the Senate side as we have put forward solution after solution.

Mr. GOHMERT. Reclaiming my time just momentarily, it is also worth noting that here in the House we have actually had numerous Democrats vote with us. So the only really bipartisan thing that has been going on in this whole Capitol are our bills to fund certain parts of the government.

I yield to my friend.

Mr. LaMALFA. Yes, thank you. Yes, we have had unanimous votes go off this floor with nearly 200 Democrats joining us on two of the pieces of legislation, and anywhere from 25 to 35 to 40 on many of the other pieces that have gone out. So it has been a bipartisan effort. I think both sides of the aisle see this is really a nonpartisan issue on these issues we are working on.

And so why do they have to rest on Senator Reid's desk over on the Senate side?

Why do we get threats of vetoes from the White House when we find agreement?

We would find agreement on almost the entire CR if we got that one provision there, where even some of the Senators themselves, and now we are seeing it in the

press where, I think you mentioned Wolf Blitzer has now joined with Senator MANCHIN as well as Senator BAUCUS in thinking the Obama health care take over is a train wreck, that we are seeing a pretty diverse group of people saying, you know, a 1-year delay would not be an unreasonable thing.

As we have seen the exchanges rolling out, they are not working very well. And people, when they are looking finally to find out what the prices are, what it is going to cost them, maybe people thought they were going to get it for free. They were going to get a rebate; they were going to get a lower price. A lot of Americans, especially the youth, are going to see higher prices. They are not going to see the savings.

And if you look at the track record of the government operating things, government generally doesn't do things cheaper, and we are going to learn this in a very detrimental way to our economy, to the health care for the people of this country as this Obama health care takeover continues to roll out.

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Mr. LAMALFA. Exactly. Now, who are the navigators?

Weren't they supposed to be vetted as to who they are, go through security?

And as well, look at the track record of the IRS. Do the American people really want 18,000 or so IRS individuals helping with their important personal health data?

I mean, there have been laws passed to make sure that that is a very secure thing. Sometimes even inconvenient to the patient, where you might be at the doctor and say, well, don't you already have this information from my other doctor?

There are very strict guidelines in how your information is traded around. Now it is going to be in the hands of navigators that are unvetted and with IRS agents that have some very huge security issues already with the way that is being used against certain organizations.

Mr. GOHMERT. And there is a story today from the Daily Caller about the White House IRS exchanged confidential taxpayer information by Patrick Howley. So if you think your personal information is secure with the IRS, or with the Federal Government, it is already showing you should not be comfortable with it happening.

I yield to my friend.

Mr. LAMALFA. The most outrageous thing for most folks, though, is that the waivers, many individuals in this country are asked for and got to be outside of this as it was coming together; and more and more are asking for it, some are being turned down.

But especially, I guess, buying off Members of Congress through the OPM, allowing Congress and Capitol Hill to be exempt from this. If it is such a great program, if it is going to work so well, why would we be subject to a waiver?

Why are they talking about there would be a brain drain on Capitol Hill because everybody would be leaving because they can't afford the health insurance?

How does that work?

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