Having Honest, Meaningful Debate

Floor Speech

Having Honest, Meaningful Debate

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I appreciate, as always, the chance to address the House.

You know, two days before the President gave his speech here to the joint session last Wednesday, the President was on television, and I watched and typed up his comments, and he talked about the critics of his health care plan, including me as a critic of what I understand his health care plan to be. And the President said these exact words.

He said, ``You have heard the lies. I have got a question for all those folks. What are you going to do? What's your answer? What's your solution? And, you know what? They don't have one.''

That is simply not true. It is so difficult to try to have a meaningful debate over a bill, and even as I have, take H.R. 3200, the bill we have been given, and read directly out loud from that bill to show what it actually says, and then have the President of the United States call critics of the bill liars. We are lying. You have heard our lies.

He keeps talking about ``his plan,'' ``his bill,'' ``this plan,'' ``this bill.'' Then he came over as a guest here in the Chamber. Now, some people don't understand why the President speaks from the lower podium rather than the upper podium. It is because this is the People's House. He is an invited guest into this House, and that is why he is at the lower podium.

We were given just excerpts just minutes before the speech started, and that came by Blackberry, by e-mail, because we were told there was simply not time to get us a copy of the speech, as has always been done in a joint session any time I have been here in the last 4 1/2 years, and I am told that has been the tradition. It is not a right, so nobody made demands. But imagine our surprise when we look up here in the gallery and see that every reporter appeared to have an entire transcript that they looked through as they went through his bill.

But I kept seeing in the transcript of the brief excerpts we were given the President referring to ``the plan,'' ``this plan,'' ``our plan,'' ``this bill,'' and again ``this plan,'' without telling us what bill he is talking about if it is not H.R. 3200.

How do you have debate on a bill that is not the one before you? And there was debate all the next day among people. Is he embracing H.R. 3200? Some thought he was. Some thought he wasn't. Well, what bill? He says he is going to call us out if we misrepresent ``his bill.''

Tell us. Madam Speaker, we need to be told what the bill is before we can be called out as misrepresenting it. I would try read from the bill, if you would tell us what it is.

He also said in that speech, and I will read from the excerpt we were given, he said, ``If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open.''

Well, I talked to my congressional friend Tom Price, who says he has been trying week after week to get to come talk to the President about his serious proposal. He has got a great one. I have a proposal. We have called over. And I am not going to call the President a liar, because I believe he knows his door is open. The problem is there are these massive gates and heavily armed guards between us and that open door that he says that is open to us.

Anyway, we had the Speaker of the House previously this year say the CIA lied. Now, of course, we have had the President say that we have spread lies. And they both used that ``L'' word.

We have been told that abortion is not covered, and everybody should know, especially people brilliant like the President, if it is not specifically excluded, it is included.

The President told the CIA they were not going to be pursued over the interrogations, that he had their back. I am not going to say he lied, because he didn't say whether he was going to stab it or protect it.

But it is time for the President and our leadership over here to quit using the ``L'' word, because that ``L'' word goes down in our well, and as my late mother used to say, Madam Speaker, what is in the well will come up in the bucket.

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