Health Care

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about and take this opportunity to address my colleagues about the issue of health care, and let me just kind of frame this and put it in a context that I think will make a difference.

This is, again, one of those opportunities where Washington says, We are here to help, but what we may see is something very, very different. Washington helps the State of Michigan today to about 41 percent of its budget, but what it's really doing is it's controlling the State of Michigan. And along with some of the ill-advised decisions that have been made in our State, Washington policy, antigrowth policies in the State of Michigan, have resulted in Michigan lagging the country. We're number 50 in employment, which means we are number 1 in unemployment, and we've been there for a long time.

Let me explain how this happens. Like I said, 41 percent of Michigan's budget this year, the State of Michigan's budget, will come from the Federal Government directly. It will come with strings attached to it, Washington telling us and our State about how we need to spend our money, what we can and cannot spend it on. And remember, it's our money. It came from the State of Michigan in the first place. It came from our taxpayers. It came from our citizens. Of course, when you have a $1.4 trillion deficit, we also know that it came from our kids and from our grandkids. But with that 41 percent of direct infusion into our State budget, I think, at a minimum, what we see is this affects another 20 to 25 percent of our budget.

So, roughly, out of Michigan's budget, more than 60 percent of our spending in the State of Michigan is directed by the Washington establishment, directed by Washington bureaucrats telling us how to spend our money. And some of you may ask, Well, how does that happen? Well, think about it. When you go to the pump and fill up your tank, there's a Federal gas tax. That money comes to Washington. It goes into over 110 different funds, and then it's distributed back to the States. And many of those funds, to get our own money back, we have to put up matching funds.

Think about it, the State that has kind of the economic problems that Michigan has right now.

To get back our own money, we have to put up our own money and we have to put it up in such a way that we have to spend it the way that Washington wants us to spend it, not the way that we need it and the way that we might be focused on it to address the issues and the problems that we are facing in Michigan.

It's disappointing, but Michigan is known as having some of the worst roads in the country. Plain English: we've got lots of potholes.

So it was kind of surprising a few years ago when I found out that the Michigan Department of Transportation was going to build a turtle fence. Think about it. We were going to build a turtle fence. And if you think what do you build a turtle fence for, it's pretty obvious. You build a turtle fence to prevent the turtle from crossing the highway. Over $400,000 to build a turtle fence, and of course to do the expensive study beforehand to determined that we needed a turtle fence.

Remember, this is a State that has the highest unemployment in the country; it has some of the worst, if not the worst, roads in the country. We send our highway dollars to Washington and we put up our matching funds, and then the Governor says, Well, Pete, the Federal Government has told us that we need to build a turtle fence.

We got it stopped the first time, and I hope the money was used to fill potholes, to build an interchange, or to help build an extra lane in a busy place or perhaps to use it on a project that would improve the safety of our highways. But, no, 2 1/2 years later it came back.

So I am driving north through my district, and I am going through some of the wetlands where they've constructed this highway, and I see people working. I don't need to guess what they're doing. They are constructing a turtle fence. It is a very nice fence. It's about, you know, 2 1/2 , 3 feet high, got the plastic tube on it so that the turtle can't climb the fence and then crawl over the top of it. I think it works.

I think that for $400,000, MDOT, the Michigan Department of Transportation, can build a very, very good and a very effective turtle fence, and we can prevent the turtles from crossing the highway. I applaud the efforts of the Michigan Department of Transportation to construct that fence and to build it in such a way that it will be a long-lasting fence and will not allow turtles to cross the highway.

I am frustrated with the leadership in Michigan that allows the State to prioritize the building of turtle fences when we have so many other high-priority needs.

We've also built rest areas that cost us in the millions of dollars, rest areas that replace other rest areas that might be a little bit old, they may not be the best or the nicest rest areas in the country, but it's hard to get into the rest area because you have got to dodge the potholes to get to them.

This is what happens when we send our money to Washington and put this in the context of health care. We're going to get to health care, but put it in the context of what happens. Michigan sends its money to Washington, it goes into 110 different funds, it comes back to the States with strings attached, and then they tell us how to spend the money.

You know, back in 1998, 1999, even though I was a member of the Transportation Committee where we have responsibility for doling that money out, I said, This is the wrong way to do it. What we need to do is we need to leave the money in the State, never send it to Washington in the first place, so the people of Michigan can use their money to spend it on the priorities that they have identified. It is their money, and the money should stay in Michigan. And if there are some national priorities for a national highway system, send a couple of pennies out of every dollar to Washington, DC, but don't send all of it and then go to Washington and beg to get some of it back.

For perhaps more than 50 years, Michigan and all of the other States have been beggars to Washington to get their money back for the life of the highway trust fund. Michigan has averaged about 83 cents. Think of that. For the life of the highway trust fund, almost 50 years, we've sent a dollar to Washington, and we've gotten 83 cents back. It's time to embrace an approach that says that money stays in the States.

I was talking to a constituent the other day and they went on vacation. They said, Where does all of that money go? They'd just gone on vacation. They went to West Virginia. They now know where our highway money went. They said, Pete, the highways and the roads in West Virginia are absolutely gorgeous; they are in great shape. I would hazard a guess that they've gotten a lot more money back than what Michigan has.

So for 50 years, Michigan has been subsidizing other States because perhaps our Members of Congress weren't the chairmen of the Transportation Committee, weren't part of the elected leadership. So they didn't get their fair share. Well, it's time to go back to where we need to be, which is we need to make sure that States get their fair share and we only give part of what we need for national priorities, the Highway Interstate System. We leave the rest of the money here.

Like I said, I've been advocating for that since the late 1990s. That argument back then was Washington is here to help build a highway system, and it has now grown to Washington telling us we need to build turtle fences in Michigan.

It was 2001 we had a new President. The President's priority was K-12 education. Washington once again was here to help. So we went through the process. I was excited. I was on the Education Committee. I thought that there was a small role for the Federal Government in K-12 education. My perspective is K-12 education, the education of our most precious assets, our kids, is the responsibility of parents, local schools, communities, the State. And then perhaps to address some inequities and some very hardship cases and maybe to do some research that would be used by all of the States and by all of our school districts, you would have the Federal Government.

So I was excited because I saw us diminishing the role of the Federal Government, rolling back Federal mandates. We'd done a study in the 1990s that showed that every Federal education dollar we spent in Washington or that was allocated in Washington, only about 65 cents made it to where it needed to be. It made it to a point where it was helping educate a child in a classroom.

I came out of the business world. I worked for a company called Herman Miller. If we were looking at it and said, Wow, we're eating up 35 percent of every dollar in bureaucracy and it's not enabling us to serve our customer, we would have said we've got to go back and take a look at the system. We've got to use every penny we can to serve our customer, or our competition is going to beat us. But for Federal education dollars--again, money that would come from Michigan, go to Washington and then we'd have to beg to get it back--but only 65 percent of it would end up in a classroom, the place where the leverage point was the most important place; 35 percent would go to bureaucracy. And we'd have to fill out all kinds of reports and paperwork back to the Federal Government telling them about what was going on in our local schools.

A friend of mine and I, we would go over to the education department consistently, and we would kind of walk through it and say, Who here in the Department of Education might be from the Second Congressional District of Michigan? Who might be from Holland, who might be here from Ludington, who might be here from Manistee so they can understand the unique perspectives of the Second Congressional District of Michigan? Really couldn't find anybody. But I've got a passion for the State of Michigan and believe that every child in the State of Michigan needs a great education.

So we go around and say if we can't find somebody from the Second Congressional District, who's here from Grand Rapids? Is there anybody who works in the Department of Education from Flint? From Detroit? From Ann Arbor? From Traverse City? From Manistee? From Marquette? Who is here that understands the unique challenges or the financing of education in Michigan and how education in Michigan runs that makes education more challenging or provides more opportunities than other States in the Midwest or other States in the country?

Who understands the challenges that we face in the winter for getting our kids to school? Who understands the challenges that we have since tourism is one of our biggest industries? Is there anybody from Michigan here who can really understand all of this paperwork that comes in? And we couldn't find those folks.

So I thought, Wow, this is a great opportunity to move and diminish the Federal role, get that money back in a classroom where we could leverage it and have an impact. And from a disappointing standpoint, we went the over way. We passed a bill called No Child Left Behind. And it was a lot of folks that were enticed and seduced by the promise of Washington money and the simple solution that said, Don't worry about your education; we'll take care of it.

There were only 41 of us that said ``no'' to No Child Left Behind. Everybody else said, Washington is here to help. Don't worry about it. Things will be fine.

We're now 8 years into No Child Left Behind, and as we go around, I am finding a lot of my colleagues are now embracing a plan that we called A-PLUS that says let's roll back No Child Left Behind, let's leave the money in the States, and let's leave educating our kids to be the primary responsibility of the States, local school districts, and parents.

People say that is a novel idea. No, that's not a novel idea. Many of us came into Washington in the 1990s, and that was the idea that we promoted. Just like we did with highway funds, leave the money in the States.

Why would we want to transfer money from the States for education and for highways to a place like Washington, D.C. where they want to control our lives, tell us how to spend our money, tell us how to educate our kids? Under No Child Left Behind, what did they do? They're telling us who are good teachers.

Excuse me, I don't need Washington, DC to tell me who are the good teachers in the schools that my kids go to and who are the bad teachers. Somehow Diane and I figured that out long before our kids got to that grade.

How did we do it? Very simple. We talked to other parents who had kids in the same school that we did. It's amazing. People at the community level actually know what the strengths and weaknesses of their schools are. It's amazing. People at the local level actually can find their schools. They know where the various schools are in our communities in Lansing and Hillsdale and Oakland County. We know where the schools are. Bureaucrats in Washington can't. They can't tell the difference between one community and the next.

So think about it. In the late 1950s, the interstate highway system. Washington said, We are here to help. Fifty years later, they're telling us to build turtle fences we don't need. 2001--actually the creation of the Department of Education in 1979. It's Washington is here to help. We're now in 2009, and they're telling us who are good teachers and who are bad teachers. It kind of sets the context for health care.

Think about it. This is now where we are with health care. ``Reid offers docs a deal.'' At least this is what's reported in one of the newspapers that we receive here in Capitol Hill. It's not about quality and quantity, just like highways is no longer about building the roads that are needed and are necessary. It's about who's got the power and the authority in Washington to allocate those dollars that we send from Michigan.

Think about it. It's the powerful in Washington that have taken that power from the State, from a State legislature, and they've usurped it and they've taken it to Washington and they're using it to demonstrate their own power.

It's not about what roads we need in Michigan. We don't need turtle fences in Michigan right now. We have fundamental transportation problems and issues that need to be addressed, but people in Washington think they know better about how Michigan should spend its transportation dollars.

We are reducing funding for K through 12 education. We don't need No Child Left Behind, which is money from Michigan going to Washington and then being allocated by the powerful in Washington so that some States win and some States lose. In highways, Michigan has lost to the tune of 17 cents of every dollar that has ever been sent to Washington, D.C., in the highway transportation program. Think about how much better our roads would be if we would have been able to spend that money on our priorities. We might have the infrastructure that would be able to support and attract a better business climate.

Think about education, where we are cutting funding for K through 12 education, yet the money is coming here to Washington and it's going back to our local school districts under No Child Left Behind, and we've got administrators hiring extra people to figure out how we need the mandates. And a lot of this, as I look at it, ends up being what some have called ``legalized Washington corruption'' because those dollars come to Washington, and they are allocated not by priority or need, but by who has the clout and who doesn't. So some States are winners and others are losers. Some communities are winners and others are losers. And when you get to education, it means that some kids are winners and some are losers.

Then you get to health care. That's the kind of system we are moving to in health care. You're going to have winners and losers in health care because this health care debate is not about the quantity and the quality of health care. It's about who is going to make the decisions. We were promised all kinds of transparency as we were moving forward on health care and health care reform. Where is the transparency? My colleagues on the other side of this building voted on a health care reform bill--think about it--they voted on a health care reform bill based on an outline of what the author intended it to stand for and intended it to be.

And finally, after they voted on it, they passed an outline. Is that transparency? Yeah, it might have been more transparent than what we got. It ended up being a 1,500-page bill after they voted on it. And now people are starting to go through the bill and to find out what's different between what was in the outline and now what is actually in the legislative language. Surprise. We are going to have Senators who found out that they thought they were voting for this and they actually ended up voting for that. That is what we've got for transparency.

And now the next thing, ``Reid Offers Docs a Deal.'' Think about it, America. Think about it. This is what health care has now amounted to. ``Reid Offers Docs a Deal.'' Here's the deal as reported in The Hill: ``The White House and Democratic leaders are offering doctors a deal.'' This is how we are going to reform health care? ``They'll freeze cuts in Medicare payments to doctors in exchange for doctors' support of health care reform.'' Some might call that bribery.

It goes on to say, ``At a meeting on Capitol Hill last week with nearly a dozen doctors groups, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate would take up separate legislation to halt scheduled Medicare cuts in doctor payments over the next 10 years. In return, Reid made it clear that he expected their support for the broader health care bill, according to four sources in the meeting.''

I thought this was about improving the quality, the quantity and the access to health care. But it's really not much different than what you see in the highway bill and in education. And you're already starting to see it in health care. The quality of your roads, West Virginia versus Michigan, depends on the people and the positions that they have moved into. Is that what health care is going to be, that you're going to go to certain States because they get more money? We'll talk about that a little bit more.

But this is what the process is for passing legislation. ``Reid Offers Docs a Deal.'' It's a massive shift. Reid can offer that--according to this paper--can offer that because if this legislation becomes law, it will not be the individual American person, family, the employer or the State who sets the framework for education. It will be leadership in Washington determining who the winners and losers will be. That's what H.R. 3200 is about. That's what the Bachus bill is all about. It's not about quantity and quality of health care. It's about who is going to have control of the decision. Who's going to be able to say, you're the folks that are going to be paying the 18 percent of the GDP, the gross domestic product, into Washington.

And then they're going to distribute it. They're going to distribute it to those people within this Chamber and within the other Chamber that are sitting in the right spot in the right chair to get more for their State and more for their community than what others may. Some of you may say, that won't happen; this is about everybody in America getting quality, quantity and improved health care. Do you really believe that that's what's happening in the highway bill? All those States that are out there, you know who are the winners in the highway formula bill, the donor States. You know who they are. We all know who they are.

We are the ones that get less back than what we pay in, not because we have fewer needs, but because someone else has made that determination.

Just like for the highway bill and No Child Left Behind, we have proposals to do it differently. For the highway bill, it's very simple. Leave the money in the States. No Child Left Behind, it's very, very simple--empower parents, don't empower Washington bureaucrats. Highways, let States and communities make the decisions as to where we're going to spend our money. As for education, let parents, teachers, community leaders, and States decide where we're going to spend the money. Heaven knows we've got enough other issues in Washington that we could and should be spending our time on, national economic issues and Afghanistan. Those deserve national priority. We want roads and transportation decisions to be made in the States. We want Michigan people to determine where Michigan dollars are going to be spent. We don't like sending our money to other States. We will make the decisions about how to educate our kids.

There's another vision that's out there for health care. It's written by a colleague of mine and myself, ``How to Insure Every American.'' Just like the highway bill has caused many of the transportation problems in Michigan, so government has caused many of the problems that we face today in health care. Our tax code incentivizes employer-provided health care, rewards health insurance companies by insulating them from accountability and competition, and punishes those who lack employer-provided care. It's an op-ed that John Shadegg and I wrote in The Wall Street Journal published September 4 of this year.

We believe that there's a better way than going to what we have got here, H.R. 3200, over 1,000 pages, one massive bill that takes power from you, the American people, and moves it to Washington, D.C. Think about it. Do you really want to know how this bill is going to get passed, how it's going to change, and how it's going to be modified over the coming weeks? ``Reid Offers Docs a Deal.'' How many other deals are being cooked up to move this bill through the process and move the power away from you, as individual consumers, to people in Washington, D.C.?

Think about it. John and I, John Shadegg and I, we've outlined an alternative vision, how to insure every American. We believe the solution to this problem is what? Just like we believe that parents ought to drive the education decision of their kids, we believe that patients and consumers should have increased power in a new insurance market because what we have today, what appears to be a free market health care system, is not. We want to improve and increase competition.

We want to empower people to have access to be able to afford health care. And later on, I will talk about the specific solutions that we have. But we have a vision that says we want consumers in charge, and yeah, we don't really have a lot of faith in this process here being in charge of health care, because they have done such a great job for some of our States and for some of us when it comes to education and when it comes to transportation.

Let me just read on. We believe that all Americans deserve the ability to select health care coverage that meets their needs, not the preferences of politicians. People versus politicians. Republicans in Congress want to empower Americans to make their own choices by providing a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for you to purchase the plan of your choice. Those who cannot presently afford coverage would be able to select and purchase their own plan using a health care voucher provided by the Federal Government, empowering individuals in a market, not the Federal Government, through mandates.

If we give citizens the ability to control their own care, cover preexisting conditions, and provide resources to the uninsured, we will have fixed health care in America. No bureaucrats. Guess what? No new czars, no mandates, just choice and coverage for every American.

It's a very, very different approach, empowering individuals, empowering States, and embracing the concept of the 10th Amendment to our Constitution, which says we are going to reserve the rights to the States, except for those things that are expressly given to the Federal Government.

Where in the world have we gone so far wrong that we believe it's the Federal Government's responsibility to get down to the point where it will decide whether our teachers develop the framework, where it will decide whether our teachers in our local schools are good teachers or bad teachers, where it believes we need a clover leaf in our transportation system, an on- and off-ramp. They don't know. These are decisions best left for parents. And since when are they going to be--if they can tell us who are the good teachers and the bad teachers, do you really believe they aren't going to try to move on and try to tell us who are good docs and who are bad docs, where our hospitals should be and what they should be able to do? We've seen what happens when they do that in education. Let's not let them do that in health care.

What does H.R. 3200 do besides moving all of this responsibility from you, the American people, to Washington, D.C.? Think about what it does to small business. Small business, the lifeblood of Michigan, the lifeblood of the U.S. economy. Do you wonder why there's uncertainty in the economy? If you're a small business and you're thinking about investing today, it's kind of like, wow, let's see. Those folks in Washington, they want to do cap-and-trade, which may put huge taxes on me. Do you know what? I'm going to have to just kind of step back and maybe reserve a little cash because I don't know what they're going to do with cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax, massive new taxes on small business, small and medium-sized business, I'd better wait.

That doesn't help the economy, this uncertainty. Massive new tax increases because we don't know what is going to happen with the tax cuts that were passed and have been in law for the last number of years. All indications are that the current administration is going to let them expire, meaning more money for Washington--at least in the short term--less money for businesses for investment and for jobs because the money is going to be coming here because, guess what, we're moving health care decisions here.

And now they've got this new tax through H.R. 3200. What will it do? It mandates what businesses will have to ensure for their employees. And if they don't, it has a sliding scale. It says you will pay zero percent if you have payrolls of under $250,000; you will pay 2 percent, 4 percent, 6 percent, 8 percent, depending on what your payroll is. New taxes for small business. Wow, when we're at record high unemployment rates.

Now, I know that this is the strategy in the State of Michigan, that when we are down, our Governor has decided that she will raise taxes because the State will be taken care of first. We found out how good that worked. They raised taxes. People looked at us from around the country and said, That's kind of strange. They've got the highest unemployment rate in the country, they've got budget problems, and they believe that the way to grow the economy in Michigan is to raise taxes. They laughed, and they were right. Michigan raised taxes, our unemployment went up. Not really brain surgery; when you tax more of it, you're going to get less of it.

So when we taxed jobs and businesses more, guess what? We got less business activity and fewer jobs. Think about it. We are at 15.3 percent unemployment in our State. The scary thing is now we've embraced that kind of mentality here in Washington, D.C. The President, the leadership in the House and the Senate, they have said we're not going to continue the tax cuts that were in place for job creation over the last number of years.

They have also said that we are going to and we want to tax business more for cap-and-trade, the carbon controlling mechanism. And now they're saying the same thing with health care, an 8 percent payroll tax. Even if an employer in good faith is offering health care to their employees and an employee decides not to take it, the company will be taxed 8 percent of that employee's salary. Penalties in here up to $500,000 for unintentional failures on the part of the employer, unintentional failures on the employer.

So, what do we see? That this health care bill is predicted to drive the same kind of results that we have seen in Michigan, that by raising taxes, we're going to get a vibrant economy; right? No, wrong. That by raising taxes, we will smother our economy.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses says that they expect that if this bill goes into law, we will lose perhaps an estimated 1.6 million jobs. The Council of Economic Advisors, the Chair, Christine Romer, found that an employer mandate could result in the loss of somewhere between 4.7 and 5.5 million jobs.

This bill also has in it taxes, surtaxes on high-income individuals. So in a State like Michigan, think about the top wage earners would be paying taxes at the rate of about 52 percent, 52 percent. And remember that about 42 percent of small business income would be subject to this surtax. That's going to be really good for small business. In Michigan, it's projected our tax rate, when you combine Federal and State taxes, the tax rate would be 51.59 percent. Wow. That is going to be something that is going to stimulate our economy. But that's the direction where this bill is headed. There are lots of questions about this bill, but let me go on.

I laid out for you that Congressman Shadegg and I and many of our colleagues have a vision for where we want to go that says we want to empower individuals to have a greater ability to have more choice in selecting the kind of health insurance that they want.

Just recently, on October 14, John and I wrote another op-ed because we were hearing all of these things about the Senator Baucus plan that was working its way through the Finance Committee in the Senate. And in this op-ed, people characterized it--the title was, ``Lies, Earmarks and Corruption All in One Bill.'' Now, we didn't put the title on it, but people read our content and the editors at the Investors Business Daily said--they are kind of implying that they made that decision to put those words at the heading of this bill. So it kind of tells you how we feel about the Baucus bill.

Let me just read some of what is in the Investor Business Daily editorial. ``We are nominating Senator Baucus' health care reform bill for the Pulitzer Prize--for fiction.

``Like works of great fiction, writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the story line of the Baucus bill is not what it seems and is in fact a clever subterfuge of what health care will mean for the American people.

``Hiding behind this facade is another story about a massive power grab by the Washington political establishment.

``The bill is loaded with fiction. To begin with, it purports to reduce the deficit. This is really an Enron-style scam with the bill's massive new taxes starting on day one and dramatic new health care expenditures, which will far exceed the tax revenues, beginning in year four.''

You know, in the private sector, if Herman Miller did that type of accounting when I was there, or if any company did that in the private sector today, Enron-style accounting, people would go to jail. But in the Baucus bill, what we see is tax revenue starting on day one, massive new health expenditures starting on day one of year four, and they come back and say, well, the 10-year window is going to help the deficit. And it's like, yeah, I think you're right. You've got 10 years of revenue and only 7 years of expenditures. What's going to happen when you've got 10 years of revenue and 10 years of expenditures? Excuse me. You are going to have a massive deficit. Some would call that a lie.

The Baucus bill claims to treat all Americans equitably, but we find that in the Baucus bill, ``Let's Make a Deal'' has been around and alive and well in the crafting of this bill already. And how is that? Well, just like Senator Reid, apparently, according to The Hill, was willing to make deals with docs, someone in the writing of the Baucus bill was willing to make deals with perhaps other Senators to maybe get their support. Well, how would that happen? ``The Baucus bill claims to treat all Americans equitably, yet four States receive Medicaid exemptions--the Federal Government will pick up the State's share of Medicaid costs,'' the increased Medicaid costs--``for 5 years.''

Interesting, one of those States is Nevada. Where is the majority leader from? Oh, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a Democrat from Nevada. Oh, okay. I think he may also be up for election. But it's interesting, Nevada will get a 5-year exemption of expanded Medicaid. Well, maybe they need it. This is the beginning of dealmaking that says your health care will be determined by leadership and not by your State.

Think about it. Sure, four States are going to get a Medicaid break. That means the other 46 States are going to be paying for it. Remember what we called that in the highway bill? You're going to have 46 States that are donor States that are subsidizing the other four States. It's already starting. And this is when people are watching. Four States are going to get a better deal on health care than what 46 other States are going to get. So now we've got, at least according to press reports, docs maybe getting a deal, four States are getting a deal on Medicaid. Does it stop there? No. It doesn't.

Again, Senator Chuck Schumer, according to the Investors Business Daily, ``put in a little-noticed provision that exempts New Yorkers and taxpayers from some other States from the bill's tax on gold-plated insurance plans.'' The result? I guess there are going to be 17 States exempted there. So 17 States, at least for a period of time, are going to be exempted from paying the tax on gold-plated insurance plans. Seventeen States are exempted. That means that 33 other States must be subsidizing the health care of these 17. It means that these 33 States will pay more in taxes and it will go to these folks in these 17 States to improve the quality of their health care.

So now we know that there may be a deal for docs. In the bill, there is a deal for four Medicaid States. There is a deal for 17 States on gold-plated. It's starting to look an awful lot like how we do transportation.

Then it goes on. Massive earmarks in the bill. Earmarks. That's right, it's in the title there. Up to--I think in the House bill it was $10 billion. Maybe in the Senate bill it's $5 billion for VEBA. What is VEBA? Well, we found this about 3 or 4 weeks after the bills came out of the committees in the House, a little-noticed provision said $10 billion. I think in the Baucus bill it may be $5 billion, an earmark for VEBA. And people are saying what's VEBA?

VEBA is the retirement account underfunded for retired UAW workers. This may be a very worthwhile investment and expenditure, but it shouldn't be in a health care bill. Why is it in a health care bill? I'm not sure. Is it another deal? I don't know. It may help get some votes for this bill.

The bill will cover illegal aliens. It will cover adoption. No American is going to be able to keep their health care plan. Maybe for a period of time that they will, but when you take a look at the bill, you know, what you find is that in the bill you can't have a Health Savings Account.

If you're young, healthy, you're thinking about investing in a business, a start-up business, and you say, You know what? I want to have health care coverage, but I'm going to take a high deductible plan so my premiums are low. I don't engage in high-risk activities, but I want to put that money into my dream business. I want to go back to Michigan. I want to open up a business and I need some of that money myself, so I'm going to take the risk. I want a high deductible plan. I'm going to cover myself so if something really bad happens, I know I'm going to have the insurance coverage that I need, but I'm willing to take a little bit of a risk because I have this dream of starting this business and I want to put my money and I want to put my cash into that. I want to create a job for me and a business for me, and I want to take my job and I want that little business to grow to be two employees, to be five employees, and in 5 years I hope it's 100. And you know what? I have a dream that maybe I can be the next Apple.

Remember, Apple and Hewlett-Packard started in back rooms. They started in garages.

I've got an idea, and I've got a vision, and I've got a passion for this new product. It may be in energy. It may be in technology. It may be in ag, but I'm going to be the next Microsoft. I'm going to be the next Apple. I'm going to be the next Hewlett-Packard, and I'm going to do it right here in the State of Michigan, or I'm going to do it right here in the United States, but to do that, I need some start-up capital. Guess what?

The government is going to mandate that you buy a Cadillac insurance plan. You're no longer going to have that choice. Guess what?

If you started a business in the last year, saying, you know, I'm going to be able to take that money and I'm going to have that high-risk plan and I'm going to have that catastrophic and I'm going to have that high-deductible plan and I'm going to keep pouring that money into my business, when this plan goes into effect, you'd better change your business plan because the health care czar, the person whom we've told 181 times, will say you must, you shall, you will in terms of establishing the rules and regulations have to follow the law. She will say, Sorry, you cannot do that. You've got to buy a full plan. You don't have that choice anymore.

When you take a look at it, this is why, I think, the folks in Investors Business Daily said--and when we look at the content of this editorial written by myself and Congressman Shadegg and when we see the deal that was cut for 33 States on gold-plated insurance plans and the deal that was cut for Medicaid for four States and the deal that Reid is now looking at again, according to press reports, at cutting on docs--they call it ``corruption,'' but in Washington, some would say it's legalized Washington corruption. This is what leads many to believe that this is not about the quality or the quantity of health care; it's all about who has the power and the decision-making in health care.

You know, our last line in this editorial--and I think this is why, when I go home, I am somewhat energized by the response. I think that the TEA party movement has been phenomenal because, if we're going to leave the power with the American people on health care, if we're going to restore the power to the American people and to parents on education, if we're going to restore the authority back to States and follow the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment, the American people and the TEA party folks and the Tenth Amendment folks and others are going to have to stand up and say, Absolutely no more because, as we close: the American people need to stand up and say no, no to this callous grab of power by Washington elites.

This is the first real test, the TEA party movement, to influence public policy. Americans are counting on their elected Representatives to protect them from a tragically flawed health care bill. Grass-roots America needs to speak. They need to speak out before it's too late. If you're not willing to fight on this issue, if not now, when? Time is running out.

People say, well, we need health care reform. You know what? The American people are absolutely right; but this bill, going through this process in the dark of night and with no transparency--the President promised us transparency and that the negotiations would be on C-SPAN. We have yet to see that materialize.

So where do we go? It's a very simple alternative. It's a seven-solutions plan.

At one of my town meetings early on, the process engineer said, you know, Pete--and you probably did this when you were at Herman Miller--you know, when you were in the business world, what you did is you identified the problems, and you fixed the problems.

I said, Yeah, that's what we did at Herman Miller whether it was in the engineering area, whether it was in customer service, whether it was in marketing. You identified the problem. You brought together a group of people to develop the solution to fix that problem, and you left the other 85 percent of the company alone that was working pretty well and maybe working really, really well.

You know, 83 percent of the American people today recognize there need to be some fixes to health care. They have compassion for those who cannot get it. They have compassion for those who cannot afford it. They have compassion for those people who have preexisting conditions. America is a compassionate country.

So they're saying, Pete--and I think they're telling a lot of my colleagues this--they're saying, Address the problems that are out there, but you know, I'm relatively satisfied with my health care. Don't mess with mine, because you know what? We really didn't like what you did with No Child Left Behind. The promises were all really good, but the implementation has been terrible in No Child Left Behind.

It's just like after 50 years there are some things we really like about the interstate highway system, but we really don't like where it has evolved to today where you tell us to build turtle fences or where the Washington government says take it and identify the pieces that are broken and fix those.

So we came up with seven very simple bills--you can look these up--which address the issues that are most frequently identified as being the problem in health care. So, just like when I was at Herman Miller in the private sector, we would go out, and we'd identify the problem. We'd talk to our customers and say, What are the difficulties? What are the issues that you have dealing with Herman Miller? They'd identify them. We'd come back, and we'd fix them.

So, as we've done that and as we've talked about health care, people have said, you know, well, cost is a problem. All right. So we've got H.R. 2607, the Small Business Health Fairness Act, which are association health plans. Create more competition.

Health savings and affordability. Expand health savings accounts. Our elders may not want to use a health savings account. They've always gotten health care in a different way. So our elders may not want to use health savings accounts. Our family uses a health savings account.

Expand the access to health savings account. My kids love it. It empowers them to make health care decisions. If they access health care effectively, guess what? At the end of the year, they have money that they have saved, and they now put that as a part of their retirement plans. My daughter is planning this already, and she's 27. She has gone through this for 3, 4 years. It works. It has made her a better consumer of health care. Under H.R. 3200, that option is gone.

The Health Care Choice Act. Allow insurance companies to compete across State lines. We can address the cost aspect.

Access. Community building access. This is a plan that we've used in Michigan, in Muskegon. It's now being used. We've got a three-party cost share of the business, the individual, and the community. Creating access. Assuring coverage. Let's take care and help people with preexisting conditions. Improving health care for all Americans. So we can address the access issue.

Then let's make sure that we don't forget about tort reform. So we can address cost, access, and tort reform.

We have seven different bills which, if passed, we could implement all of them immediately rather than what this bill does. This bill goes through and implements the taxes on day one and doesn't do the program until year four. Simple bills singularly identifying a specific problem. You could identify the bill. You could read the bill. You could probably understand it. Not many people can go through this and understand it. You won't have to go through this process of let's make a deal to make it become law. Seven solutions.

It's just like we've got a vision and a plan for transportation that says empower the States to make more of our transportation decisions, leave the money in the State, and don't send it to Washington. A vision, a strategy and a plan to make that happen. It's just like we've got a vision for education that says we're going to empower parents and local communities and school districts rather than a Washington establishment, and we've got a plan to do that called A-plus, a solution.

We've got the same thing in health care. Empower consumers and not Washington bureaucrats to make decisions about their health care. We've got the strategies, and we've got the specific bills that can make that happen.

The bottom line is it's time for the American people to stand up and to say, We've had enough of Washington taking our freedom and usurping our authority and taking our decisions and having the decisions and the quality, whether it's transportation or education or now health care, be made by the Washington elites in a way that says some will win and some will lose.

That is what we have found in transportation. It is what we are finding in education. If we move the authority for health care to Washington, D.C., we will be violating the Constitution. It is the responsibility of individuals and States to deal with that. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that this is the authority of the Federal Government, and we will be putting in place a system where the quality of your health care is going to be dependent on ``let's make a deal'' potentially with the leadership in Congress.

I want control of my health care. I think that you want control of your health care when you consider the alternative.

Take a look at the solutions that we have proposed: empowering individuals to have access and to have the means to buy health care and to make the choices and to be held accountable and responsible for the choices that they make. When they make great choices, they will benefit. Yes, they will have the freedom to make, perhaps, some wrong choices, but that is what makes America great. When we make wrong choices, we will learn and we will improve, but let's make sure that we fight for freedom.

The time to fight for freedom is today, and it is on this issue, and we need to move forward. There is nothing more important for us to do than to move forward and to reform health care, but to do it in such a way that empowers individuals and not Washington.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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