Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1, Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011, and Waiving Requirement of Clause 6(a) of Rule XIII with Respect to Consideration of Certain Resolutions
Floor Speech
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Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia, and I'm very glad to welcome him to the United States Congress. He knows a little bit about what's going on around this organism that we live and work and breathe in.
I come to the floor during this rules debate to raise a subject that I think needs to be brought before this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and that's this: that even though this House in H.R. 2, the second priority of the Speaker, voted to repeal ObamaCare and sent that bill over to the Senate where it was taken up and every Republican voted to repeal ObamaCare--so every Republican in all the United States Congress has voted to repeal ObamaCare. It was bipartisan in this House, by the former Speaker's definition. And even though that took place, we did not shut off the funding to ObamaCare because in a--I won't say a legislative sleight of hand--there was written in the ObamaCare bill automatic appropriations that just last week we were able to pull all those pieces out and add them up and we received a CRS report last Friday that shows that $105.5 billion are automatically triggered for spending that will implement ObamaCare whether or not we shut off the funds in this CR going forward. These are automatic appropriations.
I believed--and I've seen it for a long time and worked on this thing ever since mid-last summer--that we need to shut off all funding to ObamaCare in every appropriations bill going forward. And we had the assurance that we would have regular order. Well, the regular order that we have is an open rule that closes out an amendment that would shut off the funding that's automatically appropriated by ObamaCare. If we'd actually had a full regular order, I could have brought that amendment before a subcommittee of Appropriations--asked someone to do--or the full Appropriations Committee. And actually, at the request, I followed all those paths until such time it wasn't written into the bill, as was shutting off funding to transferring people out of Gitmo or cutting off the 1099 or the stimulus plan of the President's.
All of that is written out in the bill, but nothing is in the bill that allows us to write out the automatic $105 billion dollars. So we're faced with the automatic institutionalization of ObamaCare even while we cut this budget $100 billion. So I went to Rules last night and asked Rules, Protect my amendment from a point of order so this House can work its will.
Even though I have great respect for all of the members of the Rules Committee, and the tone and tenor of the debate and the dialogue in there could not have been better, the Rules Committee declined to do that.
I am here on this floor now, asking myself: How do I vote ``yes'' on a rule that I so oppose?
That's my position, Mr. Speaker. I think that, if we fail to act now, now while we have the maximum amount of leverage and the one of two pieces of must-pass legislation--that is the CR, and next is the debt ceiling bill--to shut off the funding to implement ObamaCare, we will have missed our chance. By the way, every appropriations bill will come to the floor with the same kind of rule that will block out anyone from offering any legislation that will shut off the funding, the automatic appropriations to ObamaCare.
So as much as it pains me to be standing here at this point, I can't figure out how I can vote ``yes'' on a rule that I so oppose.
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