The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“BUDGETARY AND OTHER CONCERNS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H8120-H8122 on Dec. 2, 2011.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
BUDGETARY AND OTHER CONCERNS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We're in a time of massive overspending, a time when some want to raise taxes, creating more of an economic problem. But it's been shocking that after the biggest wave election since the 1930s, 80-plus brand-new Republican conservative Members coming into this House, it's been nearly a year, and we really haven't cut much of anything. There's plenty of places to do it. It should be done. It can be done.
We ought to just say we're going back to the last Speaker Pelosi budget before the big bailouts and stimulus all started occurring. I don't remember governmental entities around the country, Federal Government entities, in 2007 and 2008 with Speaker Pelosi at the helm of things, complaining that they weren't getting enough Federal money. Yet, if we went back there and just said, you know what, forget the stimuluses and the bailouts, obviously those haven't worked. Let's just go back to the '07 or '08 budget. They didn't pass a budget; they passed appropriations--but let's go back to those numbers. Instantly, a trillion dollars trimmed off.
What we've had is a President of the United States coming into office jumping up the Federal spending by a trillion to a trillion and a half dollars and then saying we're not cutting any of that extra trillion dollars we've added on. We just need now to raise taxes to get up to all of this giveaway spending that we've done.
There are many good examples of that, but none better than in the solar energy area--a place like Solyndra getting between five and $600 million that's been completely wasted.
We've been told by Secretary Napolitano that the country just can't afford to build a fence on our southern border where our problems now are not Latin American citizens coming up here. We have what are sometimes labeled OTMs, ``other than Mexicans,'' coming in; and many of them are coming in and they're not coming in to do us any favors, and they're not coming here to get jobs.
We have an obligation to provide for the common defense. Our oath requires us to do that, and we're not doing it.
But good grief, if you took the money that this administration squandered giving away to Solyndra, take the $700 million or so that was squandered, given away to a solar plant in Nevada--actually they had about $35 billion to give away, they literally have been doing--and according to the information from this administration--some of us think it shouldn't cost nearly this much--but if you took just $1 billion to
$2 billion of that $35 billion that had been squandered by this Energy Department and said we're committed to providing for the common defense, and in providing for the common defense we're going to build a fence, it would cost a fraction of what this administration has squandered on solar energy giveaway programs. What a waste.
Then we have ObamaCare. You want to save a trillion dollars? Just stop it. Repeal ObamaCare. The vast majority of American people sent a new majority into the House to try to get that done. Turns out, we've got to have help in the Senate we don't have down there so that we can do the will of the majority of the American public and repeal ObamaCare. There's a trillion dollars in savings, actually more than that.
We've got $105 billion being spent right now, in the process of being spent, to make sure that the mechanisms are in place so that by 2013, 2014, ObamaCare is going to be the law of the land whether the Supreme Court strikes it down or not, because all of these mechanisms will be in place. It's time to repeal it. It's time to get rid of it and have serious health care reform.
And you can't have serious health care reform until you know what the cost of health care is. You can't go into any doctor's office or any hospital, any health care provider's office and say how much does it cost for this procedure, that procedure if it is something that's covered by insurance or Medicare or Medicaid because they can't tell you. It depends, they'll tell you. What kind of insurance you got? Are you on Medicare? Medicaid? Are you paying cash?
Ironically, in a society where paying cash should normally get you the lesser price, in health care, because of some of the insurance agreements, they are not allowed contractually to charge as little to the cash-paying people as those who have insurance get charged to their insurance companies.
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Well, that's not the free market. That's not competition. So that's something that has to be dealt with. We need transparency there.
When we look at the figures, for example, on Medicare for the calendar year of 2010, it has been estimated that $522.8 billion was spent on Medicare. When you divide the number of households in the United States that have been estimated to have one or more people on Medicare, you'll find out we're apparently spending between $20,000 and
$30,000 a household for Medicare. You can buy some really great private health insurance, especially if you have a high deductible, for a lot less than $20,000 a year.
That's why the proposal I had--some have called it bipartisan--has clearly become a partisan entity. After being called to the woodshed by this current President, they were able to strike about $200 billion or
$300 billion from their estimated costs of ObamaCare only to find, once it passed, it got put back in. Well, if CBO has a margin of error of
$300 billion out of every $1 trillion they estimate, then it's probably not something we ought to keep. It's kind of like the Energy Department. When they're that bad at what they do, it's time to get rid of them and do something new.
But you can't blame the folks who are there. Their hands were tied with rules that were put in place in 1974 up until the last 5 or 6 years with the most liberal Congress in our history, the same Congress that said we weren't going to stay with our commitments to allies in Southeast Asia. We left, some estimate, 2 million people to be killed when we fled Southeast Asia. Now this President seems to be following the same trends that we saw with Jimmy Carter: turning on our allies, hurting our friends, helping our enemies--and there's always a price to be paid for that.
So we've got ObamaCare put in place. Over $1 trillion could be saved. Just repeal the thing, and let's start with real reform.
Even though CBO refused to score it, Newt Gingrich told me, if I could get that bill scored, it might revolutionize the discussion on health care. So, naturally, CBO wouldn't score something like that even after they were requested by the ranking Republican on Energy and Commerce--the committee of jurisdiction--and by the ranking Republican on the Joint Committee on Taxation. They both requested it be scored, but CBO didn't score it. It might have interfered with ObamaCare being passed. The bottom line was it would have given seniors a choice.
Do you want to keep being on Medicare and have the Federal Government tell you what you can or can't have, and have to go out and, with the precious few dollars you have from Social Security, have to pay AARP or somebody else's Medigap insurance or wraparound insurance or supplemental insurance? Do you want to have to keep paying precious dollars?
Or would you like the alternative of having the Federal Government buy you basically the best private insurance you could have with a high deductible--of $3,500, $5,000, whatever we want to say, whatever ends up being the most cost-effective--and we would give you cash in a health savings account that you'd control with your own debit card, where you'd make the decisions? The only restriction is it would have to be for health care. You couldn't use that money for anything else. Give people a choice. Let them decide if they want to quit buying Medigap insurance.
I know, as wonderful as AARP is, 2 years ago, I think, they cleared over $400 million in clear profit from their supplemental Medicare insurance. So you hate to cut in on a charitable institution like AARP's massive profits like that off people who can't afford to buy the product. But gee, let's give seniors a choice.
Then, of course, we would need to give incentives to young people. Put your own money into a health savings account. It would be your money, but it could only be used for health care. You can't pull it out for something that's not health care. You can gift it to other people's health savings accounts. When you pass away, if you've got money in there, you can pass that on and have someone inherit that from you into that person's HSA, but once it's committed as health savings account money, it has to be spent on health care.
Yet we've been told if that happens, then the vast majority of young people in their twenties and thirties would have so much massive amounts of money built up by the time they'd be eligible for Medicare, not only would they not want Medicare, they wouldn't need it. They'd have plenty of money to do what they wished.
Now, that would get us off this road to the dustbin of history, because we have bankrupted ourselves on entitlement programs. At the same time, what an incredible deal--you'd get better health care; you'd get more control; you'd put patients back in control; you'd put patients and doctors back making the decisions.
I'm a big supporter of health insurance, but the trouble is for a number of years now we haven't had health insurance in America; we've had health management. I'm very concerned that, unless health insurance companies get back in the business of health insurance instead of health management, then there will be some bill that ends up running them out of business.
It, of course, will be ObamaCare if it's not repealed. Then it will be the government controlling things--a massive takeover.
As I've said before, ObamaCare is kind of like the cap-and-trade bill. They're all about the same thing. It's all about the GRE--the Government Running Everything. That's what it's about.
We could save money and return freedom to people who have not had it in the area of health care, and they would control their destinies. But there are some people here in Washington who genuinely, honestly believe they need to be making the personal decisions for people across America because, gee, they're smarter, and they would make better personal decisions for people who haven't done so well on their own.
Thinking like that caused the original Revolution. They didn't want some king who thought he knew more about what they should do with their lives making the decisions about their personal lives. Some have drawn the parallel that there is a correlation between the American Revolution and the French Revolution when compared to the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement, because the American Revolution was about one thing: It was about liberty.
There were people who signed and pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor. They were all at stake. And many who signed, pledging their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, lost their lives and their fortunes--but their sacred honor was intact when they died.
The Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights and that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Nobody is guaranteed happiness. Yet the Founders knew that we were endowed by our Creator with these rights. But like any endowment, like any inheritance that's passed on from a loving father, if you're not willing to fight for it to the death, if necessary, you will not keep your inheritance. If you make stupid decisions with your endowment, with your inheritance, you're going to lose it; you won't keep it.
Many countries have suspected they were endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, but they didn't fight to preserve them. They never fought to grasp them to begin with, and they've never had them.
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Some have had them and squandered them. We have been given such a gift by our Creator and by those who were willing to defend our inheritance so that we could enjoy that incredible endowment. Of course, we find out that there are some people in the Occupy movement who have big trust funds, massive amounts of money to keep them going, and they're out there complaining about people with money, got their laptops or their iPads, don't appear to be hurting too much. It appears some of them were born on third base and have gone through life thinking they hit a triple. Well, they haven't, and they need to be grateful for the people that got them to third base, but they're not.
We can get spending under control, but we've got to get back to a moral Nation. As the Founders said, this government was never intended to work as a government for immoral people, for a people who did not grasp and understand the gift from their Creator, and that they had a Creator.
We know that there are those who, in this country, are atheists because they have the freedom to do that, and that's fine. They have the freedom of religion, but the late Bob Murphy from Nacogdoches, Texas, used to say, you know, I used to feel sorry for atheists, he said. I do, I feel sorry for atheists because they have to tell the world, while they're trying to act like intellectuals, they have to try to tell the world that they believe the equation nobody plus nothing equals everything.
As Bob used to say, how embarrassing, to act like an intellectual and say I believe the equation, nobody plus nothing equals everything. Because the truth is, we were endowed by our Creator. It didn't just happen. These incredible gifts didn't just appear. We are endowed by a loving Creator.
I learned a lot about the nature of God as a father who loved his children. I learned even more about the nature of God as a judge and chief justice, how you don't want to punish people. You got a taste of that as a father. But there has to be laws, there has to be enforcement, there has to be equal enforcement and people not be above the law.
Well, when you get people in positions of authority who think they're above the law, that they should be in a position, as was King George III, to decide legislative, judicial and executive decisions, we're in trouble.
In North Dakota, there has been the largest oil find since the discoveries in Alaska. Some think the shale finds of oil in North Dakota may even exceed Prudhoe Bay. It's big.
We, those of us who believe in God, should be thanking God for the endowment of all the natural resources in this country. We have been richly blessed, and yet we have got an administration that says hands off: this might make us energy independent, this might move us down the road to stop sending money to countries that hate us, to stop sending money to countries who are funneling money to terrorism.
This energy resource blessing that we've been given, if we used it, would create jobs; but we're not going to allow it because we want to use something they call alternative energy. The reason, as someone recently said, it is called alternative energy is because it isn't real energy. You use more energy getting the energy out than you actually get back.
That's been seen with wind energy; and we know that these massive windmills, though producing some small amount of electricity, they've chopped up a lot of birds in the process.
And yet what has been this administration's position in response to the biggest oil find in modern history in North Dakota, Slawson Exploration Co. of Wichita, Kansas, was charged under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for killing 12 birds that--these aren't endangered species, they're migratory birds, like mallard ducks--after landing, allegedly landing in oil waste pits in western North Dakota.
So our Justice Department, which abandoned prosecution of funding of terrorism around the world against the United States and our friend Israel, it has abandoned that responsibility, they are purging their training records of any reference to radical Islam. They are refusing to go after the people that want to bring down this country. They're appointing people on the Homeland Security Advisory Council who have glowingly talked about Ayatollah Khomeini, or the Holy Land Foundation, that funneled money to terrorism, they're putting people like that on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, giving them secret clearance and letting them peruse our classified documents. That's what this administration has been doing.
But these energy resources could make us energy independent, and what are they doing? They're putting their foot on the throat of anybody that tries to produce them to the point that they will ignore the tens of thousands of birds that have been killed by windmills and go after the biggest oil find in modern history in America and charge them criminally because maybe there were 12 ducks that got into some of their oil.
It's incredible what this administration is doing--they think to help America. But, clearly, just as clearly in retrospect as President Carter hurt this country, hurt those who love liberty by recognizing the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of peace, proudly proclaiming his coming back to Iran, and thousands and thousands and thousands of people have died because such a man was encouraged to come to power.
Just like this administration did in Egypt, like this administration has done in Libya, without really knowing who we were helping, and now the Muslim Brotherhood that is devout in pursuing an international caliphate that would put the lovers of liberty in this country under the shackles of following sharia law, it's a disgrace.
There is so much damage that this administration has been doing; the Justice Department going after people because they believe there is a God.
I will just close with what Ben Franklin said in the Constitutional Convention, 1787, toward the end of June:
How has it happened that we have not once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room. Our prayers, sir, were heard and they were graciously answered.
He ultimately said:
If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We've been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that ``unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.'' I firmly believe this.
He also said:
I firmly believe that without his concurring aid, we shall succeed in our political building no better than the builders of Babel.
He was right. We've had over 200 years of blessing as a result. It's time to acknowledge the result of our blessing and the source of our blessings.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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