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.
“BROKEN PROMISES” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4770-H4777 on June 23, 2010.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
BROKEN PROMISES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Markey of Colorado). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, it's an honor to have the opportunity to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and picking up where my colleagues left off, they have given, I think, a good presentation over the last 60 minutes that covered a lot of important territory with regard to the budget and the spending. I think they've made the point that since the rules of the House required a budget resolution, this House has never before failed to pass a budget. There are political reasons for that.
I happen to see a quote over on the wall that I hadn't picked up before, and it didn't attribute it to anyone, but I am pretty sure it wasn't a Republican, Madam Speaker. It was a quote that, generally speaking, was this, that, well, until the deficit reduction commission would meet and produce a decision, we couldn't possibly pass a budget here in the House. And that would be--oh, let me see, a week or two or so after the election in November. Imagine, Congress can't do its work unless the President appoints a deficit commission, and that deficit commission couldn't possibly return a recommendation to this Congress until after the people have spoken.
It's amazing to me, Madam Speaker. The people have spoken. The people in this country have elected their Representatives that serve on this side of the aisle over here in the majority, on this side of the aisle over here in the minority. We have a responsibility to step forward and bring a budget, and that budget needs to be the reflection of spending discipline and the spending priorities of the House of Representatives.
According to the Constitution, all spending starts here--not in the Senate. It starts here. And traditionally, the House has received the President's budget, his budget recommendation. We've evaluated that budget in the process of moving a budget resolution here in the House--
in a responsible fashion when Republicans were in charge at least. I think in a less responsible fashion, but at least it got done before when Democrats were in charge, until now.
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But the spending has been so irresponsible that even the irresponsible overspending Democrats don't have enough will to bring a budget to the floor and allow it to be debated and voted upon here on the floor of the House, where the rules require us to do so. Because why? Because the President has appointed a Deficit Reduction Commission, after spending trillions of dollars irresponsibly, and now he has put these brains to work to figure out how to solve an unsolvable problem.
I know what that feels like, Madam Speaker. I remember going through the farm crisis in the eighties. I remember when asset values were going in a downward spiral and opportunities for increasing revenue were also going in a downward spiral, and the customer base that I had was doing what was happening to me. My bank was closed down by the FDIC. All accounts were frozen. Commerce came to a halt. I had two pennies in my pocket, a payroll to meet, kids to feed, a business to run, bank loans to pay even though the bank was closed by the FDIC, opened up next Monday by new owners. I know how that thing works.
You set your priorities. You step up to your responsibilities. But I have sat there at my desk during those years with my legal pad and my calculator trying to figure out how to make it work. And I know what it feels like when you think that there is something wrong with your brain because you can't solve a problem.
Well, there is something wrong with the people's brains that spent all this money all right. And now the problem they can't solve is how to present a budget to the Congress because they have created an intractable, unsolvable budget problem not by being caught in an economic downward spiral exclusively, but by going into a downward spiral where Federal revenues are being reduced in proportion to the downward economic spiral while they are increasing the spending like they are in an upward economic spiral. These two things are going opposite directions. Federal revenues are going down; Federal spending is going up.
The divergence of these two lines, the income and the outgo, have gotten so far apart that even the people without a conscience towards balancing a budget, and I mean the Democrats in this Congress, they are having a little trouble selling the idea to the Blue Dogs. Yes, Blue Dogs have gone underground. They have been quiet. They haven't been as active as they were in the past. They are certainly not as bold as they have been when I used to stand here and take lectures from the Blue Dogs that said, We want to balance the budget. What's wrong with Republicans that they can't balance the budget?
Well, nothing wrong with me, because I voted for every balanced budget that's been offered on the floor of this House since I came here. And I don't know why I wouldn't continue to do that. And we are looking for a chance to bring a balanced budget to the floor again, and we will. We will if we can break the mold here.
But this House, led by the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has so kowtowed to the President's spending priorities and spent trillions unnecessarily. The number that I had added up in my head standing on the floor here a week or two ago was $2.34 trillion of unnecessary spending, $2.34 trillion.
And the President's budget as he presented it, it's the only budget we've got to go with. No conscience to try to balance it. No conscience to try to limit it. Today a baby born in America, their share of the national debt--you just might say that here's the IOU that that little old baby, when their footprint goes down on the birth certificate is an acknowledgement that their share of the national debt that they owe Uncle Sam is $44,000. And we worry about that little child, all the money that it takes to provide health care and education and clothing and housing and nurture and love to bring that child up into responsible adulthood. That little old child that grows into responsible adulthood, we worry about them carrying a student loan debt that might be, oh, let's say--pick a number in the ballpark. It's not a statistical number. It's a ballpark number. Maybe $40,000 worth of student loans when they finish college.
That burden of servicing the interest and the principal on a $40,000 student loan, we worry about that. Well, I would be happy to take that
$40,000 loan and a guarantee of a college degree and think that child could pay that off.
But for nothing. They don't get a college degree. They don't get an education. They just get access to citizenship of the United States of America for their $44,000 that's their share of the national debt, a little baby with ink on their foot stamped right there on the birth certificate. There is one in this country we haven't seen, but the footprint on those we have seen, those little babies owe Uncle Sam
$44,000.
And, Madam Speaker, when that little child enters into fifth grade, and I picked fifth grade because that's the budget cycle. We do 10-year budget cycles, and we calculate our revenue stream. We calculate our outgo over a 10-year period of time. We put a number figure on something like, oh, let's say ObamaCare, what does that cost? That's over a 10-year period of time. So when that little child, from 10 years to the time they are born, they will be starting fifth grade. When they start fifth grade, that little child that owes Uncle Sam $44,000 that was born today owes Uncle Sam at that point, starting in the fifth grade, $88,000 under President Obama's budget. Doubles the individual national debt share just projecting the President's budget. And that, Madam Speaker, is with the President's own numbers. It's that bad.
There isn't going to be a solution coming out of the deficit commission because there is an intractable problem that's been created by irresponsible overspending and a myopic, wrongheaded view that John Maynard Keynes had the right idea when he came up with this cooked-up theory back before the Great Depression began that if you wanted to recover from an economic downward trend you would just take a lot of government money and borrow it from somewhere and dump it into the economy, give it to people, and get them to spend it. That's the Keynesian economic theory.
Government would put money into the hands of people; people would go spend the money, and spending that money would stimulate the economy. That was his plan coming into the thirties. When FDR was elected, that's what they did. They overspent. They spent the country into more deficit than they had seen before, and borrowed money and put it into the economy in all kinds of programs. The WPA, the CCC come to mind as some of those programs.
Now, that was nice for the people there that got the government jobs, and it was nice to have the soup lines. But here's what I know. When government is putting out borrowed money to pay people to do something else that's in competition with the private sector or pay people not to work, it's awfully hard to recover economically, because it takes the private sector to bring us out of this economy.
So this White House now has taken a look at the model of the thirties, and the President of the United States, his lesson, his takeaway from the whole lesson of the Great Depression was this: FDR lost his nerve. That's what the President said, February 10, 2009, before our conference, ten feet away from me, said FDR lost his nerve. He should have spent a lot more money. If he had spent more money, the President's opinion, this country would have come out of the Great Depression almost before it--he didn't say this word--but you know, before we got into the depths of it. And he argued that FDR lost his nerve, should have spent more money. If he had done that, we would not have had the depression that lasted a full decade and more.
And he argued that because FDR lost his nerve and failed to spend enough government money, what we had was--and this is according to the President's words--a recession within a depression, and unemployment numbers that went up during that period of time instead of down. And then he said along came World War II, which was the greatest economic stimulus plan ever.
I would even take issue with that statement. But I am going to concede his point there and not make an argument about it, Madam Speaker, because there is some basis for that statement. It's not completely off base at all. There is just a different perspective that I would emphasize.
But I would argue that sending this Nation into debt and borrowing money and putting it into the hands of people not in exchange for production, but just in exchange sometimes for make-work or doing something was not the right way to come out of a depression or a recession. What we need to do is increase productivity. We need to get the private sector more competitive. And he has done everything but let the private sector get more competitive.
But this Keynesian economist on steroids, which is our President, has not made what he considered to be the same mistake that Franklin Delano Roosevelt made. Remember, Roosevelt lost his nerve. He didn't spend enough money. The President hasn't lost his nerve. He spent a lot more money than FDR would have thought of spending. He spent a lot more money than John Maynard Keynes would have thought of spending.
Keynes's argument was this. He said, I will solve all the unemployment in America for you, and here is how I will do it. We will go get a whole bunch of American cash--now, I am paraphrasing here; there is an exact quote that does take this message out--a whole bunch of American cash, American dollars, and I will find an abandoned coal mine. And we will go out and we will drill holes with a drill rig all over into that abandoned coal mine, and we will stuff these holes full of cash. And then we will haul garbage in there and fill that abandoned coal mine up with garbage--this is before the EPA, you might remember--and then we will just turn the entrepreneurs loose to go in and dig up the money. We will solve all the unemployment problem.
People will go in and dig up the money. There will be a whole industry involved, almost like mining it for gold. I am adding an embellishment here, because I have included Keynes's image of this and I am adding the embellishment beyond. So his idea was, though, that people would go in, dig through the garbage, dig up the money out of the holes in the abandoned coal mine, and it would become an industry. And they would probably need some equipment. They would need shovels at least, and there would be people industriously digging through garbage and pulling the cash out and taking it to town. It wouldn't even be like gold where they had to go to the assay office. Cash was just as good.
It reminds me of the movie that was produced that had the Beatles in it years and years ago called ``The Magic Christian.'' And in ``The Magic Christian'' movie, they wanted to emphasize that there were a lot of greedy people in the world. And they filled this swimming pool full of all kinds of sewage and garbage and junk and things that would be revolting to jump into. And then there is a scene in the movie where doctors and lawyers and professionals and probably gangsters and every character that you can think of that they wanted to denigrate--they filled it full of garbage and junk and sewage and then dumped a bunch of cash in there. They had people diving into that, fighting over the cash. That image in ``The Magic Christian'' is the same image, a similar image that's created by John Maynard Keynes. But those things don't produce an economy. They don't produce wealth.
We have to be an economy that produces goods and services that are essential first for the survival of humanity and then essential to improve the productivity of humanity. And the next level is so that there is a savings or disposable income component to this so that we can go do the things we enjoy doing. But if an economy compresses down to the essentials, it will be a survivalist economy where our effort and our industry goes towards staying alive.
The next level is the level of productivity where our endeavor increases our productivity so that we can be competitive and we can compile wealth and use that wealth to increase our productivity that then increases our standard of living and our quality of life. And if the survival component of the economy and the increased productivity component of the economy gets high enough, then there is disposable wealth for us to spend to enjoy life, like go to the ball game, go on a vacation, take the kids fishing, go to Disney World, take the family out to Washington, D.C., see the monuments, go to the National Archives and to Arlington Cemetery. Those things, that's from disposable income that comes out, the recreational travel, the nonessential things that we spend money on, and that creates another industry.
But as you chase those industries down, you will chase them down to those components that are essential for the survival of Homo sapiens on this planet. That's the real economy. That's the economy we've got to stimulate. That's the one we have to let grow. It's stimulated by low taxes; it's stimulated by low regulation, and it's stimulated by entrepreneurs that understand the idea that they can invest some money or create an endeavor that will produce a profit for them that feeds their family and builds up some capital that can be used to increase their productivity so that the business can grow and they can hire employees and people have jobs. That's the economy we are supposed to support.
I think it's completely outside the understanding of the White House. I look around and I wonder who in the White House has actually signed the front side of the paycheck. Who's had employees? Who's started a business? Who's bought a business? Who's maintained and expanded an existing business that's in the White House circle? Who thinks like a free enterprise capitalist or like an entrepreneur? Is there anybody there that has an instinctive understanding of what it's like to start with something or maybe even start with nothing and create jobs and wealth? That's what America has done.
We have had the scenario that lets us do that. We have had the entrepreneurs. We have had the people with the dream that came to the United States because they knew this was a place where they could be allowed to succeed, and no one could come and take away the fruit of their labor and their endeavor. That's been the American Dream and it's been the American guarantee.
And now, now the White House can go in and order the terms of a bankruptcy for Chrysler or General Motors and direct that 17.5 percent of the shares of General Motors be handed over to the labor unions, the United Auto Workers who didn't have skin in the game except the potential for a future job. And yes, they had a benefits package out there, but their skin in the game wasn't conceded. They didn't concede a single point. Maybe some outside claims on insurance that could come in later years that all of them at the table believed was going to be replaced by ObamaCare anyway. There was no risk on UAW. They got handed 17.5 percent of the ownership of General Motors at what, the expense of the secured creditors, the stockholders, the bondholders that had the first mortgage on the asset values of General Motors taken out by the White House.
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Never before in America have we seen a scenario like that where it was testified under oath by the Treasurer of the State of Indiana that in the case of Chrysler, the Obama White House went into the bankruptcy court and dictated terms going in, and the terms that came out after chapter 11 were exactly the terms dictated by the White House. Of the testimony that took place in the chapter 11 bankruptcy hearings, there wasn't one jot or tittle that was changed as a result of the testimony because the White House dictated the terms.
The Obama administration were the only ones that were evaluating the assets of Chrysler going into chapter 11. And who is the only buyer on the other side? Well, the White House. Never before in a bankruptcy court. That is unjust. You can't get justice out of a scenario of a chapter 11 bankruptcy court that allows the same entity that is setting the terms to be the entity that is buying.
The White House is saying here is what the value of Chrysler is and here is what we are willing to pay and nobody else gets to be a bidder. And in the case of General Motors, take these shares away from the shareholders, take the assets away from the secured bond holders, push them over there and turn them over to the United Auto Workers.
So what, so they can run the business of General Motors for the benefit of the people affected by it. Doesn't that sound good. Doesn't that sound great, Madam Speaker. Run a Fortune 500 company for the benefit of the people affected by it. Where have I heard that language before? Run a business for the benefit of the people affected by it. Oh, yes, I know where I have heard that language before, Madam Speaker. I read it on the Socialist Web site. You can go read it yourself, dsausa.org. They want to nationalize the Fortune 500 companies which would include General Motors and Chrysler. I don't know if it includes BP, but I imagine they are in their sights today.
And they say we are not Communists; we are Socialists. We don't want to nationalize every business in America; we just want to nationalize the Fortune 500 companies and a few others that catch our attention. And we want to manage them for the benefit of the people affected by them. That is a quote: manage them for the benefit of the people affected by them. Dsausa.org, it is the Socialist Web site, who, by the way, tell us they don't run candidates on the Socialist ticket as if they were Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians or Communists. They run candidates on the Democrat ticket as Progressives, and they say the Progressives are the legislative arm of the Socialists.
So I read this and I am thinking, all right, but why would I take that seriously? They are attaching themselves to the Progressives in Congress, so I research a little more. I find out that there is a Web site for the Progressives here in Congress. The gentleman from Arizona
(Mr. Grijalva), it is a Web site that has his name on it now. It is often up here on a blue board with white letters that is presented by Keith Ellison of Minnesota. I see him constantly advertising the Progressives.
So I go back and do a little research, and I find out that the Socialists were the ones that managed the Progressive Web site until 1999. Yes, they are an offshoot. They are joined together at the hip. They are Siamese twins. The Progressives here in Congress are the Siamese twin of the Socialists of America. The Socialists ran their Web site until they took a little heat in 1999, and then they decided the Socialists running the Progressive Web site was a little too obvious a link, so the Progressives took over their own Web site and started to run it from there. But the Socialists still have on their Web site the proud bond between them and the Progressives in the United States Congress.
The last time I looked at the list of the Progressives on the Progressive Web site, there were 77 Members of Congress that were listed. Of these 77 Members, they would be obviously among the most liberal left wing Members of Congress. But the people in America don't think of liberal left wing Democrats as Socialists. They think of them as people who are for a little more social justice, but they don't think of them as Socialists. If they would read the Socialist Web site, I think that would be a pretty good description of what a Socialist is.
When you read on the Web site that they want to nationalize the Fortune 500 companies, and then you can minimize your dsausa.org Web site, and then open up the Progressive Web site and read on there what they want to do. Well, let me see. They want to nationalize the energy industry in America. They want to nationalize the oil refinery in America. Those would be statements written and said, stated by Maxine Waters of California and Maurice Hinchey of New York respectively. I read those statements through the press, and I hear them make them. I go back and look at the Progressive Web site, and it says on there: Proud Member of the Progressive Caucus, Maxine Waters, Maurice Hinchey. And then I go over to the Socialist Web site and I read on there, We want to nationalize the Fortune 500 companies. We want to nationalize the energy industry. We want to nationalize the oil refinery industry.
You see the pattern here, Madam Speaker. What is on the Socialist Web site is an agenda. It is on the Progressive Members of Congress caucus Web site as an agenda. And this agenda is being carried out by the White House and people are proudly advocating for these ideas while never admitting that they are a Siamese twin of the Socialists, who brought this out, and they have done this for a couple of decades or more and made this advocacy.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the one member of the Progressive Caucus, at least on the list, he is not in the House but he is in the Senate, Madam Speaker, Senator Bernie Sanders. He is a self-
avowed Socialist. I know of no one who has tried to rebut his statement that he is a Socialist. He is a proud Socialist United States Senator. He remains, I believe, a member in good standing as a member of the Progressive Caucus over here. Bernie Sanders advocates many of the things that are on the Progressive Web site, and certainly they are tied together. I have explained how that works. He is the highest profile Socialist in the United States of America, and no one has challenged his position that he is a Socialist. That would be like someone saying Steve King is not a Republican, Madam Speaker. And so I take him at his word. Senator Sanders from Vermont is a Socialist. They have elected him; that is how it goes. I don't like it, but that is how it goes. I don't dislike him; I just disagree with him philosophically. But that is how it goes in America.
So he is a Progressive and a Socialist, and we have 77 Progressives in this Congress. Well, are they Socialists? I think many are. I don't know if all are. But I know this: if you look at the voting records of President Obama when he was in the United States Senate serving with Bernie Sanders, it is clear that President Obama voted to the left of Socialist Senator Sanders of Vermont, consistently to the left.
So, Madam Speaker, the argument is not what is the ideology of our President. It is what is to the left of a Socialist. That is the argument that is out there and what we need to consider and contemplate. I believe this, that if you want to declare something not to be Socialism, however it is Socialism, you have to figure out how to redefine something to the American people. They are smart enough to know what words mean. They know what Socialism is. They know what irresponsible overspending is.
They know when a President and a Congress, led by Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, disagree with the will of the American people. They understand that it is free enterprise that has driven the economy of this Nation to success, and economically has been the component that allowed for the United States of America to be the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world. They understand that the bogged down economies, managed economies, whether it was central planning in the Soviet Union that finally collapsed in 1991, or whether it is the unstimulating economy that has bogged down Western Europe for a long time, that the vitality in this American economy that keeps chugging along is rooted in the individual entrepreneurs that are the invisible hands that are making decisions every day that turns this economy and makes it move.
We are not about to give up on free enterprise even though we have people that don't believe in it that own the gavels today, even though we have a President of the United States and a White House staff and a lot of the Cabinet that don't understand, nor do they appreciate or believe in free enterprise capitalism. I doubt if there is anybody out there in the White House that can say, Yes, I read ``Wealth of Nations.'' I understand it. I understand the division of labor. I understand the comparative advantage that Adam Smith wrote about. No, they understand Karl Marx, but they don't understand Adam Smith.
This is where we are, and it is why we have to push the reset button in November. This Nation is resilient. We can come back from this. We have a lot of debt and deficit that we have to pay off. We have a lowering national image abroad. We have a military that took a serious reset today, and I pray that it gets turned out for the best.
I think that some of our tasks are very difficult, but finding our soul is going to be the most difficult one. America will produce and bring us to a greater level of greatness yet if we find our soul, if we redefine and identify the pillars of American exceptionalism and chart ourselves down that path that goes beyond the shining city on the hill that Ronald Reagan so well spoke of and take us to the level that we can achieve, that we can see just beyond our horizons now.
Truthfully, I didn't come here to speak about any of the things I have spent the last half hour discussing. I wrote a number of subject matters down on a piece of paper, and I would like to refer over. I mentioned, Madam Speaker, the ObamaCare issue. And here is where we are. Whether it was 2 months or 3 months ago today that ObamaCare passed, I think this is a monthly anniversary of that tragic day when this Congress refused to use its common sense and refused to listen to the will of the people. Somehow they seem to be shut up here in Washington, and the constituents couldn't get to them and they hammered through and force fed an ObamaCare bill on the American people that today is the law of the land.
There was a cry that went out for almost a year from this country of the people that said I don't want my health care taken over and nationalized by the Federal Government. And bills that came in, 1,994 pages dropped on us near the end of October. It was a Thursday, 1,994 pages. We held a quick meeting a couple of hours after the bill was out. We didn't get a warning. Nobody is working with our side of the aisle. This is all drop the ambush on them if you can. Don't give them time to regroup their forces. We are going to bring this ObamaCare bill and try to turn it into law.
Well, a couple of hours after it was electronically available, our very astute staff put together an analysis of ObamaCare. And after that 2 hours, they presented us in the period of about an hour what they thought was in it in a quick cursory example. They broke it apart in titles and went down through the titles and told us what they thought we had. I thought they did a very good job of it, and it was very accurate. I appreciate the work that was done. We understood this: we had to kill the bill. We put all kinds of effort into that. People from every State came to this city to lend their voices in trying to kill ObamaCare because they wanted to keep their freedom.
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I want to keep my freedom, and I joined with them.
We came very, very close in November, December, right down to Christmas Eve when Harry Reid, the old scrooge, put the bitter pill out there on the floor of the Senate and America was force-fed that bitter pill that took away the liberty of the American people and nationalized our skin and everything inside it. That passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, and then it still had to face a cloture vote in the Senate. The people from Massachusetts rose up and decided they were going to do the improbable and the impossible, and they elected Scott Brown to the United States Senate, who said, I will oppose ObamaCare, and he came here to do just that. And in an unusual and in an unexpected and a unique tactic, they circumvented the vote in the Senate and shoved a vote here on the floor of the House on a promise that there would be another package passed through the Senate.
So we had this scenario that happened. When ObamaCare passed--and I'm talking about the bill, not the recissions package that came along afterwards--at the moment that ObamaCare passed, it could not have passed the Senate. When it passed the House and went to the President's desk, it could not have passed the Senate. And it did not enjoy a majority support here in the House unless there was a promise that they would pass a recissions bill afterwards that would give some of the holdouts the things that they thought they needed to amend the bill.
So they toyed with the idea of actually amending a bill that hadn't become law. That was the effort. There couldn't be an honest effort to put together a bill that was debated and perfected and amended in committee and on the floor so that it could become the will of the House or the will of the Senate. Neither the will of the House nor the Senate was passed that day when ObamaCare was passed. Maybe that's inside baseball, Madam Speaker, but here's where the American people are today. Wherever I go in this country I hear people say, ``I want my country back.'' They have seen this administration--and, yes, some of it started in the previous administration--but it had everything that I'm about to list, it had 100 percent support of Barack Obama whether he was a United States Senator, whether he was the President-elect, or whether he was the President of the United States, had most of it under his guidance as President of the United States.
Here's what happened. This Federal Government took over, nationalized--and when I say nationalized, I mean ownership, management, or control of--three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, Chrysler--where am I going? There's more to this. All the student loan programs in America, all of that swallowed up by the Obama administration. And I'm going to go through that, that's one-third of the private sector activity according to Professor Boyles at Arizona State University, one-third.
And then, along came ObamaCare, which passed. The gentleman earlier talked about that being 17 percent of our economy. The number I see is 17.5 percent. Well, we're close, we're within half a percentage point, who really knows? But when I add it up, I added 18 to 31 percent, that takes us to 51 percent. The question is, whether it's 50.5 percent or 51 percent of the private sector activity taken over by this Federal Government--three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors, Chrysler, all the student loans in America, now the nationalization of our bodies, of our health care, taking away a person's individual choices on how they will manage their health care, what insurance policies they will buy because, after all, the Health Choices Administration czar--they call him a commissioner, I call him a
``commizarissioner''--will write the rules later.
There isn't a single health care policy in America that the President of the United States can say I guarantee that this policy will be available to you when ObamaCare is implemented, not one. Remember, he promised America that if you like your health insurance policy, you get to keep it. He promised that over and over again. It was no guiding light, it was no promise, except a broken one. And I began to wonder--
there's a Web site out there that's a whole list of all of the broken Obama promises. It goes on and on and on. I wonder if he doesn't have a czar that's charged with keeping track of all of the Obama promises and making sure that he can break every single one of them in his first term. He's got a great start. But I know the American people don't see a guarantee and a promise from the President anymore.
If you like your health insurance policy, you get to keep it, I promise. Well, so what? Your promise means nothing because what we know today is there isn't a single policy in America that anybody believes that they get to keep on the other side of the implementation of ObamaCare.
And so if I'd stitch this back together, the list that I've gone through--the banks, AIG, Fannie and Freddie, General Motors, Chrysler, student loans, all of that, a third of private sector activity--
ObamaCare, 17.5 percent of the private sector activity of the health care swallowed up, taken over by the time this is implemented in 2014. And so now we're at 51 percent of the former private sector activity now nationalized, taken over, under the ownership, management, or control of the Federal Government.
The gentleman earlier talked about Hugo Chavez. I remember seeing a picture of the President glad handing his handshake with Hugo Chavez almost a year ago. And I said at the time, when it comes to nationalizing companies--Hugo Chavez had just taken over a Cargill rice plant in Venezuela, but when it comes to nationalizing companies, Hugo Chavez is a piker; he cannot hold a candle to the President of the United States. And that's just a fact, Madam Speaker, it's not an embellished fact, it's just a fact.
So today we've lost 51 percent of our private sector activity to the nationalization of this Federal Government. They have nationalized, under ObamaCare, our skin and everything inside it. The most sovereign thing that we have, now we can't manage it the way we managed it before. It will be that we can only manage our health care in the future under the permission of the Federal Government. And by the way, nationalize our skin and everything inside it. And let's just say that if your daughter is getting ready for the prom or a wedding and she wants to go to the tanning salon, ObamaCare taxes the outside of your skin too, to the tune of 10 percent. What is that about? Couldn't they restrain themselves? Why do something that's so blatant as that that it embellishes the argument that the nanny state is going to prevail? Are they really worried about somebody's health?
They wanted to tax a non-diet pop. They want to manage behavior, they want to control diets. They're involved in an effort to take 1.5 trillion calories out of the diet of kids because one-third of our youth are obese. And Secretary Gates, I believe, has spoken about this, our Secretary of Defense, that there is a higher percentage of young people that don't qualify to go into the military because they've got too much blubber around their belt, so they can't qualify. I would say this then: If they're healthy otherwise, bring them in. If they meet all other standards but they're a little too fat, bring them into basic training, just keep them there a while longer. By the time you run them around the field in combat boots a few more times and put them on a diet and exercise plan, you'll get them where you want them to be. They're still good shells of physical specimens, they just need to be cracked into shape. It doesn't mean we have a national security problem because too many kids are fat. I think we do have a problem, though, a nanny security program if this Federal Government is going to try to control the diets of our kids in this country. Taking away our liberty, taking away our freedom, disregarding the vitality of America that comes from our individualism, from being able to make choices, being held responsible for choices.
So ObamaCare has got to go, Madam Speaker. And there are those who think, oh, we can't get it done. It's hopeless now, the bill is passed, let's move on. We need to look ahead, not backwards. Well, listen, if we're going to look ahead, we have to look backwards and determine that ObamaCare is a terrible idea. It's an unconstitutional thing, it's an unconscionable thing to do to a free people.
{time} 2110
America, with its vitality, loses a chunk of its vitality when you take away our individualism and our liberty, and if people think we can't repeal ObamaCare, let me lay out this scenario. It works like this:
Every single Republican voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. There were 34 Democrats who voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. There was only one thing bipartisan about ObamaCare, and that was the opposition to ObamaCare--
in the House and in the Senate. So ObamaCare is the law of the land, but the implementation of it doesn't get completed until 2014. That's when we are really saddled with the juggernaut of this ``taking our decisions away from us and creating the dependency on people so that they no longer think about the freedom and liberty of making their own choices.'' So here is how we repeal ObamaCare.
First of all, there is Michele Bachmann, Parker Griffith, Bob Inglis, I believe, Jerry Moran--and there may be Todd Akin--and I. Those people I can think of have all introduced legislation to repeal ObamaCare, a standalone repeal of ObamaCare that is simply this: A 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare. Pull it out by the roots. Pull it out root and branch and lock, stock and barrel so there is not one particle of ObamaCare DNA left behind. This has become a toxic stew that we have ingested now, and it is turning into a malignant tumor that will start to metastasize in 2014 when ObamaCare is fully implemented. So here is what we do:
Of my bill and others' bills, we have 90-some cosponsors on this legislation. I have introduced a discharge petition. I think it's discharge petition No. 11. I'm not certain of the number. I think that's the number. I've signed it. A lot of others have signed it. A lot more need to sign it because of this: If a discharge petition gets 218 signatures on it here in the well of the House, it has to come to the floor for a vote unamended. That means we can force a vote even over the will of the Speaker of the House, who, surely, would do everything she could do to resist the repeal of ObamaCare. We could force a vote, but the process of getting to 218 signatures on a discharge petition identifies--separates, let's say--the men from the boys and the women from the girls.
Now, if you really were sincerely against ObamaCare, it's one thing to vote against it, and 34 Democrats did. Nancy Pelosi let them off the hook because they were afraid they would lose their seats in their districts, but who knows how many of them were serious. When we actually had the motion to recommit on no mandates, on no Federal mandates to buy insurance, there were only 21 Democrats who voted with that as opposed to the 34 who voted ``no'' on ObamaCare. So you've seen the conviction drop by 13 just in that little exchange.
How many of those 21 really have conviction?
We'll find out because the discharge petition is here, and I challenge those 21. In fact, I challenge those 34--and everybody else who is opposed to ObamaCare--to sign the discharge petition. Let's bring that discharge petition to the floor and repeal ObamaCare. Let's pull it out by the roots. Let's send it over to the Senate. Let's see what Jim DeMint and others can get done over there. That's what we need to do here in the House of Representatives.
Now, maybe that doesn't get itself accomplished and get ObamaCare repealed, because people in America, Mr. Speaker, can think in sequences, in logical, multiple sequences. All of the solutions are out there in America. I trust the judgment of our voters. They know this: If we are successful in getting 218 signatures on a discharge petition and if we pass the repeal of ObamaCare and if it goes down the hallway and across, through the Rotunda and over to Harry Reid, of course he'll do everything he can to kill it.
Maybe they'll find a way to get that done over in the Senate. Then it would go to the President, and we know what would happen. He would veto the bill. So it would come back to the House or to the Senate for an opportunity to override the Presidential veto.
It's not something you would consider to be politically possible today. Maybe there is an outside chance that it could be possible by the time we get to November. I doubt it, too--I'm skeptical about that--but we'll have put the marker down, Mr. Speaker. We will have separated the women from the girls and the men from the boys with the discharge petition. We'll have set the stage for the other side of November, the other side into the next Congress, when, I believe, the gavels will come into different hands from our side of the aisle, in which case we can move a repeal of ObamaCare as a standalone, a 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare as a standalone. We can do that. When that would happen, we would recognize President Obama would veto that, and we would have to figure out how to come up with a two-thirds majority to overturn the Presidential veto.
Again, that's a very, very high bar, but this Constitution here in my jacket pocket tells me all spending has to start here in the House, Mr. Speaker. All spending has to start here in the House. So a House controlled with a gavel in the hands of Republicans would simply refuse to fund any dollars. Any American taxpayer dollars would be prohibited to be used to implement ObamaCare. That could work really well in a Republican majority in 2011 and in 2012. So ObamaCare wouldn't be implemented. It would be sitting there without implementation, and Republicans would have passed a repeal of ObamaCare at least once during that period of time, maybe more times. Then we elect a President in 2012 who takes, as a matter of his campaign and his oath, his number one priority, which is to sign the repeal of ObamaCare. Pull it out by the roots.
So I have this vision of a President of the United States taking the oath of office, Mr. Speaker, with pen in hand: I swear to the best of my ability to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God. Pen in hand.
Normally, the President will turn and shake hands with the Chief Justice and with the outgoing President, and there will be a great celebration up there on the west portico of the Capitol. I would like to see him interrupt that for one thing. I'd like to see that pen in his hand when he takes the oath. I'd like to see the repeal of ObamaCare right there at the podium on the west portico, right by the bible that he chooses to take the oath on, and I'd like to hear him take that oath ``so help me God'' and bring his hand right down to the document that is the repeal of ObamaCare and sign the repeal of ObamaCare right there in the first instant of the new administration that begins on January 20, 2013.
Don't tell me we can't repeal ObamaCare. Yes, we can. We have to move a discharge petition now. We have to separate the women from the girls and the men from the boys on that subject. We've got to identify it so the voters know what to do when they go to the polls in November. When the time comes that the new majority is here and is being sworn in in January, probably on January 3 of 2011, we will refuse to fund ObamaCare, because the funding has to start here, and you can't get around that. No President can get around that. No Senator can get around that. The Constitution says it starts here. We control all spending in this House. There will be no funding to fund the implementation of ObamaCare. We hold the line in 2011 and 2012, and we elect a President who will sign the repeal of ObamaCare on January 20, 2013, right there on the podium at the west portico of the Capitol. It's right through those doors. Take a left. It's out on the portico where great events takes place.
That's what needs to happen--the full repeal of ObamaCare. Move this discharge petition now so we can separate those who are for a standalone, 100 percent repeal of ObamaCare and those who seem to lack the will to put their markers down and to be clear with the voters in America. That has got to happen.
Now, I didn't leave a lot of time for some of the other subject matters that I felt the urge to address, but I'll go through a list of them. A lot of them have to do with immigration, Mr. Speaker.
One of them is regarding the Secretary of Labor, who is using our tax dollars to run ads to tell people: Call this number. If you're legal or illegal, it doesn't matter. You deserve a reasonable wage, so we'll protect you with our labor laws. If you're working in the United States illegally, we're not going to ask you for your Social Security number or where you were born or what your lawful present status is or whether you are legal to work in America. If you're illegal and if your boss isn't paying you a going wage or is not treating you right under America's labor laws, call us. We'll keep you confidential, and we'll go punish the employer.
They're spending--it has to be millions of dollars--out of the Department of Labor budget to tell people who have broken into this country, who have unlawfully entered the United States or who have unlawfully overstayed their visas and who cannot lawfully work in America, that they are going to use the law to punish the employers if they don't treat them right.
Now, I don't say that an employer should be able to abuse their employees, but I do say the Secretary of Labor gets this way wrong if she thinks that she is going to use my tax dollars, Mr. Speaker, or is going to use your tax dollars to advertise to people working in America illegally, who are taking jobs away from Americans and from people who can work legally in this country, and reward them with the objective of their crimes by bringing the force of the Department of Labor against their employers.
{time} 2020
I tell you, I don't know where they find these people to appoint them to the Cabinet. This is one. I want to look at the full text of her remarks and come on tomorrow with a decision on what position I want to take. But this is a marker that needs to be down. We don't use American tax dollars to advertise and reward illegals for coming into this country. That is a form of amnesty being advertised in the television airwaves across America, with American tax dollars, at the direction of the Secretary of Labor; her face up there saying, Trust me. I will protect you. I won't enforce the law against you.
Amnesty. To grant amnesty is to pardon immigration lawbreakers and award them with the objective of their crimes. That's what she's saying. She's saying, We're not going to bring the law against you. We won't enforce the law. We'll keep your name confidential. Trust us. If your objective is a good job, we'll make sure we come down on your employer, not on you. But all the while she knows that anybody working in the United States illegally had to falsify their identification to get the job in the first place. And they probably did an identity theft or purchased the theft product from someone's identity in order to work in America. That is a serious crime. When someone's identity is stolen, they never get it back again. It is being implicitly encouraged by the Secretary of Labor. And that's got to stop, Mr. Speaker.
Now, Arizona law. Let's just say Arizona. Fox News today ran a story--I think they started it last night in some text that I read--
about the spotters down in Arizona that occupy the mountaintops along the transportation routes coming up through Arizona. Now what is going on is drug smugglers, people smugglers, contraband smugglers, occupy these locations on top of the mountains in Arizona. A lot of mountains in Arizona are shaped like volcanoes. Some is volcanic, as I notice, anyway. They come to a point. They're a cone.
And up on top of them--or whether it's a ridge--they will pick a spot where they can see an intersection of highways coming from two or three different directions or more, and the employees--these are paramilitary armed personnel that are organized as a military force taking position, strategic positions on top of mountaintops in Arizona, and they will take the stones and they'll stack them around like a gun emplacement and hunker down with optical equipment and they will watch the traffic.
And they have communications equipment with scramblers and descramblers in it so they can talk to their people and we can't listen in on them. We know the frequencies. I've heard it on the radio. I've flown over there in a helicopter and listened to the excited chatter as we fly toward some of those mountaintops to try to pick those spotters off of there before they come off the mountaintop and go hide in the desert. You can hear the chatter intensify up to a fever pitch and then all of a sudden it goes dark. Silent. That's because they come off the mountain right before you get there and they go down and hide.
I have pictures. I have hundreds of pictures from the top of these spotter locations. These are tactical positions in America. They're used to facilitate the smuggling of drugs and people, all kinds of contraband, and some of those people may well be terrorist suspects. They're from nations that we should be concerned about.
That traffic is going on through Arizona and other States. And these locations aren't just sitting along the border. These locations go all the way up the highway. Not just to Tucson. All the way to Phoenix. They control the transportation routes there. They tell them when to go, when to stop. They run decoys with a small amount of drugs in them. When the Border Patrol and other law enforcement officers converge on a vehicle, they sacrifice one of their people for the means of bringing a truckload through while they're diverted. That happens. It happens regularly.
We have a massive number of illegal border crossings. We have backpackers that are marching through the desert. We have 110-pound guys with 50-pound packs or more on their back and they march for a hundred or more miles sometimes. You look at some of those guys with calves like that on them. They're in shape because that's what they do--they walk back and forth in the desert and get paid to smuggle drugs in and out of the United States. And we sit here and we allow drug smugglers to occupy tactical positions on the tops of mountains, controlling the transportation routes in America, all the way up to Phoenix, and we're not able to go snap those people off those mountains and lock them up or put them through the shakedown and find out who they're affiliated with.
And we can listen in on the radio, but we can't understand it because it's a scrambled chatter and their equipment is at least as good as ours--and maybe better. And they supply them and they bring them food and drink and other things they need, as well as weapons. And I've been there to see these locations and optical equipment.
Mr. Speaker, we've got to take the spotters off the top of these lookout mountains. We cannot have the drug smugglers in tactical positions that control our transportation routes, however difficult it is. And there are tactical ways to do this. Our Special Forces know how. A lot of our law enforcement officers know how. They just need a mission. And last year I was able to get an appropriations amendment that directed a million dollars to take the spotters off of the lookouts in Arizona. And that appropriation went over to the Senate, where it was killed and died, Mr. Speaker.
So we've got to wake up. We've got to defend this country. We've got to shut off this border; build a wall; build a fence; stop the bleeding at the border; take the lookouts, the spotters off the lookout mountains in Arizona; shut off the magnet on jobs; get back to the rule of law. Let's reward people that respect the law and punish the people that violate the law without regard to race, creed, color, ethnicity, or national origin. Take it right out of title 7 of the Civil Rights Act. By the way, without violating Arizona law or Arizona's Constitution or the United States Constitution or any other State Constitution, for that matter.
Those are a number of the things on my mind, Mr. Speaker. And I'm very well aware that within the next 60 seconds I will have reached the balance of my time. And so I want to acknowledge and appreciate being recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
And I would yield back the balance of my time.
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