Restoring The Rule Of Law
Floor Speech
Restoring The Rule Of Law
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Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman from Texas for a few moments in this discussion.
We have a great country in that even when the law is absurd, we still obey the rule of law and spend our time working to change the law. A perfect example of that is a law, the Endangered Species Act, and its current application to a water situation in California where a small fish that is a nongame fish is preventing water from being used to irrigate and grow crops.
Consequently, unemployment in the area where these crops are usually grown is dramatically higher than the rest of the Nation, dramatically higher. And people who normally are working there are in bread lines, the very same people who grow food in California for the rest of this Nation. Consequently, this winter, a lot of fruits and vegetables will be more expensive for those of us all over the United States because we have instead deferred to the rule of law in allowing this water to flow by these fields that are laying fallow and not producing food and not allowing workers to work.
This situation gives us an opportunity to point out the absurd applications of certain laws and the need for there to be exceptions for certain laws. At the same time, we obey those laws regardless of the absurdity. So I compliment the gentleman for pointing out the importance and the history in this country of obeying the rule of law.
When Russia became post-Soviet Russia and was trying to establish institutions, as Iraq is trying to do today--among the most important institutions that they are trying to establish are courts with honest judges, which is something that is very rare around the world, especially in Second and Third World countries. How blessed we are in America to have an honest judiciary and the rule of law. That is to the compliment of many fine Members of this body, but also to the gentleman who is leading this conversation tonight, also a former judge. And I am grateful for the time you have given me to discuss this.
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Mrs. LUMMIS. Will the gentleman yield? I wonder if you might indulge a departure into health care for just one moment.
Mr. CARTER. Certainly.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you. I want to compliment my fellow freshman members of the Democratic party who had an hour preceding this hour to discuss health care from a freshman perspective. A couple of issues came up. I was watching them from my office so I came over here to the floor to comment on some of the things that they had raised and to compliment them on their statements about health care.
I want my Democratic colleagues to know that Republicans support health reform. We recognize that there are problems in our health care system, and that it needs reform. What we disagree about, and what we are here to debate and discuss, is how those changes should be implemented. It seems that my Democratic colleagues are more comfortable with government solutions and that my Republican colleagues are more comfortable with, by and large, private-sector solutions.
I might comment specifically, if I could, on a couple of things that were brought up tonight. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko) said that he wanted
stability for Medicare. And I want to say that I too want stability for Medicare. But we have not seen any bills yet that provide that stability. The only bills we've seen are bills that would create a new health care system run by the government on the backs of health care that would cost health care through Medicare dollars that are supposedly being wasted or abused.
Well I can tell you that one of my hospitals in Wyoming has told me they are only reimbursed 37 cents on the dollar of their actual costs for all of their Medicare-provided health care. So in other words, government is being subsidized right now for the health care it provides to seniors. And it is not meeting its obligations to provide the actual costs of Medicare and reimbursing them to doctors and hospitals, especially in rural areas around this country. And I would love to work with the gentleman from New York to solve that.
I want my colleague from Colorado (Mr. Polis) to know that I, too, want lower costs. But all of the bills we've seen carry costs. And they range from $800 billion and more, which is what we are hearing is the cost of the Senate Finance Committee bill, to the $1 trillion-plus range for earlier bills that were introduced in this House. So these bills that would lower costs come at a cost. It's just that those costs are going to come through surcharges, penalties and taxes that do not exist now. So those costs are just being shifted to someone else.
To the Member from Ohio, Representative Kilroy, who brought up a very powerful personal story, and to Mr. Kagen of Wisconsin, the physician, who both addressed preexisting conditions, Members of the Republican Party also know that preexisting conditions are a huge problem in this country. That is why we supported high-risk pools. And the creation of a high-risk pool passed this Congress before I was here. It was while you were here. The proposal that I am cosponsoring, House bill 3400, would add additional moneys to those high-risk pools that come from cutting off the stimulus funds that have not yet been spent and using them to create additional funding for these high-risk pools to support funding for those with preexisting conditions.
A wonderful idea was discussed during their debate. It was raised by Representative Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania. It was something new that I heard for the first time today. After 4 months of constant debate, this was something absolutely brand new, the notion of young people, through age 26, being able to stay on their parents' coverage, which is a particularly great idea during this economy where young people are leaving college and taking jobs if they can find them in this tough economy, that frequently don't have health insurance or do not have as good a health insurance as the policies that their parents had them on when they were minors. What a great idea. New things come up here every day.
In other words, Republicans are willing to work with Democrats. We want health care reform. We would love to work with Democrats on these ideas. The problem is the leadership of the Republican Party has been asking since April for a meeting with the President and has not received a response. The problem is that we want commitments. When the President says, If you like your current health care plan you can keep it, we try amendments that say exactly that, and those amendments are killed. We want 72 hours to read the bills. And when those amendments are killed, we have no assurance that we will have 72 hours to read the bill.
I want to compliment a television program called ``On the Record'' with Greta Van Susteren. She has been a tireless advocate for Members of Congress reading the bills. And among the things she asked the President is, would you sit down with Members of Congress and go line by line through the bill? And the President said yes. So, members of the Republican Party in Congress have written to the President and said, please, we would love to take you up on this. Let's go through this line by line so if you really believe we Republicans are misrepresenting the ideas that are embodied in House bill 3200, we can see where we disagree, and maybe we can find an agreement. And yet, those requests to go through the bill with the President line by line have not been responded to by the White House.
So, in other words, I want to share the frustrations that we in the minority party have, and particularly that I, as a freshman member of the minority party, have. And I want to communicate with my majority party colleagues, my Democratic colleagues, that we want to reach out and have been reaching out to the Democratic Party, the majority party, trying to find a bipartisan bill, and yet I believe our overtures have not been reciprocated. And I want to once again extend my desire to do so. I would particularly like to work with my freshman colleagues who I respect and admire very much and rely on the expertise that we have come to gather as fledgling Members of this Congress.
I note that the gentleman from Texas has now a chart on the board.
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Mrs. LUMMIS. And will the gentleman yield?
Mr. CARTER. Yes, I will yield.
Mrs. LUMMIS. And even those concepts should be at least posted for a 3-day reading now that they've been actually voted on. But as the gentleman has pointed out, who now is going to take those concepts and draft them into a bill? And will the bill be the exact embodiment of what the Senate passed in concept or will additional concepts be added? We won't know unless the 3-day reading rule and the posting rule on the Internet is implemented. Only if 72 hours are given to those people who can compare those concepts that were voted on to the actual legislative language that comes out of a drafting group will we know that the legislation reads the way that the concepts were designed to implement.
And I yield back. Thank you.
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Mrs. LUMMIS. Because of the conversation we have just had, I want to further remind people that there is a bill entitled Sunset All Czars, H.R. 3569, the primary sponsor, Representative Scalise, in addition to the Blackburn bill, which I also support.
Before we adjourn this evening, I would like to bring up one more bill, and that is the audit of the Federal Reserve. It is the subject that also, I think, is consistent with our desire as a Congress to fulfill our obligations under the Constitution.
The reason that this bill is so important to the people in the United States--and I preface my remarks by saying I supported Mr. Greenspan and I support Mr. Bernanke. I applaud them for all the efforts that they make on behalf of the Federal Reserve.
I, nevertheless, support a bill to audit the Federal Reserve. It is based on personal experience. I was my State's treasurer. I was audited annually. The auditors
came into my office in August, and they didn't leave until after Christmas. One-third of the year, every year, for the 8 years that I was State treasurer, I was being audited. It was for good reason; it was because I managed all of the money in the State of Wyoming.
The auditor and the treasurer were the two people with whom the auditors who are contracted to audit the State spent the most time. It was appropriate. It was a pain in the neck to have the auditors in my office for 4 months every year taking time away from our regular duties.
But, in fact, it protected me, as the State treasurer. Had any of the employees in the office been able to misdirect monies, it protected me. It protected their coworkers. It protected the taxpayers of the State knowing that their money was being appropriately audited, that there was someone looking over my shoulder, our shoulder, in the office of the State treasurer. It was good for me, it was good for my office, it was good for the State. It was good for the taxpayers whose money I was managing.
The same is true with the Federal Reserve. This is not an attack on Ben Bernanke or his predecessors. This is good, sound money management.
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