Talking About Truth, Honesty, And Integrity

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. FOXX. Well, I thank the gentleman from Texas for taking on this Special Order tonight and for laying things out so well from H.R. 3200, which, as you've said, is the only bill on our side of the Congress that is out there. As you said again so eloquently, what the Senate has been working on has been behind closed doors.

I was really busy today. I heard there might be a bill released today, but I don't think it has been. I do want to talk about what you were saying about the fact that we are about to turn our whole economy upside down to take care of a small number of people who are lacking health insurance and who can't afford it.

As we know, at the beginning, our colleagues across the aisle and the President were saying there are 45 or 47 million people in this country who don't have health care. When they were challenged on that, they said, Okay, there are 45 to 47 million who don't have health insurance. Even the President, on the night he spoke to us in the joint session, took that number from 47 million down to 30 million because we had kept talking about illegal aliens who were here in the country and who were counted in that number. So he got it down to 30 million, but the number is really much, much smaller than that.

The ironic thing is that, in all of the legislation we've been hearing about, it looks as though 28 million people are still not going to be covered by health insurance even if H.R. 3200 is passed or even if the bill out of the Senate is passed. So we're talking about, again, taking over the whole economy, putting us tremendously more in debt, spending $1 trillion to serve approximately 1 million people if the numbers they have been using are accurate. Of course, we know that, most of the time, they're not accurate, but they're using the numbers.

Let's talk a little bit about who these people are. We have a few variations of the exact numbers that people are using. For example, in noncitizens, I think this says that there are 10 million. A chart that I had said 9.5 million, but if you're talking about starting out with 30 million, then what we're talking about again is of the 10 million who are not citizens and then of the approximately 9 million people who earn more than $75,000 a year. I had the figure of 7.3 at $84,000, but again, different people use different numbers. These people can afford health insurance if they want it, but they choose not to purchase it.

There are 10 million people who are eligible for government programs but who told people when they were questioned that they didn't have any insurance but that they were on either Medicaid or Medicare. They don't understand that Medicaid and Medicare are health insurance programs. So we've got 10 million there who are eligible for employer-sponsored insurance but who are not enrolled. Six million of these are people who just don't want to pay for health insurance and who are not going to pay for it if we have a plan that says you've got to be on it or pay a penalty.

So, on the chart that the gentleman from Iowa, Steve King, has been using, he has got 12 to 15 million Americans who don't have affordable insurance options. The number I had been using showed about 8 million people.

So we've got a really small number of people. We could take care of those people easily with a subsidy to help them get affordable insurance. We want to help working people, the working poor. That's who most of these people are. They work, but they can't afford insurance.

Republicans have a plan. As you pointed out earlier, we have several plans, and our plans deal with the things that folks most want. They want portability.

People want to be able to take their health plans with them if they lose their jobs. Well, the way to do that is to give individuals the opportunities to take a tax deduction or a tax credit and buy their own health insurance. We have a system now where we give that preference to companies, but we don't give it to individuals.

So a simple thing to do would be to simply say you, as an individual, can buy your health insurance, and you can take the same deduction that your employer has been taking all of these years. That won't cost the Federal Government a dime. We can also allow people to buy insurance across State lines. That can be done. It won't cost the Federal Government a dime. We can have across-the-board medical malpractice reform, and we can get rid of frivolous lawsuits. Texas, I know, has done that. California has done it. My own State of North Carolina has tried on several occasions to do it, but the Democrat-controlled legislature won't allow it to be done because they basically are beholden to trial lawyers.

So those are the three most important things that people want. They want accessibility and affordability. We can take care of those without spending any money whatsoever, but the Democrats seem intent on spending money.

This is really not about health care. I think we all know it. I think the examples my colleague from Texas was using from H.R. 3200 are very clear. This is about government control of our lives. This year in the House, we have already passed a bill that allows the government to take over all loan programs for students who are going to college. That's another takeover of our lives. The government has already taken over car companies, the car production companies. It's going to be having the government run every aspect of our lives.

I want to point out that part of the problem, again, is that we have a real difference in philosophy here in the United States. We have a difference of philosophy here in the House.

Republicans think that it's best for individuals to take care of themselves and to keep as much of their money as they possibly can.

Democrats want to take as much money from citizens as they can and let the government run their lives.

I just want to give a couple of examples of what's happened since the Democrats have taken control of the Congress. The spending has increased in 2009 alone, the stimulus funding and the budgets, we have looked at that and we have found that all Federal agencies will, on average, receive a 50 percent increase in appropriated funds from 2008 to 2010. At the same time, real family incomes fell by 3.6 percent last year.

The people in Washington in control of the purse don't act like there's any recession. They just keep spending, spending, spending. Another thing that's a real problem with this health plan that's being proposed here is that it's going to cause the loss of another 5 1/2 million jobs.

Now I know many people who watch us, even when we read from sections of the bills, think this just isn't possible. How could you have people in charge of this Congress who are so anti-capitalism, who are so anti all of the values that have made this country a great country? I know it's hard to believe, but it happens every day, and it continues to happen.

We have, again, a deficit right now, for last year, $1.4 trillion. Yet since the year began, we are on target to have an increase of that next year of 12 percent. An article in today's Wall Street Journal points that out, and the increases are in what is called discretionary spending. I want to point out, in the mandatory spending programs, that's Medicare and Medicaid--and my colleagues know I hate those words mandatory spending, because there is no such thing. We simply allow things to go on automatic pilot, and they increase in spending every year because we've written it into the law. But we can change that. There is nothing mandatory about it. We allow it to be that way.

Medicare, this year, went up 9.8 percent, spending for Medicare, and spending on Medicaid went up 24.7 percent in the fiscal year that just ended October 1. We are to believe that by putting in a brand new health care program that purports to cover every citizen in the country, that we are going to reduce spending? Well, I have got some swampland in New Mexico I will sell you if you believe that story. It cannot happen. We cannot add people to the Medicare rolls and still spend less money. It just isn't going to happen.

I think it's incumbent on us here in the Congress, who understand the truth, who have read H.R. 3200, to come out here every night, every day, and explain to the American people we are not selling you a bill of goods, they are selling you a bill of goods, because all you have to do is read the bill, and you will see it and match up the numbers with what's been happening.

This is not rocket science, it's happening, and the American people are the poorer for it.

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