Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Speaker, it's a privilege to be here tonight on behalf of the Republican Party and on behalf of its members here in Congress. This evening we will be led by Judge Carter, Representative Carter of Texas, who is on his way to the Chamber at this point, but it's my privilege to cover for him until he arrives.

We have just finished, Madam Speaker, a week in our districts where we were meeting with members of our constituency. I want to inform you that among the issues that I heard about when I was home were still concerns from automobile dealers about franchises that have been put in jeopardy due to the automobile issue with General Motors; I heard about people who are trying to build houses in Wyoming and would create jobs in Wyoming doing so and had the building permits and the need for the housing confirms but that financing for building construction in Wyoming remains impossible to get because of new bank regulations that require two-thirds more security for those loans than was previously the case. Banks are simply unwilling to lend under the same terms that they would before to risk-takers who hire people to create jobs to build wealth and value in this country and who have strong credit ratings themselves and solid track records of producing jobs and producing value in the housing and the construction market in this country. That remains an issue around the United States and certainly in my State of Wyoming. Jobs must be the main criteria as we go forward this year; and the looming debt and deficit concerns continue to be voiced by people in my State throughout the week as I met with them.

As you know, we are preparing for more budget hearings now that Congress has reconvened after the President's Day recess. I'm on the Budget Committee, and we had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Orszag before the weather curtailed our activities and then the intervening district work period occurred. But we will be resuming those activities, hopefully meeting with Treasury Secretary Geithner soon and discussing the debt and deficit.

I want to remind my colleagues that last year we were approached by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the need for the United States to come up with a plan, a long-term plan to address our debt and deficits. It is not possible for us to accurately and clearly address our debt and deficit issues unless we discuss entitlements: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. There are components of those issues that will be discussed this week, hopefully, at the White House conference on health care.

We are now joined by the secretary of the Republican Conference and an esteemed Member of this body, a former judge from Texas (Mr. Carter).

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized for the balance of the time as the designee of the minority leader.

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Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding, and I have many of the same questions that Americans have.

I was on an airplane returning to Washington, D.C., today when I learned of the President's proposal; that it was not his intention to have a summit this week where members of the majority party and the minority party had an opportunity to bring ideas to the table; that it would not be an opportunity to take the House minority party bill, the Senate majority party bill, the House majority party bill, and find where the overlap is among all those bills, and then spend their time on February 25 concentrating on the areas of overlap.

That's what the American people want us to do. That's what my constituents told me they hoped would happen on February 25. They were hoping that when we were home for the President's Day work period last week that there was an effort here in Washington to find out where's the commonality among all those bills and how might that common ground be front and center to the discussion on February 25.

Now, today, as I have arrived back in Washington, I've learned that, although the Congressional Budget Office hasn't told us how much they believe President's proposal will cost, the President's own people believe that it will cost in the vicinity of $950 billion, just under the trillion dollar mark; that it will include over $600 billion in taxes; and that, even though it will provide opportunities for all States to be treated under Medicaid the same way that Nebraska is under the Senate bill, that, in fact, the special deals that were cut for Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and other States have not been altered. Furthermore, I heard one of my majority party House colleagues on another interview program this evening explaining that there's still hope that a public option, government-run health care is part of this package.

So I would ask the gentleman from Texas or our colleague from Georgia, a physician, who has joined us to let us know and enlighten me and members of the public via C-SPAN this evening, do we know what's in the President's proposal? Has it received the approval of both the majority party people who will be attending the summit and the minority party people? Do we even know who's going to be in attendance at the summit? Do we know the format of that summit? Will the President be leading this group and only explaining his proposal or will all in attendance have an opportunity to bring aspects of the health care debate forward?

For example, will there be a debate on what really are the issues that every one of us knows needs to be discussed: things like portability; things like addressing the problem of preexisting conditions being uninsured under many insurance policies today, and the issue of having an affordable insurance policy for high-risk individuals as well as the general population, and also, the issue of having a level playing field for tax treatment, whether you're self-employed or you have an employer.

These are the issues that I've heard about for the last 8 months, over and over, that people want addressed individually, bill by bill, debated, amended, and agreed upon in the House and the Senate; not these big, comprehensive omnibus bills that have so many provisions that have not been discussed, have not been vetted and are not well understood either by the Members here or by the general public.

And I yield back to the gentleman from Texas.

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Will the gentleman yield for just a second?

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. You bet. Sure.

Mrs. LUMMIS. You mentioned something that I'm curious about. In one of the little summaries that I read when I arrived back in Washington today, it said that they were reducing the penalty for noncompliant health insurance under the Internal Revenue Code, but that implies that you cannot keep your health insurance if you want to because it implies that there is still going to be a requirement under the President's proposal that your insurance comply with government approval.

So, how can the President say, if you like your insurance you can keep it, when the fact of the matter is, if your insurance does not comply with government standards, that you will be penalized under the Internal Revenue Code for keeping that insurance?

And I yield back.

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Mr. CARTER. I will yield to the gentlelady from Wyoming.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman for yielding because I have questions. My questions are the same kinds of things that my constituents are asking: Are Republicans just going to be window dressing in this event? Why were we invited if the President is going to take yet another bill drafted by Democrats just as the House-passed bill was, just as the Senate-passed bill was, and now the President has a bill? Why are the Republicans even being included now when the bill that the President is proposing is not yet in draft form, is only in talking points? How is it going to be a bipartisan summit when the party that makes it bipartisan is not really asked to participate in the crafting of the legislation?

I yield back.

Mr. CARTER. You brought up something that has bothered me about this whole process since the day it started.

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