House Proceeding 10-28-09 on Oct 28th, 2009 :: 1:58:55 to 2:35:50
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1:58:53 to 1:59:18( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: when they're very sick but throughout their lives. and gives it to them at a price that they can afford. and with that, mr. speaker, we thank you so much for gr us the time and we yield back the remaining. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker' of january 6, 2009, the gentleman from missouri, mr. akin, is recognized for 60 minutes as the

1:58:55 to 2:35:50( Edit History Discussion )
Speech By: Todd Tiahrt

1:59:34 to 1:59:55( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: minority leader. mr. akin: thank you, mr. speaker. and welcome to this debate that's been going on now for a good number of months. a debate that's caught the attention of americans everywhere, members of congress, members of the senate. the question about health care.

1:59:56 to 2:00:17( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: it's something that's big. it's as big as 18% of the entire u.s. economy. and we've seen in the last number of weeks the involvement of the government in new and not just the 18%, but we've seen czars setting the prices,

2:00:18 to 2:00:40( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: salaries of people in the insurance and banking industry, firing the president of general motors. so we've seen quite a trend of the government getting involved in the private sector. but this involvement in the area of health care is certainly the biggest of all. this is 18% of the entire

2:00:41 to 2:01:02( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: american economy. so we have -- i had the pleasure of being able to sit here and listen to quite a number of the democrats talking about health care. it was like coming from a different planet. i thought it was interesting they talked about pet phrases and slogans and things. i guess there have been quite a lot of different words about and different phrases and things.

2:01:03 to 2:01:23( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: i think it's important for us to be very precise with our use of words. otherwise, we fall into very serious mistakes. one of the things that's been talked about is, will there be a public option? that's kind of an interesting choice of words, a public option. what that really means in political talk is not a public

2:01:24 to 2:01:44( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: option but a government solution, a government soluon. so when you talk about a public option, really the public doesn't have anything to say about who's going to get treated or what price it's going to cost or how it's going to work. the public has no say in that. the government is the one who does that. and in terms of options, you

2:01:45 to 2:02:05( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: can talk about how bad health insurance companies are and certainly they do some things that we don't like. but there's one thing about health insurance companies. if you don't like one you at least have some option to try and find something else. if the option is the u.s. government, your only option is

2:02:06 to 2:02:26( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: too to another country. another phrase that sounds just wonderful, that is every american has a right to health care. that's an interesting phrase. let'think about that a little bit. there was once a country that doesn't exist right now that had the idea that everybody had a

2:02:27 to 2:02:48( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: right to certain basic things. for instance, if it gets really cold outside you should have a right to housing because if you don't have a warm place to live you'll freeze to death. so they said, everybody should have and if you don't have food to eat you'll starve to death. so everybody should have a right to food. and they said that everybody should have a right it to

2:02:49 to 2:03:11( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: education, you should be able to read. so in each of these cases the governnt was going to provide housing and food and education and the gornment said that also you needed to have a right to have a job. and so the government was going to provide the j and the government of course said that you had to have a right to health care and so the government was going to provide your health care.

2:03:12 to 2:03:32( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: and so this idea that because it's essential for your survival to have housing or food or education or a job or health care, to assume therefore it's a right is tmake the same assumption that was made by the union of soviet socialist republics. we used to call them comies when

2:03:33 to 2:03:53( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: i was younger. and how well did their system work? it didn't work very well. lots o care, starved to death, froze to death and were persecuted and killed by their government because they had an assumption that you had a right to all these different things. but i think that when our founders started america they

2:03:54 to 2:04:15( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: talked about a right to something else. a right to life, a right to liberty, a right to pursue happiness. hass the difference between those things? well, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is something that is granted by god to each and every citizen. nobody else gives you that. only god himself.

2:04:16 to 2:04:36( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: when you talk about a right to food, does that mean that the farmer has to be your slave and give you food which is the product of the sweat of his brow? i don't think so. we call that stealing. and so we need to be a little careful when we talk about rights a little bit too quickly because when you assume you have a right, then it'she

2:04:37 to 2:04:59( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: government's job to enforce it and pretty soon you end up with public options or essentially one choice and that is government running everything. so let's take a look when the government does too much. what happens when the government does too much? well, one of the things we can see by other departments of the

2:05:00 to 2:05:20( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: federal government that we have some sense of rationing, inefficient allocation of services, degraded quality and these are things that are not uncommon in government departments. you can think about the postal department, postal department's not known for its efficiency. and there are a lot of private operations that are more

2:05:21 to 2:05:42( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: efficient than the postal department. it was necessary when america was first getting going. but the government can do too much. and that is the point of many of us on this side, it's not that we want to have people not have health care but the also a reality on our side as a republican that there are things

2:05:43 to 2:06:03( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: called the law of supply and demand. and as much as we might like to repeal those basic laws like the law of gravity, the laws of physics, the laws of economics and supply andemand, we can't do that. we cannot have the government guarantee everybody to get absolutely first class health care at absolutely no cost. it just doesn't work

2:06:04 to 2:06:25( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: mathematically. you can't do it. so, the promises that you're going to get cadillac-quality health care at no cost and don't worry about it, the government's going to take care of it, that's a great proposition and if you believe that there's probably some swamp land in new jersey that you could buy. does too much? well, we've taken a look at the

2:06:26 to 2:06:47( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: democrat health plan and tried to put 1,000 pages -- because it's got to be complicated to take over 18% of the economy. and so we came up with this chart and every colored box here is a new agency or something created. so now if you think of yourself as a consumer and you got the doctors on the other side, you have to somehow get through this

2:06:48 to 2:07:09( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: ma to get your health care. and viously the first thing that you note about this chart is, and as you can imagine, a thousand-page bill, i'm sure it's longer than 1,000 pages, it's not going to be simple. it's not gb to be simple. but another thing that you know about it is, and that is that the more the government takes over, it's going to be kind of

2:07:10 to 2:07:31( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: difficult if you don't like the quality of your care to change. what is your option? where can you go? now, one of the things when americans start thinking about whether or not they really want to go this distance, whether they really want to fundamentally change all of american health care, you know, the proposition that i heard

2:07:32 to 2:07:53( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: here in the last hour was pretty much the concept that, hey, american health care is broken so burn the wholthing down and rebuild it entirely, have the government run it, they're not doing that in one step, they're having the, quote, government option, which then takes over everything and every other insurance plan has to be like the government one and pretty soon, just like student loans

2:07:54 to 2:08:14( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: started out 15, 20 years ago, the government was just one player, now they're 18%nd they've absorbed almost everything. well, anyway, so what's going to happen in this kind of a complex scenario? well, how do you answer that kind of question? what you have to do is take a look historically at who else has tried it. and one of the ople that have

2:08:15 to 2:08:36( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: tried it have been the europeans. eastern and western europe. i -- europe. i have here a letter that was sent to me personally by a lady whose name she doesn't want me to give out because she is involved with some different government things, it would be very sensitive information. she has a family that's lived in western and eastern europe and looked for health care.

2:08:37 to 2:08:58( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: so she said, in the different countries where she's been involved with government regulating health care, which is most of the european countries, the first thing i noted about the system of health care that people who want really good health care travel to the united states if they can. if you're a well to do sheik from bahrain and you have a serious health guess what happened?

2:08:59 to 2:09:20( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: you take your millions of bucks and hike over to the u.s.a. to get your health care. i was hearing people say that our healthare is terrible in this country but an awful lot of people vote with their feet, coming to america, to try to get their health care. particularly this is a person who has a family that's had surgeries, transplants, various

2:09:21 to 2:09:41( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: tests, medical maintenance checkups and facilities in these countries where medicine's long been regulated by the government. here's what -- this is what was said, my first introduction to this was hearing a national friend express her joy to others by this statement, god h been so good to my mother.

2:09:42 to 2:10:02( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: she got in a hospital where the staff mops the floors and changes the sheets. for an american used to even community health clinics that surpassed some of the westernized specialty clinics that she saw when she went to europe. she said this was a very shocking first impression that

2:10:03 to 2:10:24( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: she got. later as they talks about elderly people she talks about the fact, later as i became a regular visitor in middle class hospitals, saw firsthand how very fortunate we have in america. hospitals and clinics that speak of care for the elderly is almost too sad to describe.

2:10:25 to 2:10:45( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: but i can tell you that where as once i was incensed by a low budget nursing home my aunt was placed in, now that i haved a minute -- witnessed elderly people in apartments because nursing homes or assisted living programs are beyond the hope of the people who supposedly have

2:10:46 to 2:11:06( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: free access to their nation's health care plan, i think of my aunt and i'm grateful that she had a comparabley luxurious and ere are other stories, too. here's one for women. no woman enjoys her gynecology checkup. i would imagine women to imagine

2:11:07 to 2:11:27( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: a sceney one of the best clinics, ld room as folks walk in and out until you learn to bring your own coverup. imagine they can't give u more sophisticated testing for a suspious spot and seeng a

2:11:28 to 2:11:48( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: clinic in a neighboring country, you end up in another clinic where attitudes are demining it to a woman's dignity. those are western and eastern europe but we have a lot closer examples to

2:11:49 to 2:12:09( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: take a look whether this is a good idea. we can look much closer to massachusett where similar programs of government takeover of health care was tried in those states. both failures. what else do we learn from those states? well, one of the things that has been going on here in this debate about health care, you're

2:12:10 to 2:12:31( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: getting a lot of conflicti statements and opinions. and what i've done here was a couple of the charts that i have is to give you some that are -- come directly from our president and we're going to take a look at them here in the next few minutes and just see what really seems to be the truth. most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within

2:12:32 to 2:12:53( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. it's as though our current health care system has got line items on the various budget taps that say waste and abuse and we can take some money out of those accounts. it's not quite as simple as that. but he's saying this plan can be paid for by savings. well, when you take a look at the fine print you find out

2:12:54 to 2:13:15( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: where the savings are coming from. we're taking it out of medicare. that's one of the places it's go going to be subtracted. another place is major tax increases. that's going to be part of where this cost is coming from. now, could you also take a look at america and say, what has our experience been with government-run health care? we have two programs. one's called medicare, one's

2:13:16 to 2:13:37( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: called medicaid. we had the office of budget and management in the days that these programs were proposed made estimates about how much they're going to cost. the only problem was the rest of us were a little bit low. the politicians didn't want those people to say it's really going to cost this much because if they saw how much it was going to cost people would have

2:13:38 to 2:13:58( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: said, bologna, that's too expensive. so the estimates on each of these were many, many, many times lower by orders, not by percentages but by or to ords of let's take a look at what's going on with medicare and medicaid and the expensive increase going on over time.

2:13:59 to 2:14:19( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: and what you' got going with these three major entitlement programs, social security, which is not as much medicine, but t other two, what you have is basically an economic crash that's going to happen to america. it's going to happen somewhere when you get these programs that have absorbed so much of our budget that you're getting into

2:14:20 to 2:14:41( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: this near 20% line of taxation. because at about 20% what happens, if the government raises taxes they don't take in any more money. doesn't that sound like a weird thing so say? if the government gets taxes too high, they don't actually get in more money. the way that works is that when you run taxes too high, eventually y

2:14:42 to 2:15:02( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: entire economic system in america and so you get less revenue. think of it a little bit like this. it let's say that you were king to yourself, well, i can charge a penny a loaf and collect some revenue for bread sales. then you think, well, maybe i can charge $100 for a loaf of bread.

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Todd Tiahrt: you go, no, no one would buy a loaf of bread for $100. so somewhere between a with penny and $100 there's some optimum tax that you could charge for a loaf of bread and anything above it, if you run the taxes up, you actually get less revenue. so the government can run taxes and then it just doesn't work.

2:15:24 to 2:15:44( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: and these government-run medical programs areincreasing in cost to such a degr that they're going to create a cris economically in years. so if these programs, which were done very carefully, and we have good people trying to administer them, are making the company go

2:15:45 to 2:16:05( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: -- the country go bankrupt, is it so easy for to us take the whole enchilada, to take all 18% of medicine in america and have the government run i it by just waste, fraud and abuse and taking money out of medicare. it seems like experiences in

2:16:06 to 2:16:27( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: massachusetts, experiences in tennessee, even our own experiences with medicaid don't give as you lot of confidence. here's another statement by the president. here's what you need to know. firstly not sign a plan that will not add one time to our deficit, either now or in the future. period. boy, that made me feel good when

2:16:28 to 2:16:49( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: i heard him say that. the president's just letting us know that he's not going to get on any plan that's going to spend too much money or put us in any kind of debt. except for the fact i started asking some questions. since the beginning of the year? well, the end of last year we had half of the wall street bailout and then we spent the

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Todd Tiahrt: other half of the wall street bailout. special deals for wall street. now that's not something that's exactly good for our budget deficit. then we've got this economic stimulus bill that was really not a stimulus bill whatsoever but it was basically a big expansion of welfare. that's $787 billion.

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Todd Tiahrt: this is a big sucker and we were told that if we didn't pass this, by golly, unemplment would get over 8%. well, we passed it and unemployment is now over 9%. .

2:17:34 to 2:17:55( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: this amount of spending totals $3.6 trillion, which we don't have that money. when i'm told that we aren't going to spend a dime to do this health care thing, it makes me skeptical. i understand, mr. chairman, that we have an interruption in the regular order here.

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Todd Tiahrt: i would be happy to yield for a moment for the house's business. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentlelady from maine. ms. pingree: mr. speaker, i send to the desk two privileged reports from the committee on rules for filing under the rule the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title. the clerk: report to accompany house resolution 875, resolution providing for consideration of

2:18:18 to 2:18:38( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: the bill h.r. 3854, to amend the small business act and the small business investment act of 1958 to improve programs providing access to capital under such acts and for other purposes. report to accompany house resolution 8 76, resolution providing for consideration of the conference report to

2:18:39 to 2:18:59( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: accompany the bill h.r. 2996, making appropriations for the department of the interior, environm for the fiscal year ending september 30, 2010 and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: referred to the house calendar and ordered printed. the chair recognizes the gentleman from missouri. mr. akin: continuing on our

2:19:00 to 2:19:20( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: discussion here about health care, i try to cover some of these conflicting claims and how do you sort this stuff out and some of it you can't always believe what you hear, or the sound bites. the assumption we have seen particularly in the proposals in the democrat party have been what they call comprehensive,

2:19:21 to 2:19:42( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: which means they are going to redo the entire system. the republican party has suggested quite a number of changes that can be made without burning down the entire barn. and those changes are now, i think 50 some different separate bills, but i could name just a few and i think it's important to clarify the record because

2:19:43 to 2:20:04( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: sometime and say the republicans don't have any ideas. that's not true, of course. let me just list off a few different things that republicans are very comfortable with. reduce the cost of health care in america and make it so it's more affordable for many, many citizens.

2:20:05 to 2:20:25( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: the first would be that we have a problem trial attorneys and in various states, there has been legislation to reduce what trial attorneys can do in terms of suing doctors. the result has been that doctors are still accountable for the

2:20:26 to 2:20:47( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: medical procedures they perform, but you can't come up with out landish punitive damages that run the costs up. medical malpractice reform is something that a great numbeof republicans support and in states like texas have resulted in massive decreases in the cost of insurance and health care.

2:20:48 to 2:21:09( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: so that's one proposal. i have not seen in different proposals from the democrats in the house or senate. although the president has mentioned it. there are other kinds of proposal. another one is that the way the tax code works right now is that ifou work for a great big

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Todd Tiahrt: company rkts you get to b your health insurance with pre-tax dollars but if you are self-employed, you can't do that. republicans believe in justice. we believe the tax code should be applied consistently and unirmly and we believe that people should be able to buy their medical insurance with

2:21:31 to 2:21:51( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: pre-tax dollars across the board whether you are a big company or self-employed or work for a small company. another proposal that the republicans would make and makes a lot of sense and this isn't mething the insurance companies necessarily like but it makes sense, it prevents some of the monopoly situations that

2:21:52 to 2:22:13( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: industry when they have a heavy control in one geographic area and that's the idea that you would be able to buy medical insurance across state lines. to give you an example how that might work. i'm from the state of miouri and we have, for instance, in missouri a city, which is kansas city.

2:22:14 to 2:22:36( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: we have kansas city, missouri, but the other half of the city is in kansas city, kansas. so you have one city and that city has a group of medical providers, but it is in two separate states. this legislation would allow you to do some shopping. if you lived on thmissouri side and could get medical insurance less exp

2:22:37 to 2:22:57( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: kansas, you could buy your insurance across state lines. it increases the amount of competition and therefore helps to drive down costs. we are not trying to repeal the law of supply and demand. we're not going to promise that everybody in america have cadillac care at no cost. th is just an empty promise

2:22:58 to 2:23:19( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: and it is deceiving people trying to create that impression. but there are many things to improve what's going on. if you stand back and look at health care in america and want to say well, what really is the problem, one way to look at it, which i think is particularly helpful and that is to say, look, you've got the provider system, that is the actual

2:23:20 to 2:23:41( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: medical care that we're giving people in america. and behind that, you have the pay-for system. the pay-for piece is broken, not so much the provider side. there can always be improvements to the care we give. some hospitals give better care, some doctors do a better job than others.

2:23:42 to 2:24:03( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: but in general, american health care is pretty good, but the way we pay for it is increas problematic and that is because 2/3 of americans are paying for one-third that aren't pay-go anything. and that causes problems. there are things we can do. republicans support these ideas,

2:24:04 to 2:24:25( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: again of lawsuit reform so we don't have these tremendous punitive damages so doctors practice defensive medicine. we like the idea of allowing health insurance to be purchased across state lines. we think when you purchase medical insurance, it should be consistent across the

2:24:26 to 2:24:46( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: another idea is the problem with the fact that you lose your health insurance if you change jobs or something. that's not a good deal. you are a responsibl you're working hard for some company and have medical insurance and have a wi and some kids and they're covered upped your policy and if you lose your job, all of a sudden,

2:24:47 to 2:25:07( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: my goodness, i have a wife or child with a pre-existing condition and you are up the creek without a paddle and that's not the way insurance should work. it should be portable so you can continue carrying your coverage from job.

2:25:08 to 2:25:29( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: when you have 100 million americans with good health snuns and like their relation with their doctorthat you need to scrap that whole thing to try to address whatever it is, 10 million or 20 million that don't have insurance. you don't have to burn down everything in order to treat the few. there are some concerns when you

2:25:30 to 2:25:50( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: hear this isn't going to cost too much. $3.6 trillion is an awful lot of money. my republican president that preced our current president may have spent too much money, but he compison to what has been spent even in the last nine months. here's another statement, first,

2:25:51 to 2:26:11( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: if you are among the hundreds of millions of americans who already have health insurance through your job, medicare, medicaid or the v.a., nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. sounds pretty darn good, but it

2:26:12 to 2:26:33( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: isn't necessarily so. first of all, if you happen to have medicare, we saw the plans being proposed by the democrats are going to take somewhere, depending on which plan you look $100 billion to $500 billion out of medicare. if you are someone who has that

2:26:34 to 2:26:54( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: as part of your medical insurance, that's going to change. this is another proposal -- other opinions as to whether or not you can really keep what you have. here's one, jonathan gruber,

2:26:55 to 2:27:16( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: m.i.t. health economist. his point is that the government is not going to force you to give up what you have, but circumstances won't make that happen. in other words, what happens is if the government does this sort of public option idea and then they say everybody's got to

2:27:17 to 2:27:39( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: change their insurance to be the same as the public option, well, essentially what's happened is what you had before is going to change whether you like it or not and it's going to be changed because of the government gettin health care business. so that was his perspective-

2:27:40 to 2:28:00( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: if you like it you can keep it. one of the huge things that perhaps frightens me the most about this whole health care debate is the problem of rationing. you see, there are really only two ways to control the cost of health care.

2:28:01 to 2:28:21( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: there are really only two ways. people take money that they earn and pay for it. the second way is that the health care is rationed by somebody. and somebody says you can get it or can't get it. guess who makes those decisions when the government runs health care? it's not an insunce company, it's not you, it's not your doctor.

2:28:22 to 2:28:42( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: you guessed it, it's big brother. big brother decides who gets the health care. and the question then becomes, well, how do they decide? well, they have to come up with a fairway, so they get the calculator out and start calculating, if you're this age, you can get it. if y

2:28:43 to 2:29:04( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: get it. and so you have the government essentially rationing health care. now we can hear the democrats say, no, no, that's not going to happen. so we simply did a little test. we offered this amendment. this was dr. gingrey. and this is a simple little one-sentence amendment -- and

2:29:05 to 2:29:25( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: these aren't amendments that happened on the floor but happened in committee, because they won't let us do these amendments here on the floor. construed to allow any federal employee or political appointee to dictate how a medical provider practices medicine. in other words this amendment is

2:29:26 to 2:29:47( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: saying, your doctor-patient relationship is sacrosanct and they make the decision and they determine what your health care is going to be and we aren't going to let any federal floyee or political apointee, that means bureaucrat, czar, they're not going to tell you it's going to be you and your doctor making

2:29:48 to 2:30:08( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: this decision. that's what this amendment says. well, when this amendment was offered in committee, as you can imagine, they took a vote on it. how did the vote go? the republicans voted, 23 of them that were there voted for it and no one voted against it. this doctor-patient relationship, we need to keep

2:30:09 to 2:30:31( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: that. no matter what we do in health care, keep the doctor-patient relationship. and the democrats voted 32 against it, only one voting for it. guess what happened? this amendment failed. does that give you any source of confidence that you aren't going

2:30:32 to 2:30:52( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: big brother gets into the act? i thk not. here's another statement. this is again our president. there are those who claim that

2:30:53 to 2:31:13( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. this, too, is false. the reforms i'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. we've got a recession going, a lot of people without jobs. you have an unemployment rate at 9.7% and the idea of saddling

2:31:14 to 2:31:34( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: the american public of having to pay for illegal immigrants to come to this country for health care, that's a hard sell. and it is maybe asking an awful lot of the american public to say we aren't only going to pay for our own health care but for people from other countries.

2:31:35 to 2:31:56( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: the president recognized that this is a hard sell. he said there are those that claim that our reform effort will iure illegal grants. this is false. let's check this out. what exactly does the pelosi bill say? this is the congressional research service, not republican or democrat.

2:31:57 to 2:32:18( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: their job is to read the bills and rerpped an opinion on basic questions and here's what they say. under h.r. 3200, that's the pelosi health care bill, health insurance exchange would begin operat offer private plans alongside public option.

2:32:19 to 2:32:39( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: h.r. 3200, that's that's pelosi bill does not contain any restrictions on noncitizens whether legally or illegally present or in the united states temporarily or permanently participating in this exchange. now this is not -- these are staffers that work for the u.s.

2:32:40 to 2:33:01( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: congress and they're saying that this bill here does not -- when people go to get insurance and when they go to get health care through this exchange, which is one of those boxes on that chart, there's nothing to say whether if you're here illegally or legally or someone visiting, anybody can get this.

2:33:02 to 2:33:23( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: so this congressional research is saying that the president is just flat wrong. well, is there any other way of checking this thing out? yeah, there is, as a matter of fact. it was done with another amendment in com publican amendment. here it is. this is the heller amendment.

2:33:24 to 2:33:44( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: . an order to utilize the public option, an individual must have had his or her eligibility determined and approved under the income and eligibility verification system and the systematic alien verification for entitlements. so what this is saying

2:33:45 to 2:34:05( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: essentially is if you're going to get this health care paid for by the public, paid for by the american people, if you're going to get that, you've got to prove that you're a citizen here. ok. well, so this is an amendment, it's offered in committee. what happens in committee? well, here it is. the heller amendment. the republicans in this

2:34:06 to 2:34:27( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: particular committee, 15 voted for it, none of them voted against it. the democrats, 26 voted against it. and the amendment failed. well, it's pretty hard to believe the president when he says we're not going to have illegal immigrants coming here

2:34:28 to 2:34:48( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: to get health care and when the democrats vote down an amendment that specifically prohibit tha that's very, very hard thing to understand. in fact, i don't believe what the president said was true. and neither do other people. and one more misunderstanding i want to clear up. this is the president.

2:34:49 to 2:35:12( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: under our plan the pelosi -- under our plan, the pelosi plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions and federal conscious laws will be -- conscious laws will remain in place. america is very divided on the abortion issue. some people think that people should have the right to have an abortion. other people think it's skilling -- killing a child.

2:35:13 to 2:35:34( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: americans don't agree on that but is it reasonable to force every taxper to pay for abortion? that's a different question than whether you approve of abortions or not. so the president says, this is a misunderstanding. no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions. well, how do you test something like that?

2:35:35 to 2:35:51( Edit History Discussion )

Todd Tiahrt: i know, we've got some astute people paying attention here today and you're going to understand, yeah, there's a way to test whether this is true. and the way to test it is, of course, with an amendment in a committee. was an amendment offered? yeah.