Instead of dealing with the high jinks of big Wall Street banks, the bill is going to take over Main Street lending and on top of it create a new czar to make decisions about millions of Main Street transactions across America.  It looks like Washington is about to start regulating your daughter’s dentist bill, the plumber, and the storeowners up and down Main Street who give you flexible credit.  That’s going to make credit harder to get because the dentist or the plumber or the storeowner is going to say, “I’m not going to fool with it.  I don’t want to be regulated by some Washington bureau, so if you want to buy my goods, go to the bank and get some money or get another credit card.

That’s going to slow down the economy.  That’s going to make jobs harder to create because it’s going to make credit harder to obtain and harder to offer. If our real intention in Congress on both sides of the aisle was not to interfere with Main Street lending, then we should have actually done that.  Republicans offered an amendment that would have done that, but it was defeated by the Democratic majority.

And we don’t need another czar.  But suddenly, we have this new Washington agency not only possibly regulating Main Street lending, but with an unaccountable person running it who writes the rules and regulations.

On top of all this, the United States’ total debt is about to reach $13 trillion. That means we’re racing past a yellow flag to a large red flag that’s waving in the wind and saying, “Stop the train before we run off the fiscal cliff.”

The Democratic Congress seems to be totally unaware of this big red flag and this fiscal cliff toward which we’re headed.  It continues to take steps to pass the president’s budget, which will double our debt in five years and triple it in 10.

The elections this May are one more reminder that the November election will be primarily about too much spending, too much debt, too many taxes and electing Republican senators to put a check and a balance on a runaway Washington government.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, (R-Tenn.), can be reached in his Washington, D.C. office at (202)224-4944.

Children who are physically well do much better in schools and avoid the chronic health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. We are often over-medicating many younger children for illnesses and depression when research and common sense both clearly demonstrate that sweat is the most effective anti-depressant ever invented.

Physical education has been squeezed out of our schools, and it needs to be welcomed back in with open arms. Comprehensive physical education can give every child — regardless of background — an opportunity to learn healthy habits and get moving. The human body was made to move. Research shows that children who get a good healthy dose of cardiovascular exercise have better brain functions, test scores and sleep patterns and a better quality of life.

By the fourth grade, every child should know there are adverse consequences to a sedentary lifestyle and poor nutrition. God determines only part of your size, and the rest comes from living a healthy lifestyle. Scientific evidence demonstrates that both lifestyle and genetics can cause obesity, but new data suggests that diet and exercise can counteract the inherited risk.

About eight years ago, I founded the Congressional Fitness Caucus, which is a bipartisan group of more than 80 Members of Congress dedicated to increasing awareness about the danger of obesity and promoting the benefits of physical activity to overall health and wellness.

To strengthen physical education in our nation’s schools, I worked with my Fitness Caucus co-chair, Congressman Ron Kind, (D-Wisc.), to author the Fitness Integrated with Teaching (FIT) Kids Act. The bill, which was carefully crafted not to impose any additional financial constraints on schools, recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives and has the support of more than 40 health, education and physical activity organizations.

FIT Kids would help make sure that children are active during the school day and are taught to be personally responsible for their health. The legislation would help provide parents and the public with information about the physical education that students receive so that parents can compare it to recommended national standards. It would also examine the link between children’s health and their academic achievement, and recommend effective and innovative ways to get physical education back into schools to help our next generation lead an active lifestyle.

We have to start addressing this national crisis. There’s no way the federal government can get its arms around these future health care costs unless Americans start living healthier lifestyles today. While obesity leads to a life of chronic illness, we can change the course of our young people if they understand the importance of physical activity, diet, wellness and prevention. The more children we can encourage to have a regular regime of physical activity in their lives and take better care of themselves, the better off we will be as a society.

The obesity rates among children and young adults additionally threaten our future military strength. Just last month the “Too Fat to Fight” report was released by an organization of retired military leaders. Amazingly, it warns that more than nine million young adults, or 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24, are too overweight to join the military. The study notes that up to 40 percent of a child’s daily calorie intake occurs at school.

The importance of getting children active recently has gained a lot of attention, including the launch of the First Lady’s program to end childhood obesity in a single generation. In whatever way we approach this problem, physical activity in children must be a priority. This will be difficult to achieve without integrating it into our schools where children spend a large part of their daily life.

If we are going to get serious about combating childhood obesity, we must involve everyone in this effort — especially our schools. We cannot afford the economic and societal costs of childhood obesity, and strengthening physical education in schools could be a big step in reversing the trend lines and saving lives.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Chattanooga), is serving his 8th Congressional term, and is currently running for governor of Tennessee.  Mr. Wamp can be reached in his Washington, D.C. office at (202)225-2371.

And, I am profoundly concerned about the financial health of our country. For far too long our government has failed to rein in spending that continues to increase the national debt. We literally cannot afford to ignore the fact that unless we get federal spending under control, we are going to saddle our children and grandchildren with a crushing federal debt. Both parties must come together to balance the federal budget, keep taxes low and cooperate with each other to find fiscally responsible solutions to the challenges facing our country.

Keep taxes low: I voted in favor of extending the expiring tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. I also voted against the largest tax increases in history, totaling over $900 billion. It is important that Congress be able to balance the federal budget without digging deeper into the pockets of working Americans.

Irresponsible Earmarks: I co-sponsored an amendment that would have placed a one-year moratorium on all earmarks. The process through which earmarking takes place is irresponsible, it contributes to wasteful spending in Washington and it erodes public confidence in our ability to make and adhere to budget priorities. Irresponsible earmarks are only a small part of our fiscal problems. We must improve the process. This one-year time out would have been a step toward that end. I also support a presidential line item veto in order to give the president the ability to cut individual pork barrel projects from Congressional spending bills.

Economic stimulus is just a political stimulus: I opposed the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 that irresponsibly sprinkled money around the country. As I said during the debate over this bill, “What I see in this package is nothing but a political stimulus.” The Economic Stimulus Act will cost future generations of American taxpayers almost a half of a trillion dollars that most likely will all be borrowed from foreign countries.

A practical approach to the federal budget: I am a co-sponsor of a bill that mandates that Congress adopt a two-year budget resolution and two-year appropriations bills. Congress has routinely failed to pass the individual appropriations bills that fund federal agencies and government programs by the end of the fiscal year. This situation has forced Congress to hastily pass multiple spending bills rolled into one (called an omnibus appropriations bill) in order to keep the government operating. This process often allows wasteful spending provisions or earmarks to avoid the public scrutiny they would receive if Congress had the time to conduct appropriate oversight.

Achieving fiscally responsible results: I am a co-sponsor of S. 2063, the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action Act. This is a bipartisan effort to review all aspects of the government’s long-term financial condition and find solutions to protect critical programs while keeping costs down which would be fast-tracked through Congress and guaranteed an up or down vote.

Housing Stimulus Misses the Mark: I voted against the so-called Housing and Economic Recovery Act because as the bill evolved and new provisions were added, it became clear that the actual package passed by the Senate doesn’t address the real challenges facing our housing market. When the Senate began discussing the legislation, I supported a tax credit designed to incentivize more buyers to enter the market, modernizing the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and creating a regulator for the government sponsored enterprises (GSE), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The bill was amended a final time, adding a provision in the bill that would give the treasury secretary a blank check and unprecedented powers to deal with Fannie and Freddie without any appropriate direction and oversight. I simply refused to ask taxpayers to bear the cost of bailing out two publicly traded companies who own or guarantee over $5 trillion worth of loans.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Chattanooga), is the former mayor of Chattanooga.  He was elected to the Senate in 2006.  Corker can be reached through his Chattanooga office at (423)756-2757, or  through his Washington, D. C. office at (202)224-3344, FAX (202)228-0566.

During 2009, America’s national energy policy looked more like a national windmill policy — the equivalent of going to war in sailboats. If we were going to war, the United States would not think of putting its nuclear navy in mothballs. Yet, we did mothball our nuclear plant construction program — our best weapon against climate change, high electricity prices, polluted air and energy insecurity. Although 107 reactors were completed between 1970 and 1990 producing 20 per­cent of our electricity today — which is 69 percent of our carbon free electricity — the United States has not started a new nuclear reactor in 30 years.

Instead of using our own invention to catch up with the rest of the world, President Obama in his inaugural address set out on a different path: America would rely upon “the sun, the winds and the soil” for energy. There was no mention of nuclear. Windmills would produce 20 percent of our electricity. To achieve this goal, the federal government would commit another $30 billion in subsidies and tax breaks.  To date, almost all the subsidies for renewable energy have gone to windmill developers — many of whom are large banks, corporations and wealthy individuals. Last year’s stimulus bill alone contained $2 billion in windmill subsidies — nearly 80 percent of which went to overseas manufacturers. And despite the billions in subsidies, not much energy is being produced. Wind accounts for just 1.3 percent of America’s electricity, available only when the wind blows since wind power can’t be stored except in small amounts.

Also, conservation groups have begun to worry about “renewable energy sprawl.” For example, producing 20 percent of U.S. electricity from wind would cover an area the size of West Virginia with 186,000 turbines and require 19,000 new miles of transmission lines. And these are not your grandmother’s windmills. Turbines are up to 50 stories high. Their flashing lights can be seen for twenty miles. And yet an unbroken line of giant turbines along the 2,178-mile Appalachian Trail (except for coastlines, ridge tops are about the only place turbines work well in much of the East) would produce no more electricity than four nuclear reactors on four square miles of land — and, of course, you’d still need those reactors for when the wind doesn’t blow.

The simpler possibility that exists for producing lots of low-cost, reliable, green electricity is to build 100 new nuclear plants, doubling U.S. nuclear power production. Unlike wind turbines, 100 new reactors would require few new trans­mission lines through suburban backyards and pristine open spaces. They would also require much less taxpayer support. At current rates of subsidy, taxpayers would shell out $170 billion to subsidize the 186,000 wind turbines necessary to equal the power of 100 reactors. While federal government loan guarantees are probably necessary to jump-start the first few reactors, once we’ve proven that reactors can be built without delays or huge cost overruns, no more loan guarantees will be needed.  In fact, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) just finished rebuilding the $1.8 billion Browns Ferry reactor on time and on budget, proving it can be done — and the project has shown to be so successful that TVA now expects to have the project paid off in half the time originally anticipated.  Yet even if all $54 billion in loan guarantees defaulted — which isn’t going to happen — it would still be less than one-third of what we’re putting into wind.

Fortunately, with the arrival of 2010 has come a more welcoming environment for nuclear power. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear reactors.” His 2011 budget request recommends tripling loan guaran­tees for the first reactors, and in February his administration announced the awarding of the first two loan guarantees for nuclear power. He has selected distinguished members, both for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and for a new Blue Ribbon Commission to figure out the best way to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. Democratic senators — several of whom, in fairness, have long been supporters of nuclear energy — have joined the 40 Republicans to create bipartisan sup­port. Last December, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, a former Navy secretary, and I introduced legislation to double nuclear power production and to accelerate support for alternative forms of clean energy.

One day, solar and other renewable energy forms will be cheap and efficient enough to provide an important supplement to our energy needs and can do so in a way that minimizes damage to treasured landscapes. Today, nuclear power beats windmills for America’s green energy future.

For more information, please visit my Web site http://alexander.senate.gov and read my book, Going to War in Sailboats.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, (R-Tenn.), can be reached in his Washington, D.C. office at (202)224-4944.

In my letter to the president, I pointed out that under the president’s health insurance plan, millions of Americans’ individual premiums would go up, because of many reasons, including one-size-fits-all government mandates and taxes that are passed on to consumers.  Further, when you dump 15 to 18 million people into a program called Medicaid, which doesn’t pay the doctors and the hospitals well enough to take care of those folks, then the hospitals will shift the costs onto people with private insurance. In other words, their private premiums will go up. Also, premium costs for young people will go up under this plan, because if you put in a rule that says my insurance at my age can only be a certain amount higher than my son’s insurance, then his insurance will charge him more to make up the difference.

Not everyone will buy insurance

Finally, a scheme like the Democratic plan depends upon requiring everybody to buy insurance, but their penalty to encourage that is weak, and I suspect many young and/or healthy people would just rather pay the $750 fine rather than buy the $2,500 insurance policy, which they can’t afford.

The president made the point in his usual, persuasive way that you’d be getting better insurance. But as George Will said on ABC’s This Week last Sunday, “If the government required you to buy a better, more expensive car, even if it was better than the car you’ve got, it would still be more expensive.” And that’s the case with the president’s health care plan.

In fact, individual premiums will go up for millions of Americans — even more than they otherwise would over the next several years, and we all know how rapidly they’re rising. The whole exercise that we’ve been going through over the last year with health care reform was supposed to bring premiums down — not help drive premiums up.

Common sense tells us that if you tax an insurance company or a medical device company or a manufacturer of drugs, they’ll pass the taxes on to whom? To us, who are buying the insurance policies, or medical devices or drugs. In fact, the president’s proposal does just that.

His plan has a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost private insurance plans which we call “Cadillac Plans.”  Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, on February 24, said that a 40 percent excise tax will raise $7 billion, all of which will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher insurance premiums.

More taxes

And there are other taxes in the president’s proposal — up to half a trillion dollars in new taxes, which will be passed on to consumers: $20 billion on excise taxes on lifesaving medical devices, $33 billion on drugs, $60 billion on health insurance companies.

The American people have tried to say in every way they know how that they don’t want this bill — through elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts; through surveys and townhalls — that they would like for us to start over.  If we do that, we can write a good health care bill — one that sets as its goal reducing, not increasing — costs, both to individuals and their government. It means putting aside this idea of jamming the president’s bill through in a partisan way.  And it means going step by step together to re-earn the trust of the American people.

200,000-plus Tennessee students to be overcharged on student loans – to pay for health care

The Obama Administration’s philosophy seems to be: “If you can find it in the Yellow Pages, the government ought to be doing it.”

While health-care reform occupies the spotlight, the Obama administration is pushing for another Washington takeover — this time of the student loan system. And here’s something you probably haven’t heard: this takeover of student loans will help pay for the Democrats’ health care bill.

A preliminary CBO estimate released on March 18th indicates that not only will the health care bill cut Medicare, raise taxes, raise individual premiums for millions of Americans, and send to states big new costs that likely will require state tax increases. It will also overcharge 19 million students on their student loans — as I said, to help pay for the Democrats’ health care bill.

This is how it will work: the federal government will borrow money at 2.8 percent and then lend it to students at 6.8 percent — spending the difference on health care and new government programs. In Tennessee, more than 200,000 students have student loans, so what this latest takeover means is that those Tennessee students will, on average, pay $1,700-1,800 more in interest over 10 years — to fund the Democrats’ health care bill, instead of using that money to reduce college costs for students. According to the preliminary CBO estimate, the new bill will take $9.1 billion over 10 years from students’ interest payments to pay for this health care takeover.

Unfair overcharging for loans will help pay for health care

This latest Washington takeover would deprive 15 million students — who voted with their feet and chose private instead of direct loans last year — of choosing among 2,000 community lenders and nonprofits. Washington will throw out of work 31,000 Americans who are now helping students apply for loans. They’ll replace these lenders with the equivalent of four federal call centers, making the process of getting their loans about as friendly as going to the Department of Motor Vehicles for a driver’s license. And Washington will do this by adding half a trillion dollars to the federal debt — and worst of all, by overcharging students for their loans.

Today, roughly 2,000 lenders offer government-backed student loans on more than 4,000 campuses. One lender, Edsouth, offers Tennessee students college and career counselors, financial-aid training, and college-admissions assistance; performs hundreds of presentations at Tennessee schools; and works with 12,000 Tennessee students to improve their understanding of the college-admissions and financial-aid process.

If this latest Washington takeover goes through, Edsouth and other nonprofit lenders will no longer be able to provide these services, depriving students of real choices in lending.

The student loan “Banker of the Year” will be the only student loan banker left: the education secretary in Washington. Imagine trying to get all Edsouth’s services from a federal call center.

I was education secretary for President George H.W. Bush when, in 1991, Congress offered students a choice to borrow from a local lender or the Education Department. In 2008, 15 million students chose nongovernment lenders — and only 4 million students chose to get their loans from Washington.

If this Washington takeover happens, I propose that all 19 million-plus student loans made by the government carry this warning label: “Beware: Your federal government is overcharging you so your representative can take credit for health care and more government programs. Enjoy the extra hours you work to pay off your student loan.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander, (R-Tenn.), can be reached in his Washington, D.C. office at (202)224-4944.

Senator Reid’s bill — which he has been writing in secret for the past six weeks—is appropriate for the season: It’s the same turkey you didn’t like in August, and it’s not going to taste any better on Thanksgiving. Not much has changed. The bill still means higher premiums, it still means higher taxes, and it still cuts Medicare. It’s still 2,000 pages, and it still costs more than $2 trillion when fully implemented — and that doesn’t take into account a quarter-trillion-dollar doctors’ Medicare reimbursement. And it still sends struggling states new Medicaid costs that will force states to raise taxes or damage higher education or both.

It still leaves 24 million Americans uninsured.

There are also $28 billion in new taxes on employers who have to pay a fine when they don’t provide employer-based insurance. Under this bill, the chances are very good you could lose the insurance you have today. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says about five million Americans will lose their employer-sponsored insurance. It could be a lot more since employers will read this big, complicated bill and say, “I don’t want anything to do with that. I would rather pay the fine. I will write a check to the government. Then I will write a letter to all of my employees and say: ‘Congratulations, there is a new government plan, and you are in it.’”

You might be asking what that government plan will look like. Well, take the largest one we have, Medicaid (which we call TennCare in Tennessee), for low-income Americans. Fifty percent of doctors will not see new patients in that program because of the low government reimbursement rates.

Senator Reid’s bill relies on the states to pay for some of Medicaid, which concerns me greatly as your former governor. Our current Democratic governor said earlier versions of this bill would add $1 billion or more to state taxes or spending over the next five years which could require a new state income tax or seriously damage higher education — or both.

There is also a new Medicare payroll tax. The money that is raised from that is not spent on Grandma; it’s not spent on fixing Medicare. It is spent on a new program. So we are going to cut Medicare and tax Medicare and not spend it on Medicare, which is going broke in 2015. We need to start over.

We should move step-by-step to reduce to re-earn the trust of the American people and lower health care costs. There’s still time to act on those steps which Republicans have repeatedly proposed: let small businesses pool resources for health insurance; allow purchasing of health insurance across state lines; end junk lawsuits against doctors; eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse; expand health savings accounts; and promote wellness and prevention. n

Editor’s Note — The following are three speeches made by Rep. Duncan on the House floor during November 2009.

Government is the reason for expensive health care

Before the federal government got heavily into health care in the mid-sixties, medical care was cheap and affordable for almost everyone. Doctors even commonly made house calls. We took what was a very minor problem for very few people and turned it into a major problem for everyone.

The people want medical care that is less expensive and less bureaucratic. The bill that we will apparently vote on later this week is 1,990 pages of bureaucratic gobbledygook. It will make health care even more expensive and even more bureaucratic. As Senator Joe Lieberman said on “Face the Nation,” this bill, “will actually hurt the economic recovery and our long-term financial situation.”

The pattern seems to be that the federal government makes a problem so bad that the only solution people can see is for the government to take it all over. But a famous man once wrote that there is a simple solution to every human problem, one that is neat, plausible and wrong. This bill is the socialist approach, and all it will do over the long haul is make a bad situation even worse.

Afghanistan not worth one more American life

Madam Speaker, this morning I was honored to go with five other Members, three Democrats and three Republicans, to have breakfast at the Pentagon with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The Secretary is a kind man and this was a very nice thing for him to do. I have great respect for Secretary Gates.

The purpose of the breakfast was to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. When I got this invitation, I wondered if I should go, since I have been very much opposed to our war there. However, I decided that the only right and fair thing to do was to go listen to what he had to say.

Unfortunately, I still believe that what we are doing in Afghanistan is a horrendous waste that we cannot afford. I also believe that Afghanistan is no realistic threat to us, unless our war there continues to anger so many people around the world.

George C. Wilson, military columnist for Congress Daily, wrote recently: “The American military’s mission to pacify the 40,000 tiny villages in Afghanistan will look like mission impossible, especially if our bombings keep killing Afghan civilians and infuriating the ones who survive.”

General Petraeus said this summer we should not forget that Afghanistan has been known as the “graveyard of empires.”

Congressional Quarterly reported on Sept. 17 that members of both parties were, “fretting openly about a lack of progress in the conflict.”

As much as Americans love our troops, we need to realize that the Defense Department is not just a military organization. It is also the world’s largest bureaucracy. Every gigantic bureaucracy always wants to expand its mission and frequently exaggerates its challenges so it can get more money and personnel.

The Taliban guerillas have almost no money, and a top U.N. anti-terrorism official said recently that al-Qaida is having, “difficulty in maintaining credibility.”

National defense is the most legitimate function of our federal government. However, that does not mean Congress should automatically or blindly approve the Pentagon’s every request or never criticize its waste.

Much of what we are doing in Afghanistan is of a civic, charitable or governmental nature, like building schools and teaching agribusiness. But the Defense Department should not be the “Department of Foreign Aid,” or much of our military primarily a very large version of the Peace Corps.

In March, the president promised a “dramatic increase” in our effort in Afghanistan, including “agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers.” Why, when we are $12 trillion in debt, are we spending mega-billions in Afghanistan doing practically everything for them? We are spending money we do not have on a very unnecessary war and jeopardizing our own future in the process.

Many people think that all conservatives support this war. Well, I believe that there are many millions of conservatives who do not and who want us to bring our troops home, the sooner the better. In fact, this war goes very much against traditional conservatism.

When I was in high school, I worked as a bag boy at an A&P grocery store making $1.10 an hour. I sent my first paycheck, $19 and some cents, as a contribution to the Barry Goldwater campaign. I am still one of the most conservative members of Congress. But this war has required huge deficit spending, almost half a trillion in war and war-related costs for Afghanistan. Fiscal conservatives should be the people most upset about this. This war has spent mega-billions in foreign aid, because probably at least half of what we have done and are doing there is of a civic or charitable nature. Traditional conservatives have been the strongest opponents of massive foreign aid.

We went into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under U.N. resolutions, yet conservatives have traditionally been the biggest critics of the U.N. Conservatives have traditionally been the biggest opponents of world government because it is too elitist and arrogant and too far removed from control by the people. We should not now support what is essentially world government just because it is being run by our military.

I am a veteran and I am very pro military, but I am for national defense, not international defense. I know that the leaders of Afghanistan want us to keep spending hundreds of billions there, but we cannot afford it. We cannot afford it economically, and as far as I am concerned, it is not worth one more American life.

I know that when leaders of the Defense Department and the State Department and the National Security Council all get together in their meetings, that all of the pressures are on getting involved or staying involved in just about every military, political or ethnic dispute all around the world. I know that they want to be considered as great world statesmen, but eight years in Afghanistan is not only enough, it is far too long. It is time, Madam Speaker, to come home. It is time to start putting our own people and our own country first once again.

NYC terror trials defy all logic

People all over the nation are upset and angry about five of the Guantanamo terrorists being scheduled for trial in New York.

This is happening only because President Obama issued an executive order in the early days of his administration stopping the military tribunal process.

The Congress — both House and Senate — voted by large margins in 2006 to try these terrorists by military tribunals.

This could have been done in Guantanamo.

But President Obama overruled Congress by his executive order, and the Defense and Justice Departments then started the process of bringing the terrorists to trial in this country.

This will result in very large legal and security expenses that would not have been necessary if these men were tried at Guantanamo.

To try all these terrorists here — the first five and others later — creates a very unnecessary security risk for untold numbers of people.

I hope President Obama will listen to the outcry of the American people and not continue to insist that all these terrorists be tried in the United States.

The families of our victims deserve better.

U.S. Rep. John Duncan represents Tennessee’s 2nd District.  He has been named among the five most fiscally conservative members of Congress by the National Taxpayers Union and is one of the few members of Congress to receive the Citizens Against Government Waste’s  Super Hero Award.  Duncan can be reached in his Washington, D.C. office at (202)225-5435.

Editor’s Note — The following are three speeches made by Rep. Duncan on the House floor during October 2009.

Health care reform

Mr. Speaker, Robert Samuelson is a long-time economics columnist for The Washington Post. He is considered to be a very middle-of-the-road writer, neither liberal nor conservative.

In yesterday’s Post, he wrote a column entitled, “Public Plan Mirage.” Mr. Samuelson wrote that the public option “is mostly an exercise in political avoidance: It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn’t.”

He wrote that it is a mirage because it uses “free market rhetoric to expand government power” and added that the public plan “would probably doom today’s private insurance.”

The so-called opt-out provision is a mirage, too, because it does not allow people to opt out of paying for the program. No state could really opt out, because its citizens would then be paying medical bills for people in other states without receiving any benefits in return.

Medicare and Medicaid have both cost about 10 times more than was predicted. This new health care plan will also cost many times more than is predicted now. We simply cannot afford it.

Solar power

I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule and to the underlying multibillion-dollar waste that the rule brings to the floor.

Later today, I am sure the House will approve overwhelmingly this very wasteful $2.2 billion subsidy for the solar power industry and for the solar bureaucracy, but we should be remembering that our national debt will soon pass $12 trillion in just a few days. Solar energy has received massive subsidies, with very little progress, ever since the Carter administration. In fact, it has turned into little more than a jobs boondoggle for bureaucrats. As the gentleman from California just showed us in a story from The Wall Street Journal, in 1978, there was a claim that solar energy — by the year 2000 — would make up 20 percent of our energy needs.

After all of this time and after all of this money, however, solar energy makes up far less than 1 percent of the total of U.S. energy. In fact, it is just 1 percent of the 7 percent that renewable energy provides this country. That is such a small figure that I can’t even figure out exactly what 1 percent of 7 percent is. It’s hard to get that small. The Department of Energy has received at least $1.2 billion for this research just since fiscal 2000, not counting what other departments and agencies have spent on this.

I am not against solar energy in any way, but it is way past time for this industry to stand on its own. The demand for solar energy will go up much faster if the industry is weaned off of Federal money and if it is forced to put out a better, more efficient and less expensive product. This is called free enterprise. Some people may have heard of it. The taxpayers simply cannot afford to keep funding a very wasteful program just because it is politically correct or fashionable to do so. This is a multibillion-dollar waste, and it should be defeated.

As someone told me last week, it is easy to run as Santa Claus, but it is almost impossible to run against Santa Claus.

I urge the defeat of this legislation.

Highway bill reauthorization

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding me this time.

First of all, I want to say that I certainly agree with and support the comments that he made on this legislation a few moments ago. I find myself in the same position, and I certainly want to thank him for the great leadership he has given me in his position as the ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I want to commend our great chairman, Chairman Oberstar, because all of us, Chairman Oberstar, Mr. Mica, myself, Chairman DeFazio of our subcommittee, we all would like to stop these extensions. Nobody wants a three-month extension or any kind of extension. What we all want is to pass a major reauthorization bill.

I am in my 21st year in the Congress. I have been here for all of the major highway bills since I first was elected in 1988, and those bills have always passed with overwhelming margins and strong bipartisan support on both sides of the aisle, almost unanimous support.

Today, what you have, you have the Chamber of Commerce wanting a bill, you have the National Association of Manufacturers wanting a bill, you have the American Trucking Association wanting a bill, you have labor groups wanting a bill. I could give a whole long speech just naming all the different groups and people across this country that want a bill who say that we need it, especially with the economy in the situation it is in now.

So it is unfortunate that we have to talk about a three-month extension or a six-month extension. What we really need to be talking about is a strong, bipartisan highway reauthorization bill to help get this country moving once again and do all of the projects that have been getting backed up and are causing problems and delays all over this country.

In 1971, Chuck Colson, who was then a member of President Nixon’s staff and today is admired for his decades of selfless work in prison reform, presented to John Dean, the White House Counsel, a list of what he called “persons known to be active in their opposition to our administration.” Mr. Dean said he thought the administration should “maximize our incumbency … [or] to put it more bluntly” — and I am using his quotes — “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

Now make no mistake, politics was not such a gentlemanly affair in those days, either. What was different about Colson’s and Dean’s effort, though, was the open declaration of war upon anyone who seemed to disagree with administration policies. Colson later expanded his list to include hundreds of people, including Joe Namath, John Lennon, Carol Channing, Gregory Peck, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Congressional Black Caucus and Alabama Governor George Wallace. All this came out during the Watergate hearings. You could see an administration spiraling downwards. And, of course, we all know where that led.

I have an uneasy feeling, only 10 months into this new administration, that we’re beginning to see symptoms of this same kind of animus developing in the Obama administration.

According to Politico, the White House plans to “neuter the United States Chamber of Commerce,” an organization with members in almost every major community in America. The Chamber had supported the president’s stimulus package and some of his early appointments, but has problems with his health care and climate change proposals.

The Department of Health and Human Services imposed a gag order on a large health care company, Humana, who had warned its Medicare Advantage customers that their benefits might be reduced in Democratic health care reform proposals — a piece of information that is perfectly true. The White House communications director recently announced that the administration would treat a major television network, Fox News, as “part of the opposition.”

The president has not stopped blaming banks and investment houses for the financial meltdown even as it has become clear that Congress played a huge role, too, by encouraging Americans to borrow money for houses they couldn’t afford. He was “taking names” of bondholders who resisted the GM and Chrysler bailouts. Insurance companies, once the allies of the Obama health care proposal, have suddenly become the source of all our health care problems — because they pointed out, again correctly, that if Congress taxes insurance premiums and restricts coverage to those who are sicker and older, the cost of premiums for millions of Americans is likely to go up instead of down.

Because of the insubordination, the president and his allies have threatened to take away the insurance companies’ antitrust exemption. The president himself, in his address to Congress on health care, threatened to “call out” members of Congress who disagreed with him.

This behavior is typical of street brawls and political campaign consultants.

It is a mistake for the president of the United States and the White House staff. If the president and his top aides treat people with different views as enemies instead of listening to what they have to say, they’re likely to end up with a narrow view and a feeling that the whole world is out to get them. And as those of us who served in the Nixon administration know, that can get you into a lot of trouble.

As any veteran of the Nixon White House can attest, we’ve been down this road before and it won’t end well. An “enemies list” only denigrates the presidency and the republic itself.

These are unusually difficult times, with plenty of forces encouraging us to disagree. I offer the Obama administration a gentle suggestion that it not start calling people out and compiling an enemies list. The administration needs to push the street-brawling out of the White House and work together on the truly presidential issues: creating jobs, reducing health care costs, reducing the debt and creating clean energy.