I thank the Speaker for the recognition. Well, here we are, Tuesday night, Washington, D.C., 20 minutes until eight o'clock in the evening. What a day we have had here in the Capitol. Mr. Speaker, many of your constituents and my…

Not entirely. And what they found was, since you have to buy the insurance, the cost may have gone up a little bit.

Well, we don't know because the White House refuses to provide us with any information, even though they've been asked nicely. They were asked more forcefully with the resolution of inquiry in our committee. Chairman Waxman and Ranking…

One interesting point. You have these groups that went down to the White House in May and June--and I'm not going to criticize them for going down and advocating on behalf of their industries, on behalf of their groups. But what is so…

So we have two problems. The Constitution says we have to vote on the bill. We say the mandates may be extraconstitutional in their scope. And then the whole question of equal protection under the law. We have a constitutional scholar with…

I would just go back, too, to that instance with the Deficit Reduction Act, where a small difference in the House- and Senate-passed bills led to a court challenge, and we came back in January. We left on December 21st or whatever day it…

But, and I am sure the gentleman feels the same way, I would not want to stand in front of the 2,000 people on a hot August morning in a town hall in Denton, Texas, and say, you know what, I never voted for that bill. I voted for the rule…

There is no question that they are. You are right, the American people can see through that. It's an elaborate charade. It will provide no protection.

Actually, that is a House bill that the Senate passed. So we would simply have to concur with the Senate amendment, and that would be the identical bill. But in this case the Slaughter rule would say we don't even have to bring that bill…

The exact same bill. We learned that in December of 2005. The Deficit Reduction Act had one word different between the House and Senate bills, and the whole thing was held up.

Well, they may not be constitutional at our level. And the other thing to remember about a mandate, for a mandate to work, you have to know that it's in existence, and you have to know what the penalty is, and the penalty has to be pretty…