Medical Technology Caucus
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROKITA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I also thank the gentleman for his leadership.
We were pleased to welcome you to Indiana, and I know you get that same kind of welcome all over the Nation.
The gentleman from Minnesota, I think, has done an excellent job in making sure that this issue not only was formulated the right way, not only was formulated in a bipartisan way, but is now on the verge of going through committee and coming to the floor so we can take action.
What action are we speaking of?
There is an insidious tax that was put in the new health care law, a law colloquially referred to as ObamaCare. It is a 2.3 percent tax on innovation. I often get asked in Indiana's Fourth District and in other places around the State: How do we stay competitive? Why are you letting jobs go overseas?
I am the first to point out that to succeed in this country, to succeed in this Nation, if we are to be prosperous--to maintain and increase our prosperity in the 21st century--we have got to stay a step or two or five ahead of our competition. In Indiana, we're not competing with people in Fort Wayne or in Jeffersonville or in Terre Haute. We're competing with people from places that we can barely pronounce, meaning not in the United States. No country was ever ultimately successful by building a wall, whether it's a physical wall like we found in ancient China or an economic wall like we see with tariffs or, in this case, with taxes on companies and on an industry that continues to innovate, that continues to keep us on the cutting edge of what the world is doing in this area. That's important. That is the key to our success.
By taxing these devices, by taxing this industry, you're not going to get more of it; you're not going to get more innovation. You're going to get less. If you want less of something, you tax it. By the way, when you do that, you're not even going to get more revenue to pay for that all-inclusive, government-run, bureaucrat-interpreted health care system.
I'm really pleased to be a cosponsor. I continue to learn on this issue. I learned a lot from the field hearing that was done.
I would like to echo the point that was made: This was a bipartisan hearing. Just like in the last hour, we saw in a bipartisan way that we have to live within our means, and we can do that through a balanced budget amendment. We had Democrats come to speak on that.
At the field hearing we had on the repeal bill of the medical device tax, we had that same kind of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship does exist. It exists in Indiana. And with this bill, it can exist here on the House floor as well.
I was alarmed as well. The person testifying was Steve Ferguson from the Cook Group. Mr. Cook, when he started his company, he started from a spare bedroom in his apartment and grew it to a multibillion dollar operation. He is one of the best examples of an American success story. And his partner, Mr. Steve Ferguson, who testified--I will back up Mr. Paulsen in this--said, when new startups come to him, when young men and women come with an idea and want to start a company, he says, go to Europe. Not because he isn't a true-blooded American patriot, but because he's giving honest advice.
Now what does that say about our Federal Government? What does that say about our bureaucracy when, instead of going through the FDA approval process, the best advice is to go through the bureaucracy of a union of countries that can barely stay afloat because of the debt they're incurring? Where does that put us in a 21st century world? Where does that put us in terms of our ability to continue innovating, in terms of our ability to be prosperous?
We have got to put the swords down, as it was said earlier. We have got to come together and realize that it's that innovation, it's that economic freedom, it's that liberty to associate and provide an equal opportunity for one's own success that has made us the best and most successful experiment in self-governance that the world has ever known and, as a result, has kept us on the cutting edge of profit-making innovations that employ people, that keep taxes low, where we've proven time and time again that the way to success is doing the opposite of levying a tax, by letting individual men and women rise and fall on their own decisions. That's what this medical device bill does.
Thank you for sponsoring this time, Representative Paulsen. It's been an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to work with you.
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