[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 153 (Wednesday, November 3, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H11452-H11459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATIVE AGENDA HELD HOSTAGE BY DO-NOTHING/DO-WRONG 
                          REPUBLICAN CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues are joining me tonight 
because we really want to make the point before this Congress adjourns 
for the recess over the next couple of weeks that it really has been a 
very unproductive session because of the Republican leadership's lack 
of an agenda, or perhaps because they have the wrong agenda. Many of us 
know that at some point over the next week or perhaps 2 weeks when the 
appropriations bills are finally completed that the Congress will 
adjourn, probably until sometime in January. But this has been a 
terribly unproductive session.
  The Democrats want Congress to get to work on the real priorities for 
middle-class families, priorities the Republican leadership has once 
again ignored in favor of the needs of special interests. Democrats 
want to get the job done this year. We do not want to wait until the 
next year, the next session of Congress, and have another year of 
unfinished business, because that is simply unacceptable. Democrats 
still believe that we can get action on an agenda that matters. I 
wanted to talk briefly if I could, to mention some of the major 
priorities that the Democrats have put forward in this Congress

[[Page H11453]]

that the Republicans have either refused to act on or have sent off to 
conference between the Senate and the House where they have essentially 
been buried because the conference has never met or in some cases the 
conferees have not even been appointed.
  What we have done to sort of highlight the number of important 
issues, if you will, that are part of the Democratic agenda that have 
not been addressed by the Republican leadership is to put some of those 
major issues, if you will, on tombstones to sort of highlight the fact 
that they are resting in peace rather than being accomplished in this 
session of the Congress. I just want to point to a few of them and then 
I would like to yield to some of my colleagues to talk a little more 
about some of these issues.
  The first one and the most important for me is the Patients' Bill of 
Rights. That was killed by the GOP, in this year, 1999. I think you may 
know that today, the Republicans finally appointed conferees on the 
Patients' Bill of Rights, but there has been no indication that the 
conference is actually going to meet and we have had this one basically 
hanging around for several years, where the Republicans fooled around, 
tried to load down the Patients' Bill of Rights with whatever kind of 
poison pills, if you will, imaginable to make sure that it never 
passed, and then when it finally did pass over their protests a few 
weeks ago, they are still stalling by either not appointing the 
conferees or having the conference actually not meet.
  The Patients' Bill of Rights is in my opinion the most important 
legislative priority, the one that my constituents talk about the most, 
because they are worried that if they are in an HMO or a managed care 
organization, that oftentimes they cannot get quality care or they 
cannot get the kind of care they want because they are denied an 
operation, they are denied a particular procedure, they are denied a 
length of stay in the hospital, because basically the insurance company 
decides that they should not get it.
  The other priority, and this one is just as important, the other 
priority that the Republicans have buried, again resting in peace, is 
the Medicare drug benefit. The President in his State of the Union 
address earlier in this year basically pointed out that the cost of 
prescription drugs for seniors is skyrocketing, many of them cannot 
afford it, many of them do not have prescription drug coverage as part 
of certainly Medicare, even if they do have it in some cases if they 
are in an HMO or part of their MediGap insurance, and so far the 
Republicans have refused to even address this one at all. Democrats 
keep talking about it as an important priority for America's seniors. 
It is not being addressed by the Republican Congress.
  Another one, I hate to even mention this in the context of a 
tombstone because we know in fact that many Americans, including young 
Americans, have actually been killed because of the neglect to deal 
with gun safety issues. Mr. Speaker, several months ago we tried here 
on the floor of the House of Representatives to pass gun safety 
legislation. We were able to get a few things passed, but essentially 
because of the Republican inaction, the major priorities are still not 
addressed, and certainly nothing has been done in conference to address 
the gun safety issue. Every day that goes by, we hear about more 
Americans being killed, more Americans being maimed, and yet the gun 
safety issue remains unaddressed, killed by the GOP in 1999. It is 
resting in peace as well.

  And then also, a major issue which again has been hanging around here 
for several years, the Democrats have demanded campaign finance reform. 
We know that our constituents want it, the editorial writers talk about 
campaign finance reform because we know that what is happening now is 
that so much soft money, corporate money, if you will, not individual 
money, is being used either to finance campaigns through the political 
parties or through independent expenditures, that the reality is that 
the campaign finance system has fallen apart, and there is no 
accountability, no disclosure anymore of the soft money that is being 
used. Well, we passed the Shays-Meehan bill finally a couple of months 
ago but again there has been no conference, there has been no action 
between the House and the Senate by the Republican majority.
  There are a few more issues, and I am not going to go into all of 
them, but I did want to mention a few more if I could. Very important, 
the President a couple of years ago talked about the need to have 
Federal dollars go back to school districts to hire 100,000 new 
teachers in the elementary grades in order to try to reduce class size, 
because we know that if you reduce class size, it has a real beneficial 
impact on students', in the younger years in particular, ability to 
learn. We know that in this Congress again the Republicans are willing 
to provide some money for education but not to give back to the town 
specifically to hire more teachers. Again, I hear from my own 
constituents how important that is. Not addressed by this Republican 
Congress. That one rests in peace as well.
  And finally, the Republicans have made a lot of noise about how they 
want to give tax breaks, but the tax breaks are all for wealthy 
individuals. They passed a trillion-dollar, almost a trillion-dollar 
tax break, primarily for wealthy people, for the corporations, for 
special interests, but we as Democrats are saying, look, we need tax 
relief but we would like it to be targeted tax relief, that helps the 
average working person, that is actually used, if you will, to allow 
people to send their kids to college, to help with their education, 
higher education expenses, to provide, if you will, for day care in 
some cases through tax credits or tax deductions. But, no, the 
Republicans insist on the trillion-dollar tax break plan primarily for 
the wealthy and the special interests. They will not provide the 
targeted tax relief that will help working families and the average 
American. That again is resting in peace, killed by the GOP leadership, 
the GOP Congress in this year, 1999.
  Mr. Speaker, I am not trying to poke fun at this issue, I think these 
issues are very important, they are part of the Democratic agenda, they 
would be, I think, a part of the Republican agenda if only they would 
understand that this is what the American people want. But the 
Republican leadership refuses to address the concerns of the American 
people and instead they just want to pull their own priorities, their 
own agenda, which is primarily a major tax break, if you will, for 
wealthy Americans and for the large corporate interests.
  I would like to yield now, if I could, to some of my colleagues to 
talk a little more about this do-nothing Congress and this Congress 
that with the Republicans in charge essentially has the wrong agenda. I 
yield now to the gentleman from New York.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. CROWLEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend the gentleman from 
New Jersey (Mr. Pallone). I also want to thank the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Holt) as well as the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak) 
for this evening's address. Few have done as much to express the 
frustration that we are feeling on this side of the aisle as the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) has so readily done on a weekly 
and daily basis here in the House.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my outrage and my disappointment 
as a freshman Member of this House with the actions, or should I say, 
the inaction of this body.
  Mr. Speaker, we are more than two-thirds of the way through this 
session, and the Republican-led Congress has had no major 
accomplishments. This is despite the efforts from within their own 
party and by Democrats, working together, to pass meaningful HMO 
reform, school construction legislation, and even a minimum wage bill. 
Instead, the Republican leadership has been playing games with the 
budget, giving tax cuts to the wealthiest 1 percent of the people in 
this country and their special interest friends, blocking meaningful 
attempts at gun safety legislation and taking money away from class 
size reduction and new teacher initiatives.
  As a freshman, I arrived last January prepared for action, and 
believed that with GOP promises of less partisanship that we could all 
work together to help the American people. Yet the last 10 months have 
been partisan and without any intelligible agenda. Instead, the special 
interests and their whims have

[[Page H11454]]

dominated, leaving the American people out in the cold.
  Rather than passing a meaningful tax bill, complete with estate tax 
and marriage penalty changes and modest tax cuts, the Republican 
leadership pushed through a tax package that benefited only the wealthy 
and corporate special interests, almost $1 trillion to the wealthiest 
in this country. In fact, if you are not in the top 1 percent of wage 
earners, the tax cuts would not mean anything to you, or very, very 
little. Now, maybe all the constituents in Republican districts make 
that kind of money, but the working class people in districts like mine 
do not.
  Why not provide a family of four living in a place like New York 
City, a high cost place like New York City, in the Bronx, in Queens, in 
my district, earning $40,000 annually, some tax relief? What is wrong 
with that? Well, it is probably because they will not be contributing 
to the Republican leadership's political action committee this year, or 
next year.
  What about our Patients' Bill of Rights? We finally voted today on a 
motion to go to conference on the bipartisan Patients' Bill of Rights. 
It has been 4 weeks since the House passed by an overwhelming 
bipartisan vote of 275 to 151 the Norwood-Dingell bill. The Senate 
appointed conferees back on October 15, and yet it is only today, 
November 2, that the House GOP leadership is finally bringing up a 
motion to go to conference. As far as I can see, this delay strategy by 
the GOP leadership is their attempt to stop the momentum that was 
obtained by very strong bipartisan vote in favor of the Norwood-Dingell 
HMO reform bill.
  Mr. Speaker, why are we stopping what Members of your party want, 
what the American people overwhelmingly want? Why are we stopping it? 
We cannot even get on the runway or get off the charts a prescription 
drug bill to reduce the cost of prescription drugs to our senior 
population.
  Let me tell you a story that I heard recently. I received a letter 
from two constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Done and Gertrude Schwartz of Long 
Island City in Queens. He is 89 and she is 84 years of age. Recently he 
went to have a prescription filled for his wife. He bought 100 tablets 
of Prilosec, an extremely popular drug among our seniors. It cost him 
$394.89, $394 for 100 tablets of a vitally needed prescription.
  People are making life and death decisions as to whether they will 
pay the rent, buy needed groceries, or skip a day of taking a needed 
prescription drug, or simply not buying the prescription drug at all, 
and we are here in Congress doing nothing, as far as I can see, to help 
them.
  Then there is the budget debacle. We are 34 days into a new fiscal 
year, and still we do not have a budget. What is the Republican 
solution? To send the exact same D.C. appropriations bill that we have 
seen vetoed twice to the floor again today, without removing the riders 
that caused the vetoes in the first place. It makes absolutely no sense 
to me.
  The Republican leadership did not even bring to the floor the labor-
HHS appropriations bill for a debate. They went straight to conference 
without any Democrats represented at all at any point in time.
  But, having said all I have said, it is education that is most 
troubling to me. We passed ED-FLEX, which impacts the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act, before we even considered ESEA 
reauthorization. Then the Republican breakup of ESEA into pieces, 
passing the flawed Teacher Empowerment Act, and I want you to know this 
was not supported by one, not one teachers organization, we just passed 
a dramatically underfunded Title I bill.

  When crafting tax packages the Republican majority will not even 
consider adding school construction assistance, even though our 
deteriorating school infrastructure and classroom overcrowding is a 
national crisis.
  Then we have Social Security. Republicans say they want to save 
Social Security. Well, we will just go back to history a little bit 
here. Back in 1935, in the early thirties, nearly 40 percent of 
Americans were dying in poverty. It was a Democratic-led Congress and a 
Democratic President who signed into law the current Social Security 
system, this despite fierce opposition from the Republican Party. In 
fact, all but one Republican in the House voted for a motion to 
recommit Title II of the bill to conference, and would have thereby 
struck the Social Security Act and killed Social Security as we know it 
today, only one Republican in that entire conference.
  Now we are to expect that the Republicans are going to protect and 
save Social Security, something they never wanted in the first place. 
In fact, let me just show you some of the comments made by majority 
leader Dick Armey when he ran for Congress proposing to abolish the 
Social Security system.
  ``Ultra-conservative economics professor Dick Armey, who has based 
his campaign on his support for the abolishment of Social Security, the 
Federal minimum wage law, the corporate income tax and the Federal aid 
to education.'' That is from United Press International, October 31, 
1984.
  Again we see Mr. Armey in 1984 said that Social Security was ``a bad 
retirement and a rotten trick on the American people.'' He continued, 
``I think we are going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security 
and phase it out over a period of time.''
  See, that is the Republican side of this issue. They never wanted it 
in the first place. I do not see how we can expect them to save it.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people do not want this. They do not want a 
partisan Congress living up to its do-nothing billing. I urge you to 
work with the President and the Democratic leadership to craft budget 
bills we can all support. I implore you to let the majority rule and 
move the bipartisan Norwood-Dingell bill on to the President unchanged.
  Finally, I want to invite you to come to my district and tell the 
students that are being taught in closets, in hallways, tell the 
children in kindergarten classes with 60 kids and two teachers, tell 
those children, going to school in buildings that are still burning 
coal, that they do not need to have school modernization provisions 
added to any tax bill.
  Now, I know there are very decent people on the Republican side of 
the aisle. I have had the pleasure to work with so many of them in 
this, my first term in Congress, and I can call many of them my 
friends. But I am not giving up on the rest of you either. But we need 
to work together. We need to end the partisanship and do what is right 
for the American people, and do what is right for the American people 
today, not tomorrow, not next week, not next year.
  Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentleman from New York for the 
statements that he made. Essentially the gentleman is pointing out what 
we have been saying, which is that here we are, I guess it is over a 
month since October 1, which was when the new fiscal year was supposed 
to begin, and we are just basically staying here while we watch the 
Republicans try in some fashion to put together a budget. But it is 
virtually impossible for them to do so, because essentially their 
priorities are off base.
  Unfortunately, while we wait here, they do not move on this agenda, 
which we think is important, the Patients' Bill of Rights, trying to 
come up with a Medicare drug benefit, the education initiatives that 
the gentleman mentioned.
  I just wanted to point out very briefly, because I would like to 
introduce another one of my colleagues, this is from a summary that was 
put together today that when Speaker Hastert started the year he made 
three promises in regards to the budget. One, he said that the 
Republican Congress would pass the budget on time, stay within the 
spending caps, and do it all without spending Social Security.
  They have failed on each one of these counts.
  Mr. HOLT. Strike three.
  Mr. PALLONE. Exactly, strike three. We are now four weeks past the 
budget deadline, which was October 1. It is now November 3rd. Even the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich), the chairman of the Committee on 
the Budget, said this morning, and this is from The Los Angeles times, 
that the Republicans had not stayed within the budget caps, and both 
the Congressional Budget Office and the OMB have reached the same 
conclusion, that Republicans are spending as much as $17 billion into 
the Social Security surplus. None of these

[[Page H11455]]

promises have been kept, and we are still here.

  I yield to my colleague from my neighboring district in New Jersey 
(Mr. Holt).
  Mr. HOLT. I thank my colleague, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone), and I am pleased to be here with the gentleman from Michigan 
(Mr. Stupak) and my colleague the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Crowley).
  You know, when the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) and I and 
the other freshmen Members of Congress in both parties arrived here, we 
thought perhaps there would be less partisanship than we had seen in 
the preceding years here in Congress. As the gentleman may recall, the 
previous Speaker left following a less than stellar performance in the 
last election, and we find now, unfortunately, as the gentleman from 
New York (Mr. Crowley) was saying, that partisanship did not depart 
with the previous Speaker.
  We end up with important legislation that the public wants, and the 
gentleman has been through it with your tombstone illustrations, and 
the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) has repeated these. These are 
things that people want, Americans of both parties, Republicans and 
Democrats, and, in fact, I would say many of the moderate Democrats 
with whom we serve here in the House of Representatives and many of the 
moderate Republicans with whom we serve here in the House of 
Representatives. But the leadership that controls the agenda of the 
House will not let these come up.
  We are, by most accounts, nearly done with the first session of 
Congress and the leadership is now preparing to adjourn for the year 
without having done these things that the Americans say are important, 
that I hear about in my district in New Jersey: Campaign finance 
reform, gun safety. You know, they think maybe the public will not 
notice that we have not dealt with gun safety because they scheduled it 
so the votes would occur in the middle of the night, but my 
constituents notice that it has not been dealt with.
  The Patients' Bill of Rights. Well, yes, we passed it by a large 
majority here in the House, but the leadership, again, who control the 
schedule of these things, weeks later are only beginning to get around 
to the conference that would be necessary for this to actually become 
law.

                              {time}  2015

  A Medicare prescription drug benefit, nowhere to be seen; the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, not ready yet; school 
construction, school construction assistance, that so many school 
districts in urban areas, in fast-growing suburban areas, really all 
over the country need, and the smaller class size and more teachers, 
more well-trained teachers, nowhere; paying our obligation to the 
United Nations, I hear about that from my constituents, not done.
  Among all these priorities left untouched is social security, so let 
me touch on that for a minute. Protecting social security I think 
should be our first priority. The President, in his State of the Union 
addresses this year and the previous year said, save social security 
first.
  Protecting social security is so important to me that the first bill 
I brought to a vote here on the floor of the House of Representatives 
was the social security and Medicare Lockbox Act of 1999. This bill 
would have preserved social security and Medicare. It would have forced 
us to deal with this issue.
  The first speech that I gave on the floor of the House even before 
that was about the need to protect social security. I even voted for 
the bipartisan lockbox legislation to preserve social security, which 
did eventually pass the House, but really went nowhere because the 
leadership was too busy concocting an $800 billion tax cut.

  So throughout the past several months I have served on the bipartisan 
Social Security Task Force. I must say that preparing for the 
retirement of the baby boom generation looms as one of the Nation's 
challenges. I am very disappointed by the lack of commitment in finding 
a long-term solution.
  When social security was passed in 1935, as my colleague, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) points out, to be old was usually 
to be destitute. Social security has changed that. Social security has 
worked. People in the U.S. believe that it is of fundamental value to 
help workers save for retirement.
  But the leadership has not shored up social security. Instead, like 
magicians engaging in misdirection, they have instead accused the 
Democrats in the press and in paid political advertisements that we, we 
in the minority, are spending social security.
  Not only have they not gotten around to this central problem, but 
they spent so much of this year developing this exorbitant scheme to 
spend money that we do not even have and may never have; in other 
words, a scheme that would in fact take us into spending social 
security funds.
  In fact, they are already spending social security funds by virtue of 
the fact that they have failed to complete the appropriations for the 
current fiscal year by the end of the month of September, as they had 
promised and as is expected. So in fact they are spending at last 
year's rate, which means they are exceeding this year's caps.
  So what are we going to do about social security? Social security 
pays benefits to more than 4.7 million disabled workers. Because about 
25 to 30 percent of today's 20-year-olds will become disabled sometime 
before retirement, the protection provided by the SSDI program is 
extremely important.
  Today nearly every wage-earner now pays into the social security 
system. We have to assure them that this is a sound investment. We do 
not have to ask a retiree if social security is a good program, they 
know it is. They want it preserved. We need to reassure the younger 
workers that this is such a good program for them. Younger workers are 
skeptical.
  The fact remains that few of today's young workers are likely to have 
enough personal savings or private pension benefits to support 
themselves in the appropriate style after their retirement. Like the 
current generation of elderly, they will be heavily dependent on social 
security. It is incumbent on us to deal with that.
  Social security is the most successful program of government in the 
United States in the 21st century. We must not forget that it provides 
vitally important protections for American seniors. The majority of 
workers have no pension coverage other than social security, and more 
than 60 percent of seniors depend on social security for the bulk of 
their livelihood.
  This is just one of the many priorities that this Congress has failed 
to deal with in this session, which is rapidly approaching the close. I 
do not know what more we can do except say, as my colleague, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) and the gentleman from Michigan 
(Mr. Stupak) and others of us have said night after night, these are 
important issues, let us deal with them. Let us deal with them in a 
bipartisan manner. What more can we do?
  Mr. PALLONE. We can only do what we are doing now, which is to speak 
out and tell our colleagues and tell the American people what is really 
going on here. What is really going on here, again, is the wrong 
agenda. The only agenda that I see that the Republican leadership has 
is tax cuts for wealthy Americans and for corporations and special 
interests.

  Every proposal that the gentleman and our other colleagues here 
tonight have put forward as part of the Democratic agenda, and I 
hesitate to even call it a Democratic agenda, because as the gentleman 
from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) said, it is really the American people's 
agenda. It should be a bipartisan agenda, and we even have some 
colleagues on the Republican side who have supported some of these 
initiatives, like the Patients' Bill of Rights.
  But the Republican leadership, because they are so dependent, if you 
will, on special interests, refuse to let any of these bills come up; 
or if they come up, they basically try to load them up with all kinds 
of poison pills or kill them in conference, use all kind of procedural 
techniques to kill them.
  I appreciate the fact that the gentleman did bring up the social 
security again, because I know, when I am back in my district in New 
Jersey, I know they have those radio ads on basically accusing the 
gentleman of using the social security surplus, which is a total lie.
  In fact, what they have done is what they accuse the gentleman of, 
which is,

[[Page H11456]]

they have spent $17 billion into the social security surplus already. 
That comes from the Congressional Budget Office and the OMB. How could 
it be more clear? I have never in my entire life seen a political party 
or leadership actually put on ad accusing their opponents of doing what 
it is documented they are doing themselves.
  Mr. HOLT. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, it is 
what magicians learn in their early courses of misdirection. If they 
have their hand in the cookie jar, point to the other person and accuse 
them of engaging in thievery or lockpicking, or whatever it is that 
they are accusing us of.
  It is preposterous, insulting, and insulting to the American people.
  Mr. PALLONE. It really is insulting, I agree with the gentleman. I 
appreciate that he brought that out.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan 
(Mr. Stupak).
  Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I 
appreciate him for putting together this special order now. I also 
thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) and the gentleman from 
New Jersey (Mr. Holt). I really appreciate the gentlemen. They are new 
Members, and they bring a lot of enthusiasm to the job, and a good, 
practical approach to government. We really need that in this body at 
times.
  I think it is very unfair how the Republican majority are running ads 
against the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) on spending social 
security, yet he is the person who came up with the social security 
lockbox idea so that we cannot spend social security; the gentleman is 
absolutely right, like the cookie jar thing where they point at you 
while they are sticking their hand in the cookie jar, taking $17 
billion from the social security surplus to try to pay for this 
faltering budget that they have put forward.
  All the colleagues who join us here were here in November, and quite 
frankly, the Republican-led Congress has done very little. They have 
passed 13 appropriation bills, knowing five of them are going to be 
vetoed. So the appropriation bills languish, and the needs of the 
American people. And the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is 
right, it is not a Democratic agenda, but the needs of the American 
people are not being met, are not being met at all.
  The Republicans have spent a year trying to convince the American 
people that they need this $792 billion tax cut, which would benefit 
the wealthiest Americans. But America saw through that. They said, put 
the money to pay the debt and strengthen social security. Do not give 
this money in a tax break. Do not raid our social security. They 
rejected it.
  Did they understand that? No. Look at this, Congress Daily, 
Wednesday, November 3: ``Hastert Pledges New Tax Cut Push.'' It is 
here. He is going to push another tax cut.
  How is he going to pay for it? We do not have enough money to pay for 
the current appropriation bills. There is $17 billion taken out of 
social security to pay for the current budget, and we are not even done 
with it. While they are spending that, now they want another new tax 
cut push. This is Congress Daily, nothing we made up. This is what we 
get every day. Sure enough, they are going to push another big tax 
break to benefit the wealthy.
  How are we going to pay for it? Back to raiding social security? Why 
do they not accept the gentleman's proposal and do a lockbox? Why do 
they not take those false ads off the air and thank the gentleman from 
New Jersey (Mr. Holt) for putting on the lockbox, for saving the social 
security surplus so the Republicans cannot use it for tax breaks.

  Mr. Speaker, as we take a look at it, they have had the wrong 
priorities. They have tried to use gimmicks to pass the budget. I 
remember about 6 months ago, as we got toward the October 1 deadline, 
they came up with this great idea, let us call it the 13th month, the 
13th month. We all know there are 12 months in the calendar, but they 
want to create a 13th month. That way they can stay within the budget 
caps by creating this fictitious 13th month. Sometime, somewhere, we 
have to pay for that 13th month.
  So I am proud of Democrats standing up and saying, we are not going 
to accept that gimmick. Take away the 13th month.
  Then they said, let us declare everything an emergency, everything we 
do not have money for. If we declare an emergency, we do not have to 
stay within the budget caps. Let us declare an emergency things like 
the Census. We have to count the American people. It is in our 
Constitution for over 200 years. Every 10 years we count the American 
people. It is 2000, the 2000 budget, and we have to count the American 
people.
  Well, we will declare that an emergency. That way we can spend money, 
spend the social security trust fund and not have to declare it as part 
of our budget.
  My colleagues are right, this GOP Congress is really the do-wrong 
Congress, not do-nothing. What they do, they do it wrong. It is a do-
wrong Congress, instead of listening to the American people and working 
on the programs that would cost very little and really would improve 
the lives of the American people, like a real Patients' Bill of Rights, 
so Americans and their doctors would make medical decisions, and not 
the insurance companies and HMOs; like increasing the minimum wage, 
since we have this robust economy. Why cannot those who are struggling 
to get by enjoy the strong national economy by increasing the minimum 
wage?
  Or how about 100,000 more teachers, 100,000 more teachers, and we can 
have smaller class sizes, so students who are most at risk can get a 
helping hand to learn, so we can bring some discipline back into the 
classroom? Why not?
  Why not, I would ask, Mr. Speaker, why should we not enforce all the 
gun laws that are on the books, and do background checks on every 
commercial sale of a gun, even those at gun shows? Let us treat 
everyone the same. No more excuses, no more exceptions. We should be 
working for the American people.
  Unfortunately, the Republican-led Congress has the same old song: 
more tax breaks here for the wealthy and more tax on government.
  What America wants us to do, they want a Congress that will work for 
them, like the plans that the Democrats are fighting for: 100,000 
teachers that we need for smaller classrooms; 50,000 more police 
officers in the Cops II program that we have all fought for, and we see 
it works across this great Nation; a real Patients' Bill of Rights.
  We need to protect our environment, and we have to provide 
prescription drug coverage for our seniors. That is not asking too 
much. We can pay for it, and it is paid for without busting the budget 
or raiding social security.
  We have talked about HMO reform and a real Patients' Bill of Rights. 
We passed it here by an overwhelming bipartisan vote, 275 to 151. So 
what do we do today? Appoint conferees. Who appoints conferees? The 
Speaker. Who are the Republican members of the conferees that were 
voted on today? Not the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), who is 
the sponsor of the bill; not the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske), who 
knows something about medical stuff; or the gentleman from Oklahoma 
(Mr. Coburn).
  Why? Because they all voted for a Patients' Bill of Rights. They are 
doctors. Who did they appoint? They put on people, some of these 151, 
the people who voted against the bill. Tell me, are we going to get a 
real Patients' Bill of Rights when the conferees who work out the 
difference all voted against the bill? We do not have one Republican 
member who voted for it on that conferee; another gimmick, another 
gimmick. These guys vote for gimmicks instead of reality and practical 
government, and try to move the effort forward.
  Look, we ran the bill and they lost. Accept it. What happens when we 
have a conference? The major sponsors of the legislation are the 
conferees, not those who are going to vote for special interests; in 
this case, the insurance companies. I cannot believe they do this 
stuff.
  When we talk about the Patients' Bill of Rights, the medical needs of 
the American people, I want to share one story. I just got a call in 
today. I am not quite sure how I can help the individual.

                              {time}  2030

  In my hometown in Menominee, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this

[[Page H11457]]

gentleman owns a small business, been going great guns, been expanding 
and doing well, an employer. He has full-time benefits for his 
employees and health insurance for his employees and their families. He 
was telling me he has 90 employees. It used to cost him $17,000 to 
$19,000 to pay for health insurance.
  Unfortunately, one of his employees, their wife had open heart 
surgery. So they had to renew their insurance.
  The insurance company says, not going to cover you anymore. You have 
a claim against us.
  No, we did not have a claim.
  Yes, you did. One of your employees, their spouse had open heart 
surgery. We will insure you but it will now cost you $49,000 a month.
  One claim, 90 employees. It used to be $17,000 to $19,000 a month. 
Because of this one claim, open heart surgery, it is now $49,000. That 
is more than triple the premium went up because of this.
  So in our Patients' Bill of Rights, what we say, let us enforce these 
rights, and there is a carryover provision. So if your coverage gets 
dropped by the insurance companies, you can stay with that doctor and 
continue care.
  What happens to the lady who just has open heart surgery and the 
company can no longer afford the extortion by the insurance companies 
and has to drop the insurance? How does she get her follow-up care? How 
does she do it without bankrupting that family?
  So I think the Democratic Party or the American people have the right 
agenda. They want us to do things that will keep us within the budget. 
They want us to do things that affect their everyday life.
  I do not know about my colleagues but after the debacle of the 
Republicans before with the $792 billion tax break, no one in my 
district was pounding on my door saying give me the tax break. Every 
time they heard about it, they pounded on my door and said do not give 
the tax break. Put money in Social Security. Put money in Medicare. 
Give us some prescription drug coverage, and if there is $3 trillion, 
is it not time we pay down that debt?
  The American people know what they want. They know what they need. 
And they said, you know, geez, you guys had a good start with 100,000 
teachers last year. We have about 30,000. Can you get the other 70,000 
in there, because we do want the smaller class sizes, whether it is New 
York or upper Michigan or New Jersey, and they are not having students 
out in the hallways because classes are expanding. Right now, in this 
country we have more people in K through 12 education than ever before 
in our Nation's history, but we are not helping them out. We are not 
helping them out.
  Why not the 50,000 police officers? Why not? Crime is going down. 
Everything is going well. Now you stop, you throw in the towel and say 
we do not have to do anything else to fight crime; let us get rid of 
the cops? It just does not make any sense to me whatsoever.
  What we have seen is a Republican-led Congress, all kinds of 
gimmicks, an agenda that has been rejected by the American people. That 
is why I call it the do-wrong-thing Congress.
  We have done some things. It has all been wrong. The American public 
rejects it. The people who we have talked to reject it. They just need 
a little helping hand from government. So I am pleased that they have 
spoken up and we will continue to speak up for the American people 
through these special orders.
  I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for 
allowing us some time to come down and join him here tonight, and my 
good friend the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt). I would say to 
the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), tell them to pull those ads 
and put the truth on TV. The gentleman is the one who did the lockbox 
for the Social Security trust fund, not raiding it, and of course the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) who does well with New York and 
the conditions there in trying to educate the children in a big 
metropolitan area where they have overcrowded classrooms, and even up 
in my northern district, northern Michigan district, we do not have the 
size of New York but we still have students being taught out in those 
temporary trailers.
  I think it has been 15 or 20 years now. The temporary trailers are 
still there falling apart. We certainly do need help with more teachers 
and a bond proposal to help school construction.
  I appreciate the opportunity. That is what I am hearing from my 
constituents. I wish we could work in a bipartisan manner like on the 
Patients' Bill of Rights and then do not give us a gimmick in 
appointing conferees who all voted against us and then say we are going 
to give a fair conference on Patients' Bill of Rights. It does not make 
sense to me.

  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan 
(Mr. Stupak), particularly when he points out the gimmicks that are 
being used by the Republican leadership because that is what it is all 
about. They have the wrong agenda and they want to do whatever they can 
to block the right agenda, which is the legislation we put forth.
  I was talking to some of my colleagues, even some of my Republican 
colleagues at lunch today, and I found out, and I do not know that it 
is true in New Jersey but there apparently are a number of State 
legislatures where they have rules that the conferees have to be the 
people who supported and voted for the bill, and it is not even allowed 
under the rules of certain legislatures in certain States to appoint 
conferees who did not support the bill.
  It makes sense, if one thinks about it. By saying that they are going 
to appoint conferees that actually did not support the bill, they are 
basically sending the signal that this conference is not going to allow 
the provisions of the bill to be upheld, and that is the signal that 
they are sending
  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, for 200 years this body has operated most of 
the time in a bipartisan, courteous way. As my colleague was saying a 
moment ago, if the Speaker's party lost on a vote, the Speaker said, 
well, we gave it a good shot. We made our best case. The other side 
won. That is the way representative government works, and the Speaker 
would appoint people who would see that the best legislation came out 
of that vote.
  Mr. STUPAK. Which reflects the wishes of the House, not their 
personal agenda or the agenda of special interests but the will of the 
House. Let the will of the House prevail in this conference report, in 
this conference committee. Also, if one takes a look at the rules of 
the House, they do not say it is mandated but they certainly suggest 
that the sponsoring people of the legislation, the bulk of them would 
be conferees, should be conferees. They do everything but say they must 
be the conferees.
  I think it just adds to the poison atmosphere we see around here, and 
again just another gimmick to defeat things that the American people 
are demanding.
  The conference report no one sees that, conference committee, so we 
can kill it right there and nothing ever happens. We do not have to 
worry about real reform. It is just ridiculous.
  Mr. HOLT. The American people are not interested in gotcha strategies 
within the internal politics of this body. They want legislation that 
deals with issues that they deal with at home, that they talk about at 
their kitchen tables.
  We have just been through a long list of those that could have and 
should have been dealt with in the past 10 months.
  Mr. PALLONE. I agree, and I appreciate the gentleman bringing it to 
our attention.
  Let me now yield, if I can, to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Olver) who has joined us.
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to join the distinguished 
group of Members from New Jersey and New York and Michigan who have 
been here speaking about these issues, and to bring a Massachusetts 
point of view to some of what is being said.
  Here we are, we are almost finished with the 1999 congressional 
session. We have five major budgets yet to go. We are only 5 weeks 
late. Some of the States have been later than that but we are very 
likely going to be done in a couple of weeks and maybe even some are 
saying within one week. Yet this

[[Page H11458]]

has been really a strange session.

  Legislative bodies usually try to do the things that meet the popular 
will, but the Republican leadership of this Congress, in 1999, does not 
even try to deal with issues that the largest number of Americans say 
again and again that they want done. For the first time in 30 years, we 
have the prospect for modest and growing surpluses. We have the money 
to do those most important things that people really want done, and yet 
the Republican leadership has refused to bring forward a bill that 
would extend the Social Security system so that the next generation 
would have the same opportunity to have the Social Security system for 
them that my generation has and will have secure for them.
  The same leadership, the same Republican leadership, has refused to 
extend the life of the overall Medicare program that has been such a 
boon for our senior citizens in making certain that they could have 
quality health care that they can afford. It is clear, as has already 
been said from the way they have set up the conference committee on the 
Patients' Bill of Rights, that they really do not intend to pass a 
patients' bill of rights that would take the medical treatment 
decisions for every American family away from insurance executives and 
accountants and give those treatment decisions back to doctors where 
they belong.
  The same Republican leadership has refused to add even a modest 
prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. We have millions of 
senior citizens who are paying $200 or $300 for prescription drugs. 
Well, maybe not millions but we have a lot of senior citizens who are 
paying $200 and $300 a month for their prescription drugs and they 
really cannot afford it.
  By the way, we have seen the spectacle of this House passing a 
campaign finance reform bill in a matter of just a few weeks, with the 
votes of dozens of Republican members who courageously refused to 
follow their leadership in weakening that legislation; only to see the 
bill killed in the other body, in the Senate. There simply is not going 
to be any campaign finance reform this year or in this 106th Congress 
and very likely in this century along the way.
  Why? Well, just as an example, it should not surprise anybody out 
here in the watching audience that drug companies steadfastly oppose 
the creation of a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare system 
because they are making great profits off drug prescriptions for senior 
citizens, and those end up substantially being paid by the government. 
They are making great profits and, oh, by the way, it should not 
surprise people that of the 10 largest corporate contributors to 
Republican leadership political action committees, that a majority of 
those are themselves the drug companies.
  So then we have among those other things that have not been done this 
year, there is a proposal to increase the minimum wage by $1 over 2 
years. We have had an unprecedented good economy, growth in our economy 
over an 8-year period. We have the lowest unemployment rate in decades. 
We have people working at minimum wage who deserve to see some benefit 
for their work, and only get to see that benefit if there is an 
increase in the minimum wage.
  By the way, 80 percent of Americans favored an increase in the 
minimum wage. Just as similar numbers favor a Patients' Bill of Rights 
and favor the prescription drug benefit for senior citizens to be added 
to our Medicare program and favor the extension of our overall Medicare 
program so that the life of that program will go beyond the year 2015, 
which is now the time when it will go bankrupt.
  Well, the extension of the Social Security system for the next 
generation, all of those things are favored by 75 percent or 80 percent 
of Americans, and even 67 percent of Republicans favor the minimum wage 
bill, a bill that we could pass in a clean way in a day. The Republican 
leadership is going to allow to come to this floor only a bill, only a 
bill, that carries with it about $70 billion of tax breaks for the 1 
percent of Americans who make over $300,000 a year.
  Now, they are going to hold a simple minimum wage increase, a $1 wage 
increase, for the lowest income workers in this country. They are going 
to hold that bill hostage to a huge tax reduction for the wealthiest 1 
percent of Americans, who are the people who contribute mostly to 
political campaigns, to their own political PAC campaigns and such. So 
all of these things are interconnected. Many people do understand how 
interconnected, why we get the legislation that we get; why we do not 
get the bills that the gentleman has shown so graphically, the rest in 
pieces.
  The campaign finance is a pretty critical question in these.

                              {time}  2045

  The influence of money in the passage of legislation, in what 
legislation comes up before us, and what is allowed to be debated, and 
what ends up being passed by this Congress in this 106th Congress is a 
critically important matter until we can get campaign finance reform to 
pass through here and not be juggled between the two branches and 
killed by the one branch, and maybe next year it will end up being 
killed by this branch, and it is passed by the Senate or something.
  It is critical that we do something about campaign finance reform, or 
we are going to continue to see this musical chairs process by which 
those bills that the Americans by the largest numbers say they want us 
to do because those are important to them in their daily lives, those 
bills are not going to be handled this year or next year and the second 
year of this session.
  So I am very happy to join with the gentlemen that have been here 
tonight. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) has shown such 
leadership in bringing to the attention of the American people these 
kinds of ironies in how we are functioning, what we are not doing, what 
we should be doing, what the American people want us to do that is not 
getting done. I am very happy to add a Massachusetts view to what has 
already been said.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Olver). There were two points that he raised that I 
just wanted to mention briefly, because I think we only have a few 
minutes left. But he brought out the fact that the Republicans have not 
even looked at the long-term solvency of Social Security and Medicare, 
in other words, this debate that we have discussed tonight and we have 
had about whether or not the Republican appropriation bills and their 
budget actually spend the Social Security surplus. We know that it has 
about $17 billion that has come from this Social Security surplus in 
order to pay for their budget.
  But that is really a minor issue compared to the fact that, over the 
long-term, we need to address the financing of Social Security and 
Medicare for future generations.
  President Clinton has actually put forth proposals in both of those 
areas, primarily by saying that whatever surplus is generated through 
general revenues over the next 10 years, a good amount of that be used 
to shore up Social Security and Medicare for long-term purposes. The 
Republicans have not even looked at that. That is an agenda they have 
not even touched. The bottom line is it is going to come home to roost 
at some point.
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, it should come home to roost. But the reason 
they have not touched it is a very deliberate reason. As has already 
been discussed here this evening, they opposed the creation of Social 
Security. They opposed virtually to a person the creation of Medicare 
30 years ago. Of course, earlier this year, they rammed through the 
Congress very quickly and then, because it was not very popular out in 
the general populace, sort of backed away from it, but they ran through 
a huge, a huge tax reduction using every penny of the projected 
surpluses while not a penny of those had yet been produced, but only 
were projections, but used every penny of it that would have been 
necessary, very deliberately used every penny of it that would have 
been necessary if there ever was a possibility of extending Social 
Security and Medicare for the generations to come. It was a very 
deliberate, a very cynical kind of a move. They have done that, and 
they will do it again, because they never were in favor

[[Page H11459]]

of Social Security or Medicare in the first place.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, that is a very good point. The other thing 
the gentleman mentioned, I just wanted to briefly say, is about the 
prices of prescription drugs and the need for a Medicare prescription 
drug benefit.
  I just wanted to mention that today Families U.S.A. came out with a 
report that really documents very well the problem of high drug prices 
and the fact that so many senior citizens, they say 35 percent of 
Medicare beneficiaries, 14 million people, have absolutely no coverage 
for prescription drugs. The 65 percent that do have some coverage, it 
is limited. Increasingly, because of deductibles, co-payments, caps on 
the amount that is provided under the prescription drug coverage, they 
see a decline in their ability to obtain prescription drugs and 
increase costs out-of-pocket.
  So this is, again, the issue of a Medicare prescription drug benefit 
is not pie in the sky. This is responding, as the Democrats have, to 
real needs, to concerns that people express to us every day; and, yet, 
the Republicans refuse to acknowledge it and refuse to act on it.
  So I want to thank the gentleman again. I think we have run out of 
time, but I do want to say that we are going to continue to be here 
over the next week or two, before this House adjourns for the recess, 
to point out that the Republican leadership has the wrong agenda. They 
are not addressing the real priority of the American people. We are 
going to keep pressing that those priorities be addressed.

                          ____________________