[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 143 (Thursday, November 2, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H11792]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE WORK OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IS NOT DONE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Thornberry). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, this is the latest a Congress has met, 
absent a national emergency like World War II before an election. Now 
the work is not done. We do not yet have a fiscal year 2001 budget and 
the fiscal year began on October 1, which means that many essential 
government functions have yet to receive regular funding.
  In an effort to achieve that, furious negotiations took place over 
the weekend. In fact, at 1:20 in the morning, night, agreement was 
reached between the Republicans in the House and the Senate, and the 
Democrats in the House and the Senate, and the White House.
  There has been much talk on the other side of the aisle about the 
fact that the President was not in the room. They are right, the 
President was not in the room. They had 210 items in disagreement. This 
was grinding work for legislators and staff, but the President did 
something that the Republican leadership did not do. The President 
empowered and sent his head of office of management and budget and gave 
him the authority to negotiate and said I will stand behind you. Go get 
the best deal you can get.
  At 1:20 in the morning the people in the room decided they had the 
best deal they could get. Now, the next morning, the President stood 
behind his negotiator. The Republicans in the Senate stood behind their 
negotiator. The Democrats on the Senate stood behind their negotiator. 
The Democrats in the House stood behind their negotiator, but the whole 
agreement was blown up and Congress is still here because of one group, 
the Republican leadership.
  When their negotiator came in who they had thought, he thought they 
had, empowered to negotiate for them, they said you did what? You did 
what? You reached an agreement on workplace health and safety? Do you 
not know that the people who are paying for our elections, paying for 
us to keep the House of Representatives and win the Presidency object 
to that. And the phone has been ringing off the hook. They already 
heard about it.
  The National Association of Manufacturers called. The U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce called. By God we would not even want to have contingent, 
contingent workplace health and safety regulations, which is what the 
agreement was. Everybody says we do not know who the President is going 
to be, and what the Republicans negotiated was we will have new 
workplace health and safety regulations, but they will not go into 
effect until next June.
  Apparently, the Republican leadership who is touting they are leading 
in the polls for the House and for the Presidency does not even trust 
their candidate for President not to sign these reasonable workplace 
health and safety regulations come next June, because they blew up the 
negotiations.
  Since then they have pretended, by keeping us here, that we are 
negotiating. We are not negotiating. In fact, the Republican who last 
night, the leader who stood up to engage in the discourse with the 
Democrat side of the aisle, when he was asked where and when will the 
negotiators next meet, he said, we will get back to you on that. Well, 
guess what? They have not called. They have not called.
  The Senate left town in disgust, Democrats and Republicans alike. We 
are still here, and they are pretending that they are being reasonable 
in negotiating, because they are trying through a stealth agenda to 
hide what they are going to do if they control everything next year, 
and that is something people need to think about is what if they 
control everything. Workplace health and safety increases out the 
window. Deal with global warming, very serious problem, no way. They do 
not believe in it.
  How about the oil companies? The oil companies are gouging the heck 
out of the American people. I have introduced legislation here to deal 
with that problem. No, cannot deal with the oil companies. They are big 
contributors too.
  We heard earlier about a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Well, 
that was pretty inaccurate, because actually what the so-called 
bipartisan agreement which had about a dozen Democrats on it, Blue 
Dogs, that passed here was not on Medicare. It was to set up a new, 
very expensive, privatized system of pharmaceutical coverage for 
seniors that provided actually nothing. Because the head of the Health 
Insurance Industry of America said, well, you know, we are really not 
interested. None of my companies are interested in offering a 
pharmaceutical benefit only.
  Then the Republicans came up with a new plan, we will bribe you to do 
that. We will give subsidies to you. We will give you the subsidies. 
You get the subsidies, you take them, no matter what, if you say you 
will offer a plan, with no conditions on the plans they will offer, no 
conditions on deductibles, no conditions on who they would redline out 
and not cover, no conditions on patients' appeals or rights.
  They said that is not enough, some of those drugs are pretty 
expensive. They said well, we do not want to get in the face of the 
pharmaceutical industry, then they give subsidies to the pharmaceutical 
industry also. This is a farce.

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