[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 71 (Tuesday, June 4, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H3148-H3153]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       BEING FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kirk). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, having heard the previous speakers, it is 
interesting that, time after time after time, we have my colleagues, 
like the gentlewoman from New York that stands up and talks about 
prescription care for all people, and I am quoting here, ``everyone 
should be able to have their prescription needs met.''

                              {time}  2015

  But what the gentlewoman fails to come up with, the question she 
fails to answer, is how are we going to pay for it? It was not 1\1/2\ 
weeks ago when we were talking about the supplemental appropriation 
bill here on this House floor, on which the Democrats were giving 
stalling motion after stalling motion, alleging that the Republicans 
were going to spend the United States Congress into oblivion.
  On one hand they complain about the spending, and on the other hand 
they stand up in front of the cameras and promise all good things.
  In my State, in the State of Colorado, I have recently seen promises 
from the Democratic side of the aisle that we are going to have mass 
transit and that we are going to have full prescription care for all 
people in the State of Colorado, for all people in this country.
  Look, that sounds grand, but we ought to ask of every person, every 
Congressman or elected representative or anybody representing either of 
the parties that stands up in front of us and promises us the Moon, 
promises us the golden key: Who pays for it?
  What the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy) fails to bring up 
in her comments, and I say this with all due respect, but the fact is, 
business is business, and somebody has to pay for this. What she fails 
to bring up is right now in the United States, we are in a deficit 
situation. We are not creating new wealth. There is no new wealth that 
is being created in this country on the net bottom line for the Nation, 
which means that anytime we offer additional benefits to somebody, we 
have to transfer them from somebody else.
  I would like to say to the gentlewoman that her salary as a 
Congresswoman does not put her in the middle class; it probably puts 
her in the upper middle class. The fact is that a lot of these transfer 
payments, and that is what has to happen, when we promise somebody that 
needs prescription care, and it sounds good, and I think there are 
cases where we have to provide prescription care, but to promise it en 
masse to the population, there is only one way we can pay for it: we 
have to take it from somebody and transfer it to somebody else.
  So we cannot stand up here, and it just happened, I just saw it from 
the gentlewoman from New York, we cannot stand up here and on one hand 
promise people prescription care so that all their prescriptions are 
cared for, and on the other hand, talk about the middle-income taxpayer 
and about how the middle-income taxpayer is going to worry how they can 
pay for their prescription services.
  Of course they are going to worry about it, because under these kinds 
of

[[Page H3149]]

programs that they are proposing, which really are a type of socialism, 
equal treatment across the board, what happens when we make those kinds 
of promises is there is only one place we are going to get the money. 
The bulk of the money is going to come from the very class of people 
that they stand up here and profess to protect. That is the middle 
class.
  Prescription care is a high priority for all of us. I do not know any 
Democrat or any Republican that would not like everybody in this Nation 
to have their prescriptions paid for. The pharmaceutical industries in 
this country have really done a pretty remarkable job with the 
assistance of the people in this country who have provided those grants 
and have provided research.
  So now, for example, I was at some town meetings in the last week. I 
mentioned about how just 10 or 12 years ago, when one had diarrhea, 
they had to drink that Kaopectate stuff, that gray liquid in the white 
plastic thing, or drank that Pepto Bismol or something, and hopefully 
after 2 or 3 or 4 hours the diarrhea would slow down. Today if one gets 
that, they pop a little tiny pill not much bigger than an eraser on a 
pencil and it is gone in 20 minutes, so we have made progress in that 
regard.
  But we cannot get it for free. We cannot promise the American people 
that all their prescription needs are going to be for free. That is 
exactly what happened in the preceding statement.
  Then, on top of that, it is easy when people are not the ones making 
budget decisions, so it is easy for the Democrats in the minority party 
to go out and make all of these promises because they know that it is 
the Republicans who have to provide it. And then it is the Republicans 
that get put on the defensive when they show up.
  For example, after the gentlewoman from New York goes into a meeting 
and makes all these promises, and happens to walk out the door before 
telling how she is going to pay for it, then we walk in the door and we 
are the ones that have to come up with the funds. We are the ones that 
have to be the bearers of bad news.
  If Members want to talk about fiscal responsibility, it requires that 
every one of us on this floor, including Republicans and Democrats, 
when we propose a benefit, we ought to be able to also tell the people 
we are promising how we are going to pay for it.

  Nothing is free, and do not let the Democratic Party tell us up here 
from this House floor, do not let them tell us that prescription care 
can be given to everyone without a very, very significant cost.
  I can tell the Members who is going to end up paying that cost. 
Anybody that is listening, anyone who is working, the working people of 
this country, regardless of what their job is, they are the ones who 
are going to pick up the costs of these promises being made by the 
Democratic Party.
  Now, we hope, within the confines of our budget, that there are 
certain benefits that we can offer to the elderly. We think that is 
important. But what concerns me is this just opens the door for the 
promise to become broader and broader and broader.
  Two weeks ago, the Democrats over here were talking about 
prescription care for seniors only. Tonight, we see what has happened, 
just in a 2-week period of progression: tonight we hear the gentlewoman 
from New York, and again I say this respectfully, but we hear the 
gentlewoman from New York promising prescription care services for 
everyone. We cannot afford to do that.
  On a typical day in my office over in the Cannon Office Building, we 
will have people coming in all day long, people with special interests; 
all day long coming in, special interests, whether it is with seniors; 
special interests, whether it is with education; special interests, 
whether it is with highway construction, or military apparatus. All day 
long we have people who come into my office. All of them have ideas. 
All of their ideas, almost without exception, cost money.
  These people are not proposing to pay for the project; they are 
proposing to use the money for their project. Their proposal is that we 
pay for the project.
  The problem at the end of a day, in a typical day, we will get 
requests on an average day I would say of $6 billion in a day is what 
they have requested in assistance for their new programs, day after day 
after day after day. At the end of the day, the difficulty with these 
programs is that almost without exception, again, every program that is 
proposed to us is a good program. It makes sense. It has some benefits 
to it.
  So our choices down here are not choices between good and bad 
programs, and they are generally not choices between Republican wishes 
and Democratic wishes; but our choices are between good and good 
programs.
  The key and the bottom line comes down, okay, we have a good program 
here, we have a good program there; but we only have enough money for 
one, or we can do both of them halfway. What do we do? My preference is 
we do the one and do it right the first time, which means we also have 
to say no.
  There are lots of programs that are being proposed by the Democrats 
this year. It is of interest, I know, that in the last several weeks, 
the Democrats, because we are in budget time back here, the more 
partisan Democrats continually hammer away at the Republicans on our 
budget. They hammer away on one hand about spending, and on the other 
hand, they show up here on the House floor and promise the country 
prescription services for everybody.
  I should add that the gentlewoman from New York did not just stop at 
prescription services for everyone; she also talked about health care, 
that there should not be a two-tiered division in this country of those 
who have health care and those who do not have health care; that 
everybody should have, notice the word, I am quoting her, everybody 
should have equal health care.
  First of all, that is a socialized system. That is government-
provided health care. That is the only way you can do it and there is 
no other way around it; it is a socialized type of program. Our country 
has continuously, continuously, time after time after time, said they 
will not accept or they do not want socialized medicine. They do not 
want the government running everything for everybody on an equal basis. 
That is not the concept of a democratic government.
  This is not a socialist government; it is a democratic government. 
Yet, some of my colleagues continue to stand up here and get away with 
this kind of rhetoric, because it is real easy to stand up here and 
promise the American people, tell them we want every one of them to 
have prescription care services. But where leadership comes in is to 
say to these same people that we have to figure out how to pay for it. 
If we cannot figure out how to pay for it, some of us have to have 
enough guts to say we cannot get something for nothing. We cannot do 
it. It does not mean we do not want to do it; it means we cannot do it 
because we cannot afford to do it.
  Who do we owe that obligation to, the obligation of saying that we 
just do not have the money, we cannot give it to you for free? We owe 
that obligation not just to the taxpayers of this country, to whom we 
have a fiduciary responsibility to represent their interests, but we 
also owe that obligation to the next generations that are really going 
to have to foot the bill for this kind of thing.
  Take a look at what has been promised in the past. Take a look at how 
our system has broken down. I can tell the Members that when I go to 
town meetings in my district, which is in Colorado, I hear at town 
meeting after town meeting after town meeting complaints about programs 
that happen to be run by the Federal Government: the veterans' 
associations talk about problems we have with the veterans 
administration and the health care they deliver; problems with Social 
Security; problems with SSI; problems, problems, problems. The 
government does not run an efficient system.
  I think it is high time around here that my colleagues, and I will 
say for the last hour I have heard this from the Democratic side of the 
aisle, and it is not my intent here tonight to approach this in a 
partisan Democrat-Republican type of approach, but the fact is that the 
Democrats continually, continually profess all of these benefits that 
sound wonderful; and the fact is the reason they sound wonderful is 
because they are wonderful.

[[Page H3150]]

  Who in America would not like full prescription services, and, by the 
way, somebody else to pay for it? What they fail to point out to us is 
that if you happen to be the person sick out there, you are going to 
get a lot of benefit out of these prescription services; but if you are 
the person that is not sick, you are the person that is working out 
there, watch what happens to your taxes to provide for this never-
ending benefit.

  Now, I think the American people as a whole are willing to provide 
prescription care services for certain classes, for example, the 
elderly people. There are ways, and we have to figure out, whether it 
is mass buying, whether it is pooling, there are ways we can figure out 
to assess or assist the American people with their prescription care 
costs. That includes cracking down on pharmaceutical companies that are 
involved in antitrust actions or pharmaceutical companies which get 
together and make sure the generic brands never come to the market.
  As far as I am concerned, if we catch a pharmaceutical company 
attempting to keep a generic brand off the market, we ought to take the 
executives of that company and put them in jail. It is wrong. They are 
trying to take advantage of the American people, not in the 
capitalistic freedom-of-market type of approach, but in a very sinister 
type of approach.
  But that is a far cry from standing up in front of the American 
people on this House floor, standing up in front of our colleagues, and 
saying that we need equal health care for everybody. There should not 
be two tiers, two tiers of health care in this country, those who get 
it and those who do not get it. Instead, everybody should have equal, 
again, equal health care, and everybody should have prescription care 
services, so whatever prescriptions they need, they get paid for.
  I will just tell the Members today, I have kind of a cold, so I use a 
nose spray, which was a prescription nose spray, because I have 
allergies. I took folic acid this morning, which was prescription. I am 
trying to think what else. I took some vitamins. I took a pill for my 
knee this morning, which was prescription.
  Why should the Members or anybody else in this room pay for my 
prescriptions? I am able-bodied. I am capable of working. I would like 
it very much if you would pay for my prescription services, but the 
fact is simple: there is not enough money to go around. That is the 
reality that we have to face here.
  We have to be honest with the American public. We have to look them 
right in the eye and say, look, we would like to give everybody 
prescription care services, but somebody ought to answer the question: 
How do we pay for it? When we promise people a rose garden, we had 
better figure that out. We owe it to them to say, nothing is free. I 
can give this to you, but this is what it is going to cost you. I can 
do this, but in the future, this is what is going to happen to this 
program.
  When we start a program with the Federal Government, it never stops, 
it just grows and grows. It does not grow proportionately, by the way, 
i.e., as the population grows by 10 percent and the program would grow 
10 percent. Take a look at Social Security. The population grew 
probably like this, and Social Security grew like this. There is a huge 
gap in there that has to be paid for.
  What happens is I have colleagues, like the one who just spoke in the 
last hour, the gentlewoman from New York, who stand at the podium and 
make very pleasant promises, very nice rose garden promises to the 
American people, and then we have to come in and be the bad guys by 
saying, look, you know, it is a nice promise, it is a great program, 
but we have to pay for it.

                              {time}  2030

  So I would challenge, and with all due respect, I would challenge my 
colleague from New York (Mrs. McCarthy) to tell us how we are going to 
pay for it; tell me exactly what constituents in your congressional 
district are going to pay for it; and tell me how often you have 
returned to your congressional district, which you say is a 90-minute 
ride back to your district so it is easy to get there, tell me when the 
last time it was when you stood up in front of your constituents back 
there and told them, you will pay for these services, across-the-board 
prescription care services, across-the-board medical care. My guess is 
that what is said here is often not what is said back in the district.
  The fact is you ought to be honest with these people. And I am not 
implying that the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy) is not 
being honest, but I am saying directly to the gentlewoman from New York 
(Mrs. McCarthy), how are we going to pay for it? I want prescription 
Medicare. I would like the prescription that I took today, I would love 
it if somebody else would have paid for it. How can I say no to that? 
Somebody comes up and says, here, we are going to pay for your 
prescriptions today for your nose spray and for your knee, to help 
rebuild your muscle in your knee. We will have somebody else pay for 
it.
  It sounds great, but it does not happen that way. And we owe it to 
the American people to be straight with them, to say to them we do have 
a problem with prescription care. Prescriptions, while they have 
advanced tremendously, the pharmaceuticals, while they have advanced 
tremendously in the capability that they have, they have also advanced 
tremendously in cost. And I think, frankly, the gentlewoman from New 
York (Mrs. McCarthy) her energy would much better be exerted instead of 
standing on the House floor and promising the American people that we 
should provide prescription care for everybody across the board, that 
our energies would be much better expended going after the 
pharmaceutical companies that are trying to drive off generic drugs or 
trying to keep generic drugs off the drugstore market shelf. That is 
where we ought to focus. Promises to give everybody everything they 
want are empty promises. And too often, if this government has ever 
gotten into deficit problems, or if you can ever track how we get into 
budget problems, it is because not enough of us stand up here in front 
of the people we represent and say we cannot do it all for you. If we 
do do this for you, this is what it will cost you.
  You cannot go down to the car dealership and get a free car with 
somebody else having to pay for it. The dealership does not give away 
free cars, and the government cannot continue to provide 300 million 
citizens with their prescription care costs. So I think we need to keep 
that in mind.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about another issue tonight. I just came 
off CNN and had a very interesting discussion about ``profiling,'' 
``racial profiling.'' The American Civil Liberties Union apparently 
today filed a lawsuit on behalf of five or six plaintiffs who allege 
that they were racially profiled by airlines in the process of going 
through security to get onto these aircraft of these particular 
airlines. And we had a discussion and, of course, the plaintiffs in 
this case talk about the fact that they were asked to leave the plane 
or they were questioned, they are convinced, because of their race or 
their color. And one of them said, it broke my heart and I will never 
be the same.
  You can see the kind of language in there. I mean, in my opinion, as 
I said on CNN tonight, the American Civil Liberties Union goes out 
there and hunts for these kinds of people and then races to the court 
and then runs to the national TV and has national press conferences 
about how horrible the security system is in this country, how racial 
profiling should never be allowed.
  I can tell you that the American Civil Liberties Union racially 
profiles, schools racially profile, CNN racially profiles, the Democrat 
party racially profiles, political parties do that. Now, what do I 
mean? Back it up with a little substance. The Democratic party, take a 
look at the discussions about Florida. Take a look at what the 
Democratic party does, as do all political parties, as do insurance 
companies, as does CNN to figure out who their viewers are. They will 
go in, based strictly on a person's race or color, they will go in and 
say, how will this person vote. If they will vote Democratic, if this 
particular race tends to vote Democratic, let us spend more money here 
to get them to vote our way, Democratic.
  It is the same thing if CNN goes into an area and says, who are our 
viewers? What age are they? What income

[[Page H3151]]

bracket are they? Do blacks watch more than whites? All of this is 
done. Now when it comes to security, I think we have to take a step 
back. I do not think we should have what is called and what is trying 
to be directed towards the ACLU or the ACLU is trying to say to society 
that we are trying to justify, I do not think a person should be pulled 
off an airplane or given any extra scrutiny for the sole reason of 
their race background.

  I am Irish and I have got some Scottish. I do not think just because 
of the fact that I am Irish with no other risk factors in there, that 
is the key buzz word, risk factors, with no other risk factors in 
there, just because I am Irish, to pull me aside, to exclude me from an 
airplane.
  Now, keep in mind that with the plaintiffs that the ACLU is 
representing, this happened one time. And the representative for the 
American Civil Liberties Union tonight on CNN said these people are not 
looking for money. Because I said, look, all you are trying to do is it 
is a rush for the courts, to take what you can get. It is like a slot 
machine, let us see if we can get some money out of this deal. The ACLU 
answers and says, we do not take any money. We are here to make these 
people whole.
  Well, it happened one time to these people. Out of the thousands and 
thousands and thousands of times a day that people go through security, 
the ACLU goes out and somehow finds six of them that feel offended by 
the security and are now demanding that security not take into 
consideration at all a person's ethnic profile, even if it is in 
combination with other factors. I am here to say to you, look, we have 
a responsibility in this country to provide for security when you get 
on an airplane. I can assure you, in my opinion, that those six 
plaintiffs, had something gone wrong on that airplane and they had been 
the victim of it, they would probably have had a national news 
conference today, not with the American Civil Liberties Union but with 
a group of plaintiffs' attorneys, to sue the airline or to sue the 
government.
  My point is this, we have to provide security on those airplanes. Our 
country is very dependent, our economy is very dependent on those 
aircraft flying. A lot of us use airplanes and we want to know when we 
get on that airplane that we are safe. That requires some inconvenience 
on our part. In my opinion, it does not violate the Constitution, but 
it does require you, for example, when your suitcase is going through 
security they may open your suitcase, they may go through your 
underwear, they may go through your shaving kit. That is an 
inconvenience. It is not an unconstitutional strike against your basic 
human rights. And based on a risk profile, take a look at what hit us 
on September 11. It was not 11 Irishmen between the age of 40 and 45 
years old who had jobs and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, of the 
Catholic religion. That is not what happened.
  We had a profile, not just the ethnic background, but it had their 
ethnic background; it had their age; it had their religion; it had 
their past history or some of their past history. I can build what is 
called a risk profile. And for the ACLU or for any of the political 
left to advocate that we should compromise the security of our 
airplanes or compromise the security of the American people so that we 
are politically correct and we do not offend somebody, and I can tell 
you there are people that are offended that you lift their underwear 
out of a suitcase to look at things. But that does not mean that just 
because it is politically offensive to them that we should compromise 
security to make them happy, and it is the same thing here.
  We do have constitutional protections that we have an obligation to 
recognize, that the airport people have an obligation to recognize. But 
the fact that they have used a person's ethnic background in 
combination with the other risk elements, it is not an evil attempt to 
be prejudiced towards a person. It is a very legitimate attempt to 
protect the security of the people, including that person who wants to 
get on that airplane.
  Now, what happens if you are a police officer? I used to be a police 
officer. And I can tell you if they give me a call that says, hey, we 
just had a white man rob a bank, he just robbed a bank, this white man, 
I can tell you we did not go into the black neighborhood questioning 
black or African Americans. We did not question them whether they just 
robbed a bank. No. We used our profile. We knew the bank robber was 
white. We knew the bank robber was about 5'6''. We knew the bank robber 
was say between 19 and 27 years old, so there was no use going stopping 
Caucasian or white females that are 60 years old and questioning them 
to see whether they robbed a bank. We used a risk profile.
  Now, I am the first one to stand up and say this has its boundaries 
and it can be abused. And when it is abused, we should stop the abuse. 
But that is not what the American Civil Liberties Union is doing. The 
American Civil Liberties Union is pressing so hard that what is 
happening at our airports, and at some time pull an airport security 
person aside and say, do you ever not search someone or do you ever not 
ask questions because you will be accused of being racially motivated. 
And I bet you the answer on a lot of them will be yes. That is what 
they said to me. I have asked one another day. I said, I do not get it. 
I got on an airplane. There was a lady. She was about 75 years old and 
her baggage was all laid out on the table and they are going through it 
item by item. Then there were some people ahead of me. They were of 
Arab descent, but the interesting thing was they had packages. I am 
surprised they could get them in the overhead. And the woman had a veil 
over her face. You could not see whether it was a female or a male. I 
am assuming that it was a female. And they were both, I could not tell 
with her because of the veil, and I guess it was a her. He was about 19 
or 20 years old. They boarded the plane and that was fine.

  Then they came to me and stopped me. I asked the person, I said, I do 
not mind being searched at all. I think it is good. I do not mind if 
you search everybody on this airplane, but why did you pick me out?
  Well, because you are a Congressman, the person said, and people will 
think we have special treatment of Congressmen if we do not search you 
when you go through. So we picked you out just to show other people, 
look, just because the fact that he is a Congressman does not mean he 
gets searched. I said, how about that lady up there? Why would a lady 
like that be searched? Well, again, to show we are not focusing on a 
high risk group or a group of a particular ethnic background. I said, 
wait a minute. What if you have somebody that fits the risk profile? 
They are the right age, they are from a country that is questionable as 
far as the relationship with the United States, they meet other risk 
criteria in there, but they happen to be, say, Irish or they happen to 
be Arab; just based on the race thing does it cause you any reluctance 
to ask them any questions?
  Absolutely, he says. I do not want to get in any trouble. This person 
told me that. The person told me they felt very intimidated to step 
forward and ask somebody, especially somebody of Arabic ethnic 
background or of ethnic color, to ask them any of those type of 
questions because they are afraid they would be accused of racial 
profiling or racism.
  At that point I said to the person, you know the best way to trick 
the United States is look the part because you probably will not get 
stopped and questioned. In fact, what I said to the ACLU tonight, I 
think the opposite is happening. Some of these people that are so 
politically correct and putting security second and third and fourth 
seat back are in fact opening a big gap in our security blanket in this 
country by making our security checkers intimidated, concerned about, 
oh, my gosh, I better not ask that person because they are not white 
and Caucasian, or I better not ask that person because they are African 
American. I do not want to offend this person because they are Irish. 
That is one of the problems we have got.
  So I do not know any of my colleagues on the House floor, I do not 
know any of them that would advocate profiling somebody based on race 
alone. I think that goes, I do not understand the boundaries and I 
think there is a constitutional argument there. But when you combine 
that with other risk factors or other factors known to you, I do not 
think that should be excluded from that list. I think it should be 
included in that list.

[[Page H3152]]

  Let me tell you, in my opinion, I cannot think of a responsibility 
that the United States Congress or any elected official in the United 
States, I cannot not think of a responsibility we have that is more 
inherent to the obligation for us to the American people in our hearts 
and souls, it is more inherent to us than providing security for the 
American people. What we have seen in the last 10 years and what we 
have seen in the last 10 months and the further and further we get away 
from September 11, what we are beginning to see is the grip of 
political correctness has once again come into our cookie jar, frankly, 
and locked it up. That is what is happening. We are so concerned about 
political correctness that once again we are going to get hit hard.
  Now there is a balance out there and it is called common sense, and I 
think political correctness has gone too far off the track. It is not 
on the common sense track. And I would venture to say that most 
Americans want you searched when you get on an airplane if you meet 
certain risk factors. Americans want security on those airplanes.

                              {time}  2045

  I did not complain about the fact that I was searched and this group 
ahead of me was not searched; but boy, if somebody fit what I would 
consider a profile, considering what we had on September 11, 19 people, 
all male, all within a certain range, all within a certain ethnic 
background, all with a particular religion, most with passports from a 
particular area of the country, I mean that is a profile, and if 
somebody fits that profile, we ought to go after it, regardless of 
their ethnic background. It does not benefit our country to put 
handcuffs on the very people that we are placing the responsibility to 
provide us security with.
  Clearly we have to give them direction. We do have things like the 
Miranda rights when you arrest somebody. We have certain things that 
are observed but because a person, or because somebody at the airport 
says, ma'am, we are going to have to open a suitcase or someone says, 
Congressman, we are going to have to open your suitcase and look at 
your dock kit and your underwear and your jeans and your running shoes, 
that is not unconstitutional. Sure, it is an inconvenience, but it is 
what we have to have for security on our airlines.
  So tonight on CNN, I found it very interesting, many in my opinion 
the American Civil Liberties Union could not wait to race to the 
courtroom, could not wait to file a lawsuit against all of these 
airlines, again using the age-old plaintiff's favorite statement racial 
preferences or racial prejudice against the airlines. Go for the deep 
pockets, accuse them of racism and see how many of them we will get to 
fold.
  That is exactly what I perceive this lawsuit to be about, race to the 
courts by the American Civil Liberties Union, have a national press 
conference. They did not write the airlines and say maybe they had some 
misbehavior here, they would like to have an apology and we would like 
the airline to fix their ways. They should stop what they did to this 
particular plaintiff. They did not do that. They do not want to do 
that.
  Their mission is not to correct a wrong. Their mission is, one, to 
get attention; two, to drive this political correctness so that it fits 
their agenda; and, three, to enrich the plaintiffs here.
  Our country has become lawsuit happy. No matter how we cut it, no 
matter what angle we look at it, whether we want to talk about 
malpractice, whether we want to talk about asbestos, whether we want to 
talk about racism, they are not alleging, the American Civil Liberties 
Union, whatever it is they think they can get the slot machine to kick 
out some change, they are going to go to the court and do it.
  In the long run it hurts those plaintiffs. In the long run it hurts 
our society as a whole. If someone has truly, truly been wronged, they 
ought to be made whole, no argument there; but I can tell my colleagues 
that a lot of people allege to have been wronged, exaggerate just how 
badly wronged they were, and being made whole is not their idea. Being 
made rich is their goal, and so we can see this cycle. It was a very 
interesting debate on CNN this evening.
  I have covered a couple of areas tonight. One of them, of course, 
prescription care and the fact that we want to provide prescription 
care to the extent that we can afford it, and we want to do things that 
can help hold the costs down. For example, allow generic drugs, 
encourage generic drugs, encourage competition out there among the 
pharmaceuticals; but it is wrong for us to make a promise to the 
American people, which was made on this House floor tonight, and we 
should provide all Americans with prescription care service. We cannot 
pay for it. We do not have the money. Nice, the empty promise. It is an 
empty promise.
  They have promised a rose garden. By the way, they did not tell my 
colleagues that they are not only going to have to plant their roses, 
they are going to have to plant everybody's roses, and the rose garden 
does not have any water and nothing in it when they get into it.
  The second thing we talked about was whether or not a person's ethnic 
background, whether they are Irish, Arabic, whatever they are, is that 
an appropriate element to fit a risk profile. My belief is that it is, 
that when we combine it with other factors, we can build pretty good 
profiles, and profiles help us.
  Keep in mind, these profiles are used by our local schools. For 
example, our local schools might say, hey, in this neighborhood, we 
have a particular minority and this minority is scoring lower, this 
minority has lower math grades than this group over here. So by doing 
that, by profiling, by going in there and determining what is affecting 
this group versus this group, we say, all right, we need to focus more 
money or more resources or more help to bring this minority's math 
grades up to par.
  It is a tool. It is a legitimate tool. It is a tool that we use in 
our schools. As I said earlier, it is a tool that the media networks 
use to determine who reads their paper. It is a tool that the political 
parties use to determine who is going to vote for them. Why would we, 
on God's Earth, why would we eliminate it as a tool to provide 
ourselves with security against acts of terrorism or acts of our 
enemies that want to do us harm? Why would we say to somebody, oh, you 
are Irish, I cannot ask you if you are Irish; it is unconstitutional by 
meshing with these other factors. So you go ahead even though it may 
compromise our security? So that is a debate all on its own.
  In the few remaining minutes that I have left I want to talk about 
something entirely different, and that is, first of all, the fire 
season that we have got out there. I want to commend our firefighters, 
our national firefighters, our Federal firefighters, our State 
firefighters, our volunteer firefighters, our district firefighters 
across the Nation.
  In my particular district in the mountains of Colorado, and this 
district by the way is larger than the State of Florida, we have had 
fire after fire after fire. This is a drought the likes of which we 
have not seen in a hundred years. It is classified as an extreme 
drought. That is exactly what it is. The latest fire we had over the 
weekend took 83 or 85 homes, burned their homes, destroyed these 
people's possessions. Fortunately, we had no injuries in the fire.
  I want to commend our firemen, and when I say firemen, I say that 
generically, plural, firemen and firewomen. Those firepeople out there 
are courageous people; and what is interesting is last year we put in a 
fire plan, and my colleagues can take credit for this because it was an 
act of Congress in coordination with our Federal agencies to really 
beef up our firefighting capabilities last year.
  We hired thousands and thousands of new firepeople to fight these 
fires. We went out and purchased capital, purchases of thousands and 
thousands of pieces of new equipment. We really geared up for this 
year's fires, not knowing how serious the start it would get off to, 
and now our benefits are paying off.
  This fire in Canyon City, while it was a horrible fire, we should 
have it 100 percent contained within the next 2 days. The many, many 
fires, and I probably had five or six major fires in the last 3 weeks 
in my district, major fires, type I fires, break out in my district, 
were all contained in a pretty quick period of time because of the 
investment that we and those Federal

[[Page H3153]]

agencies and most importantly those firemen on the scene on the line 
put into this effort.
  So I want to publicly acknowledge from the House floor those 
firepeople from across the country and all those Federal agencies that 
are helping fight these horrible fires that we are seeing besiege us 
this year.
  In the next couple of days or perhaps next week, I want to take an 
entire hour and speak about the water situation in the West. As many of 
my colleagues know, I have had a series of discussions here talking 
about the public lands and what impacts us that is different in the 
West than the East.
  I am continuing to make a very conscious effort at trying to educate 
and work with my colleagues to tell them how the geographical 
difference, the public land location difference in our country has 
significant, significantly different needs, for example, in the western 
United States than we have in the eastern United States; and I want to 
spend a good hour talking about the issue of water, defining and making 
clear the difference between what is surface water, the water that 
originates on the surface or is accumulated on the surface, versus the 
water that is subsurface, that we dig a well down into.
  Many in the East get their water from wells. Where I live most of our 
water is surface water. In fact, in Colorado 80 percent of our water 
that we use in Colorado is dependent upon the snow pack. Colorado 
happens to be the highest place on the continent, and our mountains 
reach high into the skies, and they gather that snow; but water storage 
is very critical for us, and just the same as I have seen an effort in 
health care towards a socialized type of system, i.e., the government 
takes care of all of it, the government pays for all of it, do not 
worry about the prescription costs, the government will pay for all of 
it, we are seeing the same kind of effort being made in the West in 
regards to water.
  Right now water in the West is a private property. This country was 
built on the premise of private property. If we were to list some of 
the freedoms, say the top 10 freedoms that Americans feel so strongly 
about, that were the foundation of the founding of this country and the 
foundation of the greatness of this country, in those top 10 items we 
would find private property listed by almost everyone who listed those 
top 10, private property; and in the West water is a property issue.
  Generally what we see is those who do not have it or did not buy it 
or did not think to get it make a very conscious effort of saying, wait 
a minute, those who have it ought to share it with us. That is exactly 
the premise upon which socialism was built, and we are seeing it in the 
West; and it is being seen in the West by something called the public 
interest doctrine, i.e., when it comes to water, we do not consider the 
individual's private property rights. We do not consider the 
individual's rights of usage. What we consider is what is good for the 
public as a whole.
  So in other words, it might be that someone has owned these water 
rights out in the Colorado mountains for a long time, and it might be 
that that family is dependent upon ranching; but the fact is, since in 
Colorado agriculture is only a small percentage of the entire economy, 
but yet uses a larger percentage of the water in proportion to the size 
of its economy, public interest demands that we take water from them.
  That is exactly the effort that is being made, and frankly, I think 
this year in Colorado under a populist type of banner, they are going 
to attempt to put a question on our ballot, should a person's water 
rights have to take backseat to the public interest doctrine. It is a 
very, very dangerous move towards a socialistic society. I can tell my 
colleagues that there are some people's water I would like to have, 
some people's property I would like to have, but it is not my private 
property. It is their private property. They earned it, they paid for 
it, they worked it or whatever; but it is their property.
  For us to begin to move this country in a direction that because we 
as a public think we can put it to a better use, that the public 
interest doctrine should be introduced and the property should be taken 
from them is the wrong approach. So next week I fully intend to spend a 
full hour talking about the special needs of water, the special needs 
in the West.
  In the West water is like blood. That is what they say. Water runs 
thicker than blood, in fact, they say in the West. We will talk about 
where it originates, the importance of storage in Colorado and the 
West. We will talk about the public lands that are primarily located in 
the West and not located in the East. We will talk about gravity, how 
gravity has a lot to do with the situation that we are in today.
  We will talk about those who do not want water being utilized for 
their home or for no development, for example, and see it as a way to 
control or stop development. Frankly, in some regards, I think the 
abuse of water has been ignored. We will talk about that, too.
  We will talk about the environmental issues of water. Water is a very 
boring subject by the way. It only becomes interesting to all of us 
when all of the sudden we are in a drought or when we turn on the 
faucet and the water does not come out; but in fact, when we look at 
the future generations, what issue is so, so important to sustain life, 
to sustain agriculture, to sustain recreation, to sustain the 
environment, we are almost always going to come back to water.
  Colorado politicians and Colorado citizens throughout its hundred-
plus years of being a State have recognized the importance of water. If 
we go in the State capital of Denver, we see in every painting in the 
rotunda somewhere depicts someone doing something with water. It is 
very, very important.
  The Colorado River is called the mother of all rivers. Why? Is it a 
big river? No. It does not look like the Mississippi. In fact, I grew 
up understanding how important the Colorado River was, but I also 
thought it was the biggest river.

                              {time}  2100

  I about fainted when I saw the Mississippi River, the first time I 
saw a picture of it. It was huge.
  The importance of the Colorado and what makes the Colorado the mother 
of all rivers is the fact that it is the only water available for many 
of the people out there. Whereas when you get into the Mississippi, in 
fact, in a lot of the East, the difficulty is getting rid of water. In 
the West, it is the capability of being able to store water.
  So I look forward to visiting with my colleagues next week, Mr. 
Speaker.

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