[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 31 (Thursday, March 11, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1063-H1069]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1715
                         ISSUES FACING CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Burgess) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I thought we would finish up this week 
touching on several issues. We just heard about a lot of issues from 
the other side of the aisle; and I have several things that I want to 
address, and the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) is here to 
speak as well. I want to speak on the reauthorization of the 
transportation bill that we will be taking up in the latter weeks of 
this month. I want to talk a little bit about where we stand on 
fighting and winning the war on terror, and I would like to finish up 
with a discussion about retooling Medicare and debunking some of the 
myths that we have heard expressed on the floor of this House this 
week.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) to 
speak on his part of the discussion.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to talk about 
education and an exciting thing that is occurring in my district.
  I would also address some of the economic factors that this Nation 
has faced and will continue to face. We have important things about 
Medicare that we need to communicate to the American people, and I will 
do that this afternoon also. If we get a chance, we will talk about the 
concurrent receipts issue, an issue of fairness for our veterans that 
this Congress, under Republican control, took care of. It had been a 
problem since 1892 when the bill was passed that disallowed concurrent 
receipts. The Democrats continue to say that we have not taken care of 
our veterans, and yet we took care of that concurrent receipts issue, 
which was a problem during the entire time of the 40 years of 
uninterrupted power that the Democrats held in this Congress and they 
refused to take care of it. They refused to hear the bill, refused to 
get it out of committee, and now they are claiming that we did not do 
that. The facts speak differently.
  Mr. Speaker, returning to my education issue first, Roswell High 
School, New Mexico, is in my district. They recently have been named as 
one of 12 breakthrough high schools in the Nation by the National 
Association of Secondary School Principals, the NASSP. The breakthrough 
high schools project identifies and showcases exemplary high schools 
which have met the challenges of low-income, high-minority student 
populations, which describes my district. It describes some of the most 
desperately needy high schools in the Nation. That is the reason No 
Child Left Behind was put into place. It causes our school systems to 
acknowledge the difficulties of teaching the low-income, high-minority 
student populations because they are the ones that are being left 
behind.
  Roswell High School's success is one of the best examples of school 
turnaround that I personally have seen. No Child Left Behind gives 
schools the resources, the flexibility and local control to make great 
changes. I am both excited and proud to talk about Roswell High School 
and its principal, Mike Kakuska from the floor of this House. Mike 
Kakuska is my hero. He is the one who deals with young people on a day-
to-day basis, encourages them to do better, convincing them that they 
can do better, all of the while making progress in his school. His 
comment is that we have a credo here: dinosaurs disappeared because 
they did not change. If something does not work, we change it. The 
education system in America has not been working. We were leaving too 
many children behind, and simply the title of the bill says it best. 
Let us stop leaving kids behind because it is the poorer and 
disenfranchised who never will have an opportunity to go to a different 
school.
  No Child Left Behind has channeled tremendously increased resources 
at education. When President Bush came to office, the expenditure from 
a Federal level was about $27 billion on education. That number is over 
$50 billion now and increasing. Yet we are told by the Democrats that 
we are underfunding education when they know, when they are talking 
about the fact that we have increased over double what they funded 
education at during their tenure.
  The most egregious example of Democrats misusing facts is when they 
send our constituents in to say we are not funding IDEA, the 
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; and yet the facts tell us 
that traditionally from the very onset of IDEA, the funding was around 
$1 billion. Finally after about 30 years, under President Clinton the 
funding increased from $1 billion to $2 billion; yet in the time that 
President Bush has been in office, funding has increased from $2 
billion to over $11 billion.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that we need to tell the American people the 
truth. The greatest thing that I see No Child Left Behind doing is that 
it allows local flexibility and local control. Local school districts 
are given four different income streams where they can move money back 
and forth between programs. They are given the flexibility to direct 
money where it belongs.
  If a school is failing, increased resources are sent to that school 
for mentorship, 101 training, or whatever it takes to get each 
individual student up to par. One of the most important aspects of No 
Child Left Behind is right now there are over 150 school districts 
nationwide who have 100 percent control over the education dollars that 
go to their school from the Federal Government.
  We think that if the local school board will make decisions, if the 
local school board is responsible for the education of their children, 
if we take education out of the hands of Washington bureaucrats, if we 
take Washington out of the hands of the State bureaucrats that local 
school boards and local administrators and teachers will solve the 
problem.
  The No Child Left Behind Act begins that process of giving local 
autonomy and local control. I think that Michael Kakuska and Roswell 
High School are the best examples in my district of what No Child Left 
Behind can do, and I commend them for that.
  Mr. Speaker, I will speak later on about taxes, Medicare, and a few 
other issues.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, we will transition from the part of the 
infrastructure in our communities that is responsible for education to 
the part of the infrastructure in our communities that allows us to get 
to schools. I am talking about our transportation infrastructure.
  Mr. Speaker, in regards to transportation, we are at a crossroads in 
this country. We are at the intersection of the demands for creating 
the type of infrastructure that will facilitate commerce and move our 
citizenry and trying to achieve some type of rational spending limit 
within our Federal budget.
  Back home in my area of north Texas, we face a silent crisis. This 
crisis is largely unrecognized by residents

[[Page H1064]]

until they find themselves in an unbearable commute to work, or unable 
to make the necessary connections between home, work and other 
activities in their daily lives. My area of north Texas has experienced 
an increase in traffic over the past 3 decades which is the result of 
unprecedented population and employment growth. Added to this is the 
underinvestment of Federal transportation dollars to my area.
  Mr. Speaker, the time is now to make the necessary investments in our 
transportation infrastructure. In Texas, our transportation needs 
outstrip available funding three to one, and these are not trivial 
funding needs, these relate to supporting international trade, 
streamlining the environmental process, and expanding innovative 
financing techniques.
  Handling taxpayers' dollars with care is one of our highest callings 
here in the House of Representatives. That obligation is enshrined in 
the Constitution. Our charge as congressional representatives is to 
protect dollars taken from the taxpayer by streamlining and improving 
activities of the Federal Government, not just to simply spend and 
dispose of those dollars.
  Sadly, when Federal dollars are not handled with care, important 
Federal programs such as our transportation programs find themselves 
being hurt and neglected. Last year shortly after my election to my 
first term in Congress, I was very fortunate to be chosen a member of 
the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
  I wanted to be sure that the United States Department of 
Transportation was ensuring the most efficient business practices 
within the agency. I requested and had a meeting with the Department of 
Transportation Inspector General, Mr. Kenneth Mead. We discussed the 
business practices of the agency and how Congress could better 
facilitate removing inappropriate expenditures in relationship to 
transportation spending.
  Mr. Speaker, the Department of Transportation has not changed the way 
the agency disburses transportation funding to State and local entities 
since President Eisenhower was in office. The Inspector General 
recommended that if one cent had been saved out of every dollar spent 
over the last 10 years in transportation programs, the Department of 
Transportation would have had an initial $5 billion to spend. That is 
$5 billion. That would equate to the amount of funding needed for four 
of the 11 major transportation projects currently under way in this 
country. Clearly, greater efficiency within the Department of 
Transportation could have an enormous impact on more efficiently 
spending taxpayer dollars.
  The Inspector General shared with me examples of how transportation 
projects could be used as examples or models of government efficiency. 
In the State of Utah in the preparation for the Winter Olympics, 
Interstate 15 needed substantial improvement. By streamlining the 
design-build process on that project, Interstate 15 was completed ahead 
of schedule and underbudget and available for individuals traveling to 
the Winter Olympics that year.
  Similarly in north Texas, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit System worked 
within their budget last year and actually returned over $20 million in 
transit funding to the Federal Government. Unfortunately, there are 
examples of transportation projects which are not carefully managed; 
and as a result, taxpayer dollars are not wisely spent.
  The Ted Williams Tunnel, the central artery project in Boston, 
Massachusetts, the project known as the Big Dig, is the poster child 
for inefficient Federal spending on a transportation project.
  The GAO has estimated that for fiscal years 1998 through 2001, the 
highway trust fund account lost over $6 billion because of the ethanol 
tax exemption and the general fund transfer. Using the Department of 
Treasury's projections of gasohol tax receipts, the General Accounting 
Office has estimated that the highway trust fund account will not 
collect $13 billion because of the tax exemption from fiscal years 2002 
through 2012. There is an almost $7 million shortfall from the general 
fund transfer between the same years.
  Prior to the last reauthorization bill in 1998, the highway trust 
fund earned interest on its balance which was paid by the general fund. 
If the highway trust fund had continued to earn interest on its 
balance, the United States Department of Treasury estimates that the 
highway trust fund would have realized about $4 billion from September 
1999 through February 2002.
  Mr. Speaker, between modifying the Department of Transportation's 
practices with State and local governments and reevaluating the true 
purposes of the highway trust fund, I believe we can work together to 
ensure that the Federal Government is more effective and efficient for 
the American taxpayer, and we have more dollars to spend on needed 
transportation projects.
  If we are unwilling to make the monetary investment and the necessary 
policy changes, then I am afraid our vision for our Nation's highways 
will be of a congestion-bound commuter sitting in a traffic jam 
literally watching the bridges and roadways crumble before their very 
eyes.
  There are policies that we could put into this year's reauthorization 
bill which would have a dramatic impact on the efficiency with which 
our highway dollars are spent. I believe we need to have policies 
included which will allow States the flexibility to complete large 
projects in less time and consequently save money. Streamlining the 
design-build process, as was done with Interstate 15 in Utah, will 
achieve this goal; and I seek inclusion of this concept in the final 
reauthorization legislation. More funding and flexibility, which allow 
for an increase in efficiency, will equate to better roads, better 
bridges, and better transit facilities.
  Logically following from that, we can expect less congestion, 
improved safety, as well as the economic value of increased commercial 
transportation.

                              {time}  1730

  I remain committed to working with Federal, State and local officials 
during this reauthorization year to address the long-term needs, not 
just of my district, not just of my State, but of the country at large. 
We need to ensure that our Federal Government wisely spends the 
taxpayer dollars on transportation infrastructure. We need to do our 
work. We need to produce a bill which adequately provides for our 
economic security, creates and sustains jobs, enhances safety and 
continues to improve mobility for our Nation's citizens.
  I think a worthwhile goal, Mr. Speaker, would be to allow Americans 
to spend as much time in family discussions at the dinner table as they 
currently spend simply trying to get home.
  I yield back to my friend from New Mexico.
  Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. Speaker, right now we have National Guard members in Iraq who are 
defending not only the freedom of this Nation in fighting back in the 
war on terror that began on 9/11 in this country, Mr. Speaker, but 
those National Guard troops are serving and putting their lives on the 
line. And that is not new. Our National Guard has been doing that 
throughout our history.
  In World War II at Omaha Beach, some of the greatest casualties 
occurred in the Virginia National Guard. Members of my own New Mexico 
National Guard in World War II were in the Pacific. They made a thing 
called the Bataan Death March. I have known about that event throughout 
my entire life because I had next-door neighbors who were on the Bataan 
Death March. It was not until I went to the New Mexico House of 
Representatives that I began to understand why we had so many of those, 
and that is because the New Mexico National Guard was activated, sent 
there, they did their duty and many of them died.
  It is with this backdrop that I was profoundly disappointed several 
weeks ago when Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National 
Committee, said President Bush served in the National Guard, but never 
served in our military and our country.
  I will tell you, those comments are so demeaning to the people who 
served in our National Guard that I was offended and asked for an 
apology. I am now asking that the chairman of that committee would 
resign over his comments that detract from the service of all of our 
National Guard Members.

[[Page H1065]]

  I came to the floor of this House several weeks ago to talk about the 
rhetoric that was starting in the campaign, and just earlier today we 
saw a report from the leading Democrat contender for President where he 
referred to the ``crooks and liars on the other side.'' I will tell you 
as a Republican, I will say that his comments were unfounded, they were 
extremist and they have no basis in fact.
  He has already turned down a demand for an apology. I do not think he 
will do that, because I do not think he is a large enough person to do 
it. But I am profoundly disappointed by the comments from the Democrat 
candidate for the office of President.
  I yield to the gentleman from Texas for the next segment.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). The Chair would remind 
Members not to make personal references to Members of the Senate, even 
if not by name, including candidates for the presidency.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I heard those same comments last night when I was 
working late in my office, and I, too, took offense at those. I was 
reminded that the founder of our party, Abraham Lincoln, said that if a 
man asserts something to be true, even if he does not know whether it 
is true or false, that man is in fact himself guilty of a falsehood. 
When an individual refers to all members of this Republican side of the 
aisle and this body as crooks and liars, I assert that that that man is 
in fact himself guilty of a falsehood, and then thereby becomes that 
which he condemns.
  I join with my friend from New Mexico in asking for an apology from 
this individual. I think it is only proper that he do so.
  Since the gentleman was talking about the service of our troops and 
our National Guard overseas, let us also think about our success in the 
war on terror. We must remember that our President, our leader, George 
Bush, led us into this battle, and in fact if a Member of the other 
body had been in control, Saddam Hussein would still be the dictator in 
Iraq, brutalizing and terrorizing his people. The President and the 
Republican-led Congress are winning the war on terror and bringing the 
light of democracy to all corners of the world.
  Just this morning on a conference call with Ambassador Bremer in 
Baghdad, he talked about the signing of the Iraqi Constitution that 
took place earlier this week. In fact, it was not quite a week ago that 
all parties were gathered to sign the Constitution, but it did not 
happen last Friday.
  Of course, we saw that reported rather generously in the newspapers, 
that the signing of the Constitution did not occur at the time that it 
was supposed to. We did not read that much about its signing on Monday, 
other than the fact that it was indeed signed. All 25 members of the 
Iraqi Governing Council signed the Constitution. There was no change in 
verbiage that occurred between Friday and Monday. Whatever differences 
there were worked out with a concept of compromise that is apparently a 
new concept in the country, the free country of Iraq.
  The signing of that Constitution was such a big event that sometimes 
something happens that is so big it almost gets lost and you almost do 
not realize how big it was and how much that means, not just for that 
area of the world, but for our country. Maybe not for people in our 
lifetimes, but certainly in our children's lifetimes, they are going to 
see a world markedly different because of the work that has gone on in 
that country, really for not quite a year's time. I believe next week 
will be the one year anniversary of the beginning of Operation Iraqi 
Freedom.
  Certainly the press in Iraq was amazed by the fact that they had come 
this far to craft an interim Constitution, the fact that it had 
happened this quickly. Certainly they have got an aggressive task ahead 
of them in Iraq in getting approval for this interim Constitution, but 
Ambassador Bremer emphasized this was indeed a revolutionary concept in 
the country of Iraq. They are going to be governed under the rule of 
law, which is a new concept for them.
  They have a robust component of individual rights built within that 
Constitution. I believe, if I am not mistaken, there is a provision 
that 25 percent of the elected representatives in that country will now 
be women, a marked change from what they were looking at before. They 
will have an independent judiciary. They will have majority rule, but 
the rights of the minority will be protected. There is a commitment to 
democratic principles. There is freedom of religion, but there is also 
freedom to practice religion as a person sees fit.
  All of these are enormous concepts that have been crafted, again, in 
a relatively short period of time in an area of the world that has not 
known much freedom for the last 20 or 30 years.
  I was in Iraq just a little over 2 weeks ago. In fact, we heard on 
the floor of this House earlier this week some criticism of the 
administration because there is no capture of Osama bin Laden yet, and 
that the effort was diverted by what was going on in Iraq.
  Well, I also visited the country of Afghanistan and the country of 
Pakistan. I met with both President Musharraf and President Karzai 
respectively in those countries.
  I want to share with this House a picture which was given to me by 
General Austin of the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, New 
York. This is a picture where I think one picture worth 1,000 words, 
probably so. This picture demonstrates the degree to which our soldiers 
are going to capture, contain and kill those who would harm innocent 
Afghani citizens, certainly bring harm to our troops.
  This was an individual who was sought by the coalition forces in 
Afghanistan. He thought he was relatively immune from prosecution, 
living high on a steep mountainside. He was visited by some of our 
forces. Then, to bring him to justice, they landed half a helicopter on 
his house. You can see his campfire still burning down there. He was 
brought up to the roof and loaded into the back of the helicopter.

  Think of the effort involved in the capture and containment of that 
individual. I do not recall whether that was a Taliban or al Qaeda or 
simply a warlord that they were attempting to bring to justice, but it 
was quite a startling turn of events for that man that morning when 
half of that helicopter landed on his roof to bring him back to meet 
whatever fate awaited him.
  I cannot tell the gentleman from New Mexico how glad I am that he 
brought up the service of the National Guard in this country. When I 
was in Iraq and we spoke to the General of the Fourth Infantry 
Division, General Odierno, the division that captured Saddam Hussein, 
he said under his control, I cannot say numbers, but there were a 
substantial number of Guard and Reserve under his command, and he said, 
``I cannot tell you at this point who is Guard and who is regular Army. 
They are all the same in my eyes.''
  As the father of a young man in the Air National Guard back in Texas, 
I thank the gentleman from New Mexico for bringing up the valor of 
their service, not just in this conflict, but throughout the history of 
this country.
  Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. As I look at that 
picture, I wonder about the person that is taking the picture. That is 
a stunning shot from high up in the mountains there, taken at the 
moment of impact, and it just expresses in detail the fine job that our 
troops are doing.
  At the end of October of last year, October 31, November 1 and 2, I 
was in Iraq. I visited with our troops to find out what their attitudes 
were. I can tell you that every single troop I visited with, both from 
New Mexico and from outside New Mexico, they all believed in what they 
were doing, they were highly motivated, well trained and doing great 
work.
  Their one comment was, ``Why do the people in America not find out 
the good things we are doing?'' I cannot tell them why the news will 
not cover the good things that are going on in Iraq, the very positive 
rebuilding efforts, the winning over of the hearts and minds of the 
Iraqi people, but I can tell you that those soldiers know about it. 
They see firsthand that people in the neighborhoods who have been told 
their entire lives, for 35 years under Saddam Hussein, that Americans 
are evil and will be coming there to hurt them, and as the Iraqis find 
that not to be true, they bring their kids out in

[[Page H1066]]

the streets and hold them up to see the Americans eyeball-to-eyeball, 
and that is touching the lives of the young men and women from New 
Mexico serving there. I compliment our troops for the fine job that 
they are doing.
  But our reconstruction efforts are going well. We have about 75 
percent of Iraq is fairly stable. About 25 percent is unstable. But I 
visited also with General Odierno. That was before we captured Saddam 
Hussein. He told me, ``My troops have stepped on his tail a couple of 
times and we missed him.'' He said, ``It is going to be my people to 
capture him,'' and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) pointed out 
it was the troops under General Odierno that captured Saddam Hussein.
  I will tell you that when I look back on the short time that we have 
been engaged in the war on terror, we have the Taliban completely 
uprooted and out of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is on the run. The funds 
raising mechanism in Saudi Arabia that was funding the war on terror 
has been eliminated. Under A.Q. Khan, nuclear armament components were 
being sold on the world market, and that completely marketing network 
of nuclear armament has been taken down and disassembled. We have gone 
back and repossessed some of the nuclear things that were sold to 
countries. Pakistan now is energized and willing to help us in the war 
on terror. Iran is admitting publicly that they had nuclear weapons and 
nuclear capability. Syria is beginning to change their attitude. Libya 
has changed theirs.
  We have come so far in this war on terror. It disturbs me when I hear 
the national campaign from the Democrats saying we should back up, we 
should bring our troops home, we should rethink it. I will tell you 
that the worst thing we could do is to stop the war on terror, because 
that is one of the events that destabilized our country.
  People wonder why we are doing the tax cuts. I will tell you, our 
economy has suffered three deep shocks. The first, of course, was the 
dot.com collapse. That occurred in the last years of the President 
Clinton term. We had stocks that were valued at way over their actual 
dollar value. That occurred because people were euphoric. Some of these 
companies had no products, they had no net income, they had no sales. 
They just had a name and a concept, and people were bidding the stock 
up from nothing to $200 and $300 per share. That euphoria in a market 
cannot be sustained. What we found is that the dot.com collapse came, 
as well it should have.

                              {time}  1745

  It brought a correction into the market to bring reality into the 
market, but it also set our economy back on its heels. We were just 
about out from underneath that recession when the 9-11 attack occurred. 
That was approximately a $2 trillion shock to our economy and over 
2,000 lives in one day. When people worry about the cost of the war, I 
would just remind them, yes, it is extremely expensive. War is never 
inexpensive. It is at almost $200 billion right now. But I will tell my 
colleagues that $2 trillion in one day is over 10 times the total cost 
up to now of the war.
  Mr. Speaker, 9-11 set our economy back yet a second time into a 
little bit different and deeper recession. Finally, we are just about 
to come out of that when the Enron, Global Crossing, the WorldCom 
collapses began to occur and people started taking their money out of 
the stock market. That was a deeper shock still to the economy, causing 
an interruption in the confidence of the American people in our system. 
During those three events, we found that our economy was so resilient 
that it never got plunged as deeply as it could have into recession, 
but it was always lingering in the last phases of it.
  We gave the tax cut in this institution, we voted for the tax cut 
because tax cuts create jobs. We had hoped when we offered the tax cut 
that we could get a 3.5 percent rate of growth in our economy. We were 
stunned in the third quarter to find out that the rate of growth was 
actually 8.2 percent instead of the 3.5 percent that we had hoped for. 
The rate of growth has settled down to a more modest 4 percent, but 
Alan Greenspan says that he expects that number to remain constant; and 
I will tell my colleagues, if we can remain at the 4 percent growth 
level, that this economy is going to be in good, good shape.
  There are many reasons that the tax cuts were given, but one of the 
most important things that occurred is that 75 percent of the people in 
the higher income brackets that got tax cuts are small business owners. 
When we give small business owners a tax break, we are affecting over 
half of the employees of the United States. Small business is one of 
the most vibrant forms of employment in this country; and the tax 
breaks, the expensing for small businesses, the accelerated 
depreciation were two of the most dynamic parts of the equation. They 
are the things that caused our orders of manufactured goods to 
increase, the orders of vehicles, of large equipment, of new 
capability; and it is that expansion that brings on new jobs into this 
economy.
  When our opponents talk about the number of jobs lost, they simply 
refuse to talk about the number of jobs that are sent overseas by hard 
policies and too invasive regulation. I was in committee the other day, 
Mr. Speaker, and the Committee on Resources was talking to the people 
who cut timber and who process timber into lumber. Those fine union 
members of that group declared to us that 3 million jobs in that one 
industry had been sent overseas by policies that refuse to let people 
cut timber anymore. The Democrats on that committee said, you will be 
okay, you will be fine. You will have jobs in tourism. The members of 
those unions in that meeting told the Democrats, we do not want jobs in 
hotels; we want our good, high-paying jobs in the timber industry back.
  Many times we fail to account for the jobs that are sent overseas by 
the regulations that we impose as a government. I think that it is an 
important consideration in the job loss for this country, because I 
know that our companies would rather stay here and compete as long as 
they can.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) 
before I go into my next discussion. I would ask him to let me know 
when we would like to yield back the floor.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would 
like now to move on to the topic of Medicare and perhaps health care in 
general; but let us start with, let us start with a discussion of 
Medicare. When I do my town halls and discussions back home, I am 
asked, Why in the world did you even take on the task of trying to 
reform Medicare? Why even do it? It is such a heavy lift. It is such a 
big job.
  The fact remains, Mr. Speaker, that in 1965 when the Medicare bill 
was signed into law, they covered the two things that arguably would 
pose the greatest financial threat for a senior citizen, and that would 
be a major surgical procedure or a prolonged hospitalization, say for 
example, for treatment of pneumonia or a bad kidney infection. The 
prescription drug benefit was not written into law at that time because 
prescription drugs available, I think, looking back at that time, I was 
not in practice, but I think we had penicillin and cortisone and those 
two were interchangeable; but prescription drugs and the availability 
of treatments for medical illnesses has drastically changed over the 
last 39 years since the enactment of Medicare. And to have modern-day 
practice of medicine without the ability to provide prescription drugs 
essentially made no sense. We were looking at a situation where, and we 
have heard this quoted many times on the floor of this House during the 
debate, we would be more willing to pay for the end-stage renal disease 
or the amputation than we would be willing to pay for the medication to 
treat the diabetes to prevent the end-stage condition from happening in 
the first place.
  So it was important, from the standpoint of the perspective, if you 
are going to have a Medicare system, and I realize that there are 
people who would argue that perhaps the Federal Government should not 
be doing that, but the fact is, we are doing it, we have been doing it 
for almost 40 years now. And if you are going to have a Medicare system 
in the year 2004, we cannot have a publicly funded health care system 
that does not provide a way to provide prescription drugs to the 
beneficiaries.
  We also hear a lot of criticism from the other side of the aisle that 
we did

[[Page H1067]]

not go far enough, we are not spending enough in this process. We are 
either spending too much or not enough. But we have to look at who is 
targeted for coverage under the Medicare Modernization Act that we 
passed last November.

  The individual who is targeted for coverage is the individual who is 
of extremely low income, the person who is at 150 percent of poverty or 
below, and those individuals who have high out-of-pocket expenses, the 
so-called catastrophic drug coverage that was provided in the 
prescription drug bill as part of the Medicare Modernization Act. Yes, 
that does leave a group, a segment in the middle that is not going to 
be covered for every drug purchase; and if someone finds themselves in 
that area, certainly they can be grateful that they are not at 150 
percent of poverty or below as far as an income and that they do not 
have the needs of catastrophic coverage, and we should always be 
thankful for good health.
  Paying for health care in this country, and I read a rather 
disappointing op-ed article last December from Ronald Brownstein of the 
Los Angeles Times when he talked about how you pay for health care in 
this country, there are only two ways. It is either an employer-derived 
insurance policy, or it is a government-funded proposition. Mr. 
Speaker, I would suggest that there are at least two other ways. I know 
from my years of practice of medicine there is a good number of bills 
that just simply are not paid, so there is uncompensated care or a 
gift, if you will, by the hospital or provider that they are not going 
to be paid for the services rendered. And then, of course, there are 
individuals who will pay for their care themselves.
  Mr. Speaker, tapping into that group of people who are willing to pay 
for their care for themselves is an enormous reserve that we as yet 
have not properly addressed in this country. We had the old Archer 
Medical Savings Account from 1996, and I myself had a medical savings 
account and found it a very, a very worthwhile type of medical 
insurance to have. But in the Medicare Modernization Act that we passed 
in November, we allowed for the formation of what are called health 
savings accounts, not just for seniors. This is for anyone, any age 
group in the country who wants to put dollars away for their health 
care needs in the future. They are now going to have a mechanism for 
doing that within the health savings account program. This is an 
enormously powerful way to put money back in the hands of the consumers 
and put consumers in charge of making their own health care decisions. 
Because after all, the consumer is going to be more wise with spending 
their money than they are with someone else's money, and I think 
someone made the point on the floor of this House back when we were 
having this debate about, you never spend money washing a rented car. 
Well, of course not, it is not yours; you do not care what it looks 
like when you turn it in.
  Well, the same can be true, if you are not actually paying yourself 
for your health care, you do not care how much money you spend. But if 
it is your money and you are allowed to control it, you tend to be a 
much wiser steward with health care dollars. I know that from my own 
experience from having a medical savings account for the last 5 or 6 
years.
  Other aspects of health care that we need to address, and I believe 
we are addressing, the Republican leadership is addressing in this 
House and, in fact, the President of the United States when he stood up 
and gave his State of the Union address in this House at the end of 
January, the daily newspaper Roll Call, Mort Kondracke who writes a 
column for that, not necessarily a great friend of the President or the 
administration, but talked about the President's speech afterwards and, 
in a way, he was actually being critical of the President. He said the 
President's health care initiatives that were outlined in the State of 
the Union message would only cover about 25 percent of the uninsured in 
this country. Only about 10 million people would be covered by the 
programs that the President outlined.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I would submit to my colleagues that if we have 
within our grasp right now the means of bringing coverage to 10 million 
uninsured in this country that, for heaven's sakes, we ought to be 
about the business of doing that.
  The President outlined in his State of the Union address the 
deductibility, full deductibility for old income tax deductibility for 
a high deductible insurance policy, the one that would fit well with 
the concept of an HSA. This is a tremendously valuable concept. For the 
first time, if we will do that in this House, if we will provide that 
full deductibility of a high deductible insurance policy or a 
catastrophic insurance policy, anyone who pays income taxes in this 
country has no excuse for not having health insurance. We will have 
provided them the health savings account to grow that money tax 
deferred and the tax deductibility for buying their catastrophic 
coverage. Mr. Kondracke and I might argue about the number of people 
who would actually be covered by that, but that is a substantial number 
of individuals who would have coverage available to them in this 
country who today, voluntarily, do not have insurance coverage.

  Association health plans, a bill that was passed by this House in 
June of last year, association health plans allow small businesses, and 
we heard about the value of small businesses and growing our economy, 
allow small businesses to band together across State lines, if need be, 
to get the purchasing power of a larger corporation and by having that 
larger purchasing power, or having that same purchasing power of a 
large corporation, go out into the insurance market and purchase 
insurance policies for their employees at a lower price. It is a win-
win proposition for both the small business owner and for the 
employees. This House has passed that bill last June. It languishes and 
I, for one, do not understand why we do not pick up and get that done, 
get it to conference and get that bill out there, going to work for the 
American people.
  Finally, there is the concept of tax credits for the uninsured. When 
talking about the deductibility for a catastrophic policy, well, if 
somebody does not make enough money to pay income tax, they are going 
to say well, that is a great program for someone who makes more money 
than I do, but I do not pay income tax anyway, so that is not going to 
help me. The gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger), my neighbor down in 
Tarrant County, has a bill on the floor that we have yet to vote on 
that would allow for tax credits for the uninsured. This is, again, an 
enormously powerful concept that would bring insurance a pre-fundable 
tax credit, if you will, that would be available to someone at the 
beginning of the year before they file their income taxes to purchase 
health insurance for that year. These three things done together, 
expansion of the HSAs, tax credits for the uninsured, association 
health plans, and we are covering 25 percent of the uninsured in this 
country, right now, this year, without any heavy lifting, again, I do 
not understand why we do not go forward with those three plans and 
simply get that done.
  The Congress has done the work on health savings accounts and those 
are now part of the law of the land; full deductibility for the 
catastrophic policy needs to happen right away. Association health 
plans have been passed by this House, they await activity on the other 
side of the Capitol, and I would welcome some activity in the near 
future. And then finally, tax credits for the uninsured we could take 
up this spring and pass, get it over to the Senate and get their sign-
off on it and provide that coverage to 10 to 15 million of the 
uninsured in this country and get that done right now.
  I will be happy to yield to my friend from New Mexico for his 
comments.

                              {time}  1800

  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Burgess) for yielding.
  As he talked about the Medicare bill I began to remember my own 
discussions in our offices and also with my family about this. The 
discussions right now that are critical of this Medicare bill that has 
been passed and signed into law was that there is this donut hole. I 
called my mom before we voted on it the first time, I asked her, I 
said, ``Mom, you are going to fall in the category that they are 
describing as the gap in coverage or the donut hole.'' She said, ``Why 
would that be?'' I said, ``Because your assets are high

[[Page H1068]]

enough and your yearly income is up. We are targeting the poor and we 
are targeting the people with catastrophic health care, prescription 
drugs cost.'' She said, ``Son, we have been very blessed. I do not mind 
paying more if I can pay more.''
  And I feel like that that is the way most Americans are going to 
approach this, that they do not mind paying more if they can pay more.
  Again, I told my mom that. She said, ``Exactly why are you doing 
that?'' And I said, ``It is so we do not break the country, so we do 
not tag the next generation with more cost than they could ever pay. So 
the gap in coverage is there because you are able to do it and we do 
not want to pass those costs on to the next generation.''
  My colleague has adequately pointed out the great work that was done, 
and I want to commend the gentleman as one of the physicians in this 
freshman class, I think he was very instrumental in driving many of the 
components of this bill, and I congratulate him for that.
  The health savings account is a thing that I talked from the floor of 
this House last night. Basically it is a medical IRA. You can put the 
money in tax free, you can take the money out tax free. The difference 
between this medical IRA the health savings account and other IRAs is 
that you can take the money out at any age if you pay for medical 
expenses. You can pay for your premiums, you can pay for deductibles, 
you can pay for prescription drugs, or you can pay for your doctor 
visit, dental, whatever.
  Now, the nice thing about this account is that not only is it yours, 
and it is yours to dispose of the way that you would, but it is the 
part of your estate and it goes to the next generation, to your sons 
and your daughters to help them pay for their medical costs if you do 
not use it.
  I think that it is one of the most important pieces of legislation 
that we passed this year. It is in law. It is a part of the 
prescription drug Medicare bill and has been signed by the President of 
the United States and is actually in law at this time.
  We recently sent a mailer out to my district talking about Medicare 
in general, but the health savings account particularly got calls back 
to the office wondering where can we buy them right now.
  One of the most significant things that I found there New Mexico that 
we did in this Medicare bill is that we began to offer certain reforms. 
To me it is never made sense why Medicare could not do some of the 
screening so it would catch the diseases up front, so that we catch 
them before they get to catastrophic stages.
  That is one thing that happened in this Medicare bill is we allow 
preventative care and screening. We allow physical exams for the first 
time so that we understand if people have a cholesterol problem or have 
an impending heart problem because the blood pressure is too high, that 
we take care of it before it becomes catastrophic. And we all know if 
you take care of medical problems before they are catastrophic, they 
are much cheaper to take care of. I think that those components make 
this bill a very good bill. But in New Mexico in my rural district, it 
is a 9-hour drive across my district at 75 miles an hour, we have got 
almost 60,000 square miles, it is a very large district, and we have 
not too much access to health care, but the access that we do have was 
reimbursed at a different rate.
  As a physician, you understand that the urban areas were given far 
greater reimbursement for the same treatment that would be received by 
a rural hospital. I campaigned saying that this inequity needed to be 
fixed. Much to my surprise, we fixed it in this bill. Rural hospitals 
receive 100 percent of the reimbursement that the urban hospitals 
receive because of the actions that we took in this bill.
  Another thing that I campaigned about, Mr. Speaker, was that our 
border hospitals are tagged with an expense to take care of the medical 
cost of immigrants who come to the border. Our immigration law says if 
they present themselves at the border with a medical problem, that the 
local hospital or the local county will take care of the problem.
  I am on the Mexico border. My district borders the Mexico border. And 
yet my rural hospitals tell me they have carried people in an ambulance 
to Denver, Colorado, had heart surgery for them, and when they were 
recovered, they had to go up in an ambulance, pick them up and take 
them back to the border. I will tell you that our country was not 
reimbursing at all the expenses that our border hospitals were having 
to be faced with. And this bill adds $1 billion into a pool of money to 
be shared by those hospitals which are currently being faced with those 
expenses.
  So for those two reasons, for rural areas and especially for my 
district, it was a good bill. But there are good things beyond that. 
One of the greatest complaints that I hear among my constituents is 
they do not like the prescription drug manufacturers. I think that they 
are just mostly upset with them. I think that they would do more than 
what we should. But we did ring the bell here in this bill for a 
prescription drug manufacturers. We did not want to choke all of the 
profits out from the drug manufacturers because the research and 
development is creating miracle drugs that are causing the fastest 
growing population group to be the over-100 population.
  The second fastest group that we have, the second fastest growing 
group is 85 to 100. These changes are brought about by prescription 
drug makers who make great products, but they were doing some things 
that we felt like we ought to ring the bell on, maybe bring them back.
  So we are in the Medicare bill bringing generics to the market much 
sooner. We also stopped the process of extending patents almost 
indefinitely to where now we give them patent protection for one period 
and we extend it for one period, but not the continual extensions that 
were being gotten before.
  Both of these actions serve to lower in the long run the cost of 
medications that we find in the country. And, of course, we know that 
that starting right now, everyone that is 150 percent the rate of 
poverty and below has access to the two drug cards this year and next 
year, which provides immediate cash relief.
  Mr. Speaker, this Medicare bill combined a lot of elements of reform, 
it combined elements of change for rural areas, it brought in the 
health savings account, it brought prescription drug coverage to those 
who most desperately need it who are having to choose between food and 
medicine. And I am telling this Chamber that this bill is good for 
people in this New Mexico.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess.)
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding.
  And the gentleman makes an excellent point that by speeding the 
availability of generic drugs, we are bringing down the cost of 
prescription drugs in this country. In other words, an important point 
that I failed to make in my initial comments is this program is 
entirely voluntary. No one is forced into this program. You do not have 
to buy prescription drug coverage. You do not have to change any aspect 
of Medicare. If you enjoy what you are doing today, it does not have to 
change for you.
  The gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) spoke about the cost of 
prescription drugs. And, Mr. Speaker, I want to again quote from the 
Washington periodical Roll Call, Mort Kondracke's column, again, not 
necessarily any friend of the Republican majority or the 
administration, but writing in Roll Call a couple of weeks ago, Mr. 
Kondracke said, ``Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards regularly attack drug 
companies for price gouging, neglecting to observe that it costs an 
average of $700 million to bring a new drug to market. They want, in 
effect, to impose price controls on drugs by allowing the government to 
negotiate with drug companies on behalf of the Medicare and Medicaid 
program and legalizing mass importation of drugs from Canada.''
  He goes on to say, Mr. Speaker, that Medicare does not negotiate with 
providers such as doctors and hospitals on reimbursement levels. I know 
this full well. I lived under Federal price controlled my entire 
professional life.
  Going back and quoting from the article, ``It imposes them and 
Congress often gets into the act of changing formulas.'' The reasons 
that drugs are cheaper in Canada and Europe is that governments there 
fix the prices based

[[Page H1069]]

on the production costs of new drugs, escaping participation in the 
astronomical cost of drug development.
  In other words, Mr. Speaker, our trade laws which should protect us 
from this type of activity, are, in fact, asking our poorest 
individuals, our seniors without prescription drug coverage, to foot 
the cost of research and development of life savings pharmaceuticals 
for the rest of the world. And that is wrong. And that is what needs to 
change, not how we handle reimportation of drugs at the border.
  Finally, I do want to, in the few minutes that are left, I want to 
address something else. We actually heard this this afternoon on the 
floor of the House from the individual on the other side of the aisle 
who was talking about health care, and was critical of the prescription 
drug plan passed by this Congress because of the cost of the 
prescription drug plan. $395 billion was the Congressional Budget 
Office estimate for 10 years. The White House Office of the Budget came 
back with a different figure that was some $500 billion over 10 years 
time. And that discrepancy has attracted a great deal of attention.
  Mr. Speaker, the fact remains that it is almost impossible to 
precisely fix what the cost of this drug program is going to be over 10 
years time. Chairman Thomas, when he brought the conference report to 
us last fall, admitted that there was no attempt on the Congressional 
Budget Office to factor in any cost savings in the Medicare program by 
virtue of the fact that we were treating illnesses in a more timely 
fashion and that we were bringing disease management, we were going to 
be more aggressive about preventative care in the new Medicare with the 
new Medicare Modernization Act.
  Mr. Speaker, in the few minutes, that are left I have to make this 
point. This House a year ago passed H.R. 5, which was the medical 
liability bill that would cap the medical liability awards for non-
economic damages, pain and suffering at $250,000. We actually did this 
back in my home State of Texas. And medical liability rates have fallen 
dramatically. But, more importantly, more importantly, when you look at 
the cost of defensive medicine in this country, and, in fact, that was 
looked at in a study at Stanford University in 1996. And these are 1996 
dollars, several years ago, the cost of defensive medicine for the 
Medicare program was estimated to be $50 billion a year.
  Mr. Speaker, if we are concerned about the cost of the prescription 
drug program, we could pay for it by our savings in defensive medicine 
if we could simply pass that medical liability bill that is stuck on 
the other side of the capital that we got through this House a year 
ago. We need to get that bill passed and get it to conference and get 
on about the business of reducing this high tariff, this high cost of 
defensive medicine in this country.
  Mr. Speaker, we have almost consumed a full hour of talk. And I just 
wanted to yield to my friend from New Mexico if he had any closing 
comments. I really appreciate his being here with me and staying in 
town late today so we could bring our good Republican message to the 
floor of this House, to the country at large. And I really appreciate 
him being here and helping me with this discussion this afternoon.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding one last 
time. Again, I want to talk in one sense if possible to say thanks to 
those people who work in our education establishment, those who are out 
there on the front lines of the education war, especially those success 
stories like Roswell High School in New Mexico. That is one of the 12 
break-through high schools in the Nation. I think that this kind of 
outcome is exactly what we had hoped for when No Child Left Behind was 
passed.
  If the administration in any school is dedicated to the changes that 
are allowed under No Child Left Behind, I believe that the program will 
be the success that each of our parents wants throughout the Nation.
  So thanks again to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) for 
yielding time to me today.

                          ____________________