[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 17, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1219-H1225]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BILL
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rogers of Alabama). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Pallone) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, an international
consulting firm that specializes in monitoring the pharmaceutical
industry released a report that showed that prescription drug spending
in the United States rose 11 percent last year, and Mr. Speaker, I have
heard President Bush plans to highlight his health care achievements
this week, and undoubtedly he will boast about the passage of his
prescription drug legislation.
However, Mr. Speaker, seniors have already done the math and realize
that the President's law will not help them with the ever-increasing
costs of their prescription drugs.
Just consider, a senior who now spends $1,000 a year on prescription
drugs will end up paying at least $857 a year under the law passed by
the Republican majority here in the House and signed into law by the
President. Seniors with bills of $5,000 a year will still pay at least
$3,920 under the Republican law. I do not understand how the President
can tout this law as helpful to seniors when you look at those
statistics.
The trouble is that both the House Republican leadership and the
President are having a difficult time selling this bad prescription
drug law to seniors. Back when we were about to vote on this bill last
year, the President was having a difficult time selling the plan to
some of my fellow Republican colleagues right here on the House floor.
In order to overcome the skepticism that not only most of the Democrats
but even some of the Republicans had, President Bush and his
administration got involved in some questionable activities that
continue today.
Now, these activities are outlined in an editorial yesterday in the
New York Times which was titled ``The Actuary and the Actor,'' and I do
not like to read the entire editorial usually in the newspaper, but I
have to this evening, Mr. Speaker, because I just think that this New
York Times editorial says it all, about how this administration is
essentially misleading the public with regard to this Medicare bill,
just like they misled many of my colleagues on the Republican side who
ended up voting for the bill that night when we sat here for almost 3
hours before the voting was closed.
The New York Times editorial is as follows: ``An Orwellian taint is
emerging in the Bush administration's big victory last year in wringing
the Medicare prescription drug subsidy from a balky Congress. The plan
is being sold to the public through propagandistic ads disguised as TV
news reports, and it turns out the government's top Medicare actuary
was muzzled by superiors during the debate about the program's price
tag.
``Richard Foster, one of the government's foremost Medicare experts,
says
[[Page H1220]]
he was ordered not to provide requested information to Congress last
fall when doubts were being raised about the drug benefit's cost. The
administration denies this, but a ranking former official has confirmed
Mr. Foster's story. As the bill was being considered, Mr. Foster
privately cautioned that its cost could amount to as much as $600
billion, while the White House publicly stuck to the Congressional
Budget Office figure of $400 billion over 10 years. The administration
eventually conceded a cost of $534 billion, but only after the bill was
safely signed into law.
``With program in hand, the administration then attempted to rally
support, and take political credit, with government-produced TV ads
masquerading as news reports. Actors were hired by the Department of
Health and Human Services to pose as television journalists purveying
faux upbeat `news' segments about the expanded Medicare coverage.''
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that was with
taxpayer dollars that was done. Is that correct?
Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate the gentleman bringing it up. It is 100
percent paid for with taxpayer dollars, and these taxpayer dollars are
being used to pay for these videos and these advertisements.
This is a continuation of the New York Times editorial: ``Actors were
hired by the Department of Health and Human Services to pose as
television journalists purveying faux upbeat `news' segments about the
expanded Medicare coverage. The hope is that TV stations will air them
as their own. In one version, anchors are offered a script in which
they promise that `reporter Karen Ryan,' an actress, will explain the
details of the new drug plan.
``This sleight of hand openly deepens doubts about White House
credibility on a complex issue. The public deserves straightforward
information about the changes in Medicare, and Federal agencies should
not be engaging in political spin. This is no way to run a democracy
nourished by information and taxpayers' money.''
Now, again, I am just reading my colleagues the editorial of the New
York Times. As my colleague from Ohio (Mr. Brown) mentioned, this is
taxpayers' money. This is not political campaign ads on behalf of the
President's reelection. These are taxpayer funds.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to
yield, I think one of the fundamental questions here, and I appreciate
the gentleman from New Jersey's (Mr. Pallone) leading this special
order tonight and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) being
here, and the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), all of whom have been
very involved in this Medicare issue.
I think there are two questions. One is how can you justify taxpayer
dollars being spent on an ad campaign in such a politically charged
issue? Second, when the Medicare benefit does not even go into effect
for 2 years so that you are running these ads at taxpayer expense
during the Presidential election year, informing the voters and the
beneficiaries of something that is 2 years away.
I think the second question to ask is, why are they having so much
trouble convincing the public the Medicare bill is a great bill? The
fact is the public is not biting. The public understands intuitively,
the seniors overwhelmingly, and I think people of all ages
overwhelmingly, understand that George Bush and the Republican
leadership have sat down with the drug industry and sat down with the
insurance industry, and they went into the Oval Office, and they came
into this Chamber, the drug and insurance industry, and they wrote this
legislation.
A $400 billion, they told us, bill, $139 billion of that goes to
increased profits or the drug industry. Another $14 billion of our tax
dollars goes to the insurance industry. It is just clear this is
another example of President Bush's very close allegiance to the drug
industry and the insurance industry.
The word on the street in Washington is the President is going to get
$100 million from the drug industry for his campaign. The drug industry
loves this President. They have gotten everything they want from this
President, and you can bet if that $100 million from the prescription
drug industry goes to President Bush, that is one of the reasons
seniors in this country are paying such a high price. No wonder it is
darn near impossible to convince seniors that they got a good deal with
this drug bill.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, if I could just interrupt for a second,
what happens from my experience is when I go to the senior centers in
my district and I talk to the seniors, I do not have to say anything
because essentially they have already figured it out. You know how it
is. Senior citizens look at everything. They read all the material, and
many of them just tell me they have calculated this is a voluntary
program, it does not take effect for another 2 years, very much aware
of the fact that it is not going to help them for the next 2 years.
They just see it as a political ploy to get through the next election.
Then when they actually sit down and figure out how much they have to
pay out of pocket versus what they are going to get in terms of
benefit, they say, Why would I sign up for it? It is essentially a
volunteer program. You do not have to sign up for it.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would posit that this is a great example
of waste, fraud and abuse being perpetrated by this administration in
trying to sell a pig in the poke to senior citizens who are not buying
it, and it is waste, fraud and abuse in its most classical sense for at
least three reasons.
Number one, it is not working. Seniors listen to this and almost
laugh at it. I was at a meeting put on by the local chapter of the AARP
in Edmonds, Washington last week, and there were about 150 seniors
there, 150 seniors who had listened to this ``gobbledy-gook'' put out
by the administration, trying to sell this ad to them. Not one single
person out of 150 seniors, not the lobbyists who they hire, but the
real seniors who supposedly need to depend on real coverage, not one
person bought this as a decent plan for them. And I have got to tell
you, there was fire and vigor and youthfulness in that room because
they were so angry at the government trying to sell them this wasted
opportunity. So first thing is the waste, because it is not going to
work, because seniors are not going to buy it.
Second, it clearly is propaganda. I think the GAO has looked at this,
General Accounting Office, and they cited several omissions, at least
in the charitable sense of the term, of these advertisements not
telling seniors what the real deal is; which is, number one, left out
the fact they conveniently forgot that this legislation prohibited
Uncle Sam from trying to try to get better drug prices for seniors,
prohibited seniors from getting drugs from Canada, prohibiting
reimportation in a safe way. Somehow they conveniently forgot that. It
is waste because it is propaganda.
The third is it is simply not true. Let me tell you, it seems like
every week we hear about another abuse of governmental power here. But
let me tell you about one I heard about just yesterday, and that was
that this administration is sending out deliberately phony alleged
videos that purport to be news accounts from news reporters which, in
fact, were paid models and actors who were faking like they were doing
a news conference. Now if that is not an abuse of government authority,
I do not know what is. Right now, the General Accounting Office lawyers
are investigating this abuse and I think they are going to find a
violation. I will tell you why.
This administration hired actors to pose as people. One of the people
they hired, actors, who at the ending of this video that the
administration is using our taxpayer dollars to send this around to all
these local news stations around the country, and at the end they have
this actor who says, ``In Washington, I am Karen Ryan reporting.''
Turns out she was just an actor on the take, paid for by this
administration with our hard-earned dollars. It is a fraud. It is a
fake. It is being investigated, and the administration should be
ashamed of itself, not only for the substance of this bill which is
insulting enough to seniors, but then they pay
[[Page H1221]]
these people to fake seniors, to think there is cheering mobs out
there. They pay these people to clap for this thing when we go out and
talk to real seniors that I know think it is a bunch of garbage,
politely speaking.
So this is a perfect incidence of waste, fraud and abuse that I wish
my Republican colleagues would write letters to the White House and
tell them to knock it off because it is our taxpayers dollars that are
being wasted here, and it is not going to work.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what you said, and I just
wanted to go briefly, and then I would like to yield to the gentleman
from Maine, back to this story with Richard Foster who was the actuary
who was basically told, do not reveal the true cost of this Medicare
bill, because I think we have to mention that on the night when this
bill was passed, and you will all remember, we were here in the House
Chamber.
It was about 3 o'clock when the votes were first posted and the bill
was defeated. The majority had voted ``no'' on the bill because they
knew that it was basically worthless. And there is no question in my
mind that if the Republicans who were wavering that night, and their
arms had to be twisted and there were all kinds of things being done by
the President and the administration to try to get people to change
their votes, that if they had known what Foster knew and was told not
to tell us, that the actual cost of this was not $400 billion over 10
years, which was what was in the budget, but $600 billion, essentially
50 percent more, there was no way that bill would have passed.
So this is a fraudulent effort to deny the true cost of the bill to
the Congress to get those votes for the bill, and even with all that,
it was almost impossible. If they had not twisted arms and basically
bribed a couple of people that night, they still would not have gotten
the votes. That is why the Richard Foster story is so important. That
is why I think he has to be commended for coming forward and telling
the truth, even at this late date.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Maine.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for
leading this Special Order. And the case of Richard Foster, though his
name may not yet be a household word, is one that needs some review. It
is an example of what we have tried to explain to people, that the
legislative process in this Chamber, the democratic process in this
Chamber, has been corrupted by special interests. And those are strong
words, but there are no kind words that fit what the Republican
majority is doing in this House.
So let us just for the moment look at the case of Richard Foster.
Back in June 2003, when the Medicare bill first came to the floor of
this House, it came with a CBO, Congressional Budget Office, assessment
that the cost would be $395 billion over 10 years. At that very time,
the chief Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, had done a number of
scenarios, all of which showed that the cost of the bill would be
somewhere between $500 billion and $600 billion. He settled on around
$550 billion.
He never told any Member of Congress what that projection showed. And
why did he not tell any Member of Congress? Because his boss, Tom
Scully, the head of Medicare for this country, told Richard Foster that
if he told Members of Congress what his numbers showed, that it would
cost $550 billion and not $400 billion, he, Tom Scully, would fire
Richard Foster.
{time} 2245
So here you have the chief Medicare actuary, under an ethical
obligation, at least, to convey to the Congress of the United States
information about what the Medicare law was likely to cost, and he
could not say it because he would be fired.
Well, now look what has happened. The bill comes back in the fall and
we have the long night, the 3-hour vote held open. And the process had
been corrupted before that because Democratic Members from the House
had been appointed to the conference committee, they were not allowed
in the room. They were not allowed to attend the conference to which
they had been appointed because the Republican chair of the conference
would not let them in.
Now, if you try to explain this to people back home who read their
textbooks about how American democracy is supposed to work, they do not
believe you. They cannot believe that one party here, that the majority
party would simply shut down the legislative process, would withhold
information, would manipulate information.
And it continues today, because now that bill has become a law by the
narrowest of margins, a bill which would not have passed if the truth
had been told about its projected cost.
Now what happens? Well, Health and Human Services goes out and runs
TV ads. Many people have seen them. They say same Medicare, better
benefits. And it is not true. We are witnessing a concerted effort by
the administration, in close collaboration with the insurance industry
and the pharmaceutical industry, to move 35 percent of Medicare
beneficiaries out of the fee-for-service plan they have today into
private insurance.
And why is private insurance such a problem? Well, it costs more. It
costs a lot more. And Members on the other side of the aisle have come
down into the well here and they have said Medicare is in financial
difficulty, that we need to do something; and what we need are private
insurance companies to take it over.
Well, nobody in Maine has ever said to me, you know, I am willing to
give up my choice of doctors and hospitals, which I have under
traditional Medicare, and what I really want is a choice of insurance
plans. Send me those brochures. Send me those insurance agents. That is
the way to take care of our health care for seniors. Nobody has ever
said that.
The latest projections are that the insurance companies will need to
be paid 20 percent more than it costs today to deliver health care to
the average Medicare beneficiary. A 20 percent bonus. A 20 percent
overpayment to the second biggest lobby here in Washington.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield.
Mr. ALLEN. I would be glad to yield.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I think it is intriguing what the
gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) is saying about the whole Medicare
structure and how my friends on the other side of the aisle and
President Bush, in large part at the behest of the insurance industry,
which sees huge profits in this Medicare bill, say that they want to
privatize it.
One of the most important facts about Medicare public versus a
private insurance HMO Medicare is administrative costs. Traditional
Medicare, the Medicare that we know, that 85 percent of America's
seniors are enrolled in, has about 2 percent administrative costs,
while private insurance has administrative costs averaging between 15
and 20 percent.
So no wonder if we have privatized Medicare, it will cost taxpayers
more, yet Medicare beneficiary seniors will actually get less.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to finish right now with a
couple of comparisons.
The $80 million that Health and Human Services is going to spend to
advertise this law, which does not take effect until January 2006, and
Secretary Thompson made it clear why he was doing it, he said because
there is too much criticism of the law. People do not understand that
it is really the same Medicare. Of course, the author of the law in the
House was quoted on television as saying, ``To those who say this bill
will destroy Medicare as we know it, my answer is, I certainly hope
so.'' He has made it clear his goal is to destroy Medicare as we know
it.
But I wanted just to finish up with this: $80 million in advertising
to the American people. $80 million. Guess how much the President
proposes to cut out of rural health care? One-half that amount, $39
million. We cannot afford $39 million to improve rural health care, but
we can spend $80 million just to advertise a flawed Medicare bill to
the American public.
The $80 million is more than the $58 million which the incoming FDA
commissioner, Lester Crawford, says would be needed to establish a drug
reimportation plan. So in other words, we are going to spend, according
to the Bush administration, $80 million to run
[[Page H1222]]
TV ads to help his reelection campaign out of the Federal Government,
to promote a bill that is flawed, $80 million to do that, when we could
spend $58 million and establish a reimportation plan that would allow
seniors to buy their drugs from Canada without interference, and that
would reduce their present drug prices dramatically.
Those are the priorities of this administration and the Republican
Congress. And I do not know of anyone in my State of Maine who says
those are the right priorities for the country.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments; and
before I yield to the gentleman from Washington, I just wanted to say
when I was listening to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and
his statement about Republican abuse of power, that is essentially what
this is. This is an abuse of power by the President and by the
Republicans in the Congress.
And when I listened to my colleague from Maine and he talked about
how the Medicare administrator, Tom Scully, had basically threatened
Richard Foster that if he told the truth about the numbers that he
would be fired, what the gentleman did not mention and I will add, is,
of course, what happened to Tom Scully. Tom Scully during all this,
while this Medicare legislation was moving in committee and moving in
the House, was negotiating to get a job, which he ultimately got, with
the law firm that represents the pharmaceutical industry. He actually
got a waiver from the President that allowed him to negotiate for the
job.
Normally, the agency rules that he worked for say that you cannot go
out and seek a job and try to find yourself a job while you are still
in the agency working on this legislation. So the abuse is just
unbelievable, and the fact that he got the waiver and everything.
Mr. ALLEN. If the gentleman would yield just for a moment, Mr.
Speaker.
There is one other finish to this story. We are not sitting here on
the Democratic sides of the aisle making all this up. Yesterday,
Secretary Thompson initiated an investigation into these facts: that
Richard Foster was threatened with being fired if he disclosed the true
cost of the Medicare bill. So now Health and Human Services itself is
investigating what clearly, at least to my mind, was an ethical and
perhaps a legal breach by this administration, but one that clearly was
absolutely essential, absolutely essential to getting the Medicare bill
to become the Medicare law.
Here again, we see a kind of distortion and misrepresentation of
information that really has no place in the House of Representatives.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I
believe it is very important we bring this issue to the American
people. Because in this election, the issue on which the people have to
decide is if there is anything that comes out of the White House that
they believe. Is there anything that comes out of the administration,
anything, they can believe.
On weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda and all
the reasons why we went to war in Iraq, it is clear they made it all
up. Now we come to the domestic side of things; and I sit on the
Committee on Ways and Means, and Secretary Thompson comes before us and
admits that when they did a study on the inequities of health in this
country, that they rewrote it because they did not like the way it came
out. The Secretary said, well, we are going to change that. The next
thing we know, the same person is calling for an investigation of his
own Department on the issue of the actuary hiding the figures from the
Congress.
This is the gang that cannot shoot straight. They cannot tell the
truth about anything. Because if they told the truth about anything,
they would have to change the way they act. They could not give all
this money away in tax breaks. They would have to pay for the programs
that they tell the people they are giving them.
Now, I had a very interesting experience over the weekend, and I
suspect some Members will have the same experience this weekend. I went
back to Seattle and had a community meeting in a retirement home with
about 100 or 125 people there, and I showed them a video which has been
made by the Families USA about the whole issue of the drug issue. Mr.
Walter Cronkite is the narrator. Now, everybody knows Walter Cronkite.
He is so believable and has so much integrity, he could tell you the
sun was going to come up in the West and you would almost think it was
going to because he is so believable.
Well, these 125 people, and this is an old people's home, where
probably most everybody is 70 or older. So we are talking about people
who are real senior citizens. They sat there and they listened to this,
and they could not believe the things that are in this thing that have
never come out.
So, then, we talked about these advertising statements they had been
seeing on television. They said those television ads are not right,
they are not telling us the truth, if Walter Cronkite says that, that
we are not going to get any help until 2006, and that this drug card
they are coming out with is a hoax of the first order.
These are people who some were school teachers or business people or
whatever who are retired. They are now in their 70s or 80s. One of them
said, you know, that drug card, I think we ought to boycott that drug
card. I do not think we should even bother taking it. Why would I go
and choose a card and they give me a list, and they say, now, these are
the drugs that this card covers, and I pay $30 for it; and then after I
got the card in my pocket, I am locked in for a year and they can take
the drugs off the list.
The seniors were incredulous that this administration was trying to
run some kind of game on them. I said to them, the reason you are going
to get this card on the first of April is so you will have it in your
hands when you go to vote in November. They want you to believe you
have got something from them. But do not believe there is anything in
that card. There is nothing guaranteed except that you have been sold a
piece of paper for $30.
And these people said, what can we do to fix this, or what can we do
to stop this? Do you think there will be some change in this Congress?
I said, look, we are having an election year. Nothing in here is going
to be good public policy. It is all going to be about convincing the
American people that the Republicans have done everything good for
them. And this drug card and this pharmaceutical bill is simply the
worst of the examples, but there are all kinds of others.
The video by Mr. Cronkite shows the donut hole. You could hear the
audience gasp when they realized that they were going to go for a long
period of time, have to pay a premium and have no benefits. They could
not believe that. And the donut hole does not stay the same. It grows.
Every year it gets larger.
Finally, the crowning blow of it is what they discovered. They said,
you mean when we pay this once, up to $5,100, or whatever, that we have
to do it again the next year? You mean this happens every year to us?
We fall into the donut hole every year? I said, yes. I said if that is
what you want for public policy as senior citizens, then you ought to
vote Mr. Bush back in, but I think it is a terrible hoax.
And if Members of Congress have the smarts to go out and show this
video, they will have turned the whole thing around. Because these
seniors watch TV, and they are being a little bit affected by those
phony ads.
As I was coming over here, I was listening to my car radio. The
Department admitted that they had put those out as fake news reports.
They taped them in such a way that they knew if they were picked up
just as they were taped, they would look like a news report.
{time} 2300
They planned to fake the old folks out.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, it is incredible to me. The whole idea was
to take this video with the actors and hope a station would use it and
think it was the real thing.
Mr. McDERMOTT. They did it, and Fox News and all of the rest of these
phony news stations picked it up and put it out there as though it was
real. There is nothing real about this administration. They have
misrepresented from the Iraq war all of the way through, the economy,
the deficit, all
[[Page H1223]]
these things are all predicated on misrepresentations. I try not to use
the word ``lie,'' but they have certainly misrepresented and tried to
delude the people. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and
some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the old
people all of the time, and they are going to pay in this election for
having tried to run this game on old people.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman taking the time to be out
here at 11 at night putting this program on together, because it
requires real dedication to come out here night after night and do
this, and I thank the gentleman for what he has done.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman pointed out to me, it is
only 8 p.m. in Seattle.
The other thing that I wanted to point out, we have talked about the
misrepresentation and the schemes, if you will, that were being played
the night when this was voted. And, of course, the numbers being wrong
was certainly one of them. But one of the things was that after the
vote occurred at 3 a.m. and the board was left open, and there was a
majority against the bill, and we went on for 3 hours when the
President and Republican majority tried to change Republican votes, one
of the people whose vote they tried to change was the gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Smith). And we heard very credible accounts from the
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) and others about the chicanery that
was going on, statements being made to him about since he was retiring,
his son would never get to succeed him in Congress if he did not switch
his vote because the money would not be there by the Republican Party
to finance his campaign.
I just wanted to mention today it was announced that the House
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is going to investigate
these allegations that were made in that regard. Until today, they had
refused to take up the issue. However, they did announce today that
they were going to take up the issue. I do not know what the outcome is
going to be.
If we think about the way that they got Members to change votes that
night and the misinformation provided about how much it was going to
cost and now all of these ads being paid for by the taxpayers to
convince people this is a good bill, it is just a barrage of
misinformation.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today was the second shoe. The first shoe
was Mr. Foster saying, I had the figures and they told me they would
fire me if I gave the figures. Then we find out with the phony figures
out here, they still could not get enough votes until they twisted some
guy's arm into a pretzel. I think it is very important that the
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is looking at this issue.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it needs to be said, too, that our colleague
who made the assertion that he had been offered essentially a $100,000
bribe or something akin to that to his son's election campaign was a
Republican. This was a Republican Member, a colleague, who made this
assertion, and that is why it is important to find out what happened in
the situation.
But I will tell Members why I am here at 11 at night and that is
there is such a growing pattern of a corruption of democracy here in
the Chamber that I have great respect for, the House of
Representatives, the people's House. I am a relatively new Member to
this Chamber, and it is troublesome to me and I can tell Members it is
getting very troublesome to my constituents when they hear this
repeated consistent drum beat of a corruption of the democratic
process.
It is not just one thing. It is the fact they do not let Members read
the bill before they vote on it, which my people believe is a
corruption of the democratic process, which happened in the Medicare
bill. It is the fact that when they lose, they leave the time open for
3 hours to try to break arms, like the Russians did in the Olympic
Games in the 1960s when we won the game and the Russian official just
put another several seconds up on the clock. My people believe that is
a corruption of the democratic process. And then during that 3 hours,
according to a Republican colleague, he was offered a $100,000 bribe
essentially to change his vote, which he had the moral integrity not to
do, by the way, and remained a ``no'' vote solidly because he believed,
I suspect, this is a bad bill, as we do. This is a pattern, and it is
not just isolated to the Medicare bill.
Let me tell Members about another couple of problems that trouble me.
I serve on the Committee on Resources, and we had the Department of
Agriculture people. They supervise our national forests. We found out
due to some diligence of an investigative reporter, that of our hard-
earned taxpayer money, this administration has spent almost $100,000
hiring a public relations firm to try to spin the public into accepting
a forest plan that would allow more old-growth trees to be cut, which
is against public sentiment in the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky
Mountains, and this PR firm advised the Department of Agriculture to
keep it secret. It did not want the public to find out that they had
spent $100,000 to spin the public. Their memo is a classic. He said we
cannot tell the public because this is, quote, ``a matter of
perception.'' We should not be spending $100,000 to create
misperceptions or worry about perceptions. We ought to give the public
the straight scope.
That is not the only one. The Department of the Interior, I picked up
The Washington Post and I see we have an investigation going on at the
Department of the Interior of a gentleman who works for the Department
of the Interior, who, on repeated occasions, essentially was associated
with beneficial decisions for his former clients in the oil and gas
industry to open up methane wells in Wyoming and in the Rocky Mountains
when he was specifically ordered not to do it.
Time after time, we are finding incidents where common sense and good
practices of democracies are being violated.
Let me go back to a fundamental tenet. We have disagreements in this
Chamber, and our constituents have disagreements. They disagree on a
lot of things and it is not unexpected that we would have disagreements
about matters of great import. But Americans ought to be able to expect
at least one thing from the administration and from the President: That
is the truth. Even if they may disagree with it, they are entitled to
the truth in exchange for paying their taxes, and they have not got it,
repeatedly. I want to go down a list of some of those things.
The President's administration told the American public and the U.S.
Congress that the Medicare bill would cost about $460 billion. That was
false; and more importantly, it was false and known to be false by this
administration. To add insult to injury, not only was it known to be
false, they ordered their own actuary to refuse to disclose this
information to Congress. It is one thing to commit the sin of untruth
and falsehood, it is a second sin to cover it up, which they have tried
to do. That is falsehood number one.
Number two, they used taxpayer money to phony up these videos, acting
like it is a news report, saying it is a news reporter reporting live,
Sally Smith or whatever her name was, hiring actors to act like they
liked the Medicare bill; and seniors all over the country are rejecting
this Medicare bill. They want to hire actors. It is a falsehood to do
that, and they did this consciously. They cannot do that by negligence
or mistake. They made a decision. Somebody who works for the President
of the United States said, I am going to hire an actor to fake out the
seniors of this country, consciously, intentionally, and it is wrong.
Mr. PALLONE. And at taxpayers' expense.
Mr. INSLEE. And third, they told us their tax cuts were going to
result in large surplus. We were going to have surpluses as far as the
eye could see. They cut taxes wildly for the upper class. We now have
the largest deficit in American history. That is falsehood number
three, and they keep making the same mistake.
{time} 2310
Fourth, and to me a series that I want to go through, because it is
one thing to give falsehoods to Americans when it is about money, it is
another thing to give falsehoods to Americans from the executive branch
of this country sworn to defend the Constitution and the United States
of America when it jeopardizes and takes the lives of Americans.
[[Page H1224]]
I just want to read some quotes that I think we need an accounting of
and some responsibility from this administration. On March 17, 2003,
the President of the United States told the American people, and I
quote, ``Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no
doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the
most lethal weapons ever devised.'' That is a direct quote. It was
false. Of all the information that we have gathered after hundreds of
millions of dollars, the best evidence we have is that statement by the
President of the United States, ``it leaves no doubt.'' America
deserves an answer why the President of the United States told
Americans that there was no doubt when the facts were at least there
was significant doubt as reported by multiple intelligence agencies and
the facts have come to bear that multiple statements by this
administration were false and as a result of that Americans paid the
ultimate sacrifice, one of whose family I visited this weekend whose
children will never see their father again who died in the Tigris River
trying to save an Iraqi policeman while serving in the United States
Army. That family and the other 500 families and the other over 3,000
families of our wounded GIs and Marines and other proud service men and
women deserve the truth, and they deserve to know why they did not get
it.
On August 2, 2002, the Vice President of the United States, while
talking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a group that deserves the
truth after their proud service to this country, said, ``Simply stated,
there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass
destruction.'' That statement was false. According to the best
information we have after hundreds of millions of dollars spent
searching for these weapons, that statement was false. Americans who
served in Iraq deserve to know why that happened. We do not know why
that happened. It may have been a failure of intelligence. Our
intelligence agencies may have overstated the threat. They may have
left out caveats in their report to the White House. Somebody in the
political machinery may have stretched, exaggerated, spun; we do not
know what happened and why those statements that were made were so
grievously in error that cost American lives, but we deserve an answer
and this Chamber deserves an answer.
On January 28, 2003, during his State of the Union address in this
Chamber to us, the President stated, ``The British Government has
learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has
attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear
weapons production.'' That statement was false. Americans deserve to
know the exact circumstances that led to that falsehood being given to
them leading to this war.
On March 16, 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney on an interview with
NBC's ``Meet the Press'' said, referring to weapons of mass
destruction, ``He had years to get good at it. We know that he has been
absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons and we believe
he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.'' To our knowledge that
statement was false.
On January 9, 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stated, ``We
know for a fact that there are weapons there,'' referring to weapons of
mass destruction. That statement was false.
On April 10, 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stated, ``But
make no mistake, as I said earlier, we have high confidence that they
have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and
it is about, and we have high confidence it will be found.'' That
statement may be correct in the sense that he may have had high
confidence. He may have had high confidence. But the underlying
statement was false. With all due respect, we are hopeful about the
people of Iraq; but this war was based on false information, and
Americans deserve to know why they did not get the straight scoop about
this situation.
On September 19, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated,
``No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the
security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime
of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.''
People have been saying that, well, gee, the administration is now
telling us that we did not mean to actually make Americans worried by
saying this was an immediate threat. But, in fact, the Secretary of
Defense gave reference to an immediate threat with his own language,
and on multiple occasions they have continued to make that statement.
When White House communications director Dan Bartlett was asked if
Saddam Hussein on January 26, 2003, was ``an imminent threat to the
United States,'' he stated, ``Well, of course he is.'' This is repeated
references, and we have page after page after page of statements that
were false. Again, I want to repeat. The people who made these
statements may have believed that they were true at the time they were
making them. We do not know that. I do not know that. I like to give
people the benefit of the doubt. But when this country has suffered the
loss of over 500 of its sons and daughters and wives and husbands and
fathers and mothers, this Chamber owes it to the United States of
America to get to the absolute bottom of who is responsible for these
multiple falsehoods on multiple occasions with absolutely no
contrition, accountability, or responsibility.
No one has lost their job over this false information except one disc
jockey. Maybe it was not a disc jockey. He was a person who was
involved in political discourse. Where is the accountability? Where is
the personal responsibility for these falsehoods? Where is the smallest
discipline of anyone for giving Americans false information leading to
the deaths of over 500 Americans? Where are the changes of procedures?
Where is the joint committee in this Chamber? Where is the report of
the Congress? Where is the action from the Republican Party to help us
find out what happened here? It is missing in action. It is AWOL. With
all due respect to our intelligence committees, and they have been
doing some discussion of what is happening here, but it is sadly
lacking, the type of responsibility that we need to see taken, an
explanation of what happened to this information.
Let me make one suggestion when we do get to the bottom of this what
we are going to find. Let me tell you about a couple of things I have
found through my research. There was a statement by the administration,
frankly I cannot recall if it was the President or the Defense
Secretary that told Americans that Iraq had developed a drone aircraft
that was capable and intended to be able to spread biological and
chemical weapons, that could fly over America and spread these
horrendous materials over the United States of America. Obviously, that
is something we should be concerned about and we should do everything
we can to prevent. The problem is that the Air Force, the experts in
airplanes, had told the administration before they told Americans this
information, before they told Americans the information, that these
things were made out of balsa wood and almost duct tape and what they
were good for is maybe taking pictures. They were not meant for this
other nefarious purpose. They had that information and did not share it
with us because frankly there was a lot of doubt about this. There was
doubt about this. We cannot expect our intelligence service to be 100
percent, but they did not tell us that.
These aluminum tubes. The President of the United States in his State
of the Union address made reference to these aluminum tubes. He said
specifically, ``Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted
to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons
production.''
{time} 2320
In fact, before the President made that statement, one of our
agencies, and it was either the CIA or the Department of Energy, I
cannot remember which, had concluded that that was not what these
aluminum tubes were for. They were meant for other purposes.
If this was one misstatement, we would chalk it up to the fog of war
and the need to be responsible as we need to be in the war on
terrorism. But when it is a pattern, when it is a pattern of falsehood
that continues to be consistent in their approach to the Medicare bill
and the effort to clear-cut old-growth timber in the Sierra Nevada and
a whole host of issues, it is
[[Page H1225]]
responsible for Members of the House to come and blow the whistle on
this multiple corruption of the democratic process. And that is what we
are here to do.
Let me suggest there is a simple answer to some of these things,
these issues that we are calling for. If the President would really
initiate a thorough investigation of this, we could find out why this
information was false and why we found out. But do my colleagues know
what he did or his people did? When this mistake was found out about
this yellow cake in his State of the Union address, we found out that
his statement that they were trying to get yellow cake from Africa was
false, when the administration found out that was a falsehood, it was
pointed out by a gentleman named Joe Wilson, who was a former
ambassador who was sent by the CIA to Africa to find out whether this
assertion was true, and he concluded it was not and told the
administration it was not; and then the President went ahead, and
somebody gave it to him. I cannot believe he did it himself and put it
in the State of the Union address.
I am not faulting him for that specific failure. Somebody had to give
that misinformation. But when his administration found out there had
been a big mistake in the State of the Union address, one might think
he might want to thank the person who helped him correct publicly this
mistake because obviously none of us want to make any mistakes. We like
to make sure what we are saying is credible. Does the gentleman know
what the administration did? Instead, they tried to destroy the career
of a CIA agent, who was Joe Wilson's wife, by outing her to destroy a
citizen's career in public service who blew the whistle on this
corruption of the democratic process. And that is wrong.
And we are many months passed this issue, and the President of the
United States, the most powerful person in the Western World, cannot
find out who in his administration did that. I am not satisfied with
that. I am not satisfied unless the President picks up his phone and
says I want an answer by eight o'clock tomorrow morning who did this
because they are fired. And he has not done that. This is a pattern
that needs to be corrected.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to point out, and I know what
the gentleman is talking about, that the war and the loss of lives is
certainly more important, but we have the same thing here with Richard
Foster that we talked about earlier where he was basically told that if
he revealed the correct information about the cost of the Medicare
bill, he would be fired. And the irony of it is now there is a
statement which he made recently where he says that ``I'm perhaps no
longer in grave danger of being fired but there remains a strong
likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of
important technical information from key policymakers for political
reasons.'' So this poor guy who now basically came clean and explained
what happened, I do not know what his career is going to be like as
well, and it is just really tragic that this administration puts honest
people that want to be honest with the public in danger of being fired
or ultimately losing their jobs because they are just trying to be
honest and tell us the truth. And we are just seeing a pattern of this
continue with this administration in so many cases.
The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) used the word before when
he talked about abuse of power. That is essentially what we have here.
It is false information and the willingness of this administration to
essentially say whatever is necessary, the means justifies the ends, in
order for them to justify their ideology.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if I may, I suppose there are gray zones
about conduct, but when the U.S. Congress is debating something as
important as the Medicare prescription drug benefit and we are trying
to figure out how to finance it so this deficit does not continue and
the President knows that there are many people concerned about the cost
of this and a good American patriot, in the fulfillment of his
democratic responsibilities, figures out it is going to cost another
$160 billion than the President tells us it is going to cost, and he
tells the administration that and the White House and HHS and everybody
else and they tell him that may jeopardize our ability to win our
political battle and our political battle is more important than the
truth. Because that is what this boils down to. They reached a
conclusion here, and their conclusion is they are so smart and they are
so gifted and they are so special that they are more important than the
truth. Therefore, they ordered and they threatened to fire an American
who wanted to and would have shared the truth with Americans and this
Congress, Republicans and Democrats, because they concluded they were
more important than the truth.
And I just may add, I want to tip a hat to some of my Republican
colleagues here because we have Republican colleagues that are madder
than hops about this too because they were concerned about the cost of
this bill because we have a $500 billion deficit and we have a number
of our Republican colleagues who want to fix that problem. So they are
mad about this too. They are not quite as vocal as we are in this
context with their party member in the White House. But Republicans and
Democrats ought to agree on one thing, and that is let us get the facts
and the truth; then let us have our debate and let the chips fall where
they may, and we are just happy to have that debate. But it is time for
them to stop perverting the truth.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I agree. And it is important for us to
continue to point this out because again we had a situation where this
bill, which was a bad bill with prescription drugs, would not have
passed if the truth had come out. That is abundantly clear. In fact, I
cannot ever remember any legislation, and I have been here 16 years,
where we have a vote on a piece of legislation and there is an absolute
majority against it and we wait for 3 hours to try to change the vote.
It is different maybe if the board is opened and there are some people
who have not decided, but there was a majority against this bill, and
now we understand all the things that were going on to try to basically
make people change their minds about this.
I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for
yielding.
We are here to review today's proceedings relative to the resolution.
As the gentleman is well aware, there is a group of us, and we describe
ourselves as the Iraq Watch and we will be joined shortly by the
gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie), and of course the gentleman
from Washington State (Mr. Inslee) is an integral part of our
conversation. And I am sure that tomorrow morning there will be some
coverage of what occurred on the floor today because we did consider a
resolution that was put forth by the Republican majority without any
input of course from Democrats, as we talk about the process that has
become the norm here in the House. Unfortunately, it has become
exclusionary. And I think we can concur that that is indeed unfortunate
if we want to have an open and respectful debate. So during the course
of time, during the course of the debate, sometimes passions become
very fierce. But I think it is important to review this resolution
today for a variety of different reasons.
The resolution was about supporting troops and respecting their
professionalism and their courage. We all agree on that. It also
commended the Iraqi people for these early steps towards democracy.
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