[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 30, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H1715]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kline). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I came here tonight to talk about 
jobs and mismanagement of our budget and economy by the President, but 
we are going to have a moment's discussion on the previous speaker 
outlining the Medicare bill.
  The fact is the prescription drug, Medicare privatization bill is not 
working for seniors, and it begs the question, why is the 
administration spending 80 million of our tax dollars to advertise this 
bill to try to get seniors convinced that this law works, and it does 
not even go into effect until 2006? The President has made a decision 
to spend 80 million tax dollars, instead of putting it into a drug 
benefit, spend 80 million tax dollars to convince people that this new 
drug law, this new Medicare privatization law is good for the public, 
when, in fact, the Medicare privatization bill increases the profits 
for drug companies in this country by almost $180 billion; and this 
drug bill, this privatization bill gives a direct subsidy of tax 
dollars to insurance companies to Medicare HMOs of $46 billion.
  The reason the bill is not popular, the reason the law is not going 
to work is it was written by the drug and insurance industries. Why did 
the drug and insurance industries write the bill? Why did the President 
allow the drug companies and the insurance companies into the Oval 
Office to write this privatization bill? Frankly, because of major 
political contributions from the drug companies and the insurance 
companies to President Bush and to Republican leadership.
  The word on the street in this town is that the drug companies are 
going to give $100 million to President Bush's reelection. If that does 
not tell you something about this drug bill, this Medicare 
privatization bill, it speaks volumes.


   Jobs and Mismanagement of the Budget and Economy by the President

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, to shift gears for a moment, Vice 
President Cheney came to my State, to Dayton, Ohio, to defend the 
President's economic record. In Ohio, one out of six manufacturing jobs 
has been lost since President Bush took office; 300,000 people in Ohio 
have lost their jobs. That is 2,000 people every week. That is 260 
Ohioans have lost their jobs every day since President Bush took the 
oath of office on January 20, 2001.
  The response to this bad news from the President and the Vice 
President, who seem so out of touch, do not seem to understand people's 
anxieties, people's fears, people's difficulties when they lose their 
jobs, their answer is always more tax cuts for the most privileged 
people in society, the 1 percent richest people, hoping the tax cuts 
will trickle down and help the rest of the country and more trade 
agreements that send jobs overseas.
  Mr. Speaker, I would hope that instead of Vice President Cheney going 
to a fundraiser in Dayton, like he did, and then trying to defend the 
Bush economic plan, pretty indefensible, difficult thing to do, I wish 
the Vice President would have been with me in Akron, about 3 weeks ago 
in my district, meeting with a group of mostly Republican business 
owners, machine shop owners in Akron in Summit County, Ohio.
  Right before I spoke to these 60 owner/operators of small machine 
shops, tool and dye makers and others, a gentleman walked up and put 
this stack of fliers on my table, a little bit more than this actually. 
He said this is 1 month of fliers that he has received from companies 
around the country that are going out of business. These are fire sale 
fliers from small businesses, manufacturers that are going out of 
business because of the Bush economic plan and because of the Bush 
budget.
  Let me just show you some of these. A company in Cleveland, Ohio, 
auction, going out of business; company in Norristown, Pennsylvania, 
public auction; public auction company in Nashua, New Hampshire; 
machine tool auction, Tipp City, north of Dayton, Ohio; facility 
closed, all must go, Medina, Ohio; absolute auction, Cuyahoga Falls, 
Ohio, everything must go; plant closed, everything sells, Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania; Marion, Ohio, complete shop close-out action; high-tech 
manufacturing plant closeout, Elk Grove, Illinois, near Chicago; large-
capacity fabricating machine shop closing, Bingham, Massachusetts; 
precision shop, CNC job shop downsizing, Houston, Texas, President's 
own State; complete stamping and machine tool shops, two of them going 
out of business, Mansfield, Ohio, the community I grew up in; public 
auction, Charlotte, North Carolina, everything must sell, plant closes; 
South El Monte, California, facility closing; public auction, Newark, 
New York. One thing after another.
  The President does not get it. We should extend unemployment 
benefits. We should pass the bipartisan Crane-Rangel bill, which will 
give incentives, not the way the President does to all large companies 
including those that are moving out of the country, but those that 
provide jobs in the United States of America. This simply cannot keep 
happening in our country.

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