Congressional Record, Volume 150 Issue 61 (Wednesday, May 5, 2004)

[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 61 (Wednesday, May 5, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H2636-H2642]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

THE ECONOMY

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words of my friend
from California (Ms. Waters) and her passion about what has happened in
Haiti and how our government has not been exactly on the right side of
that. Equally important, I want to say something about my friend from
California (Mr. Dreier) and his comments.
To try to make it sound like the Democrats and Senator Kerry want the
French and the German model, while he wants the red, white, blue
American model is just a bit much. We are all proud of the economic
growth. We are all proud of the freedoms of our country. We are all
proud of our strong environmental laws, our worker safety laws, our
laws to protect the public and the dynamic economy we have. No one is
arguing, nobody I know, John Kerry, anybody else is arguing we want the
French economy or we want to be Germany.
What we are arguing is that we can do better with this economy than
George Bush has done. We look back at the 1990s during Bill Clinton's 8
years and saw 25 million jobs created. We look at George Bush's 3\1/2\
years and see 3 million jobs lost, and we see a President who, during
his term, will be the first since Herbert Hoover that has expressed,
that has experienced a net loss of jobs.
I look at my State when I hear the gentleman from California (Mr.
Dreier) speaking about this incredible economy. Then I look at my
State, and we hope we had an economy like he was talking about. I do
not think very many places in this country, if any places, do have that
kind of economy, the picture he painted; but we know what we need to do
to make the economy better.
Instead, President Bush has used the same old tired bromides, tax
cuts for the wealthiest people in the society. If you make a million
dollars in a year under the Bush plan, you get a $20,000 tax cut. The
Republicans hope this tax cut will trickle down and create jobs. It
clearly has not worked. We lost 3 million jobs in the last 3\1/2\
years.
The second part of his economic plan over and over is let us do more
NAFTAs, let us do more trade agreements that continue to ship jobs
overseas, that outsource, that hemorrhage jobs to China and Mexico.
That clearly is not working, but I understand my friend from
California. I understand his viewpoint.
Members of Congress do not feel the anxiety that my constituents
feel. In my State, we have lost 177,000 manufacturing jobs. One out of
six manufacturing jobs in my State has simply disappeared during George
Bush's Presidency. Yet George Bush's answer continues to be more tax
cuts for the most privileged and continues to be trade agreements that
do not work and continues to be this ideological mission to give tax
cuts and say that automatically tax cuts to the wealthy automatically
create jobs. It simply has not worked.
What we need to do is extend unemployment benefits to the 1 million
Americans, fifty-some thousand Ohioans, whose benefits have expired
since January. We need to, instead of rewarding those companies that go
offshore and change their corporate headquarters to Bermuda so they can
avoid taxes and have continued to get various kinds of Federal
contracts, on-bid contracts in the case of Halliburton, and all of
that, we need to pass legislation that will actually give tax breaks to
those companies that stay in the United States and manufacture here.

{time} 2100

Several manufacturing companies from my State came to see me today.
They cannot believe we continue to give tax breaks to these big,
multinational corporations who ship jobs overseas, who outsource to
India, and we do not give any kind of tax incentives to American
manufacturers. I just wanted to say that in response to my friend from
California.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I know we are going to talk about
prescription drugs tonight, but I just want to say that I heard the
gentleman from California also, and he kept referencing France and
Germany and how their economies were not doing well and the U.S. was
doing so well. I do not know how he can make those comparisons because
I do not think the United States is doing well at all.
I saw an analysis yesterday in terms of what was happening to the
United States in terms of job losses as opposed to Canada, and it
showed dramatically that even though the Canadian economy is very
dependent on the U.S. economy, the Canadian economy actually increased
the number of jobs over the 4 years at the same time that jobs were
being lost here under President Bush's Presidency. It said the reason
was because in Canada, although they gave tax cuts, the tax cuts all
went to the middle class and working people, and those people basically
got that money and reinvested it and created more jobs, and it also
talked about how productivity in Canada and the United States increased
at about the same amount over the last 4 years, but in the United
States the profits from the increased productivity went to corporate
profit whereas in Canada, the increase in productivity was passed on to
workers in higher wages and they invested it and created more jobs.
The gentleman from California was comparing other countries, and he
did not mention Canada. The reality is if we look at the Canadian
experience in the last 4 years, it is the Republican policies in the
United States, huge tax cuts to the rich, taking the money from
increased productivity and giving it back in corporate profits and not
giving it to workers, this has resulted in a huge difference between
our two countries. We lose the jobs, and in Canada they increase the
number of jobs.
It is the President's policies which have caused these job losses. It
is not something that is inevitable, it is something that he has caused
with his Republican majority.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, tonight I am joined by the gentleman
from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen),
the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Strickland), and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) and I want
to talk about Medicare and the discount card program that has been
unveiled this week.
Enrollment began for the prescription drug discount card through the
Medicare bill passed last year. For some seniors in Ohio, this can mean
$600 in prescription drug benefits. On the surface that sounds good,
and we want seniors to look into these cards. If they can get any help,
that is a good thing.
However, the real story about the discount cards is found in the
details. The discount drug cards will further complicate an already
confusing process for America's seniors. Instead of implementing a
prescription drug benefit under one program, Medicare, the simplest,
cleanest and the deepest discount available and possible, which 40
million of America's seniors know and trust, the administration fought
on behalf of the insurance and the drug companies, who really wrote
this bill, the administration fought to create an unnecessarily complex
system that diverts money away from benefits and gives it to drug
companies, insurance

[[Page H2637]]

companies, and to these discount card companies that we will talk about
in a moment.
The big drug companies under this original $400 billion bill, the big
drug companies will profit an additional $150 billion from this bill,
and insurance companies will get $46 billion. The insurance companies
get a direct subsidy, a direct payment of my tax dollars and your tax
dollars directly into their pockets for this bill.
No wonder, considering the drug companies, we hear on the streets of
Washington, the drug companies are going to give $100 million to
President Bush's reelection. They have already given tens of millions.
No wonder the President wrote this bill so these companies benefited.
The drug card portion of the bill was in part crafted by friends of
the President, such as David Halbert, CEO of Advanced PCS, one of the
discount card companies, a man who set President Bush up in business
before he was President and before he was governor, around the time he
ran unsuccessfully for Congress, Mr. Halbert set President Bush up in
business and helped President Bush make his first million in an
unsuccessful oil company.
It is no surprise then that this system features 70 cards by 70
different private companies. It is a lot like the multiple HMO system
that my Republican friends are trying to foist on Medicare
beneficiaries. The gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) has said on the
House floor that seniors want a choice of doctors and hospitals and
prescription drugs, they do not want a choice of insurance agents or
fancy brochures or insurance companies. Unfortunately, what this
discount card does is give seniors a choice of a whole bunch of
discount cards, and it is almost impossible to figure out which one is
the best.
A senior in Akron in my district will have to research through 50
cards to find one that works. Under our plan, they could have used one
card. Under the Republican plan, they are going to have to go through
50 cards. They are going to have 50 cards that they need to sort
through. Let me see, I am taking Fosamax. This card covers Fosamax,
this card covers Vioxx, but this card covers Zoloft, but this card
covers Celebrex.
Why do they make this more confusing instead of allowing seniors one
card, one discount, one plan. Instead, the Republicans have 50 cards,
50 plans, 50 insurance companies, 50 mailings coming to their house, 50
insurance agents knocking on their doors representing 50 different
insurance companies. The answer is why would they choose this over
this? The answer is pretty obvious. It just might, and correct me if I
am wrong, I ask my friends from Washington and Ohio and Maine and New
Jersey, it might have something to do with the insurance industry, the
drug industry, and Mr. Halbert, CEO of Advanced PCS, that makes these
cards, it might have something to do with the fact that they gave lots
of money to President Bush's reelection.

We have all read in the paper that President Bush has set all kinds
of fund-raising records. One week it is 150, then he flies Air Force
One out to Cleveland or Portland or New Jersey or Washington State,
does a little bit of government business so he can charge it off to the
government, and then he does another fund-raiser and raises another $3
million. It just keeps going up, setting records every week. No wonder
he can raise $200 million when he does things like this instead of
doing it right.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).
Mr. STRICKLAND. Once a senior goes through all these cards and
finally reaches a decision, and that is going to be difficult to do,
once they reach a decision and select a particular card, they are stuck
with that card for an entire year. Yet the sponsors of that card every
7 days can either increase or reduce, but they are most likely to
increase the costs of the drugs that are a part of that card. And every
7 days, the sponsor of the card can change the medicine covered by that
card.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. So I look through these cards. I am a senior and I
decide Fosamax is here, and they also do Claritin and Zoloft, so I want
this card. I pay $30 and sign up for the whole year. And then Mr.
Halbert's company, if it is his card, he can change it, but I have to
stay with this card, is that how it works?
Mr. STRICKLAND. You can start out by getting a discount of 10
percent, and in 7 days that discount can be reduced down to 5 percent.
I ask the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) to clarify this, but,
for example, I am a senior citizen and I have high cholesterol, and I
take Lipitor to control my level of cholesterol. I sign up for a card
that has Lipitor as one of the medicines that is available under that
card, and I am stuck with that card for an entire year, but 2 weeks
after I sign up for that particular card, the card's sponsor decides
they are not going to provide Lipitor any longer for high cholesterol,
they may decide to provide Pravachol or some other drug, and I am left
without the ability to get the drug with a discount that my doctor says
I need.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I choose a card
and I get a decent discount, even though the price goes up 20 or 30
percent per year. So you are the card maker, you can both cut the
discount and you can take my drug off the discount card list totally?
Mr. STRICKLAND. Every 7 days, I am able to make those kinds of
changes in the level of discount and in the drugs that are actually
covered by that discount card, and yet the senior will be stuck with
that particular card for an entire year. So I am locked into one card
for an entire year, and the sponsor of that card has the ability to
make all of these changes and I am the victim. I am helpless to do
anything about it.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, everything the gentleman said is absolutely
true. I saw the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) show the variation
cards, and I think he has to make it clear, they are not getting all
those cards. They are just going to choose one.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. One card for $30.
Mr. PALLONE. Also, I do not know how the senior citizens will be able
to make a decision which card to use. They have a Web site and you can
go on that Website, and they will give you the different cards and tell
you what is covered and what the cost is going to be today, but a lot
of seniors are not just taking one drug, too. So they are supposed to
look through all these different cards and decide which is the best
based on the particular cost for the particular medicine or several
medicines at a given time, but there is no guarantee of anything. There
is no guarantee that discount is going to be there the next day because
it can be changed. My understanding is they have to provide some type
of drug like Lipitor, but they do not need to provide Lipitor.
Mr. STRICKLAND. They have to provide one drug in every class of
medications; but there are many medications that are prescribed for
high cholesterol. I can tell Members that I took one drug for high
cholesterol for over a year, and it did not control my cholesterol. It
was not until my physician changed my prescription that I was actually
to find control for my cholesterol level. That is an example of the
problems that seniors are likely to face.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio
(Mrs. Jones).
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Last year when my mother was very ill, she had to
get five prescriptions on her health care plan. I went to the
pharmacist to pick up these various drugs. Three were within the plan.
One cost $10, another $10 and another $11; but two were not within the
formulary and so one cost $263 for 30 days and the other cost $250.
Seniors can choose what prescription drug they will cover. So, for
example, my mother had congestive heart failure and kidney failure, and
her doctor prescribed some of the newest drugs treating those types of
conditions, but those drugs were not covered by the formulary;
therefore, they were paying significant dollars, and I anticipate that
will be the same problem for seniors.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, they are only comparing cards on this Web
site and the fact of the matter is if we look at any one of these
drugs, and I am going to use Lipitor. This is from the National
Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, what they did is
they not only posted the prices for

[[Page H2638]]

drug cards, but also what you can get at some drug companies like
cvs.com or drugstore.com or costco.com or what the price might be in a
Canadian drugstore.
Lipitor, for example, the cheapest is actually at drugstore.com. It
may very well be there is a card that is not even on the list that will
give a better discount, or you can get it online through one of the
other companies or drugstores that is offered online; and certainly in
almost every case, the price is less in Canada.
So the whole notion of trying to give seniors a choice is just based
on the notion that somehow these cards sponsored by the government are
going to give them a good choice. Reality is they are not. The same
drug is cheaper elsewhere on the Internet.
Mr. STRICKLAND. I believe this is an election year scam, and
America's senior citizens are going to be so confused. They are not
going to know what choices to make, and we are doing it because an
election is coming up in November and we want to present to our senior
citizens that we are actually doing something meaningful when the drug
companies are telling us that they expect their drugs to be increased
by about 18 percent this year and these discount cards are likely to
provide much less in discounts than that.

{time} 2115

So seniors are going to end up paying more even with these discount
cards than they have been paying.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is hard to say that it is a good
deal when the drug companies raised the price 20 percent and President
Bush has a discount card that might be 12 or 13 percent, and then it
happens again and again.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), who has
done so much in this whole issue.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, several people are saying how much seniors
are going to have to pay for these drugs. The trouble is, one part of
the problem is, it is their tax money that is being used to promote the
program. We have just seen the Federal Government spend tens of
millions of dollars to promote the underlying prescription drug benefit
that will not take effect until January of 2006. Now there is an $18
million taxpayer-funded campaign hitting the airwaves to promote these
new Medicare cards.
So the public has to pay for the TV advertising, to persuade them of
something that is not true, that is, that these cards will actually
help them.
There was an article in the Portland paper today quoting one woman,
70-year-old Jean Houston of Waterville, Maine, who said she has already
tried calling the Federal Government's toll-free number to enroll. She
has not gotten through yet. ``I tried to sign up,'' she said. ``I
called five times yesterday and three times today.'' How long will it
take Jean Houston just to get through?
Now, CMS says, well, they have got a Web site. They can just go to
the Web site. Most seniors do not have computers that are linked to the
Internet. That is just a fact. And the idea that they are going to sit
down and try to choose among 50 different cards with all sorts of
different drugs when the pharmaceutical companies can change the drugs
that are on the cards any given week, week after week after week, this
is just absolutely nonsense. But there is an explanation. My staff
tells me that CMS has now admitted that if we get seniors to work
through this absolute maze, this absolute nightmare of 50 different
prescription drug cards, it will help prepare them.
It will get seniors used to working with private plans, private
insurance plans. Instead of the Medicare plan, which has the same
benefit and the same additional premium for everyone in the country no
matter where they live, we are going to have lots and lots of private
insurance plans. The systems that are failing the small business
community today are going to be inflicted on seniors in Medicare, and
it is not right.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is almost like NAFTA. People lose
their jobs. We are retraining them. We are retraining seniors so they
can negotiate private health plans.
Think about what the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) said now. We
had a choice. We could do what President Bush wanted to do on behalf of
his friends that own the drug companies and the insurance companies. We
could have 50 cards to choose from and seniors can go through and try
to choose the best one and pay $30 and the cardholder changes the way
it works and changes the discount, changes what drugs are available. We
can look at 50 cards and choose and get about a 10 or 15 percent
discount, or we could use one card and we could tell the government to
negotiate price, tell the government to negotiate on behalf of 39
million Medicare beneficiaries a better price the way Canada does.
Canada's prices are 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 percent lower than the United
States because the Canadian government on behalf of the whole country,
29 million people, negotiates drug prices.
Why could we not use a card like this, give this to every senior, and
then negotiate prices on behalf of every senior in this country, 39, 40
million beneficiaries? They go to a drug store and they show this card
and they automatically get that 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 percent discount.
Instead, because President Bush receives so much money from the drug
and insurance industry, he has given us 50 cards for seniors to choose
one of the 50, and then maybe, if they are lucky, get a consistent 10
or 15 percent discount. So we have one card that could do 50, 60, 70
percent discount or a choice of 50 that might do a 10, 15, 20 percent
discount.
I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding
to me.
And the shame of it all is here we have seniors who are in the
twilight of their life. The last thing they want to do is to be surfing
the Internet or looking through booklets trying to figure out where to
buy their drug, what discount they want, how will they choose. It is
really just ridiculous. It is a shame that we would put the burden on
the backs of seniors to require them to negotiate through this process.
Even with this proposal that will allow lower-income seniors a $600
benefit, they are probably going to spend so much time trying to
manipulate or make it through the process that they are not going to be
payable able to benefit from this at all.
It is almost like the lottery. One gets a lottery ticket and they
scratch off on it. Does this work? No, that does not work. Let me go to
the next scratch off, and I am going to scratch off again. And it is
almost similar to how much benefit we in Ohio got from the lottery in
terms of education right now, and here we are imposing upon the seniors
across this country the responsibility to figure out not only what plan
to go to, but how do they figure out the benefit, and then in 2006 they
are going to have to go back and figure out what plan to take and what
plan will benefit them or not benefit them.
It is a shame that we are not standing up for seniors and saying,
seniors, just like Medicare used to go to work, they can go to the
doctor, get their Medicare. They can go to the pharmacist, get their
prescription, and they can move on without all this hassle. And I agree
with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) that we ought to make sure
seniors understand the dilemma they have been placed in by this
legislation.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio
(Mrs. Jones).
It is just incredible that the Congress has passed something to put
more confusion in seniors' lives, to make the choices more difficult,
more complicated. One of 50 cards that gives a small discount instead
of using the buying power of 40 million Medicare beneficiaries to get
one good discount that every senior can put in his wallet or in her
purse and get a good 30, 40, 50 percent discount like the Canadians and
the French and the Germans and the Japanese and the Israelis and the
Swedes and everybody else.
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Even in Cuba, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Everywhere, Mr. Speaker. And I cannot think of any
other reason. It is all because President Bush has received literally
millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the drug industry,
from the insurance industry, and from Mr. Halbert, the CEO of
AdvancePCS and his company and other companies that make these
prescription drug cards.

[[Page H2639]]

I yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to follow up by what the
gentleman is saying because this may seem to many people in this
country to be a very odd result. Why on earth would the Republicans in
Congress and the President put pass this kind of complicated plan?
Well, remember what they said when they passed it. They said that in
the long run, this would help save money, this would be cost efficient.
We would have competition between plans and that would drive down
costs.
Not exactly. Right now, right now, the private plans are being paid
107 percent of the cost to Medicare. That clunky old government-run
fee-for-service Medicare program that the Republicans wanted it to get
rid of. The private plans are being paid 100 percent more than it cost
Medicare to deal with the average Medicare beneficiary. We will pay
those private insurance plans $46 billion more than it costs the
government-run fee-for-service Medicare plan. In other words, we are
paying private insurance companies more than it costs to deliver
Medicare to Medicare beneficiaries today and for what reason? Why on
earth? Well, the insurance industry knows it is money in their pocket.
Not millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions of dollars, but
billions of dollars. The pharmaceutical industry knows as well.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, think about this. We are giving the
insurance industry $46 billion just direct, reach in taxpayers'
pockets, put $46 billion from taxpayers' pockets into insurance
companies' coffers. I mean, there is no doubt about that, $46 billion.
That is actually $1,100 for every single senior in this country. There
are 40 million Medicare beneficiaries. That is more than $1,000 for
every senior in this country. So instead of giving $1,000 to seniors to
buy a drug benefit, which is a lot of money and most seniors have drug
costs not much more than that, and many have a lot more, but $1,000
goes a long way for anybody, instead of giving $1,000 to every senior,
we are giving the insurance industry $46 billion, $46 billion that
could go to all kinds of things. But how much money did they give
President Bush and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and the
Republican leadership?
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield on just
that point?
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I will be short. Not only are we
giving them this money up front. When the seniors finally do get a
prescription drug benefit in 2006, we are going to be forcing the
seniors to pay the premium every month into the plan and they will get
no coverage when their drug costs are between $2,000 and $5,000, that
doughnut hole we have been talking about. So these plans will get money
while the seniors get no benefit on top of the billions of dollars we
have already paid.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is hard to think when this bill
was written by my friends on the other side of the aisle, if my
colleagues remember, during the debate on that, they started the debate
at midnight. The vote was cast at 3 in the morning, not finished until
6 in the morning, so they could twist enough arms and do enough drug
company contributions to get it through, it is hard to think that
seniors were ever in the calculation. It was about the drug industry
and the insurance industry.
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I noticed that we have got some people
in the balcony tonight, and many of our constituents obviously are
watching through C-SPAN. I think it is appropriate that we just take a
moment and explain.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will refrain from noticing
guests in the gallery.
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I am very glad that there are those
watching us tonight and are paying attention to what we are saying
because we have lots of constituents. I have lots of constituents back
in Ohio certainly that are watching, and I am sure there are
constituents watching from Maine and New Jersey and elsewhere. And I
think they need to know how this bill came into being. We received this
bill as a body, over 700 pages, I believe, on a Friday morning. We
began that debate. We debated Friday afternoon and through the night
and at three o'clock in the morning when most of the people who are
watching us tonight were probably asleep.
They finally called the vote. I would remind my colleagues that this
is probably the most important piece of domestic legislation that this
body has considered maybe in many years, and we recall that the
President told us it was going to cost $400 billion. Now we find out
that his own administration's actuary had indicated it was going to
cost over $550 billion, and apparently he was told he would be fired if
he told the Congress, those of us who are supposed to be representing
the people of this country. He was told he would be fired if he told us
the actual cost, an action that the CRS, the Congressional Research
Service, is now saying was probably an illegal act.
But anyway, at three o'clock in the morning they called the vote here
in the people's House. And at the end of that 15-minute voting period,
the bill had lost because it is a bad bill. And they kept the vote
open, not for 15 minutes, not for 30 minutes, not for an hour, not for
2 hours, but for 3 hours. And the press said that they got the
President out of bed at four o'clock in the morning so that he could
start twisting arms. And then the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith),
who is retiring and whose son is running in a Republican primary,
indicates that he was approached on the floor of this House, the
people's House, and offered $100,000 for his son's campaign if he would
change his vote. Think of that. Think of that. And at 6 o'clock in the
morning as the sun was coming up, they finally convinced enough Members
to change their votes, and the bill passed.
That is not how an important piece of public policy should be crafted
in a democracy. And we walked home that morning, as the gentleman
recalls, as the sun was coming up after that kind of shameful behavior
had taken place in this Chamber. And now they are spending $18 million
on TV ads to try to convince America's senior citizens that it is a
good thing. Shame on this administration for this kind of political
shenanigans.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maine
(Mr. Allen).
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
I want to follow along with what the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Strickland) has been talking about because just this Monday, the
Congressional Research Service issued an important report, and in that
report they concluded a couple of things. First of all, they were
looking at this issue that was raised by Richard Foster, the Medicare
actuary who has testified that he was threatened by his boss, Tom
Scully, the head of CMS, that if Foster went to Congress and told them
the truth about his projections for what the Medicare bill would cost,
which was $150 billion more than what administration was saying, if he
went to Congress and told them that, he would be fired.
Let us look at this report. This report was just made public on
Monday. One point here it says ``Congress's right to receive truthful
information from Federal agencies to assist in its legislative
functions is clear and unassailable.''

{time} 2130

They go back to say that according to the report, attorneys at CRS
said these gag orders have been expressly prohibited by Federal law
since 1912.
Let me read you one of applicable laws. It is at 5 U.S.C. Section
7211. ``The right of employees individually or collectively to petition
Congress or a Member of Congress or to furnish information to either
House of Congress or to a committee or Member thereof may not be
interfered with or denied.''
But the truth is that the head of CMS, appointed by this President,
refused to allow his employee, the Medicare actuary, to tell Congress
the truth. So on the night of that vote, Republicans and Democrats
believed that the only applicable projection was that this law would
cost $400 billion over 10

[[Page H2640]]

years, when Medicare program officials themselves knew it would be $550
billion.
We have talked about this before, all this money going to the
insurance industry, $46 billion more than it cost the government-run
program. No wonder it is not cost-efficient. No wonder it breaks the
bank. No wonder that it delivers a very small benefit, given the amount
of money being spent on it.
This report makes it clear: The law was violated when the Congress
was not told what the cost of this bill would be, what the projections
of the Medicare actuary would be, and that in itself makes it clear, it
never would have passed this Chamber if we had been told the truth.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, imagine if
everybody in this Chamber had known, Democrats over here, Republicans,
if all of us had known that this bill would send 46 billion taxpayer
dollars directly to insurance company coffers. If people in this hall
had known that, Members of Congress had known that that would mean
$1,100 for every Medicare beneficiary would just be a gift to the
insurance industry, no matter how much money the drug companies gave to
Republican leaders, no matter how many calls George Bush had made to
Republican Members, no matter how many arms they twisted, no matter how
many drug company lobbyists had descended like vultures into this
institution, no matter all of that, if we had known, if they had not
broken the law and been honest with us, if we had known 46 billion in
taxpayer dollars were going directly from taxpayer pockets to insurance
companies, there was no way this bill would have passed. There is just
no way. No matter how many lobbyists, how much campaign money, how many
calls from the President, this bill simply would not have passed.
I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to dovetail on this, to reference why
this is so spectacularly ironic. About an hour ago one of our
Republican colleagues was railing about the only problem with the
Federal Government is waste, fraud and abuse, that that is the only
problem, and just if the Democrats would stop all this waste, fraud and
abuse we would have no problems.
I thought that was interesting, because this entire government is run
by the Republican Party, a Republican President, a Republican Senate
and a Republican House, yet he pointed out all this waste, fraud and
abuse in the Federal Government. I wanted to stand up and say, who is
in charge of the waste, fraud and abuse? Obviously it is the Republican
Party, because that is who is running this government right now.
But here is this gentleman wailing about waste, fraud and abuse, when
his party foisted down the throats of Congress and the American people
this situation where they are giving $46 billion of taxpayer money to
the insurance industry, which is totally unnecessary, because we could
have given exactly the same benefits through Medicare.
Now, I challenge any Republican, any Republican or any Democrat, or
any Green Party or socialist or independent, to show me a larger
portion of waste, fraud and abuse than the $46 billion of taxpayer
money going to the insurance industry, that does not deliver one penny
of additional prescription drug benefit to seniors than Medicare could
have done, had we not been involved in the shenanigan, not to pay off,
but to pay benefits to people who are very, very powerful political
forces in this town.
This I would nominate for the largest piece of waste, fraud and
abuse, foisted on this country by the Republican Party, and it is an
abomination. When you think about the generation having this done to
them, think about who the victims of this fraud are, it is the men and
women who we will be celebrating on Memorial Day down when we dedicate
the World War II memorial. My dad is coming in. He was a World War II
veteran.
This is the greatest generation. They prevailed in World War II, and
how do we treat them? We foist this abomination, that can only pass
this Chamber through fraud itself, a situation where my colleagues have
talked about the 3-hour delay.
It reminds me of when we beat the Russians in 1964 in the Olympics in
the basketball game. The only way the Russians won was to put time back
on the clock. This was a Russian-style democracy, when they put 3 hours
back on the clock. But during that 3 hours, what happened? There was a
Republican Congressman who reported that he was offered a $100,000
bribe, in essence, to his son's campaign, if he would switch his vote.
Does the greatest generation deserve that type of contempt for
democracy in this Chamber, which has sullied the name of Congress and
Medicare?
I have to tell you one thing, I will tell you, my Republican
colleagues, this dog is not hunting with our constituents. I had
meeting with 200 senior citizens in Edmonds, Washington, many of whom
are stalwart Republicans, two weeks ago. I asked for their hands. This
is a nonpartisan senior citizens group, just a bunch of folks concerned
about this.
We talked about this bill in some detail, and I asked how many people
believe this bill was substantially beneficial in their lives and that
it deserved passage by Congress? Not one single hand was raised of
those senior citizens, who were an eclectic group of conservatives
and not-so-conservatives and Democrats and Republicans.

It is not playing, it is not being accepted, and because it is not
accepted, people understand this, and people need to know why their
taxpayer money is being wasted in another great incident of waste,
fraud and abuse on this $18 million plan to try to sell this to the
American people. Why is that waste, fraud and abuse taking place?
Well, there is a reason for it, and the reason about it is that this
administration understands that the seniors have figured out it is an
Edsel, and the seniors know about the Edsel. Maybe some of our younger
constituents do not, but it is a turkey.
The seniors know it is an Edsel, and that is why these guys are
spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money to try to dig themselves
out of this horrible hole they have dug us into. It is an abomination.
I have to tell you, I am glad we all are here talking about it
tonight.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his
compassionate commitment.
I yield to my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I am glad the gentleman mentioned this $18
million payday. I do not have it in front of us to show, but I wanted
to read one of the ads that began airing this week.
It shows a line of older people at a pharmacy. Most have Medicare-
approved cards that emit a blue light. The announcer says, ``Good news
for those with Medicare. You can get savings on prescriptions.''
At the end, there is a disappointed looking man that steps to the
pharmacy counter without a Medicare-approved card, and the announcer
says, ``Because you either have the power to save, or you do not.''
Essentially, the whole emphasis here is that you are going to save
money. As my colleague from Washington said, it is essentially a lie. I
guess we cannot use the word ``lie'' here. It is just a total
misrepresentation of the truth.
In some ways, I do not want to say I am glad, because it is such a
tragedy and it is almost immoral, as the gentleman pointed out, but in
some ways I am almost glad we have this experience with the discount
drug cards for the next 6 months or 2 years before the year 2006 when
the so-called Medicare prescription drug benefit gets into place,
because I strongly believe that when the seniors see what this
discounts card is and what a fraud and sham it is, they are going to
want to repeal this whole bill, and maybe we'll have the opportunity
over the next 6 months or a year to show what a sham this discount card
is and actually get the votes to repeal this lousy bill that is not
helping anybody.
One of the things that I did not mention, and I think we should, we
mentioned the fact there is no guaranteed discount from the card
sponsors. We said that. Then we said there is no guaranteed discount on
particular medicines. Then we also said there is no guarantee that the
discount offered by a particular card will be the lowest price
available for a particular individual, because they might be able to

[[Page H2641]]

get another card or go on the Internet and find a lower price.
But what we did not mention is there is no guaranteed access to any
particular pharmacy, and that the final price paid for prescriptions
will vary from pharmacy to pharmacy. So even if you get the card and
you think you are going to get the savings, which you do not
necessarily get, because they can change it from day to day, or you do
not necessarily get the drug you think you are getting because they can
change the drug, you may not be able to go to your local pharmacy or
any particular pharmacy nearby, because that pharmacy may decide they
are not going to honor the card.
Then, in addition to that, the way I understand it, is they can
charge a different price, because they can decide at the pharmacy
whether they are going to make a little more profit or not on the
particular drug they sell.
We have also have had some the companies, this web site has only been
on, I do not know how long, I guess a few days or maybe a few weeks,
but already some of the companies are writing back, and I had one of
them, saying that the information that is being given on the web site
about their card is not accurate.
I just have never seen so much misinformation, untruth. I do not know
how to describe it.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. When it could have been so simple. When it could
have simply been one discount card where the government negotiated
price, using 40 million beneficiaries as the negotiating pool, could
have gotten one much lower price. Instead of that, because the drug and
insurance companies wanted it, the President made it very, very
confusing.
Mr. PALLONE. Essentially it is a lie, because it is not the truth,
because they are saying that the main goal here is to save money. There
is no reason to believe that.
But I just go back to what my colleague from Maine said. The purpose
of all this is to get people used to privatization, and not used to a
government program like Medicare. And I am beginning to believe, maybe
I am too optimistic, that when people see how lousy the private sector
is, if this is an example of it, they are not going to want it and they
are going to reject it. That is the only positive thing I can see
coming out of this.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to my colleague, the gentlewoman next door
in Ohio (Mrs. Jones).
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. First of all, I want to commend my colleague the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for his leadership on this issue. He
has been right on top of all of this as long as I have been in
Congress, and this is my sixth year in Congress, and I am just so proud
to be a part of the delegation in which he is one of our more senior
Members. That is no offense to you, talking about ``senior.''
But to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and to the gentleman from
Washington (Mr. Inslee) and to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland)
and to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), this story is almost like
the story our mothers used to read to us when we were growing up, The
Emperor Has No Clothes.

Remember this person came to the emperor's palace and said, ``Okay,
emperor, I want to make you this finest robe out of this wool. The wool
is so fine, you will not be able to see it. I am going to go to the
barn and I am going to string it and so forth and so on and I am going
to come back with this gorgeous robe.''
The emperor kept saying, ``I cannot see it, I cannot see it.''
He kept saying, ``But it is there. It is there. I am going to put it
on you, and you are going to walk down the street of your community,
and everybody is going to go, oh, what a beautiful robe you have on,
emperor.''
Come to find out, the emperor walked down the street with no clothes
on, naked, just with his underwear on. And that is what this bill is
like. It is naked. It is saying to seniors, I am going to give you this
great bill, you are going to get all these benefits. But it is like the
bill has no clothes. It is a piece of paper with no benefit for senior
citizens. It is a card that gives them nothing. It is a premium that
they are given for a period of time, and they get nothing.
The fact is, it is a misrepresentation, and it is just like that
emperor walking down the street without any clothes.
I just want to thank all my colleagues for their leadership on this
issue.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio.
I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank also my friend the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for leading this discussion tonight.
I really believe what we are dealing with here is an administration
that truly does not believe in Medicare, and this effort is not going
over well with our senior citizens.
As my friend the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) said, the
experience that he had with his seniors, I have had the same experience
with the seniors in my district. When I sit down with them and I
explain this bill, I explain how it came into being, the shenanigans
that occurred right here in the people's chamber, the benefits that are
so difficult to understand, the benefits that are really going not to
the senior citizen, but to the insurance companies and to the
pharmaceutical companies, they are outraged.
They say to me, ``What can I do to respond? Who can I talk to? How
can I express the anger that I feel?'' And that is what is happening
across this country, and the administration is starting to feel the
heat, and that is why they are taking I think $18 million of public tax
dollars and putting these ads on TV, trying to convince our seniors
that they are doing something good for them.
Well, America's seniors are a pretty wise bunch. They have lived
through a lot. Many of them have lived through the Depression. They
have lived through the wars. These are not children in their
understanding. They have watched government. They know those who are
for them and those who are against them.

{time} 2145

And America's senior citizens are angry tonight, because they
desperately need help with the cost of their medications. There are
seniors in this country I believe losing their lives because they are
unable to afford the medicines that they so desperately need. They know
that this bill that was passed here in the Chamber under these terrible
circumstances specifically prohibits the reimportation of cheaper drugs
from Canada. They know that the Secretary of Health and Human Services
is specifically prohibited from negotiating discounts for our senior
citizens, although the Veterans Administration negotiates discounts as
a savings of, I think, about 40 percent. They know that this bill was
written by and for the pharmaceutical industry, and they are angry.
And I think they are going to express themselves come November,
because they are sick and tired of being used as political pawns, of
being given false and exaggerated information; and I think they are
going to stand up and say, we have had enough. We built this country.
We fought the wars. We built our schools and our hospitals. We have
made the sacrifice to make America what it is today, and we are sick
and tired of being treated like second-class citizens. I think
America's seniors are going to be expressing themselves loudly and
clearly, and the best way they can do that is to do it with their vote.
That is the one way they can fight back.
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield just for
a moment, can we imagine if the seniors in Ohio had been able to ask
these same questions of President Bush when he was parading through
Ohio. Can we imagine if they had been able to say, President Bush, what
am I getting from this prescription drug benefit? I mean, the day that
the card was issued, here he was parading around Ohio, but he was not
talking about the nonprescription benefit. He was talking about the
jobs that we did not get in Ohio as well.
So those seniors could have said, President Bush, President Bush, I
need a prescription drug benefit. Can you help me?
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all of my colleagues
together tonight: the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), the gentlewoman from Ohio (
Mrs. Jones), the

[[Page H2642]]

gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), and the gentleman from Maine
(Mr. Alan).
I want to close with an interesting point that the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Strickland) raised. He said it just seems that Republicans do
not much like the Medicare program. On the surface, that does not sound
like it makes sense, because I have a whole lot of Republican
constituents who love Medicare. They know it has saved their lives and
let them live longer, let them live healthier lives; but there is
something about Republican politicians and their relationship with
Medicare.
Back in 1965, 12 Republicans, 12 Republicans total voted for
Medicare, to create Medicare. Bob Dole voted against it, Gerald Ford
voted against it, Strom Thurmond voted against it, Donald Rumsfeld
voted against it. Then, 30 years later, the first time the Republicans
had control of this House and the majority, they tried to cut $270
billion, with a B, billion from Medicare. That failed because President
Clinton got out his veto pen and said, Do not even try.
Then, in 2002, or in 1999, Congressman Armey, the second top
Republican in Congress, said, in a free society, we would not have
Medicare; we would not want something like Medicare. Whatever that
meant. Then, in 2002, another Southern Republican Congressman in the
leadership, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder), said that Medicare
is a Soviet-style program, whatever that meant.
The fact is that a lot of us in this institution, every single
Democrat and some of the Republicans, care deeply about Medicare and
want to preserve it, and that is why we fought against the
privatization of Medicare that President Bush tried to foist upon us.
That is why instead of these 50 cards, we want to see one discount card
where seniors get a good benefit under Medicare, get a 30 or 40 or 50
or 60 percent discount like our neighbors to the north, the Canadians
have, and like our neighbors across the ocean in Europe have. Instead,
what we got was a bill written by the drug discount card companies,
written by the insurance companies, written by the drug companies, all
of whom are major contributors to the President of the United States.
Mr. Speaker, it was a sad day last December when this bill passed. It
was a sad day when President Bush signed this bill. We all have work to
do.

____________________