[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 29854-29860]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just would like to spend some time 
tonight, and I am going to be joined by the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), talking about the unfinished business of 
this Congress and of this House of Representatives.
  We know that it is likely, either tomorrow or within the next few 
days, that the Republican leadership will bring up probably an omnibus 
appropriations bill, better known as the budget, I guess, for most 
people.
  We, as Democrats, have been very critical of the Republican 
leadership because since October 1, which was the beginning of the 
fiscal year, they have not been able to complete the budget, the 
appropriations process. And that process now is, I guess, about 6 weeks 
overdue and they have not been able to effectively legislate and keep 
the Government going by providing the budget that we need for this 
fiscal year.
  We have also been critical of the fact that already, even though they 
keep bringing up the issue of Social Security and spending the Social 
Security surplus, already, if we look at the appropriations bills that 
they passed, they clearly have dipped into the Social Security Trust 
Fund.
  At the same time, they have also broken the caps. One of our 
colleagues, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), was here just 
a few minutes ago giving a special order and talking about how the caps 
under the Balanced Budget Act have really become a thing of the past.
  But I did not really want to dwell on this tonight because I think it 
is evident that the budget process has been a mess. But, hopefully, 
over the next few days, there will be a budget passed; and we will have 
an appropriations and a budget for this fiscal year.
  The larger problem, though, I think is the unfinished business of 
this Congress and the unfinished business of this House of 
Representatives.
  Republicans are, basically, ready to leave town now, not having 
addressed most of the concerns that my constituents bring to my 
attention. And these are the concerns that the average family has in 
this country, whether it is Medicare, seniors asking me about the need 
for a prescription drug benefit; HMO reform, which myself and my 
colleague from Connecticut have been on this floor so many times in the 
last couple of years demanding that the Patients' Bill of Rights be 
passed.
  We finally did manage to get it passed, but so far there has been no 
conference between the House and the Senate on the Patients' Bill of 
Rights, and the Republican leadership is obviously just trying to kill 
HMO reform by not having the conference take place and hoping that the 
issue will go away.
  I just mention those two issues because I think they are very 
important. But there are a lot of other issues: gun safety, the issue 
of school construction, campaign finance reform. There are many that 
need to be addressed.
  I would like to yield to my colleague, the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), but before I do that, I

[[Page 29855]]

just want to say very briefly that I get so many letters from my 
constituents about the fact that this Congress has not addressed the 
problem with prescription drugs, the increased cost of prescription 
drugs, the fact that seniors do not have access to them because 
Medicare does not cover it as a basic benefit, and also about HMO 
reform and the need for HMO reform.
  This letter just came to my office in the last few days before we 
came back. I think I received it on Friday of last week from one of my 
constituents in my hometown of Long Branch, New Jersey. I am just going 
to read part of it because it is so simple, but it says it all:

  Dear Congressman Pallone,
  I know how hard you have fought for the HMO Patients' Bill of Rights. 
This legislation is supposed to protect the public from the insurance 
company's over-zealous quest for profits. I have an Aetna U.S. 
Healthcare Medicare plan. Aetna gets the $45 from Medicare Part B. As 
of January 1, 2000, the rate will have increased by $35. That is a 78 
percent increase, and they have dropped the prescription drug benefit. 
I don't know how they can justify that kind of increase. My plan is to 
drop the HMO coverage and take the Part B from Medicare.

  Now, you know, Mr. Speaker, this just says it all to me. How many 
constituents have come into my office, have called me and sent me 
letters and complained about the fact that they cannot afford 
prescription drugs? How many people that actually have some kind of 
prescription drug benefit as part of their health insurance have been 
dropped, that prescription drug benefit has been dropped or the co-
payments or the deductibles or everything have gone up? And how many 
people have complained to me about abuses relative to HMOs and the 
problems they have experienced with HMOs?
  I only read this letter and I start out this evening by talking about 
these two health care issues because these are just common sense 
things. These are things that people talk to us about on the streets 
every day. These are the kinds of things that the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) and I are going to be hearing about over the 
next 6 weeks after this House adjourns over the next few days.
  It is really unfair that this Republican leadership does not address 
these issues and just leaves this unfinished for the next year because 
the public is crying out for this kind of legislation to address these 
issues.

                              {time}  2030

  I yield to my colleague from Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I thank my colleague from New Jersey for taking this 
time to talk about really quite a serious issue. I think we should try 
to put this in some kind of a perspective. First of all, let me mention 
that we are going to be gone from here within the next few days. We do 
not know how many more days there will continue to be the deliberation 
on the budget, but the fact is that if we do have an opportunity after 
the Republican leadership has been fighting tooth and nail, more cops 
on the beat, more teachers, reduced class size, if in fact there are 
some gains in that area, we will feel vindicated and we will be very, 
very pleased. They are important victories for working families. That 
is what we want to do. That is why we come here. We want to try and 
protect those vital priorities.
  But that leads me to say that one has to take a look at why we are 
here. Each of us comes as a direct result of elections, people cast 
their votes and they say, Frank Pallone of New Jersey, Rosa DeLauro of 
Connecticut, of the Third District, we think you will do a good job on 
our behalf. Each of the 435 Members who comes here has that kind of 
trust. It is a responsibility as well as an opportunity. What we try to 
do is to take very seriously that responsibility, those obligations, 
and try to reflect the will of the people in this body. It is the 
People's House. But the kinds of issues that you have talked about, the 
health issues and as you go through the list of the unfinished business 
and whether it is HMO reform or prescription drugs or gun safety or 
minimum wage, Social Security or Medicare, in each of these areas we 
know that the public is clamoring for some kind of relief. If it is on 
HMO reform, they are desperate to get back to doctors and patients and 
themselves making their medical decisions. They are desperate and 
clamoring for the notion that, my gosh, if something goes terribly 
wrong with a course of medical action that has been, if you will, 
prescribed by an HMO, that they in fact cannot get any accountability, 
any relief, they have no place to go. They worry about that for 
themselves and their families.
  You mentioned prescription drugs. You know and I know that people are 
making those hard decisions every day as to whether or not to fill 
their prescriptions or buy food, because the cost of prescription drugs 
continues to escalate. Gun safety. We know that it is now 7 months 
since Columbine, that terrible tragic case and there have been 
subsequent tragedies, and yet modest gun safety legislation cannot seem 
to see the light of day, when we have parents and children saying, help 
us to make our communities safe.
  Minimum wage. We are at a time in this country over the last 10 years 
where chief executive officers of corporations have seen their wages 
escalate 481 percent over the last 10 years. In fact, workers have seen 
only a 28 percent increase and quite frankly if workers' salaries had 
gone up as much as the CEO salaries, the minimum wage would be roughly 
about $22. People want to raise their standard of living. They are 
working very, very hard. Social Security and Medicare, bedrock programs 
which have lifted, really lifted and provided a retirement future, 
retirement security for so many hardworking men and women in this 
country. These are the issues that people speak to us about. These are 
the issues that they are concerned and worried about. This is what they 
feel that they have given us their trust to do something about.
  Yet there is a hard core minority within the majority party, within 
the Republican Party here, that has said ``no'' to these pieces of 
legislation, when there has been real bipartisan support. As you know, 
HMO reform, campaign finance reform which I did not mention, but there 
were bipartisan gun safety measures in the Senate. If this were just 
one-sided, you might say that, ``My gosh, all these folks on the 
Democratic side are wrong. These are not issues that people care 
about.'' But, in fact, it does not make any difference what party you 
are about, what your party identification is. Prescription drugs, HMO 
reform, gun safety, minimum wage, Medicare/Social Security, they know 
no party affiliation. People just expect that we are going to do the 
best we can on their behalf. And, yet, this majority party, this 
Republican leadership, has bottled these bills up after they had passed 
in the House, after they have real bipartisan support. They have said 
``no.'' So they thwart the will of the Members who serve here, but 
much, much more importantly, they thwart the will of the American 
public. It is wrong. It really is. That is not why we were sent here. 
We cannot subsume all of this legislation that in fact has a tremendous 
impact on what people's lives are about because we may have some 
individual views or there may be some special interests out there that 
provide us with funding for campaigns, for some reason that we do not 
like, that I do not like or the gentleman from New Jersey does not like 
or the gentleman from Maine does not like that particular thing. That 
is not why we are here. We have an obligation. We have responsibilities 
to those people who send us here. We do not come here on our own. We 
are sent here to do the public's work.
  What this does, when the Republican leadership thwarts the will of 
the public, they fray that public trust. And we find wherever we go 
people say, ``Well, I have got to make it on my own, because those 
folks in Washington are not going to make a difference in the lives of 
my family, of my work.'' That is sad, that is very sad, because that is 
not what we are supposed to be about. I lament that, you do, my 
colleague from Maine does, and people on both

[[Page 29856]]

sides of the aisle. My hope, and it certainly is not going to happen in 
the next few days of this year, of the 106th Congress, but we have to 
make that commitment that we will come back, and every day of the last 
year of this 106th Congress, of this session, that we pledge to make 
the fight for prescription drugs and HMO reform and gun safety 
legislation and Social Security and Medicare and the minimum wage. The 
public has got to know that we want to do that, and we are on their 
side on these issues.
  There are those in this body who would do harm. Unfortunately, they 
are in the leadership of the majority party. That is wrong. I thank my 
colleague for calling us all together tonight.
  Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentlewoman. I just wanted to 
briefly comment on some of the things she has said because it is so 
true, and then yield to our colleague from Maine.
  It is amazing to me because I have just seen the pattern from day one 
with every one of the pieces of legislation that you mentioned, and you 
are right, that ultimately when these bills pass the House, they are 
bipartisan. But what we see is the Republican leadership basically, for 
every one of these, HMO reform, Medicare prescription drugs, campaign 
finance reform, gun safety, we see Democrats introducing a bill, I will 
use the HMO reform as an example but I could use it for every one of 
the ones the gentlewoman mentioned. Democrats introduced a bill that 
would really make a difference in terms of correcting the abuses of 
HMOs. They get almost every Democrat to support the bill, to cosponsor 
it, as we say, and then they reach across to the other side of the 
aisle to try to get some Republicans who understand that this is an 
important issue and that something has to be done about it and we still 
cannot get the bill out of committee or to the floor because the 
Republican leadership because they are so dependent on special 
interests, in this case the insurance companies, will not bring it up.
  What do we do? We file a discharge petition. We file it on a 
bipartisan basis, or we get some of the Republicans to join us. The 
numbers of the discharge petition, which is an extraordinary procedure 
that you should not have to use, is basically petitioning this House 
leadership to bring a bill to the floor because they will not go 
through the normal process in committee, and when we approach the 
magical majority of numbers to sign that discharge petition, then all 
of a sudden the Republican leadership decides they have to bring the 
bill to the floor. But they do not let the bill have hearings, they do 
not let the bill go through committee. They just manage to bring some 
bill to the floor that is usually exactly the opposite and does not 
have the reforms that are necessary to cure the problems with HMOs. 
Then when it gets to the floor, we have to make an extraordinary effort 
to amend the bill or to bring up the substitute that is an actual 
reform measure and finally we succeed. But almost a year has gone by by 
the time that happens. Then, because the Senate has not passed 
anything, we try to go to conference where the House and the Senate get 
together so that we can eventually send the bill to the President, and 
at that stage, they do not let the conference take place. We have done 
this over and over again.
  My colleague from Maine has now just last week filed a discharge 
petition on his bill related to the price discrimination with regard to 
prescription drugs, and we filed another bill by the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Stark) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), 
a discharge petition, that would provide for the Medicare benefit. We 
are going to have to get people to sign the petitions when we come back 
in January. We will. We are all going to work on it, to make sure that 
we get those signatures and eventually bring these bills to the floor. 
But we have to exercise these extraordinary procedures. It is very 
difficult and it takes a long time and it is very easy for the 
Republican leadership through these procedural gimmicks to basically 
thwart the will of the real majority here.
  I saw just the other day some of our Republican colleagues coming up 
on the floor and talking about the need for a prescription drug 
benefit. So we are starting to get some of them, too. But it does not 
matter because the House leadership, the Republican leadership is 
opposed to it.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Our colleague from Maine will talk about this whole 
issue of prescription drugs. In the framework that we are talking 
about, this is not a program here, a program there. That is not what 
this is about, because budgets and legislation is created out of need. 
It is reflective of priorities, of values, of how you approach problems 
that people have. If you reflect on values and who we are and what you 
want to try to do with responsibility and providing opportunity and 
doing those kinds of things which is what this body is all about, one 
has to take a look at all of this through that prism of values and 
where our values lie in this body, because that is what infuses all of 
this. That is what prompts us to act. It is what we believe is the 
right thing to do on behalf of the people. That is what runs through 
all these pieces of legislation. They are not out there by themselves. 
I am sorry to take time from my colleague from Maine.
  Mr. PALLONE. The thing that really worries me, too, my colleague from 
Connecticut talked about how the public starts to lose faith because 
they see all these procedural gimmicks and they think we are never 
getting anything done. That letter that I was quoting from from my 
hometown constituent, he ends the letter saying, ``I think your best 
efforts have had less than the anticipated worthy results. Can 
something be done?''
  As much as he has faith in me and my willingness to come down here 
and try to get a prescription drug benefit and HMO reform, he is 
doubting whether it is ever going to be accomplished. That is a sad 
thing. I yield to my colleague from Maine who is really the person who 
has done the most to bring to our attention this issue of price 
discrimination with prescription drugs. I appreciate all the gentleman 
has done.

                              {time}  2045

  Mr. ALLEN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I 
thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for her eloquence 
on these topics.
  What she has been saying is that we are not here to go through the 
motions. I remember when I was elected, I got a little handwritten note 
from a constituent of mine who had sent me a $20 check at some point 
during the campaign. And he said, when you get to Washington, remember 
the people who sent you there.
  What he was saying is, all of those people who sent us here did not 
send us here to help ourselves, they sent us here to help them, to work 
for them. Occasionally, as I travel around my district in Maine, once 
in a while someone gets it right and comes up to me and says, we sent 
you there to work for us. It is true. If we forget that even for a day, 
we are slipping from our assignment.
  Mr. Speaker, it was 3 years ago almost exactly to the day when I had 
just been elected for the first time. I came in for an orientation 
session. Our leader, our Democratic leader, the gentleman from Missouri 
(Mr. Gephardt) said something that I will not forget, partly because he 
does not let us forget it. He says it often. He said that ``nothing 
important in this House ever gets done except on a bipartisan basis. 
Nothing important ever gets done in this House except on a bipartisan 
basis.'' That is why this year, when we look back at this year, we 
cannot help but be disappointed, because we have had opportunities. Let 
us look at two of them.
  On two of the major issues that came before this body, we constructed 
a bipartisan majority made up mostly of Democrats, but of a number of 
courageous and determined Republicans.
  Let us look at one issue, campaign finance reform. In the last 
session of this House, in the last Congress, it was a battle simply to 
get the bill to the

[[Page 29857]]

floor. But this session of Congress, with the help of the Speaker, it 
came to the floor. And a substantial number of Republicans, I think 60 
or more, voted with the Democrats to pass campaign finance reform in 
the House, but then the leadership appoints conferees and the issue 
dies. We do not get anywhere particularly in the other body.
  The second example is the Patients' Bill of Rights. There is no 
question that the real Patients' Bill of Rights which we passed in the 
House of Representatives could not have passed without Republican 
support; not a lot of Republican support, but some Republican support. 
What happens? At the end of the day, the Speaker appoints conferees, 
only one of whom on the Republican side, only one of the 13 conferees, 
had actually voted for the Dingell-Norwood bill.
  There again, a chance for a bipartisan accomplishment was lost, was 
lost, to the detriment of the people who sent us here to work for them.
  A couple of other examples where we did not have the same kind of 
success. It seems to me that when we look at all of this, we tried to 
pass some modest gun safety provisions and the Republicans said no. We 
tried to improve health care by passing a Patients' Bill of Rights; 
some Republicans said yes, the majority said no, and the leadership 
said no.
  In the other body there was an effort to ratify the comprehensive 
test ban treaty to make the world a safer place for all of us, and the 
Republicans said no. They have said no to prescription drug relief for 
seniors who need the help. They have said no to extending the solvency 
of social security. They have said no to extending the solvency of 
Medicare. Mr. Speaker, we have work to do for the people of this 
country in this House and it is not being done.
  Let me come back for a moment, since both Members said I would talk 
about it, and I cannot sit down without talking about the issue of 
prescription drugs.
  The gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) said that what we try 
to do here grows out of need. Here is a story about how this whole sort 
of issue of prescription drugs arose for me.
  In the first year or so that I was elected, I would go to meetings 
with groups of seniors. I would go there talking about the issues that 
Washington wanted to talk about: Social security and Medicare, and the 
need to make those programs solvent for the long-term.
  What my seniors said, they would pull out a little white slip of 
paper and say, what I am really worried about is the cost of these 
prescription drugs. So eventually when the Democratic staff on the 
Committee on Government Reform said they would be interested in doing a 
study, something I wanted to call attention to in my district, I said, 
please, can you do something on prescription drugs?
  What we found by that study that has now been replicated in 130 
districts across the country is that on average, seniors pay twice as 
much for their prescription medication as the drug companies' preferred 
customers: the big HMOs, the hospitals, and the Federal government 
itself through the VA and Medicaid.
  That price discrimination needs to stop. I have one bill, the 
Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act. The gentlemen from 
California, Mr. Waxman and Mr. Stark, have a bill to provide 
prescription drug benefits under Medicare.
  We need both approaches. The bottom line is what the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) said over and over again, we cannot do anything 
important, and these are important issues, that is not done in a 
bipartisan way. We need some help from the other side.
  Frankly, there is no need to wait. This is a disappointing year. We 
are coming back next year, however. We will go right back at it. We are 
going to do the best we can on these issues for the American people.
  Next year I hope that we have a little different spirit in this 
House, that we get back to basics, that we remember who sent us here, 
that we remember why we came, and that we put aside the ideology that 
the Federal government cannot do anything or should not do anything or 
cannot do anything right or should not do anything, and we do the best 
we can for the American people.
  If we do that, we will have some gun show safety positions, we will 
pass and enact the Patients' Bill of Rights, we will pass a 
prescription drug benefit, and make sure that there is enough leverage 
on price so the taxpayers do not get taken for a ride, and we will do 
something about preserving Medicare and social security for the long-
term.
  That would be an agenda that the 106th Congress, both sides of the 
aisle, could be proud of, because it is an agenda that grows out of the 
needs and the wishes and the beliefs of the American people today. That 
is the agenda that we have all been fighting for on this side of the 
aisle.
  We have not been quite persuasive enough yet, but I am still hopeful 
that next year will be the year, and next year we can say with some 
real satisfaction that we took on the major issues of our time and we 
dealt with them productively.
  Mr. PALLONE. I know that the gentleman is going to do that.
  The gentleman talked about and I talked about the discharge petitions 
on the gentleman's bill with regard to the price of prescription drugs, 
as well as the Stark-Waxman bill that would provide a prescription drug 
benefit under Medicare. We are certainly going to pursue that full 
force when we come back in January.
  I do not mean to be the pessimist here. Obviously, we would like to 
be bipartisan. But I just read the other day, and I think it was in 
Congress Daily, that when we come back in January, the Speaker, the 
Republican Speaker, is talking about another tax cut; that that is 
going to be at the top of the agenda.
  I just cannot help thinking that we are going to see maybe a watered 
down version, but another version of what we witnessed this summer, 
which is this trillion dollar, and the Republicans try to forget about 
this now, they do not talk about it anymore, but one of the reasons 
that it has taken so long and we have been so delayed with this budget 
is because they spent most of the first 6 months through the summer 
trying to pass this trillion dollar tax cut.
  The effect of that tax cut would have been exactly the opposite of 
what my colleague, the gentleman from Maine, just talked about. In 
other words, there would not have been any money to shore up social 
security, no money to help with Medicare, and we need to look at those 
programs on a long-term basis because we know they are going to start 
to run out of money in a few years.
  We want to move ahead in a positive way to actually improve Medicare 
by providing a prescription drug benefit, but if this surplus was used 
the way the Republicans had initially wanted to by having all the money 
go for a tax cut that was primarily for the wealthy and for corporate 
interests, we would not have had anything. We would not have been able 
to even discuss trying to preserve social security and Medicare.
  I am just so afraid, having looked at what the Speaker mentioned the 
other day in Congress Daily, which is a publication that is circulated 
around Congress, for the people that do not know what it is, that they 
are just going to come back here in January and start to talk about 
another huge tax cut again, instead of addressing Medicare and social 
security and the other long-term needs that my colleague, the gentleman 
from Maine, has talked about.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield briefly, one 
point about the tax cut, that was such a bogus issue, because there was 
no trillion dollar on-budget surplus. If we make just two simple 
assumptions that the Republican leadership did not make, one, that we 
would have emergency spending at at least the same level that we had 
had it for the last 5 or 10 years, and number two, that there would be 
growth in domestic spending at least at the rate of inflation, if we 
just made those two assumptions, the

[[Page 29858]]

trillion dollar on-budget surplus became a $200 billion on-budget 
surplus.
  Well, we cannot have an $800 billion tax cut when there is only a 
$200 billion surplus and even pretend that we are being fiscally 
responsible. So there is one issue where I believe the majority went 
astray.
  Here is another one. There has been all this talk and accusations 
about the Democrats raiding the social security trust fund. Sometimes 
people on our side of the aisle say, well, they have done it, too. We 
get into this conversation that is really not very productive and 
misleading.
  Some of the articles lately have been illuminating. In September, the 
Washington Post called it ``a fake debate.'' In October, the New York 
Times said it was ``social security scare-mongering.'' In a recent 
column, Henry Aaron described this as ``great pretenders.'' The truth 
was shown in an article in USA Today this morning. The headline is, 
``Add It Up, Social Surplus Is Getting Tapped.''
  But the important point is this: The Republicans have already dipped 
into the social security surplus to the tune of $17 billion, according 
to the Congressional Budget Office. Our own budgeters are saying that. 
Let us not make a big deal of this, because the truth is, this does not 
affect the security of the benefits for a single person who is getting 
social security. It does not extend or contract the solvency of the 
social security trust fund by one day.
  The real problem that we know, that we have been talking about, is 
how do we make sure that when there are fewer people working and paying 
into the system, that the retirees will be able to maintain the 
benefits at at least the current level.
  We can deal with that issue. That is a real issue. But we cannot deal 
with the issues of health care, of education, of the environment in 
this country if we are engaged in fake debates about tax cuts and 
surpluses where the numbers do not add up, and allegations of thievery 
that have no place on the Floor of this Chamber or anywhere else.
  We need to be serious about the work that we do, and as I said 
before, remember who we are doing it for.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I am convinced that that whole effort on 
the Republican side to talk about tapping the existing trust fund is 
nothing more than an effort to disguise the fact that they are not 
providing one penny for long-term solvency of social security and 
Medicare. They just keep confusing the issues constantly. I appreciate 
what the gentleman said.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, let me make two quick points. My colleague, 
the gentleman from Maine, when he was talking about the Republican 
argument on the Democrats raiding social security trust fund, it is 
somewhat disingenuous when we have the majority leader of the 
Republican party who, in 1984, indicated that social security was a 
rotten trick, a bad retirement, and who only in recent years talked 
about phasing out social security.
  So this sense of the Republican majority saving social security, I 
think the public sees through that, given the history.
  But I wanted to make a quick point on the issue that the gentleman 
brought up on the tax cut, this trillion dollars, which ultimately came 
down to $800 billion in a tax cut.
  I think it is important to note that Democrats are for tax cuts. We 
support tax cuts. But it is a question, when I talked about values and 
priorities, and where the focus is, where are tax cuts? Let us look at 
families in this country. Let us look at working families. Let us look 
at the marriage penalty, home health care, education tax credits to get 
the kids to school, small business tax cuts.
  We put a package together where the tax cuts were paid for. We are 
for tax cuts, but we want to make sure that it is not the richest 1 
percent or 2 percent of folks in this country who are the 
beneficiaries, but hard-working folks of modest means who are finding 
it more difficult day in and day out to make ends meet.
  That is where our direction has to be. That is what we have to do. 
That is about values. That is about priorities. That is about who in 
fact should benefit from what goes on in this country.
  Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentlewoman for mentioning that this 
unfinished agenda that we are realizing over the next few days because 
the Republicans want to go home really could have included significant 
tax cuts for the average family if only they would have, on the other 
side, agreed to deal with those real tax cuts for families, rather than 
the larger tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporate interests.

                              {time}  2100

  I yield now to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I again thank my colleague from New 
Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for asking for this special order on the 
``unfinished agenda.'' I was in my office returning phone calls and I 
know the gentleman talked about prescription drug benefits for seniors. 
One of the calls I was returning was a senior who is in an HMO and he 
joined that HMO because they did have a prescription drug benefit. Now 
what we are seeing is they are raising the deductibles and lowering the 
maximum they will cover. So unless Congress reacts, then the HMOs who 
got a lot of seniors to join because of whether it be for glasses or 
some other benefit that is not covered by Medicare, we will see even 
more seniors who do not have some type of copay or prescription drugs.
  This person said he liked his doctors, he liked his hospital, but he 
just could not afford to continue paying because HMOs are raising the 
deductibles and dropping some of the coverage for Medicare.
  The unfinished agenda I think is important to talk about it, because 
not that I do not want to go home and we do not want to go home. In 
fact, I go home every weekend and I enjoy it. I get to see my family 
and I love the district I represent and to do things in that district. 
But there are some things that we need to do and I think we could have 
gotten to them before the middle of November. In fact, our original 
adjournment date was the end of October and we missed that, but we 
could tell earlier in the year that the way things were running it just 
was not working.
  One of the issues that I did not hear talked about that we hoped we 
would see is a minimum wage increase. The have the best economy in our 
history, but we still have a lot of people left out. Typically, the 
unskilled, the people at the literally lower level of the economic 
scale and they are not benefitting from that. They cannot invest in new 
stock offerings or take advantage of some of the things that are 
happening, but a minimum wage increase will see that benefit to them.
  So I talked to a lot of my own constituents and some businesses who 
said we do not know if we could afford it. And I said this is the best 
economy that we have seen in years. So we have not dealt with that. I 
know the controversy is whether they will have a dollar increase over 2 
years versus 3 years, but the concern I have is the sweetener on that 
minimum wage increase. We are in a legislative process. There is not 
purity. We have to get enough votes to pass something. So I understand 
we would have to have some tax relief. But it needs to be paid for.
  The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) had a minimum wage increase 
in 2 years with $30 billion in tax relief, but it would have been made 
up by not going into Social Security or borrowing more money from 
Social Security. Because I agree with my colleagues that we are not 
spending Social Security up here; what we are doing is a continual 
borrowing from it. And whether we as Members of Congress this year or 
next year or 20 years from now, whoever is here, we need to make sure 
that the Congress then pays back those debts to Social Security, just 
like they would pay it back to us if we had a Treasury note or someone 
in Europe or Japan who happened to invest in the government securities 
of our country. Social Security needs to be paid back just like every 
other person

[[Page 29859]]

who loans money to the Federal Government.
  Mr. Speaker, the minimum wage increase was just left out. And, again, 
we are talking people who are working hard. We are not talking people 
who are on public assistance. Workers at minimum wage with two children 
in the family, they are still well below the poverty line. That is why 
I think it is bad we did not take it up much sooner and seriously 
discuss it in October and early November.
  Let me talk about the managed care. I know that some time has been 
spent on it by my colleagues tonight, and the gentleman from New Jersey 
served on the health task force, he is the Chair of that in our caucus. 
It worried me when the Speaker appointed only one Member to the 
conference with the Senate that voted for the bill. Today, I think 
Congress Daily said the Speaker's office said, well, his concerns and 
reason there is not going to be any more people added to it, only one 
person who voted for the bill that passed on a bipartisan basis on this 
floor, is that he is concerned about coverage. They want more people 
covered.
  Great. I would like to do that too, and I think we share that. But 
let us not try and eat the whole apple at one bite. We have to deal 
with people who are fortunate enough to have coverage now and make sure 
they have adequate coverage. I would like to, tonight or tomorrow, 
start drafting a bill that would talk about expanded health care, 
because I come from a district that is traditionally underserved and we 
have a lot of employers who cannot afford insurance. Or maybe they do 
pay part of it, but their employee has to pay part of it. That 
employee, if they are minimum wage or a little higher, they are busy 
just trying to cover their weekly needs, rent and fuel and insurance. 
Not health insurance, but insurance on their car, because it is 
mandatory in most of our States to come and go from work. So people do 
not have that.
  So I would like to start on that, and I would wish they would not use 
the managed care reform bill as the whipping post, because that is what 
they are doing. I do not think they have any seriousness about 
expanding coverage. Managed care needs to be dealt with as its own 
issue, because those are people who are fortunate enough to have some 
type of insurance. And, again, I speak from coming from the State of 
Texas where all the protections that we passed on this floor, they are 
already in State law and of course have been for 2 years.
  Eliminating the gag rules between the doctor and their patients. 
Outside swift appeals process. Medical necessity. Making sure the 
doctor is the one making that determination. Accountability. 
Accountability for those medical decisions. Again, I know the fear is 
we are going to see lots of folks go to the court house. In Texas, we 
have not seen that run on the court house. In fact, I do not think 
there is more than half a dozen, or not even that many cases, that were 
filed simply because the appeals process works. They are finding over 
half the time in favor of the patient and not necessarily for who made 
that decision in the HMO bureaucracy.
  The other concern we have as part of our bill is that patients do not 
have to drive by an emergency room to get care. If the HMO may have 
been fortunate enough to make a deal with an emergency room that is 15 
miles away and the patient is having chest pains or breaks a leg, then, 
sure, they want to go to the closest emergency room and then be 
transferred. But our bill provided for that.
  That is why it worries me that we are going to see not only a weak 
bill that the Senate passed, we passed a strong bill here, but the 
majority, the Republicans put again out of 13 conferees, I think only 
one voted for the final version. I think that sends a message to the 
American people. And I hope they continue to remember, and I am going 
to be here as long as I can over the next few weeks and next months 
when we come back to talk about how real managed care reform needs to 
be passed and that is an unfinished agenda we have for this year.
  Frankly, we could have dealt with that much earlier if it had not 
come up in the middle of October. The gentleman from New Jersey and I 
are members of the Committee on Commerce, the Subcommittee on Health 
and Environment. It would have been nice if we would have held hearings 
on the bill, instead of waiting to September to have a few hearings on 
it. This was such a major issue last session of Congress and in this 
session of Congress, it should have been dealt with in the spring and 
maybe today we could be congratulating ourselves on the agenda that we 
did accomplish. So that is what really bothers me.
  The tax cut; I know we spent so long this year talking about this 
hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. And, again, I sometimes 
have constituents who come to me and say, ``Wait a minute. We want you 
to talk how we understand you. Do not talk in `Washingtonese.' '' and I 
tell them, ``With my accent, I do not think anybody would say that I 
talk in `Washingtonese.' '' But one of the things that I asked some 
folks, I said: Wait a minute. If this tax cut was so important and it 
was such a great political issue, why did we not have a veto override 
vote here on the floor of the House or the Senate? Why did we not have 
an effort to do that?
  I think when I went back home in August and when our colleagues went 
back home and talked to a lot of people, they found out that the tax 
cut was not the top of the agenda for most folks. Health care concerns, 
education concerns. The economy is good. They did not want Congress to 
mess things up because the economy is so good for such a large 
percentage of the American people. So maybe it was that we spent so 
much time this year talking about this huge tax cut that, again, it 
would have literally devastated our country.
  I think over the next 10 years, because the demand we had, we have a 
growing country. That is great. We have growing demands both for our 
military, defense, we have growing demand for the INS, for the Border 
Patrol. We have a growing demand, and so many people say, ``Sure, I 
would like to have a tax cut. But I do not want them not to be able to 
staff an aircraft carrier,'' although I hope we do not build one that 
we do not want. ``I want to make sure that our military personnel have 
a pay increase,'' and that was part of the bill that we did pass. That 
is one of the few things that I think we could say that we finished and 
it was passed and signed by the President.
  So lack of a real managed care reform effort that should have started 
earlier this year. Prescription drugs is something that we have been 
talking about on our side of the aisle for over a year, and it is 
beginning to hit because again a lot of the seniors who are fortunate 
enough to have an HMO which has prescription coverage are now seeing 
that benefit reduced. Hopefully not eliminated, but reduced. And we 
need to solve the problem before it becomes such a crisis for our 
seniors. It is already a crisis for at least a third of the people who 
have no benefit at all.
  Again, coming from Houston, I have seniors who are willing to drive 
to Mexico, which takes 6\1/2\ hours. But most people cannot afford to 
do that, whether it be physically or financially, to go down to buy 
cheaper drugs, or to go to Canada in the northern part of our country.
  Social Security Trust Fund. The safeguarding. I know we talked about 
that earlier and we have not had any long-term safeguarding. But I 
would hope that maybe when we come back after the holidays and New 
Years, and of course next year is an election year and people say 
Congress does not do anything during an election year. I hope that is 
not the case. Hopefully, we will respond to the demands of the American 
people, one, because of the managed care reform needs and also a 
prescription drug benefit.
  The President has a proposal that would expand Medicare coverage. But 
there is a bill that our colleague from Maine and the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Turner) and a bunch of us signed on to that does not cost 
very much Federal money a lot all. All it would do is allow HCFA to 
negotiate just like

[[Page 29860]]

HMOs now do for reduced medication costs for their seniors who are 
members of their HMO, just like as the Federal Government, the Veterans 
Administration does. They negotiate with prescription drug companies to 
be able to reduce prescription costs to veterans, because that is part 
of the service that is provided for our veterans who served our 
country.
  Mr. Speaker, that would have so little Federal cost that it was 
something that we really should have been talking about in the spring 
and say, hey, let us see if this works. Let us at least have some 
hearings on it and see where everyone sits down and comes around on it. 
If there is a problem, let us try and fix it. That is what the 
legislative process is about and that is what we have not been doing 
for this year.
  Again, I am disappointed because I have served a lot of years as a 
legislator and I enjoy problem-solving like some of my colleagues on 
the Republican side, but we have not had that opportunity this year. 
Let us problem-solve with managed care reform, prescription drug 
benefits and a minimum wage increase. However we have to couch it to 
make sure it can be beneficial to so many people.
  Again, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for taking the time 
tonight and asking for this special order, but also to say we know we 
have not finished our job. And as much as I want to go home and be with 
my family in Houston, I would like to be here to get our job done. And 
if we could stay for another week, I would be glad to take up 
prescription drugs and HMO because it would be a much nicer Christmas 
for the American people if we had something to take home to them.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the gentleman said. It is 
so true. We know because just for the last few days when we were home 
for Friday over the couple of days we had around Veterans Day, that 
that is what I am hearing. I am hearing from my constituents about 
these unfinished needs and about the prescription drugs and the HMOs.
  The one letter that I read earlier, this is from a gentleman who 
actually had a Medicare plan that included the prescription drug 
benefit and now it has been dropped completely. So I am getting all of 
that. I am getting a lot of people who had the benefit completely 
dropped and others for whom it costs a lot more.
  The one thing that the gentleman from Texas said that I wanted to 
highlight again, before we conclude tonight, is a lot of times I think 
that the Republican leadership thinks that the American public, that 
they can pull the wool over their eyes, that they do not really 
understand what is going on down here, that a lot of people do not pay 
attention. And we always hear that people do not pay attention to what 
goes on in Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I find just the opposite to be true. When we had that 
situation with the trillion-dollar tax cut that the Republicans put 
forth during the summer, which was mostly to pay for the wealthy, to 
help the wealthy and the corporate interests, I was amazed when I went 
home because everybody always says the public is selfish, they want a 
tax cut. They are not going to worry about the implications of it. I 
found just the opposite was true.
  Everyone, particularly the seniors, understood exactly that that was 
not a tax cut that was going to help the average person and that for 
senior citizens it meant that there would be no money left to deal with 
the solvency of Medicare and Social Security.
  I think that is why when we came back, there was no effort to 
override the President's veto and we really have not heard any more 
about it for the last 2 or 3 months because they realize that the 
public got it and that the public understood that that was wrong and 
that it was taking away from other more important priorities. I do not 
know if it will stop them, because as I said before, we hear that the 
Speaker is talking about bringing up another major tax cut in January. 
We just have to make sure that this unfinished agenda that we have been 
talking about tonight, that we address it and that we force the 
Republican leadership to address it when we come back in January.

                              {time}  2115

  The President will deliver his State of the Union Address. I know he 
is going to talk about prescription drugs because he set the pace for 
that last year. That and these other priorities have to be met. But we 
will be here. We will be determined that we are going to deal with this 
unfinished agenda.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, like the gentleman from New Jersey 
(Mr. Pallone) said, we will, like the Terminator, we will be back. But 
it would not hurt me if we stayed a few days to get some of these 
things done. The gentleman and I know, if we have not done them in the 
11 months we have been here, we are not going to do them in the next 
couple of weeks.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, we still do not control the process because 
we are in the minority.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, they do not let the gentleman from 
New Jersey and I bring bills up on the floor.

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