[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19786]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                  THE MESSAGE MATTERS: WORDS THAT WORK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, as we enter the final stretch of legislative 
business for this Congress and as we prepare to engage in the campaigns 
back home, as a member of Florida and a member of the Committee on Ways 
and Means of Congress, I wanted to assure residents in Florida that, in 
fact, Republicans have initiated prescription drug coverage for seniors 
in our community.
  Back in 1994, then Governor Lawton Chiles was running for reelection 
to the governorship and was being challenged by Jeb Bush. Governor 
Chiles ran negative ads saying, if Jeb Bush was elected the governor, 
he would take away Social Security.
  Now, everyone knows the governor of a State does not control Social 
Security. But the scam worked and, in fact, Jeb lost. The governor went 
on later to apologize after a thorough investigation found that the 
campaign did, in fact, make those spurious claims that were false and 
misleading.
  Now we are being told that if we do not elect a majority to the other 
side of the aisle that we will not see prescription drug coverage for 
senior citizens.
  Let us put people before politics; and let us make certain that, at 
the end of the day, we come together in a bipartisan fashion to bring 
about prescription coverage for our seniors.
  In town hall meetings in Florida, I meet with seniors all the time of 
every political stripe, not just Republicans, but Democrats and 
Independents. Their first thought to me is, we do not want something 
free, but we certainly do not want to be forced into a government-run 
HMO-style system that makes everyone in the same system one size fits 
all. They would like access to prescription drugs. Yes, they would like 
lower pricing of prescription drugs.
  In this House, we are trying do that. We recognize the cost is 
becoming a big burden on many seniors in our community. But we want to 
make certain that we only cover the poorest and the sickest.
  When the President's drug plan first came to our Committee on Ways 
and Means, there was no provision for catastrophic coverage. We are 
most concerned in our bill of finding a way for the sickest Americans 
who may have diabetes, who may have hypertension, who may have suffered 
from cancer, who may have to depend daily on a multiple dose of 
medications that they, in fact, have some safeguard against financial 
ruin.
  Our bill does that. But our bill also provides a voluntary system in 
which they can decide whether they want to enroll in a new drug plan.
  Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts stated that two-thirds of 
Americans currently have prescription drug coverage who are 65 and 
older. So it begs the question, why are we going to upturn, if you 
will, or turn over the entire prescription drug benefit to those two-
thirds when it is really the one-third we should be seeking to remedy.
  Those may again be the poorest. And we can help through our plan to 
provide for prescription drug coverage both through the States and the 
Medicaid system and through our innovative care.
  Again, people before politics.
  We want to put families back in charge of the decisions they make 
relative to their prescription coverage and their health care and what 
policies they may or may not want to join, not a forced plan by the 
Federal Government.
  But we also have to recognize some of the other things that we have 
to consider, long-term care insurance, another serious issue facing 
Americans. We should not just be talking, Mr. Speaker, about 
prescription drugs. We have to face reality that our community and our 
country is growing older and that the need for long-term health care 
insurance or coverage will become even more profound in the years 
ahead.
  Now, fortunately this Congress is on its way to paying down with 
surplus dollars, 90 percent of that surplus, to pay down the Federal 
debt. When we first came to Congress, many of us prescribed a bill that 
would in fact use any anticipated surplus for paying down debt, 
strengthening Social Security and Medicare, and providing some tax 
relief for our citizens.
  I think we are on the threshold of greatness in being able to 
announce to the people that, yes, both sides of the aisle can take 
credit, because $356-some billion of the debt has been retired in the 
last 3 years of this Congress's existence.
  Now, that is a monumental achievement in as much as now the interest 
that was going to be paid on that $356 billion can now be used to fund 
and strengthen Social Security, fund and strengthen Medicare and, yes, 
provide prescription drugs.
  So before people who are listening to our voices get scared by TV ads 
suggesting that some party is going to do more for them than the other, 
at least listen to the facts at hand and recognize that I believe so 
many people in Congress on both sides of the aisle are in fact striving 
to provide the coverage to make certain our seniors have the drugs they 
need that they may not be able to afford; but thankfully for the 
pharmaceutical industry, which has brought some miraculous drugs to the 
forefront, we will provide a way to provide them cheaper, more 
affordably and more accessibly.

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