[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12794]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            CORPORATE GREED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday of this week President 
Bush gave a major speech on his administration's plans to curb 
executive greed and corporate misgovernance in America. Why, one should 
ask, was the President's speech so poorly received? Why did the market 
drop several hundred points in the 3 days since the President gave his 
speech, including a couple of hundred points actually the same day that 
he delivered the speech on Wall Street? Why did so many Wall Street 
workers who attended the speech ask afterwards how much of this speech 
was just politics and how much of it is about real change?
  Despite the President's calls for corporate America to clean up its 
act, President Bush, at the behest of his corporate sponsors, continues 
to oppose real reform on Capitol Hill. He has refused to support 
meaningful pension and accounting reforms, even though a bipartisan 
bill just passed the other House. He will not support other legislation 
to halt offshore tax avoidance. His budget severely underfunds the SEC; 
and to make matters worse, the President has pushed to turn Medicare 
over to the health insurance industry, which brought us HMOs and has 
brought us disaster in many, particularly rural, communities around the 
country.
  Why is all this happening? Why would all this be? It is pretty 
simple. The President and Republican leadership have invited corporate 
interests into the inner sanctum of government to help them run this 
country. Insurance companies write the legislation that Republicans and 
the President try to get through this Congress to privatize the 
Medicare system.
  The chemical industry has written legislation that the Republican 
President and the Republican leaders in Congress have tried to push 
through on environmental policies. The oil industry has written 
legislation for the President and written legislation that the 
President and Republican leadership have tried to push through on 
energy policy. At Wall Street, bankers have written the legislation on 
behalf of Republican leadership and the President to privatize Social 
Security, but worst of all is what Republican leaders in the House have 
pushed through on behalf of the prescription drug industry.
  Let me relate a story of an event. About 3 weeks ago, as the senior 
Democrat on the Subcommittee on Health, I have worked extensively with 
my colleagues on legislation to provide a Medicare prescription drug 
benefit and do something about the outrageous prices that the drug 
industry, the most profitable industry in America, with the lowest tax 
rate in America, has inflicted upon the public.
  During the markup of the Republican plan, because they are in the 
majority in committee, at five o'clock in the afternoon, while we still 
had 15 to 20 hours of work to do, as it turned out, Republican leaders 
adjourned the committee so the Republican Members could go off to join 
President Bush and Vice President Cheney at a big fundraiser 
underwritten by the drug industry to the tune of at least $2 million, 
maybe $3 million, and sponsored by the drug industry and chaired by the 
CEO of a British drug company who, he and his firm, contributed 
$250,000 to the Republicans. Other drug companies, the drug industry 
trade association and others contributed hundreds of thousands of 
additional dollars.
  When we returned the next day to our committee to continue the work 
on the prescription drug bill, on every single major amendment 
consumers and seniors lost, and the drug industry won issue after issue 
after issue. Amendments such as saying that Medicare beneficiaries 
should have a prescription drug plan as good as a Member of Congress, 
voted down on a party-line vote, Republicans opposing because the drug 
industry wanted them to.
  On issues such as dealing with bringing the price down, perhaps 
Medicare, the 40 million Medicare beneficiaries, the government could 
negotiate prices on behalf of all of them and bring the price down like 
they do in Canada. Republican party-line voted no because the 
prescription drug industry wanted it that way.
  Issue after issue after issue, the Republicans sided with the 
prescription drug industry against reform, against seniors, against 
American consumers.
  This government, the Republican leadership in this House of 
Representatives is too close to corporate America. It is too close to 
the oil industry when writing energy policy. It is too close to the 
chemical industry when writing chemical policy. It is too close to the 
drug industry when writing Medicare prescription drug policy. It is too 
close to the insurance industry when they try to privatize Medicare, 
and it is too close to Wall Street when they try to privatize the 
Social Security system.
  Mr. Speaker, the Democratic plan does something about Medicare by 
providing a benefit and doing something about the outrageous pricing.

                          ____________________