Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the meritorious service performed by aviators in the United States Armed Forces who, as a result of hostile action, mechanical failures, or other problems, were forced to evade or escape enemy capture, were captured but subsequently escaped, or were compelled to endure arduous confinement, retaliation, and even death as a result of their efforts to evade capture or escape.

I thank the gentlelady.

The previous resolution had to do with the anniversary of Iwo Jima. This is something that would actually go to a number of wars and conflicts that the U.S. Armed Forces have been involved in, but I will focus a bit on a veteran of World War II in terms of the need for this recognition and resolution.

Oddly enough somehow, the Defense Department has overlooked the valiant service of many who were previously in the Army Air Corps, now in the United States Air Force, or in the flying arms of the United States Army or the Marines and Navy and their sacrifice when they have been shot down behind enemy lines and not captured and imprisoned, but actually managed to evade escape, sometimes allying themselves with resistance movements, other times just depriving the enemy of the victory of capturing a downed U.S. pilot, bombardier, airman of any sort.

This first came to my attention when I was approached by a gentleman I have known a number of years in Eugene, Oregon, Don Fisher. And he came to me with a request I hear from a lot of vets, which is, ``Hey, could you help me get my service records?'' We had the infamous fire in St. Louis which burned up so many veterans' records. And we are often asked to help reconstitute their records, generally for benefit purposes, but sometimes for other purposes. And I said, ``Sure, Don.'' I mean that's really pretty routine. ``We can help you with that.'' He said, ``This one isn't quite so routine.'' And I said, ``Well, how is that?'' And he said, ``Well, I was shot down over occupied France in a B-17. I came down behind enemy lines, and I was harbored by French families who were friendly to the allies. I cooperated and worked with the resistance and evaded escape until D-day.'' And on D-day he revealed himself to British forces and was first allowed to send a message home. But then when turned over to the U.S. forces, they had questions about whether he really was a U.S. aviator, and he was rather extensively interrogated.

So what he wanted was to get his interrogation files. He said, ``I really don't remember everything that happened to me when I was behind enemy lines.'' He said, ``I'm sure when I was a young man I had a better memory. And I would like to have that for my family and myself.'' I said, ``Well, sure. We'll help.'' It's either still in the depths of some classification system somewhere or it was declassified, so we could never find that file.

But that brought me an interest in him and his organization. There is an organization of what they call evaders. In this case they are World War II. Many of them are becoming quite elderly. They are going to have a reunion in the not too distant future out at the Air Force Academy in Colorado.

I took on the task to try to get them some recognition. So this is actually two parts. One is expressing the sense of Congress for admiration for their extraordinary service. And again, this does not just extend to World War II. It would be Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, Afghanistan, other conflicts and other involvements by U.S. forces. Anybody who has been in this situation.

Secondly, I am recommending strongly to the Secretary of Defense that a special ribbon, award, or medal be developed to recognize these activities and encourage these activities, because there will be future U.S. aviators who will be in the same position. And we want them to know that we honored their forebears, those who came before them who for years hid and operated behind enemy lines and then came back to freedom with our victories.

It is almost exactly 47 years since he was shot down. It's a story that is not totally extraordinary. I know other World War II veterans. But I just recount it briefly. His plane was shot down. They bailed out. He doesn't remember much because they were at a pretty high altitude. He blacked out. The next thing he knew he was hanging from a tree, and the German fighter pilot circled him. And he thought for sure he was going to be strafed. Instead, the German fighter pilot saluted him and flew off.

He then managed to get extricated from his harness, and after that was sheltered by the French, and ultimately became associated with French resistance, and as I say, met the liberators in Paris when we liberated Paris. So this is one of thousands of extraordinary stories and acts of valor by our soldiers.

I just hope strongly that we can get unanimous agreement on this resolution and restrict the debate to the subject of this resolution to honor these people for their extraordinary service, and move on.

Again, I wish that the Republican side had been able to wait until later this evening during their 2

hours to raise their concerns about health care, but there are some things that merit response in the interest of truth and the American way.

The gentleman before me is extraordinary. This President has deficits totaled larger than every other President combined? No. Actually, yes, we do have a record deficit this last year. Most of it is inherited from George Bush. But it's true, now, that that's a very high year.

But George Bush is the one who doubled the national debt and did accumulate more debt than every other President before him, before the collapse of Wall Street because of the deregulatory agenda of the Bush administration and the Republican Party--every ounce of which I fought on the floor of this House--which brought America to its knees, which dissolved people's savings and 401(k)s and everything else for greedy bankers and investors and others. And the Republicans put that agenda in place when they controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House with their deregulatory approach.

So it's not even factually true. Yes, I'm very concerned about the astounding deficits, and we've got to deal with that, but George Bush doubled the debt. There is a record 1-year increase. It does not exceed even the amount of debt George Bush accumulated. He may be looking into the future, but it's not factually true.

To the gentleman before him who talked about bankrupting people because we're going to give them access to quality, affordable health care, I wish he would tell that to the woman from my district who I talked to who got cancer, had an individual policy, and guess what? She paid her premiums, and when it became time for renewal, the company said, Sorry. We don't renew policies of people who have cancer. Thank you very much for your premiums.

Or the gentleman I met in the unemployment office. Yeah, he had rights to purchase his health care under COBRA. But the cost of his health care was three-quarters of his unemployment benefit. His wife was deathly ill. This is a tough guy. He cried in public in that office. That won't happen again if we pass this legislation tomorrow. That gentleman will not be forced to choose between keeping his home, feeding his family, and getting his wife needed health care. Under your plan, that continues, status quo. You guys are the pets of the insurance industry, and you know it.

And then the woman that needed a double mastectomy and they had a special team from her insurance company. That was great. But their job was to find a way to get her off the plan. They reviewed her history. They found she had been to a dermatologist for acne. They said she hadn't reported it. They rescinded her policy. And a gentleman from your side of the aisle had to threaten that insurance company publicly to get her reinstated. This law will prohibit that in the future.

We need to take on the health insurance industry in America and prevent these abuses, and you guys did nothing about that under your charge, and your proposals for the future will do nothing about that.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Madam Speaker, I too rise in support of House Resolution 925, which seeks recognition for aviators who, as a result of hostile action or other causes, were forced to escape and evade their potential captors. Every military aviator who begins a combat mission recognizes and prepares for the possibility that hostile actions or other events will compel the aviator to escape and evade capture.

Thousands of American aviators have faced that daunting task. Some overcame long odds and great hardships to return to their units to resume their service. Others tried to evade enemy forces but were captured, suffering arduous confinement, torture, and even death. Except for a few, the specific identities of those thousands have mostly faded from American memory, and many were not recognized for their determined efforts to escape and evade. That is why this resolution is important. These aviators deserve recognition. That is why I call on all Members to support this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, the service performed by aviators in the U.S. Armed Forces is indeed meritorious. They have fought bravely and risked much to take care of our country. Indeed, they deserve the recognition and care for their sacrifice that this resolution embodies. As members of the military, their health care falls under the TRICARE system, which as Representative Skelton mentioned earlier in this day, must be addressed in any health care bill before Congress.

We must make sure that any bill we pass in this area gives them the benefits that they deserve.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Posey).

I would say that it's always the proper time to talk about issues that impact our freedom, and we have momentous issues here in Congress at times that deal directly upon our freedom.

With that in mind, I would like to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to my colleague and friend who is an Army veteran from the State of Michigan (Mr. Rogers).

Madam Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Rogers).

Madam Speaker, there are some important, vital, and principled reasons why those of us on this side of the aisle will be opposing the health care plan should it come to a vote tomorrow. And just briefly let me recap these. It raises taxes by $570 billion over 10 years. It will cost the taxpayers $1.2 trillion, not to mention the so-called doc fix of about $371 billion, a massive increase of government spending. It's also a takeover by the

government, a dramatic step away from personal, private coverage and choice to a government-run system that will end up rationing care. It's unconstitutional. There is nowhere in the Constitution that says the government has the power to require every single person to go out and buy insurance whether they want to or not. It fails to adequately address illegal immigrants through no enforceable means of citizen verification. It funds abortion. There's lack of tort reform. It forces Americans out of their current plans. It increases premiums. It will increase personal health expenditures whether people can afford it or not. It bends the curve of government spending in the future in the wrong direction. It constitutes a massive permanent government takeover of the private student loan industry. That's 30,000 jobs right there. It is chock-full of special deals, from the Bismarck bank job to the Louisiana purchase and others. It does not factor in market risks regarding defaults on student loans.

So for all those reasons, Madam Speaker, we should be opposing that bill when it comes, if it comes, to a vote tomorrow.

At this point, I would like to yield 3 minutes to my friend and colleague from the State of Ohio who is also a member of the Armed Services Committee that I serve on with him, Representative Turner.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my friend and colleague from Alabama, Representative Aderholt.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my friend and colleague from Texas, Representative Brady .

Madam Speaker, I would inquire as to the time remaining.

Madam Speaker, let me point out that there is a big flaw in the process that we have been following here recently. We have these massive groups of bills that we are supposed to absorb in a 72-hour period which finishes tomorrow, and then we culminate potentially with a vote on a massive piece of legislation reforming one-sixth of our Nation's economy.

And if you look at this bill right here, this is the reconciliation bill, H.R. 4872, the bill reported from the House Budget Committee, 2,310 pages; the two plain-language reports from the Budget Committee totaling about 1,300 pages; and, the amendment in the nature of a substitute of 150 pages. You add all that together, that is 3,800 pages that we have been given in the last 3 days. I dare say there is not a single Member of this House that has read these 3,800 pages, and that is on top of the original bill of a couple thousand pages.

So we have a process here where we are not really given enough time to absorb and go through these bills, and the American people really deserve better than that. This system has not been followed like we should be doing, and I just regret that. I think that is a flaw in this process.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman from Colorado for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I applaud the sponsors, cosponsors, and everyone in the body who is taking the time to support the heroes that we're discussing today. I would also like to take this opportunity to remind the body, as my colleague just has, that we must keep the TRICARE promised them for life as well. And while we're on the TRICARE/health care subject, I'd like to stress my strong objections to the health care legislation, the unprecedented abuses, and perhaps unconstitutional process through which it's being considered.

The American people are telling us, either in letters or calls, in every poll that they don't want it. Besides the fact of Social Security is unsustainable, Medicare is unsustainable, and only a few doctors even accept Medicaid as it is now. There are other top 10 reasons to reject it.

It raises taxes by over $550 billion. It adds over a trillion more dollars to the national debt, kills over 2 million more jobs, and drives up the cost of medical insurance; gives the IRS unprecedented power over the lives of the American people; replaces your doctor with Federal bureaucrats to make critical decisions about your medical care; cuts Medicare by more than a half a trillion dollars, and of course Congress is exempt; provides for the largest expansion of abortion coverage since Roe v. Wade, including taxpayer-funded abortions. It will bankrupt States through billions in unfunded mandates; force American citizens to foot the bill for health care for illegal aliens, inasmuch as it fails to include strict enforcement; is the result of a flawed process, having been written in secret out of the view of C-SPAN cameras and filled with backroom deals and vote buying.

We're a Nation of laws. Laws are not supposed to be ignored when they are inconvenient or simply pose a hurdle to achieving certain agendas. We teach our children to play by the rules, but this Congress is teaching them something very different.

How can we expect the American people to obey the laws Congress passes when Congress won't obey its own rules? It is respect for the rule of law that has distinguished the United

States from the banana republics and authoritarian regimes.

Indeed, millions of Americans, including those we're honoring today, have fought and even have died for this country; yet this bill, this process grossly compromises that principle. Clearly, Congress isn't listening to the American people and is once again ignoring their voices.

There is an old political axiom that says any time you promise to take from Peter to pay Paul, one thing usually happens--Paul votes for you. And that is where we are right here, right now today in Congress. This is exactly what ultimately leads democracies to fail, and this bill, if enacted into law, will greatly undermine the future of our Republic, the greatest Nation in the history of the world that these men and women fought and died for.

It has been said democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government; it can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority usually votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits. Therefore, the average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been about 200 years.

These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to apathy, from apathy to dependence, and from dependency back into bondage.

It is not difficult to see where we are right now on that scale, but what is true is it's frightening. It's frightening that some people think our government is some kind of cosmic Santa Claus who cannot fail. It isn't--and it can fail if we are not good stewards of the gift our Forefathers gave to us. We must not allow the American experiment at representative self-government to fail on our watch.

If our Founders wanted to live like Europeans, they would not have come here in the first place or they would have turned the ships around and headed home. But they didn't. They wanted a land of opportunity, not a land of government-administered, cradle-to-the-grave entitlements.

Americans don't want to go down this path toward future socialism, increasingly losing power to government. Vice President Biden said it best yesterday when he said, if this bill is passed, government will ``control'' health care in America. His words not mine.

No one believes the status quo in our Nation's health care system is acceptable. There are many areas where we can find agreement, and we must move forward to fix those problems. The American people deserve better. Let them know that we know we don't work for Congress. Congress works for them by defeating this bill.

I commend Madeleine Bordallo on the work on this bill, and it does sadden many of us that we have to come here today and talk about an issue that is so pressing, an issue that affects 310 million Americans. And it's hard to find that time to get out and talk about that issue that will take away health care from millions, that will tax health care for millions, that will raid the Social Security trust fund, that will actually cut a half a trillion dollars out of the Medicare budget. But there are things in this bill that I think the other side does not want to talk about that is in here, and that is exactly why we feel compelled to come here to offer amendments at the Rules Committee to get this thing at least where the American people can have some faith that you're going to have an honest debate.

The number of sweetheart and sleazy deals in this bill, the bill that this Chamber will vote on tomorrow, is sickening. It pits one American against another American. It pits one neighbor against another neighbor, and it happens time and time and time again in your legislation.

If you're a retired UAW worker living next door to a retired tool and die machinist, guess what? There is a special provision where you get offsets for the increase in your premiums for a UAW worker but the tool and die machinists get nothing except a higher tax bill. It's wrong. It was a special provision tucked in this bill.

If you're a senior citizen in Florida, there is a special provision that says your Medicare Advantage stays intact, but if you're a senior citizen living in Ohio or New York or Michigan, guess what? Not for you. You get treated differently. You lose your Medicare Advantage. It's wrong. It's sleazy. It's un-American.

If you're a UAW worker in Michigan, you're going to get a higher tax on your insurance plan. If you're a longshoreman in New York City, you don't pay the higher tax on your insurance plan. It's unseemly, sleazy, and it's wrong.

These are provisions tucked into this bill we can only assume to get to the magic number to pass on this floor.

You know, if you're a banker in Michigan, you no longer, after this bill is passed, will be able to make a private student loan. That is right. But if you're a banker from North Dakota, guess what? You will get to make a private student loan. It's un-American. And each and every one of these sleazy deals ought to be brought to this floor and eliminated from this bill.

We will have that opportunity in Rules Committee. We will see the commitment of this Chamber to be honest and transparent, not to mention the fact that we will stop the Social Security raid to pay for a bill that adds a trillion dollars to the deficit.

And do you realize, Madam Speaker, why the impact of this is so important? Because this administration has had more deficit spending than every other President of the United States combined. It is shocking and it's breathtaking, and the arrogance of this Chamber to bring such an un-American bill with special sweetheart, sleazy deals tucked in and arm-twisting to make it happen is wrong.

I know that the soldiers I served with fought for a unified country, a country that believed in liberty and personal responsibility and limited government. I know that today we ought to stand for that, too, and we ought to ask all of this to come to light and put those amendments as a part of the bill and clean up our act in Congress.

Finally, some spirited debate on an issue that will impact 310 million Americans. The problem with your anecdotal stories is, you are going to say that 85 percent of the system that is working right and having insurance are going to be punished and rationed in health care to fix the 15 percent. That's the travesty. You won't have one tough guy crying; you will have millions and millions of Americans crying for losing their health care.

And on the deficit, to set it straight, the year prior to the Democrats taking over control of this Congress it was a $270 billion deficit. The year leading up to their takeover of this Chamber, $160 billion. And guess what? The very next year, $1.4 trillion. That's your problem. That's your plan. You need to deal with the facts.

The purpose of this resolution is to honor the aviators who have done such courageous duty for this country. And they have. And I think one of the things they have done because of their sacrifices is that they have always given America a chance to become a more perfect union. And I think the language in our founding documents of working towards a more perfect union suggests that we're a country that's always looking for an opportunity to get just a little bit better. And we now have a bill we will be voting on tomorrow that does give America a chance, not to solve all our problems, but to get a little bit better when it comes to health care.

And I just want to, in the context of an aviator, suggest what that may mean. Let's take an aviator that goes to France, serves in a B-17 like so many courageous aviators did, is shot down, rescued, prisoner- of-war, returns, starts a little business, raises a family back home, survives World War II, raises let's say his daughter, she grows up to maturity, maybe has a kid. He is a proud grandfather like many of these aviators are.

What could happen to his daughter right now in the current situation of the law? What could happen is she could have insurance, she could have a good job, she could be taking care of her family, and then she can develop cancer. And do you know what this side of the aisle wants to allow to continue to be the law of the United States of America? They want to let the aviator's daughter to be able to be canceled in her insurance policy because she develops cancer.

Let's assume the grandchild of the aviator develops diabetes and gets to maturity and wants to go out and buy an insurance policy. Guess what this side of the aisle wants to allow to be continued practiced in America? They, who are going to be voting en masse, en masse, against health care reform, against this step forward tomorrow, they will be voting tomorrow to allow the aviator's grandchild to be denied insurance because she developed diabetes.

Now I question whether American aviators who fight wars proudly think it's really up to American standards to allow the children and grandchildren of aviators to be denied coverage because they developed illness. We don't think that is good enough for America. We think we deserve better. And what we will be doing tomorrow is voting for a provision that will give the families of aviators the right, in fact, to be treated fairly in America.

Now I know many people, they have argued this is somehow a government takeover of health care. I've thought about that, and I can understand people don't want a government takeover of health care. But it is fundamental. What this does is it changes the relationship between Americans and the insurance industry. And that's a relationship, and the rules of that relationship do need to change because we need to give Americans more choice. We need to give them more freedom. We need to give them more protection against some of the practices of the insurance companies. And that's what we will be voting to do tomorrow.

So I say let's honor some aviators. Let's honor their families by giving their families the right to have health care even though they have asthma, even though they have diabetes, even though they have Parkinson's. Whether they are Republicans or Democrats, or red and blue States, all Americans deserve to be able to have insurance in this country. That's what we're going to do tomorrow.