Floor Statements

Thank you so much, Congressman Murphy. Thank you for gathering us here at this late hour and also for taking on the leadership role in this extremely important issue. I am very proud to be here with you and my other colleagues tonight who are taking the time to talk about how important this is. And I would like to add a few words that can't come close to expressing what people have done in letters and stories that have already been told, but I do want to add a few words from my own perspective.

In 1993, as we have talked about today, Congress passed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law that mandates the discharge of openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual servicemembers. Under this law, as we all know and have been talking about, at least one individual a day on average is fired because they are gay or lesbian. Since 1994, that amounts to 13,000 servicemembers who have been discharged under the authority of this discriminatory act.

I am a freshman, as you mentioned, and I know this bill was passed in a different time, but as a freshman, coming in here with different eyes, as a new Member, nothing seems fair or reasonable about this policy. And as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, it is clear to me that this policy does nothing to keep our country safe. And it does nothing to move our country forward in protecting the very rights that the brave men and women of the military are fighting to protect.

In fact, I believe this policy has the opposite effect. Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been responsible for the dismissal of highly qualified soldiers, as we said, almost 13,000 soldiers, that our country desperately needs at a time when we are engaged in two active conflicts overseas.

We have talked a lot about this report which has just been recently released. And As Colonel Om Prakash recently said, as others have said in the Joint Force Quarterly, Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been costly both in personnel and treasure, and is ultimately more damaging to the unit cohesion its stated purpose is to preserve.

We talk a lot about the numbers, about our need for trained members, like experienced Arabic translators, which we know this damages. Tonight we have heard thousands of stories of the men and women who willingly serve our country and, oh, by the way, happen to be gay.

I heard a story recently of a soldier whose partner died while he was serving in Iraq. Because he was gay and because his partner was a male, he couldn't openly grieve or talk, just as you mentioned, to his commanding officer or to any other troops.

I heard about a young woman who wanted to follow in her father's footsteps but because she was openly gay, a lesbian, she could not serve in the military, and it was her life goal.

I, like many of my colleagues, have visited in Iraq and Afghanistan and I have seen the chaos and the confusion, the danger that our soldiers take on every day in which many of them serve.

In my State, like many other States, I attend the ceremonies where we send them off, where we welcome soldiers home, and I look at them, young and old, men and women. And I, like many others, attend the funerals when those soldiers don't come home, and I have hugged the parents of military members who don't come home and know the grief that they feel. But of all of those soldiers, whether you see them in Iraq and Afghanistan, you see them as they are going off, I just see young men and women, older men and women in the Guard who are willing to serve our country. I don't see anyone who is gay or straight. I see, as one of my colleagues said, Americans, people who are willing to serve.

I stand here today in support of every single one of our soldiers, no matter what their sex, their ethnicity, or their sexual orientation. They deserve our respect and deep gratitude and support, and every single one of them deserves the honor just as they are to serve our country.

Thank you so much for taking on this issue and being here tonight.

Absolutely. You're right. I come from the State of Maine. And like many State legislatures, when I was in the legislature and after I was there, the State implemented a lot of reforms around health care. They've done a tremendous amount to attempt to cover more citizens, to bring down the price of prescription drugs, to deal with the challenges of the insurance markets. But the fact is, even though that is a State that has done all it can, a State can't do it by itself. It can't do it one State at a time. What I hear from my constituents when I go back is, Please, do something about the health care system, and don't delay. Do it now. Get it done this year.

You talked about small businesses. Small businesses in my State and big businesses alike are really struggling under the cost of health care. It's a significant economic issue. It truly is. If we don't do something about the rising costs of health care, we're more uncompetitive as a Nation. More small businesses are finding that they're having to cut back on the coverage for their families or take away coverage completely. It's a huge economic issue in our State.

You know, one other factor we sometimes don't talk about around the economic issues is the number of people who might leave their job to start a business. I talk to a lot of constituents who say to me, You know, I would like to start up my own business. I have got an idea. I even might employ a couple of people, but I wouldn't dare leave my job because I don't think I could be without a safety net.

So you have older workers who might choose to retire, you know, go on to their next stage of their lives, but they don't want to leave that health care insurance that they currently have. Or people who have good ideas, who want to go do something, and they say, I just can't do it without the safety net of health care insurance. I don't dare be out there.

You know, it's interesting to come from a State where we have done a lot of insurance reforms and a variety of reforms. What I find is because we've been talking about it for such a long period of time in our State and because the State has moved forward on a variety of things, I find that the constituents in my district are very literate and very articulate about this. Wherever I go, they've got to give me a piece of their mind about the insurance company, and most of them have had some kind of an encounter.

We often talk about the number of people that are happy with their plan, but I've also heard people say, you know, you're happy with your insurance plan sometimes until you have to go and use it. And I am amazed at how many times I meet with people who say, I thought it was going to be there for me. I didn't realize there was going to be a cap on it.

An awful lot of people in my district are self-employed or they do a variety of different jobs. We have a tremendous number of fishermen. People work at woodcutting, a variety of different things, and they have $5,000 and $10,000 deductibles. Well, that sounds pretty good when you first sign up, but the fact is you still pay a very high premium and you've got to pay that first $10,000. You do an injury to your knee or you do a variety of other things or one of your kids gets sick, before you know it, you've got to pay that first $10,000 and you're still paying enormous premiums, and what have you got in the end? It sounds like kind of a way to get around the situation, but most people say to me in the end, you know, This idea of just catastrophic coverage, it really didn't work for me, or, The insurance company wasn't really there when I needed it.

I just want to go back to that point. A number of people who I talk to say--it's a tough economy. Maine is 38th in per capita income, so my district doesn't necessarily look just like yours. A lot of people are really struggling to put it together. A lot of people are seniors or nearing retirement age. But because it's a hardworking constituency, they'll say, you know, We do pretty well at making ends meet. I go fishing. I paint houses. I cut some Christmas trees. My wife sells crafts. We've got this little business or we want a tourist motel. We can almost put it all together and have a pretty good income. The thing we can't afford is that $12,000 or $13,000 a year for insurance. And my daughter's diabetic or my husband's got a condition; we can't go without it. And I just want to go back to that point that the number of people who work hard and say, I could earn a pretty good living, but what I can't afford is health care insurance.

When I look at my State, the struggling economy, the job loss--our unemployment numbers just went up, and we're all looking for the big extension today of unemployment insurance. But the fact is the single biggest thing we can do to revive the economy in my State is to have universal coverage for health care. And I don't care whom I talk to. If they're on the left or the right or they own a business or they work for a big company, that's the one thing we all agree on: If there were affordable health care, we could get by.

One other fact I just want to put out there, and we're talking about a variety of things today, is sometimes people will say to us, well, you know, I don't want to have this kind of government health care. I don't want to have to pay for everybody else.

Well, if you're paying the cost of health care insurance today, at least $1,000 of your $12,000 to $13,000 premium is in the cost shift of all the people who aren't covered or who don't have adequate coverage. I mean, thank goodness people get coverage when they get sick and they get to the hospital. But the fact is our hospitals are struggling under the weight. Our practitioners are having to cover a lot of people who just don't have it when they need it or the insurance wasn't there when they thought they did. So you're already paying at least $1,000 a year in a tax, in a cost shift that's going somewhere else.

Why not make this a sensible system where everybody has early care and intervention and we emphasize wellness? It would make a huge difference in the economy.

We have a lot of colleagues who are strong voices for reform; and most of us, every time we go to the supermarket, go to somebody's birthday party, the first thing our friends and neighbors and constituents say to us, We need to get the health care bill passed. What is standing in the way?

There is so much hard work going on here in dealing with many of the complicated details. This is a major overhaul of the health care system. I commend my colleagues in Congress who are putting in a tremendous number of hours to get this right, and it is not easy to figure out and how to make it affordable for Americans. The stories that you talked about earlier are exactly what we hear everywhere we go. What we are trying to do now is put the finishing touches on a bill that will get us to that place.

I want to go back to the point you made about wellness. I have visited with a lot of the businesses in my district, many of which are self-insured. Those businesses are big enough to take on the challenges of health care themselves, and I am so impressed with the number of companies that are self-insured and say that wellness needs to be a critical component. What they have found as a business decision, the more you can emphasize wellness, good nutrition, smoking cessation, regular check-ups, some have fitness trainers on site, things we wouldn't consider as an early component, but they have realized that the more you can do to keep people healthy, to make sure that their workers and their families get tests, stay out of the hospitals, that is where we can cut significant costs.

That is one of the challenges that people are spending a tremendous number of hours trying to sort out. What does that mean to lower cost? How do you make sure that we don't do unnecessary testing, and that we pay our practitioners for keeping people well, not for hospital admissions and just the times we get sick. It is a major change that we are talking about here, and there has been a lot of thoughtful dialogue and debate, not the crazy talk that is out on some of the cable news shows, but serious dialogue about how to do this right, how to get real competition in with the insurance companies, how to help our small businesses to increase the number of people who are covered.

I have to say that in spite of the difficulties in making major change and crafting a big piece of legislation, I get excited when I think about it. I think about what would it be like to end this year and go back home to our constituents and say, We did it. We took a major step forward. We will no longer be the only Western nation that doesn't have civilized health care insurance, that hasn't worked to bring down costs. That it is affordable. It would be wonderful to say that to people.

I have to leave the floor, but I want to say in closing about my own district, we have talked a lot about the economic issues. When we talk about individual constituents, there is a part of me that believes this is a moral issue. It is a patriotic issue. It is a way of making sure that we understand that in America, we are all in this together. If my small business fails because I struggle under the cost of health insurance, or one of your constituents goes into personal bankruptcy because of cancer or another illness that wasn't covered, that is not the kind of America that I want to live in. That is not the kind of place we want to be. We want to do this because it is right for our economy, but also because we believe it is right for America.

Thank you for allowing me to join you.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

In addition to making landmark investments in higher education and student financial aid, H.R. 3221 provides over $4 billion in funding for K-12 public schools. This funding is critical to ensure that students grow up and learn in healthy, safe environments that maximize their chances to receive a quality education and graduate from high school. This is particularly challenging for areas that are facing extraordinary economic hardship. Public schools in these areas need additional attention and support to make sure these students have every opportunity to succeed.

H.R. 3221 currently sets aside $200 million in reserve funding for K- 12 schools that are located in areas suffering from a natural disaster or severe economic distress. However, it does not recognize areas affected by the closure of a military base due to Base Realignment and Closure, the BRAC process, as eligible for this emergency educational funding. A base closure, such as the closure of the Brunswick Naval Air Station in my district, is a devastating event in a community. Schools in these communities need special attention, because unlike areas hit by economic recession, the closure of a base means the overnight disruption of the local economy. With a dramatic loss of taxpayers and Federal Impact Aid funding, which disappears 1 year after the students leave, BRAC communities are left without a dependable source of funding for critical school repairs.

In Brunswick, Maine, in my district, the closure of the once vibrant Brunswick Naval Air Station will result in an estimated 7,000 total jobs lost, a reduction in 10 percent of the public school population, and millions of dollars in lost economic activity, including $1 million in school funding that will be lost.

And my district is not alone. The closure of the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas, will result in over 7,000 military and civilian jobs lost from that area. In fact, the 2005 BRAC resulted in the closure of major Army, Navy and Air Force bases in States across the country, including Maine, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas. Mr. Chair, schools in communities affected by these closures would all be eligible to benefit from much-needed funding under this amendment. We need to help communities like Brunswick recover from the loss of a military base, and we need to give them the resources they need to maintain a high-quality school system.

These investments in education are critical to putting these communities on a path to economic growth and redevelopment. The need for emergency educational funding in areas affected by the base closures is clear. My amendment helps public schools in BRAC communities recover from the devastating impact of losing hundreds of students and millions of dollars in taxpayer support.

I urge you to support the schools, teachers and students in BRAC communities by voting ``yes'' on this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller).

Thank you for your thoughts. I just want to, once again, urge my colleagues to support this amendment, the schools and the teachers in those communities that are affected by the BRAC.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

H.R. 3221 makes a remarkable investment in higher education at a time when our country needs it the most. But during these tough economic times, students need to be able to access an affordable education.

In my home State of Maine, we have one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country but one of the lowest rates for entry into college. Far too often, qualified, hardworking students in my State don't go to college because their families just can't afford it.

President Obama set a goal that by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. Investment in our community colleges is essential to achieving this goal in Maine and across the country. Community colleges are a critical resource for new and returning students who want to further their education and enhance their job skills. They provide a wide variety of innovative educational programs at affordable rates, and American families recognize the value of community colleges. In my State and many others, there are waiting lists because the community colleges can't handle the demand. That is why we must ensure that these schools have the funding they need to construct new facilities as well as the ability to renovate and repair existing facilities to create safe, energy-efficient, effective learning environments.

The need is high. The American Association of Community Colleges estimates that it would take roughly $100 billion to fully fund the construction and renovation of community colleges across the country. This far exceeds the $2.5 billion that we have set aside under this bill. Unfortunately, when this bill was originally drafted, it included a provision to prohibit any community college that received Recovery Act funding from receiving grants for construction or repair. That's why I'm offering this critically important amendment.

The intent of the recovery package was to provide a temporary injection of money into our economy and to create jobs and support our States, schools and local communities who were struggling during an economic downturn. States were encouraged to use this money for facility improvements and modernization. In Maine, every community college except one accepted this funding. They had no way of knowing that using these funds would interfere with their ability to access additional support. These schools should not be penalized for accepting this help.

It is also important to note that this amendment would also permit Historically Black Colleges and Universities to receive assistance under this bill, even if they also received assistance under the Higher Education Act of 1965. These institutions play an important role in our educational system and should not be excluded from the benefits provided by this bill. As President Obama declared, It's time to reform our community colleges so that they provide Americans of all ages a chance to learn the skills and knowledge necessary to compete for the jobs of the future. This amendment and the underlying bill will help do just that.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I rise again to support the amendment and to talk about the importance of community college modernization, about the ability for our community colleges to rebuild and restructure these important institutions. In this time of such dire economic need, I find that so many of my constituents are contacting me and saying, You know, at this moment in time, I plan to go back to college and get an education; I want to do everything I can to make sure that as the economy improves, I am ready and prepared with the skills for this new century.

People want to have green jobs. They want to be prepared for the new technology. They want an education. And as young people grow up in my State--particularly my State, 38th in per capita income--many, many families struggling in this economy, the one thing we hear over and over again is that those young people in our State who graduate from high school at such high rates want to go on to college, they want to make sure they can get a college education. But over and over I hear from young people, You know, we couldn't afford it; I had to take a year off. And we hear from the community colleges, We can't expand fast enough; we can't make sure that we have the space available for the young people who want to attend college in our State.

In this time of dire economic need, when our State is turning to the Federal Government and saying, Do what you can to help us with education, I can't imagine any reason not to support our community colleges, not to make sure that they are able to take advantage of every possible opportunity for educational funding.

I come from a State that has really struggled to balance the budget, like so many other States across the country. Our State has made cuts everywhere they could to local education, places that we never wanted to go in the State Government to make those cuts. And you know what I hear all the time from my State legislators, from my former colleagues in the State legislature? They say, Please make sure that the Federal Government puts all the money it can into education, particularly higher education.

That's what this amendment does. It makes sure that no community college is penalized for taking advantage earlier. It makes sure that every community college is available to be there for our young people. I continue to support this amendment. I think it's so important in my State and so many other States. I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with tremendous hope and full confidence that we are finally moving forward with legislation that will put our health care system on the right track and bring quality, affordable health care to all Americans. I strongly support H.R. 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act. I believe that this is the right step for families, for small businesses, and for people in Maine and all across the country. But I also have a warning, a warning that comes from my experience in the Maine Legislature, a warning that comes from taking on the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies and the entrenched special interests that have done everything they can to block health care reform for a generation.

Mr. Speaker, if we go home for recess without passing this bill, we will give the special interests and their lobbyists 5 weeks to dump millions of dollars into ad campaigns that spread misinformation, fear and confusion. We will give them 5 weeks to do everything they can to kill the best chance we have had in a lifetime to move forward on significant health care reform. We must pass this bill now. We absolutely cannot afford to wait. I look forward to going back to my district in August and telling the good people of Maine that we didn't let them down.

Well, thank you so much for letting me say a few words here and thank you for convening us all here on the floor to counter some of what we hear on the other side, as you mentioned, that this would be the worst thing we could ever do and what is wrong with this. I'm glad to be here for a while to talk about what is right about this.

You mentioned that I have been working on this for a little while. I often tell people I may be a freshman in Congress--and I truly am one of the freshmen and proud to be here--but I've been working on this since I was first elected to the State legislature in 1992, which was also a year we all thought we were running on health care and when we promised the American public we were going to do something about this.

And what I would say is most significant about talking about the issue now when I'm back in the district--and I, like most of my colleagues, have held forums of doctors and businesspeople and individuals who have health care, individuals who can't afford their health care, everyone across the spectrum.

What is different is, when I first ran in 1992, I would sit down with a group of the doctors in my home county, Knox County, and they would say, Keep your hands off medicine. Don't want socialized medicine. Leave this alone.

And when I meet with the doctors today, they say, How soon are you going to fix this system? They tell me, We can't work anymore. We can't provide our patients with the care that they need.

This will be surprising, but they took a poll of the doctors in Maine--and, look, we're not a completely liberal State. We've got two Republican United States Senators. But our doctors said, with a 50 percent margin, that they wanted single-payer health care now. Now, we're not voting on single-payer today. We are working on a bill that is an excellent bill. But that just shows you how far the medical profession has come. Doctors, nurses, alternative providers, they're all saying that.

Certainly, my Chambers of Commerce, when I sit down with them, it's same thing. They don't say to me anymore, Keep your hand off medicine. They say, How soon are you going to do this? We can't afford to cover the cost of our employees. And they want to. They know that it's better to have your employees covered.

These aren't people trying to run away from the bill. These are people who are saying, with the costs going up, with a limited number of providers, We cannot not afford to be in the system any more.

Recent figures in Maine show, if you have health care insurance--and you all may have mentioned this before I came into the room--but if you have health insurance today, $1,200 of your payments are going to a cost shift to cover everybody else. When people say to me, Don't tax me to cover health care, you're already paying a tax if you have health care coverage.

One other thing I want to say and then get back into the dialogue. My good friend from New York mentioned the challenges of being a State legislator. Certainly States today, as we all know, are struggling under the weight of trying to cover the uninsured, the charity care in hospitals. I am fortunate to have a daughter who is the Speaker of the House in the State of Maine.

I can guarantee you, as they made budget cut after budget cut after budget cut, every time she could pick up the phone and call me, she would say, Mom, when are you guys in Washington sending the money back to our State because we can't afford this anymore? And I am one of those who have valiantly tried health care reform. We have many of the insurance reforms that we are talking about in this bill, but frankly, they don't go far enough. You can't count on the insurance companies just to do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

We've tried it all in our State. States are struggling under the weight of this. We need a Federal plan, just like the bill we're working on today. It's an excellent piece of legislation. It's a very good start, and I am very excited to be here with all my colleagues tonight.

Will the gentleman yield?

You know, it's interesting. I want to just talk about this point for a minute.

I was doing a Statewide radio talk show the other day, and I got the question that, I think, a lot of us get when we talk about the public plan, and I completely agree with you about this issue of choice.

In my State, two insurance companies control 88 percent of the market, and one of them is controlling 78 percent of the market. So, you know, we've tried all kinds of alternative, and insurance companies just don't want to participate. You're right. There is no choice. A lot of States are faced with the same kind of increases.

Somebody asked me on the call-in show, Well, how are you going to make sure there is a level playing field? Is this going to be fair to insurance companies? I said, Wait a minute. It's not my job to support insurance companies that are declaring 32 percent increases or 15 percent increases or whatever is going on in your State. It's not my job to make sure insurance companies can pay CEOs huge salaries and have huge administrative costs. My job is to make sure that everybody in my State and in this country has access to affordable health care. The hospitals can keep operating. The doctors can keep seeing patients. It's not my job to make sure insurance companies make huge profits. It's my job to make sure that everybody has access to health care.

The reason we have a public plan, as my colleagues have so eloquently stated, is so that there is some choice in competition out there. Isn't that what we're here for? When people say to us, Government should act more like a business, well, that's what we're doing. We're trying to create a more businesslike atmosphere out there so there really is choice and competition.

I just want to read a couple of interesting facts and then turn it back to my colleagues.

You know, in looking at some of the numbers in my own State--and I know we've all been doing this--it is really fascinating. I think a lot of people don't know how amazing this bill can be if and when we get it passed, and I believe we will soon. In my district alone, there are 87 seniors in the district who are hitting the doughnut hole in that they are forced to pay full drug costs. Well, under this plan, we're going to do something about that doughnut hole. That's a huge difference in our State. The legislation also cuts brand name costs in the doughnut hole. This is a huge change for all of us and for many seniors who are already struggling.

You know, I looked at another interesting fact. In my district in 2008, there were 690 health care-related bankruptcies. How many times do we hear a story about somebody who has put his health care bills on his credit card, about somebody who just can't afford to get by anymore because he couldn't pay for his health care costs? Well, this bill not only will provide health insurance for almost every American, but it will cap your annual out-of-pocket costs with $10,000 a year. That ensures that no citizen is going to get to that position. It's going to make a huge difference. We're talking about things that people will feel in the economy in their daily lives.

If we want to talk about, as many of my colleagues have said, the economy and what could make it a lot better, I know in my State it would be by lowering the costs of health care and by making sure everyone has access and by making sure everyone is covered from lowering those costs.

Absolutely.

Mr. Speaker, in Maine we are witnessing the birth of an industry, a clean energy industry that will create the jobs and supply the renewable energy we will need to grow our economy. In Maine, we have the people, the technology and the resources to develop and grow this industry.

Last week, Maine hosted the International Energy Ocean Conference, where hundreds of clean energy experts from around the world gathered and saw firsthand how serious our State is about developing renewable energy.

Also last week the Maine Wind Industry Initiative went public. MWII has organized the complete wind power industry supply chain, from large organizations like Bath Iron Works to smaller companies that specialize in precision composite manufacturing.

Mr. Speaker, Maine has an important role to play in Maine's clean energy future, and Maine people are ready to be part of it.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 622 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The gentleman from Arizona has made some eloquent points this morning. And I certainly hope if he really wants to resolve this issue, he will join me in supporting the bill that is in the House right now on public financing. Since both he and I come from States, Arizona and Maine, that have had great success with this system in removing some of the corruption from the process, I think that we could make a good team on that issue.

But, Mr. Speaker, we know that this point of order is not about unfunded mandates, as he mentioned--or, in fact,

even about earmarks. It's about delaying consideration of this bill and ultimately stopping it altogether.

Since I do come from the State of Maine, where nearly one-fifth of our residents are veterans or active-duty members of our armed services, I know that this bill we are about to talk about today is extremely important, and passing this rule to allow for consideration of this bill and move forward on these issues around access to health care, making sure our veterans get the benefits that they deserve, is extremely important to the residents of my State and certainly people across this country.

I hope my colleagues will see through this attempt and will vote ``yes'' so that we can consider this legislation on its merits and not stop it with a procedural motion. The last thing that people want to see happening in the House of Representatives is endless conversation about things that have nothing to do with the issues before us but not moving forward with the things that we care about.

Those who oppose this bill can vote against it on the final passage. We must consider this rule. We must pass this legislation today.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' to consider this rule.

I will.

Again, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this motion to consider so that we can debate and pass this important legislation today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions). All time during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 622.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

House Resolution 622 provides for consideration of H.R. 3082, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2010, under a structured rule.

For the past 8 years, our country has been engaged in two conflicts halfway around the world. The number of wounded military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan has put a financial strain on the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Health Administration estimates that they will treat more than 6 million patients in 2010, including over 400,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, the consistent training, deployment, and redeployment of our troops have put a significant burden on our military.

H.R. 3082 appropriates over $133 billion in fiscal year 2010 for military construction, veterans programs, and four related agencies. The bill provides $24.6 billion for construction and improvements to military bases, facilities, and housing units. The bill provides $450 million to accelerate the modernization of trainee housing and $2 billion to construct and maintain houses for military families.

The bill also provides $200 million in additional funding for the Guard and Reserves to address critical unfunded requirements as a result of prolonged and repeated deployments. Maine is home to thousands of Guard and Reservists who have made an invaluable contribution to our national defense, and I am proud to see funding included in this bill for them.

H.R. 3082 also renews our commitment to redevelop closed military bases and their surrounding communities. The bill provides $7.5 billion to implement the 2005 BRAC and $537 million to address an enormous backlog of environmental cleanup projects from the previous BRAC rounds. This funding is essential to communities across the country, including the town of Brunswick in my district, which is already experiencing economic difficulties from the closing of Naval Air Station Brunswick.

While the investments in military construction are vital, they are only a small portion of this bill. More than 80 percent of the bill's funding in this legislation is devoted to veterans programs. The bill provides over $108 billion for veterans' medical care, claims processors, and facility improvements. H.R. 3082 increases appropriations by 14 percent or $12.9 billion over the current level. This bill includes $45 billion for the Veterans Health Administration, with increased funding for mental health services, assistance programs for homeless veterans, and innovative services for veterans in rural areas.

The bill also provides $85 million for States to build and renovate extended care facilities and $3 billion to fund new technological initiatives which will increase processing time and improve electronic record keeping.

Perhaps most importantly, the bill provides for a significant and historic change in the way we fund health care of our veterans. H.R. 3082 provides $48.2 billion in advance appropriations for fiscal year 2011 for the medical services, medical facilities, and medical administration accounts.

While the Congress has always taken on the challenges of this country, these issues have not always been shielded from partisan battles and political delays. This Congress in the past few weeks has been no exception, but there are some issues which should not be subject to politics and doubt. There is no doubt that the men and women of the armed services have bravely served our country. They have fought without question and without debate, and in doing so, they have sacrificed time with their families, risked their own well-being, and all too often they have sacrificed their lives. By providing advance appropriations for the health care of our veterans, we can take the steps to ensure that these benefits are not subject to politics as usual.

I strongly support this rule, which provides for consideration of this essential and important bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes of my time to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter).

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith).

(Mr. SMITH of Washington asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I'm very pleased to yield 5 minutes of my time to the Chair of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis).

Mr. Speaker, I am the last speaker on my side, so I'm going to reserve the balance of my time until the gentleman closes for his side.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out as we're closing that there has been a tremendous amount of conversation on the floor today about the open rule, about the process here. And I want to point out to the Members that even under an open rule, nearly two- thirds of the amendments that were submitted to the Rules Committee were in violation of House rules and would have been subject to points of order. They wouldn't have been able to proceed on the House floor. In fact, the majority of amendments you have heard about this morning from my good friend from Minnesota, from my colleague from Georgia, those are amendments that would have been in violation of House rules, would have been subject to a point of order. And while they made good points about why they wanted to have their amendments moved forward, the fact is, that wouldn't have happened today anyway, even if we had been under an open rule.

Let me say one last thing. My colleague from Texas mentioned that a few of us who are new here, who haven't been through the appropriations process under open rules--and I will say as a new Member of this body, most of the bills that come to the floor come under structured rules. There may have been a tradition in the past of appropriations bills coming under more of an open rule, but I balance that with the remarks of our colleague from the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Obey, who talked to us this morning about the tremendous amount of work we're expected to get done. I can tell you, from my constituents back in the State of Maine, they say to me, you know, you've got a lot of work to do on renewable energy, on health care. We want to see you move forward on those issues. We want to see appropriations bills, like the one we're talking about today, that are going to provide vital services for our veterans. We want to see those get done. We want to see the Members of Congress get their work done. We don't want to listen to you with hours of endless debate, particularly on things that would be subject to points of order and wouldn't even be allowed to be discussed. We want to see you get your work done.

As a very proud member of the Rules Committee, I have the opportunity to listen to a tremendous number of the amendments that come before us; and I feel very good about the way we're moving forward with our work and about the challenges that we are facing for the American public and all that is before us and the importance of getting our work done.

I do want to remind us today that in spite of all the other conversation that has gone on, this particular rule is a vital step forward towards improving our military infrastructure and ensuring the quality care of our veterans and their families, making sure it is worthy of their sacrifice. That is why we are here on the floor this morning to talk about our veterans, to talk about military construction, to talk about making sure that we are there for them.

My home State of Maine has one of the highest populations of veterans in the country. In a State of not even 2 million people, Maine is home to over 155,000 veterans, nearly one-fifth of our population. These men and women have served without question, without politics and certainly without delay. We must make a promise to them and to all of our veterans that we will do the same. We must provide them with health care and the benefits they deserve without question, without politics and without delay. Passing H.R. 3082, we will begin to keep that promise. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 572 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials into the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 572 provides for consideration of H.R. 2647, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, under a structured rule.

Last week the House Armed Services Committee reported H.R. 2647 favorably to the House by unanimous vote. The final vote came at 2:30 in the morning after more than 14 hours of thorough debate.

During that time the members of the committee did not see eye-to-eye on every issue, but we did not split by party lines on every vote, and we often had differing views on how to devote limited resources to endless challenges. In the end, we all agreed by a unanimous vote that we must take steps to keep our country safe and keep our military prepared. We must work to eliminate wasteful spending and restore fiscal discipline, and we must provide our troops and their families with the care that they need and the quality of life that is worthy of their sacrifice.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2647 makes significant progress on all these fronts. It strengthens our national security by focusing resources on the most immediate and severe threats to our troops and our country. The bill enhances efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction by increasing funding for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and by fully supporting the Department of Energy's nonproliferation programs.

The bill cuts extensive spending, excessive spending on flawed missile-defense programs and, instead, invests more resources in systems that are proven to work and strategies that meet immediate threats.

H.R. 2647 also takes an important step forward in strengthening accountability and increasing oversight of the defense contracting process. The bill grows the size of the civilian acquisition workforce, which will reduce our reliance on defense contractors and cut down on wasteful spending.

The bill improves the quality of life and the quality of care for our men and women in uniform by providing a 3.4 percent pay raise for each servicemember, by expanding access to education and training, by increasing funding for family housing programs, and by expanding TRICARE coverage for members of the Reserve and their families prior to mobilization.

After 7 years of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, this bill provides a basis for ensuring that the plans for progress are sound and that the objectives for victory are clear. The bill requires frequent reports to Congress on the objectives and measurements for success in Afghanistan and the progress of withdrawing our troops from Iraq.

The bill also directs the GAO to provide Congress with separate reports, which will assess strategic plans for both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Congress must do everything in its power to ensure that our military strategies are working and our ultimate goals are achievable. I believe that we can always do more, but I also believe that this bill provides a starting point for that process. Lastly, Mr. Speaker, while this bill addresses broad strategic issues and threats across the globe, it also has a direct impact on our districts.

While communities across the country are saving, struggling and working to recover from this recession, other communities are preparing for even tougher times ahead. In 2011, scores of military bases will close for good as a result of the 2005 BRAC. For decades, these bases have been the backbones of communities and provided the surrounding areas with jobs, tenants, customers and neighbors, which will now be lost in a matter of years.

H.R. 2647 expands the use of no-cost economic development conveyances as a tool to redevelop and restart communities affected by base closure. This provision allows the Department of Defense to transfer property to a local redevelopment authority at no cost if the land will be used for purposes of economic development.

At a time of declining property values, devastating job loss and crippling economic hardship, we must provide communities with every possible tool to redevelop and reorganize. This bill will assist in that effort.

I am looking forward to completing our work on this year's defense authorization.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 3 minutes to a member of the Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Loebsack).

I yield 3 minutes to the Chair of the Committee on Financial Services, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to a member of the Committee on Armed Services, the gentlewoman from Arizona (Ms. Giffords).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Driehaus), a member of the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman), the Chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Quigley).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart) for the dialogue that we have had here on the floor tonight.

Mr. Speaker, the rule before us today will continue the open debate that was held on committee, some of which continue tonight, and further our efforts to find solutions to those pressing problems.

In particular, this rule adds the text of H.R. 2990 to the underlying bill, which funds a 1-year expansion of concurrent receipts for retired veterans, extends retention bonuses and special pay authorities for enlisted servicemembers and funds provisions in the Federal Retirement Reform Act of 2009.

I would like to thank the Chair, Chairman Skelton, Ranking Member McKeon, and all my colleagues on the House Armed Services Committee for their tireless work on this bill.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, it's a great honor to be here tonight. The freshmen members like to take a little bit of time and come to the floor and talk about issues that we find are of great concern both to our country and back home in our district. And so tonight I am going be joined by a couple of my freshmen colleagues and we want to devote our time to talk about the issue of health care. Given the late hour, we may not see as many of our colleagues as we would at other hours of the day, but we know this is an important issue any hour of the day, and I am very happy to be here and to have this opportunity to talk a little bit about it.

This is certainly an important time about the--for the issue of universal access to health care and expanding the access to health care. I don't know about other Members, but I would think it's a universal feeling out there that this is the number one issue for so many Americans.

I started campaigning a long time ago. I got sworn into office last January. And I can say, during the entire time I was campaigning and since I have been elected to office, for so many people, this is their number one issue.

I hear this from individuals who don't have health care coverage, people who have insurance and don't find that their company is there when they need it. I hear it from big business owners who are challenged by the cost of health care, from small business owners who don't know if they can continue to cover their employees.

It is a universal issue. I hear it from providers, from doctors and nurses and others who say, You know, when I signed up to take care of people, to make sure that their health care needs were going to be met, I didn't expect a system that would fall apart in the way that it has. This is, as I say, a universal issue. People say to me, Health care ought to be a basic right. It is extremely important that this Congress does something about the issue of health care, and we want to see you do something.

The good news is that this Congress is working very hard on putting together legislation. The President budgeted $634 billion for health care reform in the budget that we have already passed, and the Speaker of the House is committed to passing a bill by the end of July. The President has asked us for a bill on his desk this fall.

The discussion draft was released in the House just this Friday, and I, personally, can say that I am happy to see a lot of the good things that are included in there, a public plan option, better insurance regulation, insurance companies won't be able to cut people out who have preexisting conditions, reasonable amount of cost-sharing and emphasis on prevention and wellness, investments in Medicare and Medicaid, many of the things that we have been talking about and that I hear about all the time from constituents in my district are in this bill.

More than anything else, people say to me you need to pass universal access to health care. You need to do something now. And I feel like we are right here in the middle of this, and we are moving forward on this.

In my own district, like many other of my freshmen colleagues, every chance I get during the break, on weekends, we have been meeting with groups of individuals. And as I said, this spans from constituents who I meet in the grocery store, who tell me about their individual challenges, to doctors, nurses, providers, nontraditional providers, to chambers of commerce. And, once again, what I hear is they all want change, and they want things to move forward.

I had the good fortune of being a State legislator in the past, and this was, back when I first ran for office in 1992 as a State legislator, again, one of our number one issues. And it's amazing to me now, 17 years since then, it hasn't gone away, in spite of the many things we attempted to do in my home State, the State of Maine, to take on the pricing of prescription drugs to attempt to expand access to more individuals in our State. On each and every one of those we made progress but we haven't gone far enough.

And when I hear from my colleagues, my former colleagues in the State legislature, my daughter, who is the Speaker of the House--and as you can imagine, I am very proud of her--the one thing they say to me is, You have got to do something about this. We have tried as hard as we can in our home State, but we can't go it alone. States across the country are feeling the exact same challenge, but they want now to have us at the congressional level to do something about this.

Now there are many things that we could talk about tonight. We even have a few charts and graphs, but let me just get started by recognizing my good friend and colleague, Mr. Boccieri from Ohio. I know he is hearing about this quite a bit in his home district, and it would be great if you could just talk a little bit about some issues and concerns and then we can keep going on this topic.

We're joined by another one of our colleagues, but you mentioned some of the cost issues. Since we have a couple of charts, I thought I might just put them up here right now.

You talked a little bit about the expenses of health, and here's one that shows how our national health expenditures have really just, as they say, gone off the charts. This is one of those charts, actual and projected, that shows that we can no longer afford this.

People always say to us, How are you going to pay for health care? I say, when I talk to businesses, individuals, I say, How are we going to afford the system the way it is? And this is one of the charts that really, really shows that.

Let me just show another one right now. I think this is one that we don't have to tell any of our constituents. We, again, hear it all the time. We hear it from business owners who say they're worried that they can't cover the cost of their employees anymore or they have really cut back. But here's one that just shows, since 2000, health care premiums have doubled while wages have only gone up by just 3 percent.

So it is no wonder that people everywhere we go are saying to us, We're just dropping our coverage. They're just going without coverage or they're going for the $10,000 deductibles. How many constituents have you seen that say, I've got a $10,000 deductible and a very expensive plan, and I spend the whole year paying that $10,000. Why do I even have insurance? That's just something I feel like I hear all the time.

Why don't we welcome our other colleague, the other night owl here, Congresswoman Halvorson from Illinois. And we're just so pleased to have you join us and hold forth.

Well, I know that not too many of the American people are still up and watching us on C-SPAN, but those who are and those who see this later I think will be just so grateful that they're hearing one more conversation about moving this forward.

What they don't want to hear from us is, Well, we talked it all over but we backed down. We just tinkered with it around the edges. We couldn't really pass anything. We couldn't find a way to get to a conclusion. That is definitely not what they want to hear from us.

They want to hear, you're on the floor, you're working hard, you're going to pass a health care bill before you go home on recess.

I just want to add one thing, then I hope you all continue with the stories that you're hearing from your district. Just as you said, there are so many families with those kinds of stories that say, We have never had health care coverage. I pulled a few out of our office this afternoon, and they're endless, the things that people tell you, the sad things that people come up and tell you.

Here's one that says, I earn $20,000 a year. What good is a mandated policy that would cost me $400 a month with a 5K deductible? I have been stripped of my wealth over the past 30 years and in nonadjusted dollars I made more when I was 24 years old than I make now as a 53- year-old. We need taxpayer-funded health care. If it's good enough for our elected officials--which we all know very well--it should be good enough for all of us. We want health care to pass right now.

Here's another person who said to me something that I mentioned before. I feel like I hear this a lot in Maine. People who are self- employed. We have a lot of fishermen and farmers, woodcutters in our area, who go out and get these plans with huge deductibles. It's all that they can afford.

Here's somebody who said, I can only afford a catastrophic plan with a $15,000 deductible. It's essentially insurance to save my home if my wife or I get sick. I can't afford a colonoscopy, which would cost around $3,000 to $4,000. With a family history of colon cancer, the chances of my dying from this cancer are pretty good unless I was able to detect it early. But the health insurance industry doesn't care about my health. They only care about the profit and will help those who help them.

He is just feeling angry and saying, you know, you have got to do something about this now. That's one of the things that you mentioned.

We need a plan, and the proposals before us talk about wellness, early intervention, women getting mammography, getting those early checkups and treatments when you need it.

Before I turn it back over, I just want to share my own story, or a little bit of it anyway. I had a brother who died of melanoma, which is almost always a tragic and difficult form of cancer. He was diagnosed 20 years ago, so he would be about 60 years old today. He was 40 at the time.

But without going into all the details--and sadly, most of them haven't changed, but his employer dropped his coverage. He was unable to get the kind of coverage that he needed. He and his wife had to basically turn over all their assets so they could be eligible for Medicaid.

I can guarantee you that my brother spent the 18 months of his illness worrying about how he was going to provide for his family when he was gone. That shouldn't be. It shouldn't have been that way 20 years ago. It's shocking to me to think that this is 20 years later and, really, people have the same problems, or worse.

We haven't fixed the system. It's only gotten more difficult.

So, hold forth.

I just want to reinforce one of the points you made about what you hear from physicians. I don't know about you guys, but I feel like every time I sit down and meet with a group of doctors, I feel like I'm in a completely different era than when I first ran for office in 1992. When I was first elected to be a State senator and I would meet with my local group of physicians, the first thing they would say was, you just keep your hands off health care reform. We are perfectly happy with the way it is going.

I would meet the occasional member of the practice who would say, I have got a few sources of dissatisfaction, but I mostly would meet with resistance. And when I recently met with a group of physicians in my district, I thought I was in a completely different country. Just as you said, it was physicians who are saying, I don't have any time with my patients. I signed up to make people well. And now I feel like I turn people away. I can't take low-income patients because I can't afford it. I have a room full of people that just fill out the paperwork for the insurance companies, and then half the time, the things that I know my patients should have are denied. And the kind of treatment that they should be getting, they are not able to get because they are turned down time after time.

I know people are going to find this hard to believe, but a group of Maine physicians, the Maine Medical Association affiliate, actually took a poll of themselves recently; and almost 50 percent, about 50 percent of them said they were in favor of single-payer health care. Now we are not even debating single-payer health care in the current bill. But the idea that physicians now who once said to me, keep

your hands off medical insurance and the health care system, are now saying, I can't take it anymore. I cannot run a practice. I can't be the kind of doctor I wanted to be. And I hear exactly the same thing from nurses, from everyone in the medical profession who just say, This is not working. How soon can you get it repaired so I can really give the care that people want? And I'm sure that you all have had similar or other experiences you want to share.

I will just jump in on that only because the issue of the pricing of prescription drugs is a big part of my own personal history in politics and one of my great concerns. I think I have the oldest population in the Nation in the State of Maine. So between Mike Michaud and me and the two United States Senators, we cover some of the oldest Americans, and we are about 38th in per capita income. So we have a tremendous number of people who really struggle to make that decision every month: Do they pay for their medication or put food on their table or pay their heating oil bill?

Now, everyone may not agree with my particular perspectives on this, but I think one of the big mistakes when the Medicare part D bill was passed was that Congress specifically prohibited negotiating with pharmaceutical manufacturers for a better price. So here we are, the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world on the Medicare plan; and when the bill was passed, and luckily none of us were there so we don't have to take responsibility for that, but there was no provision for negotiating for drugs.

Now, every other country in the world negotiates for a good price for prescription drugs. So in a sense, it is like we pay the highest prices in the world so that we subsidize everybody else. And I won't go on to my giant rant, but this was one of the bills that I passed when I was a State legislator on helping to regulate the pricing of prescription drugs.

I will just say that one of the ways I really got involved in that and very interested in it was because Maine is a border State, we have a lot of seniors who get on buses, bus trips for seniors and go to Canada to buy their medication. And you can buy medicine in Canada, sometimes it is exactly the same drug that you would buy just across the border for one-third or one-quarter of the price. And it is not because it is a subsidized price up there, because these aren't people with the Canadian health care plan, but because the Canadian Government negotiates for a good price.

So in my opinion, and I have signed on to H.R. 684, which is by our good friend and colleague, Representative Berry, that bill would force us to look at this and to do something about the pricing of prescription drugs. And I think that is one other thing we have to address if we are really going to bring down the cost of health care, the one thing we know is that when people take their medications, they stay much healthier, whether you are a senior citizen or a person with a high cholesterol rate hereditarily and you need to keep it down.

So we know the importance of medication, and we know one way to drive down the cost of health care is to make sure that medicine is affordable. That is true of seniors and all people. And it is certainly one of the issues that concerns me and one of the things that I promised my constituents back home that even though we had passed this bill in Maine, I would take it on as an issue here in the United States Congress. And I know many share the same concern.

I am going to read a quote from one of the letters that I brought in because it reinforces your point. This person is talking about their issues with the health care system. It is a Maine constituent. It says: My wife and I struggled to get our provider to pay for special infant formula that our oldest son needed to live due to his protein intolerance. This was despite our specialist doctor showing us a letter in which the insurance company had agreed in arbitration from a previous case to pay in full for the formula in cases like our son's.

This is clearly one of those examples where it is a bureaucrat or a bean counter who is denying it just to save the insurance company some money.

This same person also says in another example my brother-in-law was denied cancer treatment that his doctors had recommended, and only began his treatment after the insurance company overturned the decision on appeal. The delay may prove fatal to him.

Both of you have said this over and over again, people want to go to their doctor or their primary care provider and get the advice they need, follow the treatment plan that they recommend, and not be told by a bureaucrat in Washington or an insurance company that they can't do it just because they are trying to save money on your health. I agree with you, we need cost-saving measures, but not on people's essential treatment.

They really wouldn't allowed her to have insurance coverage, and that was their stated reason?

Preexisting conditions, it is kind of shocking when you hear those stories. I heard about a State the other day that didn't have a requirement that insurance cover you in spite of a preexisting condition. And someone told me about an insurance company that considered women of childbearing age a preexisting condition. So that didn't mean you had a child, it meant you could potentially get pregnant. You may have already decided never to have a child, and why shouldn't your insurance company cover you, but they weren't going to take any chances. Why don't they just say we only want healthy people who promise never to get sick. And if you get sick, we will deny you coverage.

I come from the State of Maine, where the State legislature has already required that insurance companies cover you in spite of preexisting conditions, and that is really a great reform. Maine is one of the leaders in health care reform. We have a very high number of people who have some form of insurance coverage. Many of them are on Medicaid or our MaineCare system. But the fact is, what my colleagues in Maine tell me, and I certainly felt when I was in the State legislature, is States can't go it alone. Many States in the country have passed these kinds of regulations, but then it makes it hard to compete with the State next door that doesn't bother doing any of that, or charges all the sick people more than the people who are well, and doesn't have a community rating kind of plan.

One of the issues that we are facing now, particularly in States that are having a hard time holding their own budgets together, is they are saying to us: Let's makes this universal. Let's make it the same kind of coverage from State to State. And you mentioned portability. There are a lot of people now, and I forgot what somebody called the term, it is something like job lock, people who stay in their job because they are terrified to leave that job because they can't go without health insurance, or their spouse is sick or one of their children is sick.

I meet people who say, you know, I've got a great idea for starting my own business. I'm ready to go out on my own, and I could create a job vacancy for somebody else here who would really like to come and work at this company because I'm ready to go do something else. But they can't take that risk. People who have just enough set aside to retire who say, I am ready to retire, but I don't dare be out there without health care coverage, so they don't retire at 57 or 58. And in this economy, where we can use any job we can find, having health care coverage

would do more to boost the economy, I think, than many other things.

I often say about the State of Maine, where, as I mentioned, a lot of people are self-employed, we have a lot of fishermen, or they run a small business or some kind of little entity that they are making enough money, people say to me all the time, We make enough to get by. We do okay. We own our own home. We make our own home repairs. We're doing all right, but it's health care coverage that we're worried about, our health care coverage that we can't afford and then we go without.

And exactly what you mentioned earlier, those are the very people who, when they do get sick, have to go to the emergency room, who often depend--and they hate it, they depend on charity care at the hospital, uncompensated care. And I have the same situation, a lot of rural hospitals who depend on fund-raising drives just to keep the doors open, who are desperately coming down to see us all the time to say, We can't keep the hospital open. What are we going to do? And that is a vital part of our infrastructure.

You know, absolutely. I think it's one of the reasons why earlier this year we went along with the President's proposal and invested so much in health information technology. It has been clear to people for a long time that so many different insurance companies and so many different kinds of forums just make it difficult for practitioners to run a business and hospitals to operate, and as you said, for people to get the kind of medical care that they really need.

Well, we are at about time to wrap up here. I will just kind of go over again from my perspective, and certainly will let the gentleman from Ohio close with a few thoughts as well, but I just want to emphasize again that from my perspective, in my home State--and really what I hear across the country and everywhere I go--people say, Can you get a health care plan passed? Are you going to do something about all of the things that we've been talking about tonight? People want the coverage, they want a choice. As we've said many times, if you like your plan, you can keep it; if not, there will be real alternatives.

They want affordability. People are willing to buy health care, but they want to know that they can afford it. This plan that has just been released has a shared responsibility from employers and individuals alike. It has real components to control costs. It makes a serious investment in prevention and wellness and invests in the health care workforce, something we haven't talked much about tonight. But I know I come from a State where there is a tremendous shortage of health care practitioners--doctor, nurses, those people that are needed to do this job to make sure that we can have good care, and that is part of the legislation is to really look at investing in our workforce.

I feel very hopeful, I feel hopeful that we have already moved us forward as far as we can, that there is a sense around here really from both sides of the aisle that we don't have to debate anymore whether or not there is a problem with the system. We may have differences about how we go about fixing it, but there is a real commitment to go ahead and fix it.

And I am very impressed with the President, who has just made it clear that this is something he wants to do on his watch. He wants to do it in the first year, and I think this is a tremendous commitment to really pass a health care package that works for America and get on with it.

And I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

I thank my colleagues from Ohio and Illinois for being willing to be here.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 30 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, June 24, 2009, at 10 a.m.

Thank you to the Chair of the committee for yielding me this time.

Now, you can imagine when I first saw this amendment I was quite angry,

and I don't want to be discouraged about the motives of the good Representative from Texas, so I thought, well, perhaps the good Representative from Texas doesn't understand the importance of this to Maine. And as he said, in many ways he doesn't. I know, because he has a farming district. I'm sure in his district, it's important to him to have dairy program subsidies, cotton subsidies, wheat subsidies-- millions of dollars of which come into his State every year.

This is $200,000, Mr. Speaker, to a very important industry in our State, the lobster fishing industry.

Now, if you're from Texas, fishing may seem like a distant thing, and I understand that may be complicated. But let me just say that fishing is a common resource. This $200,000 helps us to monitor these fisheries, a very tightly controlled and restricted fisheries, but very successful fisheries in our State because of it. And this is the subsidy that the Federal Government--as well as our State government-- gives to help make sure that this stays a healthy resource.

Now, just to give you a sense of the size of this industry, there are 7,000 licensed fishermen in the lobster industry. They brought in 69 million pounds of lobster in the last year. Now, I know in Texas, $242 million may not sound like a substantial contribution to the economy, but that's big money in the State of Maine. And fishing is big business in our State and very important to our State. Eighty-five percent of all of the lobsters in this country come from the State of Maine.

Now, it may be that you think about lobsters as some sort of glamorous food, but the fact is we're talking about hardworking fishermen. And let me tell you a little bit about how this industry works. By law in the State of Maine, these are basically individual entrepreneurs. Each one of these fishermen is a small business, and it's a family business for most people who go lobster fishing in the State of Maine.

Unlike other States where you may have big corporate farms that get big corporate subsidies, these are individual fishermen. This is not a subsidy to them. This is making sure that there is a resource for them out there, and by law, they operate as individuals. They buy the gas, they pay for their boats, often their own children go to work with them on the boat every day. They get up early morning, work long, hard hours, and struggle with a resource that isn't always abundant and plentiful. That's why we need to monitor this resource.

It's been a tough year for the fishermen in our State, partly because of the economic downturn. These fish are often processed in Canada and the Canadian banks had a problem because they were affiliated with Iceland last year. So these fishermen have been struggling. These hardworking fisherman just want to make sure that there is a resource available to them in the future.

Mr. Chairman, it is possible that the good Representative from Texas did not understand how vital this was to the State of Maine. It is possible that he thought this would be a way to use our subsidy of the fishing industry as an example. But I just want him and everyone else here in this body to know that this is one of the most regulated fisheries in the world. These are some of the most hardworking fishermen in our country.

This is an important resource to our State, and $200,000 isn't very much to ask to a lot of hardworking people who contribute to our economy in the State of Maine every day and are counting on our support.

I hope that the good Representative from Texas will withdraw his amendment. But if not, I urge everyone in this body to vote against this and to vote for the economy and the State of Maine.

Madam Speaker, I want to talk to you this morning about Hodgdon Yachts of East Boothbay, Maine. Hodgdon Brothers opened for business in 1816 and is the oldest continually operated shipyard in the United States. Tim Hodgdon is a fifth-generation boat builder, continuing a long and proud tradition.

Hodgdon has taken Maine's tradition of world-class craftsmanship and combined it with new technology and advances in composites to build their business and create good paying, sustainable jobs in our State.

For example, in the small town of Richmond, Maine, Hodgdon has created a facility to build boat interiors. Between 60 and 70 new jobs have been created there in the last 6 months alone, and Hodgdon believes they can double the size of that operation in the next year.

And just this week, Hodgdon was given a Maine Technology Institute grant for nearly $4 million to take the first steps towards building a 30,000-square-foot facility that would create hundreds of more jobs building high-speed patrol boats of the future.

Hodgdon Yachts is just one example of the innovative companies doing business in Maine, aggressively using new technology to create good, quality jobs that can't be exported.

Madam Speaker, coastal communities across this nation are in trouble. Fishermen who have spent their lives on the water--the sons and daughters of fishermen, the grandchildren of fishermen, fishermen from families that have been fishing for generations, have hung up their boots and do not go out sea any more. My friends and neighbors are giving up a lifetime of fishing. Businesses that depend on the water shut their doors and close their wharves. You see Madam Speaker, I live in a community built around fishing. A community with a working waterfront. A community that is in trouble.

When I was a teenager in my hometown, the island of North Haven, there were more fishermen and the island supported a diverse fishery. Throughout the history of the islands of Penobscot Bay, from the first natives fishing of off the island in dugout canoes to the herring seiners, gill netters, ground fisherman, and lobstermen, fishing has been an important part of the islands--providing jobs and a sense of place.

The fishing vessel Starlight seined for herring in the waters off the island and brought fish ashore for lobster bait. Now, most boats fish for lobster. My friends and neighbors on

North Haven, like all fishermen up and down the coast, need a place to land their lobsters, store their bait, load and unload their lobster traps. In some communities fishermen use privately owned piers, in other communities they compete for space at public landings and town docks. Some keep their skiffs upside down on the beach and others on the dock, most park their trucks at the landing.

Coastal landowners who used to allow their friends and neighbors to cross their property to get to the clam flats face rising property taxes and pressure to sell. With these sales to the highest bidder, frequently to build a vacation home or condos on a desirable and ``authentic waterfront,'' access for the community is lost in the process. Condos spring up, displacing the fishermen and boat builders, and the wide variety of businesses that require access to the water. As new construction sprawls, traditional ties to the water are severed and the economic engine that is our coast sputters and stalls for want of a place to land a fish or dock a boat.

Our nation's working waterfronts are disappearing. Less than 20 miles of Maine's 3,300 mile coastline support commercial fishing and other traditional marine based activities--and working waterfronts are continuing to disappear.

These are a very important 20 miles. Maine's Working Waterfront Coalition, a broad and diverse group of stakeholders dedicated to protecting working waterfronts, conducted a study that found that working waterfronts like those supported by this legislation add between $15 and $168 million more to the economy than do the conversion of those properties to high end residential uses.

Working Waterfronts support many communities up and down the coast. Every community is unique but they all are connected by the bond of having a working waterfront. The challenges facing working waterfronts are not unique to Maine. These waterfronts are disappearing up and down our coasts, in all of our coastal states. In Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, Virginia and South Carolina, Florida and Texas, California, Oregon, and Washington and even on the Great Lakes. Across the country, working waterfronts and the jobs they provide are quickly disappearing under the tremendous pressure these communities face from conversion to incompatible uses. As history has shown us, once these business close, and waterfronts stop supporting water dependent businesses, they do not come back.

Together, our nation must take an important step towards protecting these jobs and the families they support--and even, eventually rebuilding our working waterfronts. In honor of the many folks in Maine who have been tirelessly working to ensure these special areas are protected, I am proud to have introduced legislation, H.R. 2548, with Representatives Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Lois Capps, Bill Delahunt, Sam Farr, Barney Frank, Patrick J. Kennedy, Ron Klein, James R. Langevin, James P. McGovern, Mike McIntyre, Michael H. Michaud, James P. Moran, Mike Thompson, and Robert J. Wittman that encourages states to consider the importance of working waterfronts and how to best protect them.

Our legislation amends the Coastal Zone Management Act to establish a Working Waterfronts program. The Coastal Zone Management Act is a flexible tool, developed to allow states to manage their coasts in a manner that fits that particular coast. In recognition of this, the Working Waterfronts program broadly defines working waterfronts to be water-dependent, coastal related businesses--this includes commercial fishing, recreational fishing businesses, aquaculture, boat yards and other businesses whose business model requires access to the water.

This bill creates a Working Waterfront Grant program to help states protect and preserve these important areas. In order for states to be eligible for a working waterfront grant, the State must have a working waterfront plan that requires a thoughtful, collaborative, public process to identify the economic and social value of working waterfronts and the plan requires the states to be thoughtful and strategic in their use of federal money. This bill is not designed to require states to undergo a completely new or comprehensive planning process but rather to utilize existing information to the maximum extent practicable.

The program encourages states to use the best information they have available to develop their working waterfronts plan. It is not our intention to require a detailed or in-depth GIS study of the entire coast, an undertaking that may well be beneficial but also could delay and hinder the implementation of the program. We only ask that the coastal states give some thought to what makes a working waterfront in that state and why working waterfronts are particularly important or special to that state.

This bill not only protects working waterfronts and the jobs they provide, this bill also protects public access to our coastline. One of the conditions of the bill states that any working waterfront receiving a working waterfront grant must provide access to the water for the public. The bill makes an exception for commercial fishing if providing access would not be safe.

Those who live on or visit our coasts know how valuable coastal property is--and this is why traditional uses of working waterfronts are vulnerable. Eliminating working waterfronts fundamentally alters the economy, culture and heart of coastal communities. Please join me in supporting the Keep America's Waterfronts Working Act of 2009; help protect working waterfronts and the jobs they provide.

Mr. Speaker, coastal communities across this Nation are in trouble. In Maine and in other coastal States, working waterfronts and the jobs they provide are quickly disappearing.

Working waterfronts include commercial fishing, boatyards and other businesses who need access to the water. Once these businesses close, once the waterfront stops supporting these businesses, history shows us they do not come back.

Recently, I introduced the Keep America's Waterfronts Working Act of 2009. This bill will help communities acquire permanent access to the water and develop programs to protect working waterfronts and the jobs they provide, the backbone of our coastal communities.

A report released this week, the ``State of the U.S. Ocean and Coastal Economies,'' coauthored by Professor Charlie Colgan from the University of Southern Maine, found that coastal counties contributed 42 percent of the national economic output in 2007, and working waterfronts are critical to supporting this economy.

We must protect working waterfronts and the jobs they provide. I would like to thank my colleagues for joining together to protect working waterfronts, and I look forward to working together to move this legislation through Congress.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 463 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

General Leave

I also ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials into the Record.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 463 provides for consideration of the conference report to accompany S. 454, the WASTE TKO Act of 2009.

Mr. Speaker, today the House will consider the conference report to accompany S. 454, the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act of 2009. Last week, the House took an important step toward sending this legislation to the President when it passed H.R. 2101, the WASTE TKO Act of 2009, as amended, by a vote of 428-0. I would like to thank my colleagues on the House Armed Services Committee, Chairman Skelton, Ranking Member McHugh, Representative Andrews, and Representative Conaway, for their tireless work on this bill.

The conference report before us today includes three key provisions from H.R. 2101. First, it requires the Secretary of Defense to designate one official as the principal expert on performance assessment in acquisition.

Second, the agreement mandates that weapons systems which are not meeting the standards set in statute or which have incurred critical Nunn-McCurdy breaches will receive additional reviews, along with increased oversight from Congress and the necessary corrective measures to ensure that these programs succeed.

Lastly, the agreement requires the Department of Defense to develop a system for tracking cost growth and schedule changes before a weapons systems moves into the systems development phase.

With these key provisions, the conference agreement includes the strengths, ideas, hard work, and spirit of both H.R. 2101 and S. 454. It is the culmination of the thoughtful and thorough efforts of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, and it is a noteworthy example of what the Congress can accomplish with a focused bipartisan and bicameral effort.

However, while I am proud of my colleagues, I am truly excited about what this legislation will accomplish on behalf of the American people. According to the GAO, the Department of Defense is the largest buying enterprise in the world. What this means is that the American taxpayer is truly invested, in every sense of the word, in the capability, efficiency, and accountability of the Department of Defense.

In March 2009, the GAO identified $296 billion in cumulative cost growth on 96 major defense acquisition programs. Mr. Speaker, let me put this in perspective. We are spending more on cost overruns than the amount that we spend on salaries and health care for the entire American military for 2 full years.

The GAO also found that these major weapons programs were behind schedule, on average, by 22 months.

This is shocking and unacceptable to the American public, especially in such challenging economic times. We can do better than this. We can do better than $300 billion over budget and nearly 2 years behind schedule at a time when our Nation's resources are limited, our men and women in uniform are in harm's way, and our family budgets are being cut back to provide only the bare necessities.

In my home State, Mainers have always lived with an ethic of hard work, a spirit of responsibility, and a determination to provide the best they can with what they have.

This legislation was crafted in that very same spirit. By ensuring accurate assessments in the performance of a weapons systems and accurate assessments in its cost, a taxpayer can be certain that they are getting the best bang for their buck by providing ``intensive care'' for sick programs, and our soldiers can be assured that they receive the necessary capabilities and appropriate technology to defend our country and themselves. In short, this legislation keeps the taxpayer in mind and the men and women of the Armed Forces at heart.

I look forward to completing the work on this bill.

And I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I first want to say to my good friend and colleague from California, I, too, agree that it is nice to be on the floor talking about a wonderful bipartisan effort and having such agreement on an issue that is very important to the people of this country.

Mr. Speaker, at this moment, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), a member of the Armed Services Committee who did considerable work on the issue we're talking about today and made it possible for us to bring it to the floor.

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I will reserve my time until the gentleman has closed. I have no other speakers.

Mr. Speaker, as my good friend from California has mentioned, we have some essential responsibilities as Members of Congress. Our constituents have charged us with several responsibilities. It would be impossible to list them all today, but I think it is essential to highlight three of those charges.

Our constituents have charged Congress with keeping our country safe and secure, from both the threats of today and the threats of tomorrow. Our constituents have asked to stand up for and defend our men and women in uniform, just as our men and women in uniform have defended us. And our constituents have asked us to spend their tax dollars in a way that is prudent, productive, and responsible.

Today, we take a step forward in living up to these responsibilities as the House considers the conference report for S. 454, the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act of 2009. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.

I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

The previous question was ordered.