Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, due to official business outside the Washington, DC, area, I was unable to be present during rollcall votes 673-677. Had I been here I would have voted ``yea'' for rollcall votes 673-677.

Madam Speaker, today I come to the House floor in strong support of H. Res. 453, a House resolution condemning the terrorist attacks in Istanbul, Turkey and expressing condolences to the families of the individuals murdered.

On November 15 and 20, four horrific terrorist attacks rocked Istanbul. Two Jewish synagogues, the British Consulate and the London- based HSBC bank were the targets. Faceless, cowardly terrorists who thrive on inflicting fear and terror on the innocent carried out these attacks. These recent attacks epitomize the fact that terrorism knows no boundaries and does not distinguish between religion, nationality or culture.

Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest terms whenever and wherever it occurs. The Government of Turkey appropriately did so and has vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. But, no one country can do this alone. In order for the perpetrators of terrorism to be brought to justice, all the countries of the world must stand united against terrorism that targets the civilized world.

For over fifty years, Turkey has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S. as one of our most valued strategic partners and it is only fitting that Congress express sympathy for those murdered and wounded, extend condolences to the bereaved families and affirm our unity with Turkey in the ongoing fight against terror. I am pleased that the House Leadership scheduled H. Res. 453 for floor action today.

Mr. Speaker, I admire our President and my leaders in the House, but I want to tell you why I oppose this bill.

The average senior is going to pay $4,000 in order to receive the first $1,500 in benefits. Now, we should take care of the 24 percent of seniors across this country that have no drug coverage; but this covers all of them, including the 76 percent that do have coverage.

Employers will, in my opinion, in spite of a $70 billion payoff, drop their seniors and put them on the government program, and they are going to get less coverage than they have right now, and it will cost a lot more.

This program is going to cost much more, in my opinion, than the $400 billion that we estimate. I think it will go as high as maybe a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. And, finally, there is no negotiation with the pharmaceutical companies on drug prices even though Americans are paying as much as five to 10 times more than they are paying in Germany and Canada and other places in the world; and that is just not right.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to make it clear, I am a Republican and I am very proud to be a Republican. However, there are problems with this bill that make it impossible for me to vote for it.

It has been said tonight that 35 million AARP members cannot be wrong, but I am telling you AARP does not speak for all seniors. And when the seniors find out what is in this bill, that most of them initially are going to pay about $4,000 of the first $5,000 they are going to spend on pharmaceuticals, they are going to be so angry it is going to be like 1988 all over again.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about the pharmaceutical industry. There is nothing in here that allows our government to negotiate the prices with the pharmaceutical industry. We pay the highest prices in the world for pharmaceuticals. We pay seven, eight, nine, 10 times as much for Tamoxifen, a woman who has breast cancer and has to have it, than they do in Canada; and yet there is no provision in this bill for negotiation.

You say we have a 25 percent discount card. Twenty-five percent of what? If the pharmaceutical industry has these high prices and you knock 25 percent off, they are still a hell of a lot higher than they are in Canada or Germany, and yet we cannot reimport. Why? It does not make sense.

Do we believe in free trade? We have NAFTA. You can import everything back and forth across the borders, but not pharmaceuticals because it is not safe. Yet when we talk to the Canadians, and I had four hearings on it, they could not find one case where there was a problem. This is not a safety issue. The problem is profit and price.

I want to tell you something. It has been said that for too long seniors have paid too much. They have been paying too much. But we are not doing anything in this bill to lower the price of pharmaceutical products.

Now, I want to say to my colleagues also there is $70 billion in this bill, a

pay-off to Big Business to keep their employees and their former employees covered under this plan.

I want to tell you something. As a businessman, they are going to look down the road and they are going to say, hey, Congress changes from time to time and they are going to start dumping their employees on the Federal plan. And when they do, those retirees are going to be so angry at us, you are not going to believe it.

Mr. Speaker, last night I took a special order, and I talked about what seniors are going to pay under the new Medicare prescription drug program if it is passed in its present form; and I understand it is coming out of committee just a little bit different than that we said last night, but the end result is the same. They are changing the annual deductible from $275 to $250, but the seniors will be paying 25 percent of the next $2,250 minus the annual deductible. So the seniors for $1,500 in coverage will be paying $1,170, and that is not well known by most of the seniors with whom I have talked. And then there is a doughnut hole which goes up to $5,100, and seniors will pay an additional $2,850 with no coverage for that.

That means seniors up to $5,100 under the new prescription drug benefit will pay $4,020 and the government will pay $1,500.

Now, that is not what I think seniors are expecting. I think they are expecting coverage that is much broader than that; and I think they are going to be very unpleasantly surprised when they realize that they will be paying a tremendous amount of money for very small amount of coverage.

Now, above the $5,000 level, the catastrophic health care benefit kicks in, and that is 95 percent of that. But the average senior pays about $1,800 year in prescription drug costs, and they will not reach that level. There will be very few that reach that level. So most seniors, if they pay $5,000 for their prescription drugs in a given year, the average senior, they will pay $4,020 and the Federal Government will pay $1,500. I think they will be very angry when they find out that is the case.

I believe we should pass a bill that takes care of those who are uninsured, who do not have prescription drug coverage. Right now, 76 percent of American seniors have some form of prescription drug coverage. And the program that we are talking about in most cases is going to give them less coverage than what they already have. Now, the 24 percent of the seniors that do not have coverage, we should deal with them. We should help them. Those who are indigent, those who have health problems where they cannot get coverage, we need to take care of those. But those who are already covered, I do not believe our government should start taking care of.

The cost of this program is estimated to be somewhere around $400 billion over 10 years. I have another chart which I am not bring forward right now, but it shows what happened with Medicare. Medicare when it was passed in 1965 cost $3 billion. Two years ago in the year 2001, Medicare cost $241 billion. That is an 80 times increase.

It went up 80 times since 1964. The Medicaid program which we passed in Indiana under duress started out, we thought, costing a few million. We estimated a top figure of $20 million. It has cost well over $1 billion just for Indiana's share, and it has gone up about 70 times since 1969.

Anybody who thinks that this donut hole is not going to be a big issue to seniors is sorely mistaken, in my opinion; and I believe that they will demand that this donut hole, this $2,850 that is not covered, will shrink. When that happens, there is going to be a tremendous increase in the cost of this program. I believe the $400 billion price tag for 10 years is very low. I believe it will be more than double that, maybe up to $1 trillion over 10 years, but only time will tell.

The other thing that really concerns me is we are paying $70 billion to American industry so that they will not dump their retired employees on the Federal Government program. The fact of the matter is I believe long term the businessmen and industrialists in this country are going to say we do not know what Congress is going to do tomorrow, and they are going to start dumping their employees on the Federal program anyhow; and when that happens, the retirees are going to see the program that they are under with their previous employer go out the window, and they are going to be put on the government program.

Their coverage right now under their retired benefits with their previous employer is probably much, much better.

In fact, I am sure it is much better than what they are going to get on the Federal program, and so the $70 billion buyout or payout they are going to give to industry I do not think is going to stop the dumping of employees on to this program out of independent industrial programs that are covered by private industry and companies.

I think it is very realistic to believe those people will be put on the government program. So that is another cost that will be added to this program over the next 10 years.

This is an open-ended entitlement. The floor, the floor is $400 billion. There is no ceiling. They will tell you there are some cost controls in it, but the fact of the matter is there really will not be, not over the long period of time; and the ultimate result of this is going to be an entitlement that is going to be like Medicare, like Medicaid. It is going to be out of control. It is not going to provide the benefits that the seniors anticipate, and I think they are going to be very, very angry.

So I would just like to say to my colleagues, tomorrow or the next day when we decide to vote on this bill, think about what the seniors' reaction is going to be. In 1988 we passed a catastrophic health care bill. Only 11 Members, as I recall, voted against it. I was one of the 11, and 1 year later we repealed it because the seniors were so angry when they found out what was in it. I think they are going to be angry with this bill as well, and I hope my colleagues will take that into consideration.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to be voting before the end of the week on probably one of the most sweeping reforms in Medicare in the history of the program, and it is going to involve prescription drug coverage for seniors. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the bill, mainly because the bill has not been reported out of the committee yet; but we have gotten a synopsis of the bill, and I think it is important to see what this is really going to do.

Tonight, and I am going to be doing this every night, tonight I have a chart that shows what seniors will really pay on average. This is an average. If we look at the chart, the annual premium that seniors will pay every year is $420, and then they have a $275 deductible which totals $695. Then they will pay 25 percent of the next $1,925. The government will pay 75 percent, and that is a figure of $481. If we add those together, that is $1,176. And when we take out the amount that the senior is going to pay as opposed to what the government is going to be pay, for that $1,176, the senior will be getting $1,444.

After that there is what they call the doughnut hole: from $2,200 to $5,044 there is no coverage. So seniors will be required to pay on average about $2,844. If we add the other costs I enumerated, we are looking at a total cost to seniors on an annual basis, if they get about $5,000 in expenditures, they will pay $4,020 and the government will pay $1,444 of the total figure.

The fact of the matter is the senior will be out $4,020, and the government's part will be $1,444. I think it is very important that we make certain seniors understand this before we pass this bill because I think most seniors believe they are going to get first dollar coverage or get very broad coverage in a very short period of time, and this will be a big disappointment to them, in my opinion.

The other thing I would like to point out is the cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

When I first got elected to the Indiana General Assembly, and I served in the Indiana State Senate, we were blackjacked by the Federal Government into taking Medicaid. At that time they told us it would cost about $20 million per year for the Medicaid bill.

Medicaid in Indiana this past year was $1.3 billion for our share and $2.5 billion for the Federal Government share. If you just take the Indiana share, you will find that it is about 70 times what the initial cost was of Medicaid. So it went up 70 times since 1969. If you look at Medicare, Medicare was passed in 1965 and in 1967 Medicare cost, across the country, $3 billion. In 2001, Medicare cost $241 billion. I think it is very important that we put all this in perspective, because Medicare went up 80 times since 1965, Medicaid went up 70 times since 1969. And so we can anticipate that there will be a rapid growth in the prescription drug coverage as seniors find out what they are not getting and what they expected.

I would like to say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, seniors need to get the facts. The fact is they are not going to get the benefits that they think they are going to get, and if they do get the benefits that they think they are going to get, the cost is going to be much higher than the $400 billion over 10 years they have talked about. As a matter of fact, I have been told, and I cannot verify this, that CBO has said it is going to cost $432 billion over the next 10 years, and the bill has not yet been reported to my knowledge out of committee.

I think this is very, very important. AARP, the senior organization, has said this is a very beneficial thing for seniors, and it is a good first step. I think they realize that when seniors find out about this, they are going to demand more. I can understand that. So what will happen, I believe, is what happened in 1988 when we passed the catastrophic health care bill. Seniors thought they were getting a good deal. I voted against that bill. There were 11 of us that voted against it in 1988. We were castigated by senior groups and seniors across the country because they said we did not care about them. But a year and a half later, when seniors found out what was in the bill, they were chasing Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, down the street with umbrellas, beating on his car saying, what have you done to us and the bill was repealed within a short period of time.

I am going to make a prediction tonight. If we pass this bill in its present form, I believe that the seniors are going to be very upset not only with the Congress, but with AARP and other groups that say this is a very good first step. Because when they find out that the benefits that they anticipate are not there, they are going to be very angry just like it was in 1988. I would like to say to my colleagues, let us do what absolutely must be done to help seniors. Seventy-six percent of the seniors have a plan where they get their prescription drugs already. Twenty-four percent do not. We ought to help the 24 percent who do not. Those are the ones that we need to be helping. If we did that, I think we would solve a large part of the problem.

I will be back tomorrow night.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at midnight), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, November 19, 2003, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I want to give my colleagues a little bit of history about the entitlement programs.

When I was in the Indiana State Senate in 1969, the Federal Government came to Indiana and said if we did not take the Medicaid program, they would withdraw $2.5 million in Federal highway funds from Indiana. They were, in effect, blackjacking our State, and I went to the floor of the State Senate and said we ought to tell them to keep their $2.5 million because it will cost us 10 times that much if we take the Medicaid program. Boy, was I off.

The Medicaid program that we thought would end up around $20, $25 million is now $1.4 billion or 70 times, 70 times what we anticipated, and then the Medicare program, which was passed in 1965 I believe, it was supposed to cost $3 billion the first year. In fact, it was $3 billion. In 2001, it was $241 billion. That is 80 times more, 80 times more than it was initially.

The prescription drugs that are in the bill that we are talking about right now they said was going to cost $400 billion, that provision. The bill has not even gotten out of the conference committee yet, and it is already up to $432 billion according to CBO. If we look at the way the Medicaid program has progressed over the past 25 to 30 years and we look at how the Medicare program has progressed over the past 25 to 30 to 40 years, we can assume that the prescription drug benefit is going to go out of sight as well, and if that happens, if it goes up say 70 times, like Medicare and Medicaid did, we could see an annual expenditure for prescription drugs of $2- or $3 trillion. This thing could bankrupt America.

So we should be looking at another approach, which is the reimportation that we talked about, putting competition and market prices into effect and competition to keep the prescription drug prices down. Seventy-six percent of the seniors in this country already have prescription drug coverage. So we are only talking about the other 24 or 25 percent, and yet we are going to have an all-encompassing program when we should only be helping those who truly need the help, but for those who really are looking forward to the program, let me just give my colleagues some facts, and I hope that there may be some seniors and my colleagues who are paying attention to this.

The premium per year is $420. Then there is an additional $275 deductible. That is a total of $695 the seniors will have to pay before they get a dime, and then they pay 25 percent of the first $2,200 of prescription drugs that they buy. That is another $550. So they are going to pay $1,245 before they get a dime, $1,245, and then for that $1,245, they are going to get $1,650 in coverage.

That is not the end of it because between $2,200 and $3,600 there is no coverage whatsoever. So that is another $1,400 that they will be out of pocket. If we add that together, that means if a senior citizen has to spend $3,000 on

prescription drugs or if that is what the cost is, they are going to get $1,650 of that $3,000, and for that $1,650, they are going to pay $2,645. That is not a good deal for them. It is a very bad deal.

Granted, some of the impoverished people who are a little bit below the poverty line are going to get a better deal than that, but the average senior is going to pay more than they are going to get if their bill is say a $3,000 prescription drug bill because they are going to pay $2,645 for the coverage that they are going to get, and that is $1,650 of the $3,000.

I think that the AARP people and everybody else ought to take a hard look at that because I think the American seniors are being misled about this. We need to provide prescription drug coverage for those who truly need it, who cannot get it because of health reasons or cannot afford it, but we should have not a program that covers everybody when we cannot afford that. The cost is going to be extraordinarily high.

What we should be doing instead is working on reimportation, market prices and competition, as the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) has been advocating for a long, long time. If we did that, we could solve the problem, and we would not have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to do it.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from New Jersey will yield, the language in the bill is essentially the same as it is right now, and that is that the head of the health agency, HHS, all he has to do is say there is a safety issue, which he has already said, and there will be no reimportation.

Mr. Speaker, due to a scheduling conflict, I was unable to be in Washington during rollcall votes 616-619. Had I been here I would have voted ``no'' for rollcall vote 616, ``aye'' for rollcall vote 617 and ``no'' for rollcall votes 618-619.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my strong support for H.R. 2620, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003, which would authorize appropriations for fiscal years 2004 and 2005 for the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.

In these modern times, it is hard for Americans to believe that the problem of human slavery still exists. Not only do these crimes against humanity still occur, they are increasing in frequency all across the globe.

To further investigate the topic of human slavery and trafficking in persons, I held a hearing before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Human Rights & Wellness on October 29, 2003, entitled, ``The Ongoing Tragedy of International Slavery and Human Trafficking: An Overview,'' to examine the worldwide effects of these illicit practices, and to discuss how United States policies and programs are beginning to have a positive effect in combating these crimes against humanity.

Our investigation found that over 27,000,000 people are currently enslaved in some form around the world, and it is estimated that up to 4,000,000 men, women, and children are forced or coerced into slavery every year, which represents the highest concentration of slaves alive at one time ever in world history.

Thankfully, the U.S. Government has been working tirelessly to eliminate the practices of slavery and trafficking in persons around the globe. This is mainly due to the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, authored by my dear friend and our esteemed colleague, Representative Chris Smith. This law has assisted victims by authorizing grants to shelters and rehabilitation programs to help victims of trafficking, and by establishing programs to prevent trafficking through the enhancement of economic opportunities for potential victims. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act promotes public awareness of the dangers of human slavery, and provides stringent penalties for persons who facilitate these crimes.

H.R. 2620 not only reauthorizes, but builds upon the successes of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 by (1) requiring that U.S. Government contracts relating to international affairs contain clauses authorizing termination by the United States if the contractor engages in human trafficking, or procures commercial sexual services while the contract is in force; (2) promoting innovative trafficking prevention initiatives, such as border interdiction programs; and (3) requiring airlines to inform passengers about U.S. laws against sex tourism, among other enhanced protections for current victims of trafficking.

Before the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, victims had no hope that they would be rescued from the horrid conditions into which they had been forced to live. The enactment of this law has not only put forth initiatives to prevent further human abuses, but has also given victims of slavery a real chance for liberty, and we as Members of Congress should do all that we can to promote their freedom.

Mr. Speaker, reauthorizing H.R. 2620 will continue to protect and liberate people who are currently enslaved against their will in these modern times, and I strongly urge my colleagues to continue to support this most important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor and recognition of my former colleague and fellow Hoosier, Congressman Frank X. McCloskey, upon his untimely death after a year-long battle with bladder cancer. I strongly support the ``Francis X. McCloskey Post Office Building Designation Act'' (H.R. 3379), renaming the United states Post Office located in downtown Bloomington, Indiana, after former Congressman McCloskey.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1939, McCloskey attended high school in Norristown, PA, and entered the Air Force immediately after graduation. After honorably serving his country, McCloskey attended Indiana University, where the received both his undergraduate degree and a Doctorate of Jurisprudence. He then settled down in Bloomington and began his service to both the state of Indiana and our Nation in a most distinguished manner, beginning with his ten-year term as mayor of the city of Bloomington. McCloskey had the highest of aspirations, and was eventually elected to the U.S.House of Representatives in 1982, serving a 6-term career as U.S. Representative from the 8th Congressional District of Indiana.

During his tenure in the House of Representatives, Frank McCloskey became highly involved in the Balkan crisis, introducing several pieces of legislation seeking to avert a humanitarian disaster in the former Yugoslav republics. In the years following his Congressional service, Frank drew upon those experiences in foreign relations and human rights by pursuing formal training in Balkan studies and serving as a mediator in negotiations over territorial disputes in Bosnia. As a result of his dedication and tireless efforts, McCloskey was awarded by being named Director of Kosovo Programs for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

Mr. Speaker and my esteemed colleagues, please join me in honoring and recognizing the service and commitment that Congressman Frank McCloskey gave to his fellow Hoosiers, the American people, and the international community. It is only fitting that we dedicate a last memorial by renaming the Post Office in downtown Bloomington, Indiana, after a man who helped change the course of history and served the public with distinction.

Please join me in supporting the ``Francis X. McCloskey Post Office Building Designation Act.''

Madam Speaker, it was my pleasure to serve in the Congress of the United States for 6 years when Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States. When Ronald Reagan became President, the economy was heading in the wrong direction. Early in his administration, we went into a recession which was caused by his predecessor, and he pushed through the Congress very large tax cuts which led to the economic recovery that started the last part of his administration and went on for well over a decade, 14, 15 years.

Ronald Reagan was a very affable man, is a very affable man, was a very kind and generous man, a very understanding man, one who had a big heart and who really cared about America.

Many people in his administration took issue with him when he decided to take on the Soviet Union. When he was about to make his speech talking about the Soviet Union being an evil empire, many people in the State Department cringed and said, my God, Mr. President, you cannot say that. Nevertheless, he did, because the Soviet Union held so many millions of people under bondage, and the captive nations of Eastern Europe applauded what he said.

When he stood before the Berlin Wall and said, ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,'' I remember listening to that and thinking that is a great thing to say, Mr. President; but it will not happen in my lifetime. Yet I was in Namibia when they had the special elections over there, and I went into a German beer garden, and everybody was celebrating. They were raising their steins and dancing, and I said what in the world is going on, and they said do you not know, the Berlin Wall is coming down. The hair on my head and the back of my neck started to rise because I knew that Ronald Reagan got that job done. He raised the stakes against the Soviet Union, with the Soviet Union.

They had 50,000 T-55 tanks that started rusting away because he built up the American defenses so high that they could not keep pace, and their economy could not deal with the problem. So their whole economy started to collapse; and as a result, the Soviet Union collapsed. So Ronald Reagan, when he was President, brought this economy back from the ashes of disaster to where it went on for years and years and years in the right direction. He destroyed, I believe personally, the Soviet Union, along with Lech Walesa and the Pope, by putting pressure on the Soviet Union and Mr. Gorbachev and his predecessors until they just fell apart.

So I was very, very disappointed when I saw that CBS was going to do a miniseries denigrating this great President, this great man, especially at a time when he cannot defend himself. He is suffering from Alzheimers; and his beautiful wife, Nancy Reagan, whom I had a chance to get to know a little bit when she was in the White House, has to live with these horrible things that are being said about her husband, and she cannot do anything about it.

Well, we in the Congress that served with President Ronald Reagan know better. He was a great President. He was a great man. He was a humanitarian. He was a visionary, and he was a man who when he said something he meant it and everybody knew he meant it, and for them to try to destroy his memory is something I do not think we should tolerate.

I would like to just say that Peggy Noonan, who worked in the White House with Ronald Reagan, was one of his speech writers. She wrote a book that was called ``When Character Was King,'' and I wish all of the people who criticized Ronald Reagan and participated in this CBS miniseries will read that book because, if they read that book, they are going to see what the man was really like. He was a great man. He is a great man, and his legacy and his memory should not be tarnished by a bunch of trash being put out by CBS.

I understand they have pulled that miniseries, and it is not going to be on the network now; but they said that they are going to sell it, I guess, or use it in one of their other areas like ``Showtime,'' and it will be shown as, I guess, a made-for-television movie. I want all my friends to know that I watch ``Showtime,'' and I pay for ``Showtime,'' but I want to say to my friends, if they put that trash on ``Showtime,'' and they have a right to do it under the first amendment, but if they put that trash on ``Showtime,'' I will tell all of my friends and people across this Nation they ought to drop it because that is not the kind of thing you do to a great man like Ronald Reagan who served his country so well and did so much, not only for America but for the whole world.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H. Con. Res. 302. I also want to urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this resolution that expresses the sense of Congress welcoming President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan to the United States on October 31, 2003.

Taiwan is a beacon of liberty and democracy in a region of the world where human rights and personal freedoms are routinely denied, and I believe that this Chamber should recognize Taiwan's achievements and congratulate President Chen on his outstanding leadership.

I ask my colleagues to consider the following facts: Taiwan has become one of the world's freest nations, and is now one of the most successful models of rapid reform in the region. Fifty years ago, Taiwan was a closed authoritarian society with no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, and no right to vote. Today, Taiwan is a full- fledged democracy. It has robust political parties, and virtually every office in Taiwan is contested through free and fair elections.

Taiwan supports the same democratic, economic and security values, which we as a Nation cherish. Taiwan shares our belief in free-market economics, which has resulted in Taiwan providing its people with one of the highest standards of living in Asia. Furthermore, U.S. strategic interests in the region are closely intertwined with Taiwan's security in the region. In addition, Taiwan and the U.S. share the same respect for human rights. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate President Chen Shui-bian for receiving the Human Rights Award from the International League for Human Rights.

H. Con. Res. 302 provides us with a golden opportunity to affirm our friendship and support for the free people of Taiwan. Because Taiwan is such a steadfast ally of the U.S., I am a proud cosponsor of H. Con. Res. 302. I also wish to thank my colleague from Florida, Mr. Wexler, for introducing this resolution and the House Leadership for scheduling a vote on it. I believe that Congress should extend a warm and public welcome to President Chen of Taiwan upon his arrival in the United States on October 31, 2003. President Chen's visit will serve to broaden and deepen the strong alliance between the United States and Taiwan. Also, his visit is of tremendous importance to all Americans who join me in recognizing the value of a longstanding friendship between the U.S. and Taiwan.

Once again, Mr. Speaker, I ask that my colleagues join me in support of this resolution, and I offer a hearty welcome to President Chen and wish him great success upon his visit to the U.S.

Mr. Speaker, for some time, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson), myself and a number of others, Congressmen from the Democrat side, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), our independent Congressman, have been working very hard to make sure that Americans do not pay any more for their pharmaceutical products than they do in other parts of the industrialized world.

One of the things we found out when we were doing our investigation was that some of the pharmaceutical products that are sold in Canada sell for one-seventh or one-eighth or one-tenth of what they sell for in the United States. Tamoxifen, for instance, which is one of the drugs of choice for a woman who has breast cancer, costs seven times as much in the United States as it does Canada. That just is not right. Americans should not pay a disproportionate amount of the costs of research and development for a pharmaceutical product or advertising or anything else as they do in other parts of the world.

Yet Americans are bearing an undue amount of the burden of producing these products. Toward that end, a number of us have been working to try to get that changed through reimportation of pharmaceutical products from Canada, from Germany, from Spain, from other industrialized nations so that Americans get the benefit of the lower prices. The prices of pharmaceuticals have been rising at about 15 percent a year and Americans simply cannot afford that tremendous amount of increase year after year after year. We have seniors that are going to pharmacies with prescriptions saying, how much is it? If it is too much, they say, well, maybe I'll be back tomorrow. Or maybe they buy half a prescription and they split it in two, and that is not sufficient for the problems that they face. So we have been working on this.

We now find that we have a lot of allies in the States around this country. Governor Blagojevich of Illinois, one of our former Democrat colleagues from the Congress, did some research and found out in the State of Illinois for State employees, the State would save $91 million a year in Illinois alone if they went to a reimportation plan. Today, Mayor Bloomberg of New York, a Republican, has said that he is going to look into this to try to do it to save money because New York is strapped for cash. The Governor of Minnesota, a Republican, has said that he is going to do it, and it is going to save tens of millions of dollars for the State of Minnesota. The Governor of Iowa is working on it. The mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Mayors in Vermont and across the country, Governors and mayors, are starting to realize that they are strapped for cash and need money to run their governments for fire protection, education, safety and other causes; and they need that money. They either raise it through taxes or find ways to economize in their States and cities. They have found they can save tens of millions of dollars across this country in each city and State by buying pharmaceutical products from outside the United States, the very same products that we buy here, made by the same manufacturers. There is no difference. The only difference is Americans pay six or seven times or as much as 10 times more than they do in other countries. That is not right.

There is a groundswell of support to bring about positive change in the cost of pharmaceuticals across this Nation. It is a groundswell that is not going to stop.

I would like to say to my friends in the pharmaceutical industry, it is time to sit down and reason with Members of Congress to try to find a solution to this problem rather than have Americans having to import the same products you are selling here in the United States from other countries. It makes no sense for you to sell them to Canada and for us to have to reimport them in order to save the taxpayers, the people of this country, millions of dollars and save the Governors and mayors of the States and cities of this country millions and maybe even billions of dollars. We spend over $200 billion a year for State and Federal employees for their pharmaceutical products, I understand; and it is estimated by experts we can save 30 percent, that is, $60 billion a year could be saved if we had a fair pricing like they do in Canada, Spain, Germany, and elsewhere. That could pay for the Medicare prescription drug program that we have all been talking about.

We need to get with the program. The pharmaceutical industry needs to get with the program. We want them to make a profit. We want them to have money for research and development, and we want them to get their tax credits; but we do not want them to burden the American taxpayer with all of these expenses, and that is what is going to happen if we do not deal with this now.

I would just like to say once again, Mr. Speaker, if anybody in the pharmaceutical industry is listening, we want to work with you to solve this problem; but one way or another, Americans are going to get a fair price for their pharmaceutical products. If we have to fight for reimportation, we will do it that way; or we will deal with you to do it a better way.