Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of and with gratitude to my colleague, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald) for her resolution honoring our colleague, now our retired colleague, Steve Horn, a colleague and a friend and a much- admired person here in Washington, D.C.

He is not a bicycle rider and he is not an Olympic athlete here, but I guess it is fitting for us to have the U.S. Post Office, which has sponsored one of our athletes, and today we are talking about the naming of a post office after Steve Horn. I cannot think of a better candidate than Steve Horn to name a post office after, especially on Signal Hill, California.

Steve Horn, of course, started out as an academic and ended up working for a United States Senator from California, Senator Kuchel, and later on became president of Long Beach State College. Let me note that I graduated from Long Beach State College and was part of the committee, elected by the students of Long Beach State College, to be part of the selection committee to find out who would be the president, and that selection committee ended up choosing Steve Horn to be the President of Long Beach State College, which later became Long Beach State University.

Steve Horn did a terrific job as president of that university. He was an incredible leader in the academic community. He was tough, but he was an intellectual and he was always very thoughtful. When he came here to Congress it was an interesting transition between the President of Long Beach State and coming to Congress. Steve and I actually ran against each other on my very first run for Congress. Steve was in the primary. It was a crowded primary of eight people, and I always thought of Steve as the one opponent I had in that primary who I dearly respected. He was such a thoughtful person.

I always thought of it as the Jeffersonians versus the Hamiltonians. As our country started out we had these two different groups vying intellectually, and Steve was definitely a Hamiltonian and I thought of myself as a Jeffersonian. Now he would think of that as a great compliment, even though in the end, the Jeffersonians won in the beginning of our country's history. They won the battles with the Hamiltonians in terms of the electoral process. But as any very thoughtful historian will tell you, it was the Hamiltonians that ended up having a dominant influence on the structure of our government.

Steve, of course, was someone who wanted to have an influence. He was someone who wanted to get tangible things done rather than talk about philosophy. He carried a book with him at all times, taking notes so he could have the details down on the things that he wanted to remember and to follow through on. He was a pragmatist of the highest order and someone who actually gives honor to that title of pragmatist because he wanted to make government work. He wanted it to work for the people, but, yes, work in its most efficient way.

He was on the Committee on Government Reform and he served on it after he was elected in 1992. He came here and ran again in 1992 and won and was here for 10 years as Representative of the 38th District. During that time period we faced the challenge that our computer system may go haywire, and Steve headed the subcommittee on technology and spent a great deal of time working with, of course, the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) and others to make sure that our country did not suffer horrible repercussions of being unprepared for the turn of the century that was going to make our computers all malfunction. With Steve's leadership, we were able to avert a great crisis at that time that probably saved our country billions upon billions of dollars and all sorts of disruption.

This was a man who was making things better by making government work. He was also on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on which he worked so diligently to make sure that our transportation needs, especially in southern California, were met.

So let me say again that even though Steve and I had been at odds, we had

run against each other and at times we had our disagreements, he was a person whose methodology in his own life demanded a certain degree of respect even for those who disagreed with him. And then when we did agree, it was such a pleasure to have someone as efficient as Steve on your side, who was focused on detail and getting the job done.

I think together in the Republican majority we were able to accomplish a great deal with Steve Horn and myself on the same team. And that is what the Republican majority, we hope, has been all about. We are missing Steve now and we wish him well. This post office that we are naming after him he fought long and hard to get a ZIP Code for in Signal Hill, so I think it is very, very fitting that we offer him this tribute by putting his name on that post office.

So I thank once again the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender- McDonald). This is a very nice bipartisan tribute to a man who really appreciated bipartisanship.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

I yield to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda) and me supports the rights of former American prisoners of war who were captured at the fall of Bataan, the Philippines, in 1942. They were used as slave labor by Japanese corporations during the rest of the Second World War.

These heroes survived the Bataan Death March only to be transported to Japan and elsewhere in infamous death ships. They were then forced to labor for Japanese corporations under the most horrendous circumstances one can imagine. Private employees of these corporations tortured and physically abused our American POWs while the corporations withheld essential medical care and even the most minimal amount of food. All of this, and when it was over, they were not even permitted to be compensated by the Japanese corporations that used them as slave labor.

Perhaps the worst part of this nightmare is that these American heroes have been thwarted in their efforts to secure for themselves just compensation and an apology, and they are being thwarted by our own State Department, which claims they have no right to sue.

My amendment to H.R. 2799 would prohibit any funds in the act from being used by the United States Government to prevent our POWs from seeking a fair hearing in civil court against the Japanese companies that used them as slave labor.

We are told, of course, that if the American POWs seek this compensation from these Japanese corporations, that it would be an insult to the corporate leaders in Japan who led these corporations or an insult to the Japanese people. Ironically, even while we are being told this, the Japanese have extended favorable reparation terms to other victims from other countries, and they continue to settle war claims for people of other countries. But, of course, those other countries have their governments fighting for the rights of their people rather than trying to undermine the rights of their greatest heroes.

Unfortunately, to date, our State Department continues to argue in court against our POWs, touting a ridiculously restrictive reading of the peace treaty between the United States and Japan. In that, our State Department is now betraying our own POWs in order to protect Japanese corporations that used them as slave labor during the war. If our State Department is doing that, it is wrong; and it is therefore up to this Congress to pass this bill to force our State Department to get out of the way of our POWs and let them have their day in court, because every time our POWs come forth to sue these Japanese corporations, our State Department is there arguing against them and tearing down their arguments.

This is not the first time that we have taken on this issue to try to prevent this from happening to our American heroes. On July 18 of 2001, this amendment passed in the House with a resounding vote of 395 to 33. It was also agreed to on September 10, 2001, in identical form by a majority in the United States Senate.

It is a disgrace that this amendment, after having been approved by both Houses of Congress in identical terms, was pulled out of the bill and did not make it into the conference report; thus, behind closed doors, our POWs were again betrayed.

Is this a democracy where if a majority of people in both Houses vote for something, it does not stay in the bill, that someone can just take it out? No. I think that we have got to try to correct this situation now; and if we stand up today, we send a message that this kind of behavior, making these kind of decisions behind closed doors, is unacceptable. And what better issue to draw the line against this practice than in protecting the rights of some of America's greatest heroes?

I would hope that we can once again put restrictions into this bill that will prevent the State Department from using any of these funds that we authorize or appropriate today to prevent our own POWs from suing Japanese corporations that used them as slave labor during the Second World War.

Which side are we on? It comes down to that. Which side are we on? On the side of America's greatest heroes or are we more concerned with the sensibilities of big Japanese corporations who used our heroes as slaves?

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment, for two reasons. Number one, I believe in freedom. I believe in democracy and the democratic process. If the people of 10 States have voted, I guess eight of them have actually voted through referendum and two through their other legislative process to legalize the medical use of marijuana within those States, it is totally contrary to our way of life in the United States of America to say that those States, the people of those States, do not have a right to set their standards, their legal standards in those States.

There are dry counties, and there are wet counties. You can have a State that is right next to one State. That is no argument. You do not have to have one rule for the whole country. That is what federalism is all about. And what greater use of federalism or more important use of federalism than for people to control substances as they are consumed in their own area? I would suggest that in my State, for example, where the people did, by a large majority, vote for legalizing the medical use of marijuana that it is a travesty for the Federal Government to send police into my State and arrest people and throw them in a cage, in jail, for doing something that the vast majority of people in my State voted to make a legal practice. This is contrary to American tradition. This is not right. It has only been in this last 100 years that America has decided to go haywire and create this type of oppression which is contrary to the wishes of the majority of people in these areas.

Number two, let us just face it, it has not worked. The process that we have tried to use to prevent drug use has not worked. The drug war is a miserable failure. That does not mean we should give up. I am not advocating that. I do not advocate legalizing drugs, but I think that it is time to take a second look at what has been going on. It has not succeeded at all in preventing people from using drugs, and it has been a catastrophe in the black and other minority communities where young people get thrown into jail at an early age and their whole life is ruined. We need to take a second look at drugs in general and how we are going to try to convince young people not to use drugs.

By the way, I was Ronald Reagan's speech writer and I wrote almost every one of his speeches about drugs at a time when we convinced America's youth to stop using drugs and there was the greatest decline in the use of drugs during Reagan's administration as any time in our history. I can assure you in Ronald Reagan's speeches, he talked about just relying on law enforcement was not the answer. And it certainly is not the answer in dealing with medical marijuana that has been approved by the majority of people in various States. Lynn Nofziger, Ronald Reagan's adviser; William F. Buckley, the editor of National Review; Bob Ehrlich, the Governor of Maryland, all of these people understand what this is all about and understand that those people opposing this liberalization of the medical use of marijuana are living in a bygone era.

Let me just note this. My mother passed away about 4 or 5 years ago. One of the factors in my determination tonight to stand up here before you is that I remember when the doctor told me that she had lost her appetite and I was going to have to feed her. I was very pleased that I had voted for making the medical use of marijuana legal because I could not look at myself in the face knowing that I had done that to other people who were confronted by their mother. What are we doing to someone, and they do not have to be critically ill. What about an older person that has lost their appetite and their will to live? If a doctor thinks it is going to help them to use marijuana, it is immoral for us to try to put people in jail who are moving to alleviate that type of horror that people have in their own lives.

Are we compassionate or are we not? I suggest that we vote for compassion and freedom and support this liberalization.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to join the gentleman from New Jersey and the gentleman from California as I have over the years on many human rights issues, and this is a human rights issue. Racism, religious hatred, these are things that decent people must condemn and we must unite in our strong opposition wherever this type of vile behavior and vile thought patterns emerge. We must recognize that there are, however, people who exploit these type of negative feelings and this type of racial hatred. Anti-Semitism is perhaps the epitome of this ignorance and irrationality and mindless hatred and it is again raising its ugly head both in Europe and in the United States.

Let us note that over 10 years ago, a major political figure in the United States referred to New York City as ``Hymietown.'' What is important is the fact that he was winked at and that for 10 years after that statement, he still remained a recognized leader. That did tremendous harm in America's black community. It sent a horrible message to young blacks and we are paying some of the price of an increased anti-Semitism today in our black community by mistakes that we made 10 years ago by not condemning that and other types of horrible remarks that should never have been made or accepted in our political debate.

In Europe today, we see that same kind of winking going on. Oh, yes, people are ignoring statements that are being made that are totally unacceptable to people who believe in civilized behavior and are opposed to this type of vile hatred, the vile hatred in relationship to their fellow man. This is an alarm bell today. I am very proud to stand here with the gentleman from

California and the gentleman from New Jersey ringing the alarm bell. We are not going to sit idly by and wink at an increase in this level of hatred towards our Jewish friends nor towards any other minority in the Western democracies. The Western democracies, our friends in Europe, just like we in the United States, have to remain vigilant and it is up to us as leaders of this society and the democratic leaders in Europe to call to task those who would wink and would not condemn this type of vicious trend in their society. We can cut it short now. Let us stand together united against anti-Semitism and all such hatred.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss this resolution, although I have not yet determined how I shall vote on it.

The resolution has ``resolved'' clauses that speak for themselves and are reasonable. In the ``resolved'' clauses we do see a recognition of expression of sentiment about both the Palestinian as well as the Israeli innocent people who have been killed. Also, it recognizes the Roadmap and talks about some of the goals that we all agree on.

I do have some reservations as to the ``whereas'' clauses which seem to be one-sided. The clause most disconcerting to me happens to be the one that people seem to be the most frantic in trying to get across today, and that is the claim that in some way, by saying that this is a cycle of violence that is going on, as it says in the ``whereas'' clause, that this implies a moral equivalency. It does not. The cycle of violence could well have been started, and I do believe there is a cycle of violence going on; it could be that both sides have made mistakes. That does not mean they are both morally equivalent. Who is judging the morality of it? We are judging the reality of it.

The fact is, Israel may have made some mistakes. Certainly the Palestinians have made horrible immoral decisions in terms of suicide bombings and other types of acts of terrorism. But Israel may have made some mistakes. Was Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, in retrospect, was that not a mistake? How about the Israeli settlement policy for these last few years? I think in retrospect these things have not furthered the cause of peace; these things have created a cycle of violence, if you will.

It is our job to try to come to grips with what is going on there and end this conflict, and quit trying to say that all of the blame is on one side. Both sides have made mistakes. Let us try to be an honest broker.

Now, I will probably be voting for the resolution, because the ``resolved'' clauses are things that I agree with. But I would hope that we would be honest with ourselves and try to discuss this in a way that will further the cause of peace and not just simply be one-sided.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I hope the public is paying attention to this debate. If we had major cities throughout this country, they are refusing to cooperate with the INS and other people who are trying to protect us from illegal aliens that may be coming in to do terrorist acts, they should not be getting funds from this government. We are trying to ask them to comply to protect our citizens when we are given that type of a description.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) to give him a chance to answer some of these absurd charges.

Reclaiming my time, the purpose of this amendment is clear. We are trying to have cooperation throughout the country in a matter that is vital to our national security and the safety of our people. If there are people in those governments, in those cities that are refusing to cooperate with us, refusing to permit those who are responsible for protecting our borders to get assistance, they should not be getting funds. This is how we will encourage them to get involved and to help protect America.

Mr. Speaker, before my colleagues leave, let me just note that that quote from Newt Gingrich that was bandied around earlier, we have seen that quote used many times, and those of us who have been who have seen the full quote know that that quote was taken out of context and often Mr. Gingrich pointed that out as an example of the abuse of the public trust by presenting something that was totally misrepresented.

No, I would not.

Mr. Speaker, I think I control the body. I have the floor.

I would ask that the gentleman be removed from the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I am reclaiming my time. I would ask that the Sergeant at Arms remove the gentleman from the floor if he insists on taking my time.

I would ask the Sergeant at Arms to remove him from the floor if he continues to interrupt.

Mr. Speaker, we have seen this misuse of this quote so often in this body, and I would just like to make sure that the public is aware when they hear it misused again that Mr. Gingrich has time and time again demonstrated that that quote was being misused by people who were trying to misrepresent what he said.

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to yield.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Let me just note that this quote, as I have stated, has been refuted over and over again and demonstrated by Mr. Gingrich in many public forums that it was being used in a very irresponsible and dishonest manner.

I would just note now that I would like to discuss a different approach to medical independence and privacy and health insurance and the whole issue that we have been discussing tonight and will be discussing further in the next few days.

I have a piece of legislation that I would like people to consider and that I would like them to look at; it is H.R. 2544. It is a piece of legislation that I believe offers a whole new approach to medical care and health care in America.

Unfortunately, all too often, the discussion of medical reform legislation has been focusing on the allocation of more funds. Sometimes those funds would help in our society those who are lacking resources to purchase their own adequate health care and medical care; but at other times when we are talking about spending more funds, what we are not talking about is helping those who really need it and cannot provide for themselves, but what we are talking about is subsidizing everybody, whether or not they need it. Rarely does Congress, when they are focusing on just spending more money, whether or not someone needs that help, rarely do we focus on how can we do things more wisely and more efficiently, and how can we bring down the costs of getting health care that would make more people able to take care of themselves. Rarely does government focus on how to create an environment which would spur the supply of medical services, and rarely do we focus on encouraging cost-cutting innovation or to provide incentives for those who create and innovate and bring up new, cost-effective methods of dealing with illness in our society.

In essence, what government does, and what this body often does, is focus on medical care demand rather than on medical care supply. This focus all but guarantees the price of drugs and hospital care and medical treatment will continue to soar and outpace the ability of many Americans to afford the price of being healthy and; certainly, as it brings the price of health care up, it then creates even more Americans, a pool of even more Americans who cannot take care of their own health care costs. So it is a cycle that leaves even more Americans dependent on the government, and then the government creates a situation where even more Americans cannot take care of themselves.

The Federal Government took over responsibility for the health care of America's seniors back in 1965. When Medicare was first enacted into law back in 1965, very few people remember what it was like back then. But before then, our economically disadvantaged were taken care of by tax dollars. Yes, they were. But most Americans who became seniors were expected to take care of themselves. And we need to ask ourselves, what has happened to the price of health care since the government assumed responsibility of taking care of all Americans over a certain age? What has happened to our health care since the emergence of Medicare?

Today, I dare say the price of health care is so high that it is inconceivable that most of our seniors can take care of themselves. Before Medicare, people were expected, if they could, to take care of themselves. Medicare came in and decided to take care of everybody. Now, almost nobody is able to take care of themselves.

Of course, the massive escalation of health care prices have hit the rest of the population as well as our seniors. Now, the same can be expected, I might add, of the price of prescription drugs if, indeed, we end up having the government take over, providing prescription drugs for all seniors, whether or not those seniors can afford to take care of themselves. What will happen is the price of drugs will soar, not only for seniors who will be paid for by the government, but by everyone else as well, again, making it even more difficult for people, for American citizens, to take care of their own health needs.

Last week, I introduced a bill entitled the Medical Independence, Privacy, and Innovation Act of 2003. This legislation combines a creative mix of market-oriented reforms that will encourage independence and, hence, wise personal medical care choices. If enacted, this legislation will further expand the protection of our medical care privacy. It makes long overdue changes in the Federal Drug Administration procedures that will encourage innovation and invention of new pharmaceuticals and, thus, will have a major effect on bringing down the cost of health care. This legislation, if enacted, will expand the variety, quantity, and availability of medical innovation. It is innovation, new technology, and our creative genius that

will enable Americans to overcome the monumental challenge of providing health care to the baby boomer generation as this generation slips into its senior years. Today, the entire system of health care delivery needs to be reshaped if we are to prevent a collapse as the baby boomer generation begins to retire and to go on Medicare.

In my legislation, I propose a program of reforms based on sound economic principles that are vital to improving medical care in America. It assures that people make choices for themselves rather than accept bureaucratic or political mandates. Today, nonseniors, as with seniors, in fact, find that health care decisions are being taken out of their hands. So even our nonseniors now, much less our seniors, are finding that they do not control their own destiny. They do not make those health care decisions that are so important to their lives. What we have done to the nonseniors in America, while co-opting the decision of every senior in America by just suggesting no one will be taking care of themselves, even those who could, we have now taken over full responsibility and taken the decision out of their hands; but we are doing that, in a way, to the people before they become seniors.

What we have done is structured a system where the employer has become the primary source of a health care service through employer- based health insurance plans. That is a fact of life, and we just had to accept it. Well, unfortunately, it means so many resources and so much power has been co-opted that consumer sovereignty and responsibility has been all but negated. Most people really do not have a choice. It is what the boss offers. If the boss offers it, it is take it or leave it.

There is an old economic truth, by the way, and that is, if the cost of a private or public good approach is zero, that means if you are being offered something and there is no cost to you taking advantage of it, there will be overuse and a waste of that good.

Today's system leaves us with almost no personal choices, but it leaves us with a system that does not rely at all on personal responsibility. We have no choices, and there is no personal responsibility as part of the system. It leaves people, American citizens, with a sense of helplessness and hopelessness and resigned to whatever is going to happen to them that is totally inconsistent with our heritage as a free people.

We spend more and more money on health care. We spend, in fact, more money on health care supposedly than any other country of the world. So as you are listening to people debate the issue of Medicare and debate the issue of prescription drugs and debate the issues of health care in America, remember we already spend more money by far than any other country of the world.

Perhaps part of this is due to the fact that individual responsibility has all been extracted from the system because what it is is we spend more money but we do not have the best health care system in the world and our people are not getting what they pay for or what is being paid for in the United States of America. We have, as I say, all but extracted from our system the idea of individual responsibility and personal authority over one's destiny, not to mention, of course, the profiteering and exploitation of the system by lawyers.

Now, it is time to make a new approach and our system and my bill does not reflect on the exploitation of our system by lawyers. That is another bill. That is a whole different area. But those are obviously one group of people who siphon money out of the system that should be going to people's health care. It is time to take a new approach and, again, over and above the medical malpractice situation.

It is time to take a new approach and what we need, for example, in my legislation, I am proposing that we establish medical checking accounts that incorporate both deductions and credits into our system so that our people will be free to control their own destinies.

Many American families would benefit through the ideas that I am proposing in my legislation. They would benefit by being able to purchase high deductible catastrophic health insurance plans and pay for the year to year or day to day doctor, dentist and pharmaceutical costs out of a medical checking account.

I have sat in my office with self-employed constituents who would love to be able to design their own package of medical care coverage. This approach would protect their family against the huge costs of serious medical illness, of accidents or some type of illness or disease, but it would allow them to pay out of their pocket for normal month to month costs.

Now, imagine how the intelligently a consumer spending his money would help to limit overspending and over-utilization of insurance coverage. Imagine in a society where individual families could shop around for medical insurance plans that suit their needs and not have to squeeze their life-styles into their employer options. My bill would, for example, in the end and it would end the unfair discrimination against individuals who seek independent alternatives to their employer health insurance plans that are mandated in many big businesses or many normal businesses as well, I might add. It would naturally integrate market discipline through personal choice and responsibility into Medicare spending.

My plan creates a medical checking account plan where the account base of $4,000 per family or $2,000 for an individual is built with tax deductible dollars and the estimated yearly variable costs are built in with a $1,000 tax credit replenished on a yearly basis. Now, we are beginning to find out that once we have been relegated, as we are in our current system, to cogs in a machine, either big government or big business machine, that the rights of privacy are no longer paramount or even considered. My legislation would reestablish the principle that a person owns his own medical history and must consent before it is passed on to others.

The emergence of big government and big insurance as the dominant force in health care has eroded the ideas of medical privacy, if not totally just extinguished it. It is time to swing the pendulum back. My bill restores the issue of prior consent and protects the private relationship information relationship between patient and doctor. It eliminates loopholes in the current law that will result in unsolicited merchandising, disclosures of private medical information and the diminishing privacy for millions of Americans.

Americans have visited their local pharmacy and many millions of have visited the pharmacy in the past several months and have been asked to sign a new HIPAA notice. Do these Americans realize that what they are signing is a set of rules that undermines their right to disclose or not to disclose their private and personal medical history?

This country was at one time based on the principle that you owned your medical history and that your property is your property and without your concept that that information should not be placed in the hands of another, whether that person is in big government or private corporations. We need to go back to that principle. When big government starts taking the power, of course, to protect us from ourselves, and that is what they always say, they are trying to protect us from ourselves, not just protect the people who cannot help themselves but protect everybody. They are protecting us from ourselves, you better watch out.

The government can and is protecting us to death. Not from death. They are protecting us to death. Today, for example, FDA approval standards require new pharmaceuticals not just be safe, new pharmaceuticals coming on the market, the requirement is not that they be safe, they have to be nearly 100 percent effective for everyone. It is a 96 percent efficacy rate that is demanded by the Federal Government. That makes it dramatically longer more difficult and more costly for a new drug to get on the mark. By doing this we are condemning hundreds of thousands of people to needless suffering with these overly high standards, we create hurdles to development of new drugs urgently needed and we end up preventing the use of drugs that are already available to help people, but it might only help 75 percent of the people. But if it only helps 75 percent, that cannot go on the market because the rule is it has to be 96 percent effective.

No, this is not fair and it is not right. And it is no coincidence that families of victims of leukemia, cancer, AIDS and other diseases plead to no avail for the abilities to use drugs that were legally available throughout the world. I have sat if my office with constituents who have children with leukemia or siblings with AIDS or patients with cancer who beg for us to do something to allow them to have those pharmaceutical products that are available to people in other countries. Tragically at the same time, as new drugs are provided, or excuse me, are approved for both safety and efficacy, those drugs who do manage to jump all the hurdles and become effective for almost everybody, it ends up where the price is sky high and very few people can afford them.

Then there is the case, of course, where inventors often place on their shelves and innovators and researchers and developers and scientists, they put on their shelves unused and undeveloped many innovative potential technologies and products because they can not afford the exorbitant costs of passing all of these FDA efficacy tests and are making it absolutely prove that 96 percent of the people will be totally cured by this drug.

Well, that makes no sense if 85 percent of the people are going to be cured by a drug, and I have sat in my office with inventors who have told me horror stories of these new inventions that they have but they will not bring them out because they cannot jump over these FDA hurdles.

Well, why does the FDA regulation concerning, for example, drug cocktailing today block the availability of new innovation? Why are we so afraid of new innovation? That new invasion can be set on the standard of it does no harm. I am proposing that we have the standard of it does no harm rather than a 96 percent or 100 percent efficacy rate. That is, it seems to me that that is what we should leave in the hands of the American people, the right to choose drugs that will do them no harm and they should have a right to take them if they feel, especially with the doctor's prescription that they can take that drug and treat themselves even if only 85 percent are cured rather than 96 percent.

Today, websites, consumer interest groups, investigative reporting will make the people of our country, with the help of their doctors who can help them with prescriptions and give them advice, they help the American people fully able to make these choices that were not possibly available to them or maybe the American people could not do it in the past.

Another oddity in the current system that drives up the price of drugs, not just this 96 percent efficacy standard that is insisted upon, one thing that drives up the price for drugs for Americans is the way we deal with the ownership rights of inventors, of those very same inventors and innovators that develop new drugs and find new ways of treating people more efficiently and for less costs in the long run.

What we do, if an individual or a corporation invests tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in developing a new health alternative, all too often it takes years for them to get through this FAA approval process and the other governmental restrictions, and by the time a new drug or health care technology can be sold to the American people, almost all of the ownership time that the innovator and the patent owner has has been used up. So you only have about 20 years or 17 years with a patent, and if it takes them 15 years to get through the process, the company has to immediately charge a huge amount of money for that drug in order to cover its cost of development, to get it back, and then, of course, the drug has been held up for all of these other years. So it has not been available to the public; and then, of course, when it gets on the market we end up putting the company in a situation where it has to charge even more money to recoup its investment.

My bill speeds up the process. It basically establishes that the patent clock does not start ticking against that company until the drug can be put on the market, until it is actually sold. Thus, new drugs, rather than waiting for 20 years or waiting for 15 years, can be put on the market sooner because people want to get this thing on the market because they have lowered those FDA restrictions and the company will make money over that time period.

My bill also makes sure that once that patent term runs out, unlike today, there are many legal maneuvers these companies can play in order to keep the generic drug manufacturers from coming in and producing their drug. We eliminate those maneuvers.

So what we have done is put a drug available on the market and in the hands of the American consumer earlier and cheaper, and then we make sure that the drug companies can make a profit, and we end up making sure that the generic manufacturers can jump in earlier without being deterred by legal maneuvers.

In the end, my bill gives the people more access, more time with the drug. It can cure more people. Hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people, will be available to be treated with a new, innovative approach, drug, or a new health technology if my legislation sets these new standards and we move forward with a system based on those standards, rather than protecting the people of the United States to death, which is precisely what we have been doing. When we hear the FDA say we are approving the drug today and it is going to save the lives of 10,000 people a year who are dying from this disease, and then you find out it is taking 10 years for the drug to get on the market, that FDA official has just admitted that they have been in the process of participating in the unnecessary death of 100,000 people. That is ridiculous.

As we expand the ability of our drug innovators to create and make available new drugs that will, under my legislation, be protected, they will be able to make a profit at what they are doing; and the public will actually have more choice in their hands, and what we need to know, by the way, on the other hand, if the taxpayers end up financing, and there are some drug companies, we have to admit, they get money from the government to try to develop new drugs, they are subsidized by the taxpayers in developing new drugs. My bill will say if a company does that, if a private company does that, they will be subject to price controls, meaning if Uncle Sam pays the price of research and development, Uncle Sam will tell you what is a reasonable price to have on that drug; and the consumers will be protected right off the bat, even though there will be a reasonable profit margin made as well, but my bill insists that the government then put a reasonable price on that drug if the taxpayers did pay for that research.

If a company pays for its own research and development, which we want to encourage more companies to do, they will not be limited by this type of price control.

By encouraging private investment, and whether it is in the development and research of drugs or in other types of health care technology, we will thus be increasing the supply of health care of those things in our society which treat people's illnesses. By increasing that supply, it should help bring down the cost and thus the price of health care to our people. More new drugs and more new technology that can help bring health to our people being introduced on the market, that means a healthier life and a more affordable healthy life for our people.

The medical reform bill I have introduced is a creative package of reforms. I urge all of the Members and fellow colleagues to study these proposals and to support this legislation. As health care costs are obviously going up and even ordinary Americans are struggling to pay the bill and many Americans, of course, cannot pay it all, it is imperative that we begin to seriously think about new approaches to health care.

If the only thing that comes to us while we are looking at the Medicare system and the problem of health care in America is just the only thing we come up with is spending more and more money, we are going to increase the demand for drugs in our society. For example, if all we are doing is taking now a financial situation where the people who can pay for their own health care and their own prescriptions do so and we end up having the government take over all of that, we are

going to end up not only dramatically increasing the price of drugs for the government but those people outside the government, younger people, the price of their drugs will dramatically go up.

No, we cannot just simply handle this Medicare system, of course, by dramatically increasing the price of drugs, which will happen, will make sure the Medicare goes bankrupt much earlier than is scheduled. Right now, in the outyears, we can try to do something to keep Medicare solvent. If we are just going to take responsibility for everyone, even the people who can take care of themselves in terms of a drug benefit, it is going to bankrupt the system; and we will all be worse off, and the price of drugs will soar for ordinary families who are not seniors.

We ignore half the problem if we only try to spend money. We need to free up the supply end of the medical care system, the supply of people who will be producing more health care for America. Yet we also have to be, of course, concerned about the escalating costs; but we cannot be stampeded into easy answers, quick fixes, because those just spending more money without creating any innovation in the system or any reforms in the system, it will make all of our problems worse. Backing up the Federal dump truck and just pouring in a mammoth load of tax money is not a quick fix. It will not work; and with new expenditures, it is going to bankrupt the system and cause the price of drugs to go sky high for all the American people, not just the seniors.

No, the tooth fairy is not going to leave the money that is going to be spent on health care and improving our health care system under our pillow. Each and every one of us will pay. So it is irresponsible not to try to make the system more competitive, less bureaucratic, more innovative as we are talk about expanding Medicare and trying to take care of those people who need prescription drugs but cannot afford it.

Our focus should be on those who cannot afford it rather than coopting this whole field and trying to take care of everybody. A government that tries to do everything for everybody is not going to be able to do anything for anybody in the long run as this economic insanity takes hold and has its effect on our society. We are going to make our problems for insurance worse if we do not try to make our system more effective and cost effective.

One last note about health care in America. In recent years, Americans have witnessed an explosion of alternative health care health-related nutrition, acupuncture, chiropractic, vitamins, exercise, mental health programs that are based on self-help and individual responsibility. These are exciting, new alternatives; and most of them are not even covered by insurance, much less being paid for by the tax dollars. The American people need to have these available to them, these and other vehicles for a good healthy life; and we must use mass communications and the Internet to make sure our people know what their alternatives are, but instead, now what are we focusing on here in the Federal Government, instead we are just trying to focus on spending more money.

New opportunities are needed. We do not need to just regulate these new approaches and these new things that people can do for health care. We do not need to regulate it, control it or ration it. We need, like my legislation will do, is to open up new opportunities. My legislation is based on the principles of freedom and the incentives of the market. This at least will have to be part of the solution, if not the entire solution, we seek to the challenges we face today.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at midnight), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, June 25, 2003, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, shortly after I was elected to Congress 15 years ago, I went to the jungles of Burma and met with a group of young people who were then struggling for freedom and democracy in their country. They showed me a picture of Thomas Jefferson and said, We do not like Karl Marx. We want to have a government like you have in the United States, where people are free.

I will never forget that. They were up against one of the most brutal dictatorships in history, the SLORC regime, the military dictatorship that runs the country of Burma, although they would like to call it Myanmar.

The bottom line is the SLORC dictatorship is still in power after all of these years, and they have just put under arrest Aung San Suu Kyi, one of the true heroes of freedom on this planet, a Nobel Prize winner. Aung San Suu Kyi, we do not know where she is. She is under arrest. They murdered and brutalized many of the democratic activists there.

Today, this Congress needs to be aware of what is going on in Burma, and we must warn the dictators in Burma they will not get away with the dirty deed if they have touched one hair on the head of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the Dreier amendment. I, too, signed that letter in 1993, and I have regretted it ever since. Unlike the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), who has not seemed to have learned his lessons on this, the bottom line is this is exactly the same issue. I signed that letter in 1993 because I was promised that there would be no transfer of technology for military use that could be in any way threatening to the United States. And you know what happened? Yes, because the satellite industry wanted to sell satellites to Communist China and the end result was our missile technology was transferred to Communist China and as the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) said, we now have MIRVs based on our technology, that technology, aimed at the United States. This is a travesty. The same will happen if we do not put these types of restrictions on supercomputers.

The bottom line is there is an obsession with open trade to Communist China driving policy here. We need to put heavy restrictions on those countries that could be potential enemies, like Communist China, while opening up free trade with nonbelligerent countries that do not pose a threat to us.

Vote ``no'' on the Dreier amendment. Keep us safe.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 191, 108th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on International Relations be discharged from further consideration of the Senate bill (S. 243) concerning participation of Taiwan in the World Health Organization, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, for approximately 5 years I warned this body about the threat that the Taliban regime posed to the United States and the free world and the threat posed by the al Qaeda terrorist network, which was then operating out of Afghanistan. For years I was a voice in the wilderness; and later it was found, of course, that those warnings should have been heeded.

Tonight, I rise to alert my colleagues that our State Department may well be in the process of snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory in Afghanistan.

First and foremost, let us note that we, the American people, have not done right by the people of Afghanistan. These poor people, in their war-torn land, they again have helped us out, but again we have not stepped forward with the type of commitment to rebuild their country and to help them rebuild what would have been warranted by the sacrifices they have made.

Their bravery and their sacrifice helped defeat, not just helped defeat, it dramatically and specifically defeated the Soviet Army that was occupying their country, and that defeat of the Soviet Army was a major factor in the end of the Cold War. After the Cold War and after the Soviet Army left, we walked a way to leave them amidst land mines and rubble.

However, after we were attacked 10 years later by the Taliban and the al Qaeda, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, which are the northern tribes, you might say, of Afghanistan, rallied to our side and were instrumental in eliminating the Taliban regime and defeating al Qaeda. Without their support, we would have lost many hundreds, if not thousands, of troops in Afghanistan. These brave people, however, after they helped us defeat the Soviet Union, then they helped us defeat the Taliban, these brave people are still sleeping in the rubble.

We have not built, as Newt Gingrich noted recently, one new mile of road in Afghanistan. Three weeks ago, I was in Afghanistan and drove across the country on the same roads, the hole-pocked roads and horrible conditions that have existed there for years. Not one mile of new road, not one new energy project has been built, although most all Afghans live in the darkness of a nonelectric world.

We need to offer them a way out of their despair. We need to let them know that America's word counts and that they can count on us because they have helped us. We need to repay our debt to the people of Afghanistan. We need to offer them a way to lay down their rifles and pick up shovels and start rebuilding their country.

Instead, we have not done what is right by the people of Afghanistan, and our State Department seems to be not competent to get that job done, because for a year and a half the job has not been proceeding as it should.

Instead, our State Department is, what? Our State Department is pushing that our allies in the war against the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, should, without reservation, disarm and dismantle their military forces; this at a time when those people who sided with the Taliban could well take over the central government and as the Taliban are still skirmishing throughout the country periodically. Yet our State Department wants our allies to disarm.

By the way, our allies, and I visited them 1 month ago, want one thing and one thing only: the Northern Alliance, those who fought with us against the Taliban, are asking only that they have the right to elect their local leaders, their local mayors and provision leaders. That is what they are asking for. Is that not understandable? Is this not what America is all about?

It is funny that our State Department, however, is pushing a system that is totally contrary to the American experience. They, instead, are insisting that Afghanistan have, get this, a French-like centralized system of government, in which the provision leaders and the local leaders would be appointed. The local police chief is appointed by the centralized government in Kabul, the capital city. The school masters are appointed by the centralized government in Kabul.

This is not freedom. This is not what America is all about. Yet our State Department pushes in exactly the wrong direction. We need to oversee what the State Department is doing in Afghanistan before it collapses and before the heroin production in that country destroys any hope for those people to have a decent life in the future.

Mr. Speaker, let me note that one of the prior speakers from the other side of the aisle was talking about the tax cut going to the richest part of America, which they defined as any family earning over $75,000 a year.

Now, I would hope that every working family out there, where a man and woman working as hard as they do in order to make ends meet, realizes that if their total family income is over $75,000, the people on this side of the aisle have been labeling them as the rich, as the wealthy, as the people who need to be exploited in order to help all the other people.

This is quite disturbing. It is certainly disturbing to me. I do not come from a wealthy family and the people I know work really hard in order to have a family income of $75,000 a year. Let me note that in our package, we are hearing a complaint that we are helping families that earn $75,000 a year, we are hearing complaints we have included a child tax credit, we are hearing a complaint we have ended the marriage penalty tax, that we have tried to give the seniors a little relief on their earnings limitations, things that were dramatically reversed in the opposite direction during the Clinton years when the Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress and the presidency.

They just went to work on all of the ordinary Americans. Of course, ordinary Americans are anyone who earns under $75,000. But if you earned $75,000 a year, you are the enemy and you are the target, according to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

But that is not the subject I wish to talk about today. Just very quickly, let me note I have spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan over the years. People in this body understand that I have taken special care with the issue of Afghanistan. I warned this body for years during the Clinton administration that we had to do something about the Taliban or it would come back to hurt us, and it did, in a big way on September 11, when 3,000 of our own people were slaughtered by an attack that had been based in Afghanistan.

I rise today to warn my colleagues that the situation in Afghanistan is not going in the right way. Although much progress has been made, there are some things we need to worry about. Let us remember that the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, some of the same people, these mujahedin fighters who fought against the Soviet Union, and I was there in Afghanistan at the time with them, those very same people were recruited by this administration, by the United States, to help us defeat the Taliban and drive al Qaeda, which was a terrorist gang headed by bin Laden, out of Afghanistan.

Their bravery, along with that of our Special Forces teams, had a magnificent victory in Afghanistan. We drove them out; but since that time, we have not done what is right by the Afghan people again. When they helped us drive out the Soviet Union troops and end the Cold War, we let them sleep in the rubble. There has not been the progress in helping them rebuild their country in Afghanistan that they need to experience. America needs to pay attention to this. There are prices to pay when we do not do what is right.

The heroin crop in Afghanistan has quadrupled over the last year and a half. That is because the people are desperate. They have no other source of income. We have to go in there and help those people rebuild their country, and we are not doing so.

What is worse than that is our embassy, under the control of the United States State Department, is pushing to undermine the Northern Alliance that drove out the Taliban and defeated al Qaeda, they are undermining these brave militia men and instead, shifting power over to another group in Afghanistan, many of whom were allied with the Taliban. Now, if you think that is screwed up, it is hard to fathom when you take a look at it.

What the people in the northern part of Afghanistan are looking for is the right to elect their own provincial leaders, their governors, and their own mayors and city councilmen; they are asking for that right before they would disarm. Our embassy is pushing a centralized system on the people of Afghanistan modeled after the French, of all people, where the government, the central government would appoint the heads of the local police and the schools and whatever. Well, no wonder the Northern Alliance who fought the Taliban are not willing to give up their arms until they know they have a right to cast ballots to determine their own destiny.

Our State Department, for some reason, does not have faith in the American system of government to the point that we are willing to share that with the people of Afghanistan. We need to keep track of what is going on over there. The people in Congress, the administration needs to keep closer track of what is happening and make sure that democracy works and the people of Afghanistan can share in the prosperity of this era.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to take this opportunity to point out to my fellow colleagues and those who are listening in on C-SPAN, as well as those reading the Congressional Record, the tremendous courage it takes for the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) to be leading this effort.

This is a thankless effort. The gentleman just suggested that when you add up these various different approaches of things that are going on that it is minimizing the importance of citizenship, and that perhaps this is being done by design.

Well, it is clear there is a coalition of a very powerful people in this country who do not really believe in the type of United States of America and the laws of the population we grew up with, but instead have more of a ``global concept'' and are willing to basically experiment with the rights, if not discard the rights, of American citizens in order to create this new dream.

These are powerful people. These are people who have attacked the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo). They are people that have great deals of financial resources and political power.

I personally am just rising tonight, when I saw the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) here again trying to be like Paul Revere and spreading the word and talking about the danger ahead of us, I wanted to come down here and let everyone know what a risk the gentleman is taking, that he is doing this at great personal expense.

The gentleman could be a ``go-along, get-along'' guy. Those of us who try to make waves here, I try to be very amicable and I know the gentleman from Colorado does as well. He has a wonderful laugh and smile. We try to be fun-loving, good people, with good hearts and of good will; but at the same time, we are having to tackle issues that mean life and death to the people of the United States. It means whether our people are going to have their children go to school or not, whether the standard of living of our people is going to decline.

Why do we have a situation where dramatically during the 1990s, there was such a huge increase in the GNP in our country, and, yes, the top 20 percent of our country did benefit, but the working people of this country, by and large, were kept behind? If you really trace it back, and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) has done this many times before, we have looked at the charts, illegal immigration, this overwhelming flood of illegal immigration in the 1990s dragged down the standard of living, dragged down any pressure for an increase in wages for the working people.

I know that I do not come from a wealthy family, and I am sure the gentleman from Colorado does not either. We identify with working people.

There is no doubt that in the Federal Government there are many people who come from the elite of our society. But our job is to watch out for the working people and the regular human beings who go off to fight the wars, and

go to work every day, and our good citizens by way of every race, of every ethnic group, of every religion. America, what we are so proud of, it is the fact we are a combination of the whole world; but we are working together, and because we have this love of liberty and justice and these ideals that keep us together.

That is why it is so ever-important to recognize that we are a unit, that Americans are a family; and if we have policies that are bringing in strangers, even though they may be very good strangers and very positive people, from the outside, but it is happening in such a magnitude as to prevent our people from sharing in this great prosperity that we had in the 1990s, keeping wages down, that it is wrong. It is a wrong thing.

Ordinary people are having their standard of living brought down by helping strangers. Our first and foremost job is to watch out for America and Americans and do what is right. Sometimes it takes a very courageous person to do that, and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) has demonstrated that time and again.

For those of you who do not know, the gentleman has made every hit list of every radical group, and other political groups, unfortunately. People that should know better have targeted the gentleman.

I am very proud of him tonight, and I hope all of you who are looking at the Congressional Record and are seeing this on C-SPAN and the rest of the colleagues here will give Mr. Tancredo his due.

I have my own Special Order later on tonight after the gentleman is done, but I thought I would make sure everyone understands what a great job the gentleman is doing for our country and for each of them.