Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule and the underlying legislation. I've only been here 6 months, but this is the worst piece of legislation that has come out of the House yet.

It defies logic that at a time of economic recession we would impose a regressive national energy tax that many have predicted will result in a net job loss. Supporters of this legislation only want to talk about the so-called ``green'' jobs that will be created, but they conveniently ignore that some studies indicate that for every one job created, two are eliminated.

Worse, we are creating a costly, confusing program of carbon credits. Let me make one prediction: the only certainty under this bill is Wall Street traders sophisticated enough to understand how these credits are traded will make millions.

I offered an amendment yesterday at the Rules Committee stating that at least bring it to a level playing field between the U.S., China, and India. My feeling is that if Congress is going to pass this legislation, we should require India and China--two enormous and growing resources of greenhouse emissions--to abide by the same standards.

My amendment would have required the U.S. to come to agreement with these two countries on emission reductions before implementing any provision within this bill.

This rule is a sham. It pales in comparison to how awful the bill is. I urge the Members to demand a return to the democratic process and defeat this bill that will certainly exacerbate our economic recession.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I strongly urge opposition to this undemocratic rule. The majority is apparently unwilling at best or afraid at worst of debating whether the Environmental Protection Agency should have the authority to change the Clean Air Act without congressional opinion.

I went to the Rules Committee last night and asked them to make in order my amendment that would prohibit the EPA from using funding to implement or enforce its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking finding six greenhouse gases constitute a threat to the public's health and welfare. On April 24, 2009, the EPA issued a proposed rulemaking that it had found six greenhouse gases--carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride-- pose a significant threat to the public's health and welfare. This endangerment finding is a precursor for the EPA to regulate these gases' emission, with or without explicit authority from Congress to do so.

My amendment would have simply returned this explicit authority to Congress to regulate greenhouse gases. Without this amendment, the EPA could threaten sweeping changes without giving any consideration whatsoever to its effects on the economy since the EPA's mandate is environmental and public health. Passing this amendment could have removed a threat so that we can consider climate change legislation in an open, deliberative process.

If the majority's national energy tax scheduled for debate later this week gets signed into law, eventually the EPA can move forward on enforcing this explicit action by Congress. But there has been no action taken yet. Rather, the courts have decided the EPA has the authority to make such a determination, which is hardly what Congress intended when it passed the Clean Air Act.

Unfortunately, the Rules Committee blocked this amendment. Furthermore, Congressman Lewis and Congressman Blackburn had similar amendments, and the Rules Committee denied all three. If we had an open rule, we could not be debating all three of our amendments. We would be debating one. Unfortunately, because of the Democrats' unprecedented lockdown rule, we don't get a chance to debate at all. This is a travesty for democracy.

I urge all Members to reject the Democratic leadership's attempt to stifle debate and impose its will on the House by defeating this embarrassing rule.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday on the House floor, I offered an amendment to fully fund President Obama's budget request for the Federal prison system, and it was called a ``draconian cut.'' I'm sure President Obama would be surprised to learn his recommended level would be greeted by such hostility by his own party, considering he proposed spending $384 million more in fiscal year 2009, an increase of 6.8 percent.

Only in Washington, DC, is a 6.8 percent increase called a ``draconian cut.''

Back in Johnson City, where I was mayor, we had a very simple philosophy. We spent less than we took in.

When I arrived in Washington, DC, I learned the President's philosophy was to borrow more than you take in and then spend all of that. Apparently, congressional Democratic philosophy is borrow even more than the President and then spend that.

I hope it's apparent that we are addicted to spending. I hope we adopt my amendment today and send a message, a small message, that this Congress is not entirely tone deaf to the fact that we have record deficits and runaway spending.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I believe the level of spending in this bill is irresponsible in light of our deficits, but I also know my view is in the minority. This is about priorities and it is about morals.

This year, we are going to pass $1.8 trillion in new debt on to our children's generation. I would argue that passing this level of debt on to our next generation is immoral. So far, there has been not one iota of interest in setting priorities from the majority. Instead, they've chosen to fund everything generously and call that priority setting. That's their prerogative. They won the election, and they are entitled to run our Nation's credit card well past its limit to never-before- seen levels.

When it comes to spending in budgets, it is clear from debates that there is no interest in adopting Republican ideas by my friends on the other side of the aisle, so I went to a source you might not think a Republican would look at: President Obama's budget.

The President has requested nearly $6 billion for the Federal prison system. The Democratic Congress has increased that by $97.4 million.

We are trying to support the President and show a little bit of fiscal restraint by adopting the President's budgeted level. In percentage terms, this means we are growing at 6.8 percent instead of 8.6 percent. If it passes, the amendment's impact will not be huge, but it sends a message, however small, that this Congress is not completely tone deaf to the concerns about the deficit of runaway spending.

It is important to note this is not a vote on whether to cut the program. It is a vote on whether to provide the program the President's proposed increase or to provide it the Democratic leadership's proposed increase.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

I certainly understand the budget constraints. I've been a mayor, had a jail system under my supervision, and I also know that around this Nation there are cities and States that are dealing with budget deficits never before seen, and here is the only place in the world I have ever seen where we raise it almost 9 percent and then give the President exactly what he wanted and call that a draconian cut. It is not.

We should show some fiscal restraint here in the House as an example to the people around this country, families and cities and municipalities and States, that are working hard to balance their budget. In my own hometown they're doing that by making real cuts, not making huge increases and reducing it somewhat. This is a very minimal cut, and not a cut actually but a reduction, and exactly what the President of the United States asked for.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill.

I wanted to come down to the House floor to let the troops know I support them and how much I appreciate the work they're doing around the world. I have been to Afghanistan and to Guantanamo Bay this year to see the work they're doing, and it is tremendous. We should all be proud of their effort.

Unfortunately, today's vote misuses critical funding for our troops to push through billions in foreign spending. People in east Tennessee question why we're giving $5 billion and over $100 billion in loan guarantees to the International Monetary Fund to bail out other countries when we have so many needs right here at home.

Additionally, because this legislation designates everything as ``emergency'' spending, this spending is not offset and breaks the already-inflated spending caps. The way I see it, the only emergency I see is that a month has passed and the Democrats haven't added a few billion to our already record deficit in new spending.

I urge members to defeat this bill and force the Democratic Leadership to bring us back a clean supplemental that supports the troops.

Offered By: Mr. Roe of Tennessee

Amendment No. 15: Page 13, line 11, after the dollar amount

insert ``(reduced by $111,256,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. Roe of Tennessee

Amendment No. 25: Page 38, line 13, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced by $97,400,000)''.

Mr. Speaker, it's time we address the crisis in health care. We can ensure every American can get the care they need, protect individuals from costs that can bankrupt them, and make health insurance portable so they can move or change jobs without losing health insurance coverage. We can also stop insurance companies from avoiding sick patients by reforming the system to pay when people become healthier.

Enacting a public plan will not bring about this type of change. If you think you won't be affected by a public plan, consider this: a recent analysis by the respected independent firm The Lewin Group estimated that 70 percent of individuals who have health care coverage through their employer would lose those benefits in favor of a public option. This plan could very easily be a Medicaid-like plan. In fact, Senator Kennedy is proposing expanding Medicaid to families making up to $110,000 a year in legislation he dropped yesterday.

When supporters of a public plan say they want a public plan to compete with private plans, the facts show that what they're really saying is they want a Washington bureaucrat to take over health care decisionmaking. Buyer beware.

Thank you, Dr. Gingrey and also Madam Speaker. It is good to be here tonight to discuss a very important, and I believe, Dr. Gingrey and Madam Speaker, probably from a social standpoint, the most important issue that we will discuss, and probably this health care debate is the most important one since the mid-sixties when Medicare was voted on.

Just to give you a little background, I am a native Tennessean, practiced medicine in Johnson City, Tennessee, in that region for 31 years, and really saw a tremendous change in the health care delivery system from 1970 when I graduated from medical school until the current. I really marvel myself at the miracles that occurred.

I recall when I was in medical school when St. Jude's Children's Hospital had just opened, it hadn't been there long, and the death rate among childhood cancers was 80-plus percent. Today, over 80 percent of those children survive and live and thrive.

We are having a debate on what kind of system best fits America and its personality, and I will share with you some things we have learned in Tennessee about a public and a private system.

What I hear when I am out talking to people is that, number one, they are worried about the cost of care. They are worried about the availability of it. And there is another whole discussion that we haven't had, which is accessibility.

As we age, as the medical population and caregivers age, there is going to be a huge problem of accessibility in this country. We are already seeing it in our own communities, where in the next 7 years we will need 1 million more registered nurses in America. In the next 8 to 10 years there will be more physicians retiring and dying than we are producing in this country.

Well, you know, that is not sustainable. You cannot maintain the quality of care that we have grown to expect and the medical advances we have grown to expect without practitioners. That is an entirely different issue, not part of this debate, but indeed very much a part of this debate.

In Tennessee, about 14 or 15 years ago we had Medicaid. We got a waiver to try a managed care system. Back in the eighties and nineties, managed care was going to be how we were going to control the ever- escalating health care costs. So it was a wonderful idea to try to provide care to as many Tennesseans as we could at as low a cost as we could.

What we did was we hastily put a plan together, as we are doing right here in this Congress right now. The most astounding thing I have ever heard in my life is in 60 days, or less than that, we are going to vote on a health care plan that affects every American citizen, 300 million of us. And your health care choices, as you know, are very personal choices. They are between you and your physician and your family.

So the plan was a managed care plan, and it was a very rich plan. It provided a lot of care for not much money, and for some people no money. What happened was that people made very logical choices. About 45 percent of the people who ended up on TennCare actually had private health insurance, but dropped it. Why did they drop their care? Well, you had a plan, this TennCare plan, which was cheaper, but provided more coverage, so therefore people made again a very conscious decision.

The problem with the plan is, as with every public plan so far, is it does not pay the cost of the care. That cost has been shifted over to the private sector. So when you look at your health insurance costs going up each year, you are paying or supplementing, a tax really, on your private health insurance premiums caused by the increased usage of the public plan.

In Tennessee, for instance, the TennCare plan covered about 60 percent of the cost of actually providing the care. If everyone in Tennessee had the TennCare plan, most providers would lock the door, throw the key away and walk away because they couldn't pay their bills. Medicare, another plan that we have, pays about 90 percent of the cost, and our uninsured pay somewhere in between.

Now, what I think will happen with this public plan is that once again, because politicians are involved in designing the plan, what will happen is more and more and more things will be promised about what will be covered in the plan, but when it comes to paying for it, and if we have time we can get in and discuss the Massachusetts plan a little bit, what will happen is you will have a Medicaid plan that doesn't pay the cost, you will have a Medicare plan that doesn't pay the cost, and you will have a public funded ``competitive'' plan that is subsidized by government but doesn't pay the full cost of the care, meaning more and more costs will be shifted on to the private payers.

Well, what will happen over time, I think, is that, again, individuals first, small businesses, 20, 30, 40, 50 in the business will say, We just can't afford this private continually escalating cost of private health insurance. And what will happen then is more will be shifted to the public plan, and over time you'll end up with a single- payer system. And a lot would say, and I've heard it argued here on the House floor, Well, so what? What's wrong with that? We have a government-run, one-payer health care system. What's the problem with that? Everybody has coverage. Well, everybody has a health insurance card, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can get health care. Don't confuse a plastic card that says you have coverage with actually getting care.

Well, what do I mean by that? Well, let me give you an example.

When President Clinton had his heart attack, he went to the hospital, had a heart attack. He was operated on several days later, I think 3 or 4 days, and probably the reason, in my opinion, he probably got a blood thinner that took a few days to get out of his system. And he was operated on and went home.

Had he had that heart attack in Canada, they would have said, Mr. Clinton, you can go home and in 117 days, that's the average amount of time it takes to get a bypass operation in Canada, you can come back and get your bypass operation.

Two weeks ago, I was in Morristown, Tennessee, talking to a physician there who is Canadian. His father began to have chest pain. I won't go through all the details about how long it took him to get a treadmill, how long it took him to see a cardiologist. Anyway, 11 months later, the man got--his left anterior descending coronary artery was 90 percent blocked, and he finally survived and got a bypass operation. I do not believe the American people are going to put up with that type of health care system. We are not.

The other thing that I think that's been so astonishing to me, and I know Dr. Gingrey and Dr. Fleming, you have seen this, and Dr. Broun also, are the medical advances. When I graduated from medical school, we had one cephalosporin antibiotic, one. That's a type of antibiotic we use in infection. There probably are 50 today.

There were about five antihypertensives, high blood pressure medicines, three of which caused severe side effects. I mean, it was almost better to have the high blood pressure than take this medicine. Today there are over 50, and the side effects have been reduced dramatically. People do so much better.

So there are a lot of reasons, and we can go to it, and I'm going to yield back some time now, Dr. Gingrey and Dr. Fleming, for comments. And I have some other comments about a single-payer system. It's a good idea, as you pointed out a moment ago, to try to cover as many people as we can in this Nation as inexpensively as we can, and I agree with that.

I yield back.

Would the gentleman yield?

Just a point right here. You were making an excellent point, Dr. Gingrey, about why you don't want the Federal Government to come between a patient and a doctor.

A veteran can go to an emergency room, have an electronic medical record at the VA, can show up somewhere in an emergency room, let's say, in our area we have a VA Hospital in Johnson City, and let's say he lives in Mountain City, Tennessee. He shows up there and the doctor in the emergency room at Mountain City does not have access to his VA record, to his electronic record that they have at the VA. Now, I think we can do better than that, and that's going on right now.

So that veteran who's up there with, maybe he's an elderly veteran, a World War II veteran with a very complicated medical history, that emergency room doctor is flying by the seat of his or her pants, and I think we can do better.

And again, the health care decisions should be made between a patient and a doctor. And I don't want to let the private insurers off the hook here. You and I know this, and Dr. Fleming, also.

I remember one of the last cases I did in practice before I retired to run for Congress, I spent almost as much time on the phone with a private insurer trying to get the case approved as I did actually doing a major surgical procedure. Now, that's the ridiculous item of the day when you do that, when you're not providing care to someone, you're arguing with a bureaucrat at the private health insurer.

I yield back.

Just a couple of comments.

Our colleague from California made great points. And I am going to ask the two of you who have been here for a while to discuss this Medicare part D discussion in just a moment. But he is correct. What happened was, when we created the TennCare plan in Tennessee, we are surrounded by eight States in the State of Tennessee, and we had a plan much richer than the surrounding States. So guess what happened? People came into the State. First of all, when we first put the plan out, all you had to have was a post office box. Well, there were a lot of post offices boxes that occurred, and a lot of people came into the State of Tennessee to get care.

The way the Governor handled that--and remember that government-run plans--and I want people to understand, this is a very important point--in Tennessee, when it was about to break the State, our Governor, along with the legislature, made some very tough decisions. They cut the rolls. They limited the number of people that were on the TennCare plan. In a plan in England or in Canada or other single-payer systems, what happens is you ration care, you create waits. For example, in Canada--and this is the head of the Canadian Medical Association, not Phil Roe saying this--but he said you could get your dog's hip replaced in a week in Canada, but it takes 2 to 3 years for a person to get their hip replaced in Canada. And I think you made that point this morning during 1 minutes.

It was. And I think the discussion, as I recall--and Dr. Fleming is absolutely right, there are not that many disagreements, it's who is controlling these health care decisions; is it a bureaucrat or is it the patient and a doctor? And I think that is where the big discussion is.

Now, as I recall, when the Medicare part D discussion came up, the problem was going to be--the argument I heard the other side make was that without this public option there wouldn't be enough competition, and therefore prices would go up. But was what happened in part D--and I'm not saying part D certainly is perfect, it's not--but what happened was, with a competitive market out there, that actually came in lower without the public option when you had the private option competing in the open market. And I believe the discussion among the Democrats was that without this public option, that wouldn't happen. Well, just the opposite happened.

And again, we have seen what happened in Tennessee, I don't want to go over it again. But I can assure you that it will be a plan that promises more than it can deliver for the funds that are available, and there will be two options. And you know what those options are, and that's long waits--and I just don't think the American people are interested, I know I'm not interested in that.

Will the gentleman yield?

Good points about the private versus the public sector. The private sector will always be more efficient and more responsive. And you have heard this story before, but when I began practice and when you did, Dr. Gingrey and Dr. Fleming also, when a patient came to me, and I took care of nothing but women, and when they came to me with breast cancer--which I unfortunately saw way too much of and our practice diagnosed about a case a week. It was that common or is that common.

And we just had a relay this weekend. In 1977 or so, the 5-year survival rate was about 50 percent, maybe a little bit better, but about 50 percent. And the big argument came: Do you do a disfiguring operation of a radical mastectomy or a lumpectomy? Because the survival rates were the same. So what has happened over that time is that now a patient can come to you or me or any of our colleagues and we can tell them that because of early detection, because of education, because of mammography, you're going to have a 98 percent survival rate in new medications. That is a wonderful story to tell. And I know no matter how tough the times are for that patient, you can look at them and say, You're going to be okay.

In the English system, they quit doing routine mammography. And why did they quit doing that? Screening mammograms aren't done anymore. Why? Well, because it costs more than the biopsies. Sometimes a test will tell us we have something when we don't have it. That's called a false positive. And the phone call that I love to make is to my patients to say, You do not have cancer. So this is one where they quit doing that because the cost of the biopsies was more than the screening. The best rates they had were 78 percent survivals, and those are going to go down if you use that technique.

Thank you. It's great to be here tonight. I, too, echo Congressman Paulsen. We do have a very, very fine, diverse freshman class. I think we add a lot to the debate.

I guess many of the speakers tonight sort of mentioned why they ran for Congress. I do have one distinct advantage. I delivered a lot of my own voters. So that's a huge advantage when you're out on the trail and you deliver babies.

I ran, really, to serve my country. I have had a very successful medical career in Johnson City, Tennessee, which is where I'm from. And for those of you who don't know, so you can remember, it's the only congressional district in America that's had two Presidents, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and Davy Crockett served in this body as a Congressman. Andrew Jackson was the first person to sit in this seat, so it's a very historic seat in northeast Tennessee.

Yes, that is correct. That is correct. The reason that I--it was about 10 years ago. I have never had service in the State government or Federal Government before. I really wanted to take this time just to serve my country as I did my patients over the years. So I was asked to be on the city commission and ran and was fortunate enough to win, and then became mayor of Johnson City after my second win.

I brought a very simple philosophy to government, and that is: Spend less than you take in. It's not complicated.

Well, how do we do with that philosophy? Well, we had 6 years ago in our city of 60,000 people, we had $2 million, approximately $2 million in reserve. When I last came to Congress, we had $24 million in reserve. We have not raised taxes, and our bond rating went up during 2008 when everybody else's had gone off a cliff.

The city has a great management, has a great commission. They're going to balance this budget. And every single budget we passed had a surplus.

Now, the philosophy in Washington, D.C., I found, is you borrow more than you take in. You spend that and what you take in also. That's what we've done here this year. As you probably have mentioned, we start our fiscal year on 1 October. And by the 26th of April of this year, we had spent all the money that the taxpayers had sent us for the year. So everything we're running on now is borrowed money.

The folks back home, as they have you all, ask you what is your biggest frustration or surprise or whatever. A lot of them think it's the workload. It's not that. To me, it's the partisanship and, second, it's the spending. I just can't get over the staggering amount of money that we spend up here.

And to give you an example, in our local city, we've put $120-plus million in water and sewer improvements. Didn't raise taxes. We were able to do that. We paid for it. We didn't have the Federal Government pay for it. We paid for it locally.

Yes.

Well, we just spent less than what we took in. It wasn't complicated. In the city where we were, we have one of the lowest tax rates in the State of Tennessee. So smaller government, less people working. We had fewer employees than we had 8 years ago. And lean government. They reward you. The taxpayers like that and they reward you for that kind of work.

The other thing we did was we could see--and all of you all dealt with this in State governments--the new ozone levels that the EPA came down with when they lowered that from 80 to 75 parts per billion, a lot of people around don't understand what that means. Well, if you go into nonattainment, meaning you don't attain those standards, the EPA has a right to freeze all building permits, so you cannot grow your community.

And we understood where we were. If you had the infrastructure, the roads, water, sewer, and schools, you could grow and business would want to come there. As Erik pointed out, you want an environment where business can flourish.

And we looked at the challenge we had with energy and said, Okay, how do we manage this energy problem we're having? Did we look at raising taxes on power? No. What we did was this. We had a landfill, as you've mentioned, and we looked at this as an opportunity. And we went into a private-public partnership with a private company, zero tax dollars, and formed this partnership where we went to our landfill, we capped the landfill, drilled wells into it, sent a pipe 4 miles over to our VA, which is a hundred-acre VA, the Quillen College of Medicine, named after Congressman Quillen who served here for 34 years. Huge campus. They heat and cool that campus with the gas, the methane gas, which is the second largest greenhouse gas outside of carbon dioxide.

You, the Federal taxpayer, get a 15 percent discount on your bill. We, the local taxpayer, make money off royalties--about half a million- plus per year--and the private company created jobs and made money. That's the way you do it.

We cut our consumption from a million gallons of fuel a year to 850,000 gallons. And when gas was $4 a gallon, that's very, very significant.

To give you another example about what you could do: around the country, we did some simple things like just change the lights in a stoplight from the 150-watt bulb to an LED bulb. In every intersection over the period of that lighting, you can save almost $800 per intersection. Multiply that across the country. It's the carrot versus the stick that we're seeing now.

You all may have talked about this before I got here, but within days of getting here, we were faced with the stimulus package, which arrived as a 450-page document that went to the Senate and came back as 750 pages. It then came back at conference at 1,071. I carry it around in the trunk of my car and show people how big it is. We had 4 hours or 5 hours to read it here on the House floor. We got it, I think, at 9 o'clock on Friday morning and put it on at 2 o'clock that afternoon.

Then we were faced with the omnibus spending bill. The 110th Congress had 12 appropriations in the bill, and we have them every year. Only three had been passed. Every local government, every business, every State in the Union tightens their belts when their revenue is down. So what did we do? We went up 8 percent. We passed an 8 percent increase. I felt like I was in the twilight zone. Then we got the next

budget after we got a $1.8 trillion deficit. Guess what? We raised that 8 percent. Then there is this year's budget that's coming along, and that's $3.9 trillion. People back home--I'm talking about Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and apolitical people--do not understand that, and I don't understand that kind of spending. It is not sustainable.

Now we've got two big issues that we're going to be facing that are coming up ahead of us: our health care--and I'm really glad to be in the middle of that discussion--and the carbon tax.

I yield back.

The gentlelady will remember our first weekend or two here when we, both the freshman Democrats and Republicans--and I might add that I think there are 33 new Democrats and 22 Republicans, I believe, is that correct? We have them outnumbered finally. I will point that out.

You remember, we went there, and the economists told us, if we don't spend this money rapidly, the earth's going to end? I remember saying, Well, that sounds counterintuitive to me to spend your way to wealth. Well, guess what, the economy is beginning to turn around, thank goodness, I think, for a lot of people. The signs are feeble, but it looks like the economy may have bottomed out; and the same people are telling us in the third and fourth quarter that the economy probably will show some growth. We've spent less than 10 percent of the stimulus package. The economy did that on its own without the stimulus package. I think the target is what we were talking about earlier; and if we truly had done this, if we truly had looked at infrastructure. For example, the State of Tennessee is going to get $55 million in water and sewer projects, and the small city of 60,000 people I am from is already putting $100 million in the ground. So it was a spending bill that had some little bit of stimulus in it.

Look at energy, for instance. If we had invested $100 billion, $200 billion in nuclear power how much further along would we be to energy independence. We chose not to do that. In 2 years the money will be spent, and I don't think we will have much to show for it.

Just a couple of things that Congressman Thompson talked about. One, is accessibility to care, and that is the crisis of personnel. If you look in the next 20 years, over half of our registered nurses can and will retire. We'll need a million new registered nurses in the next 8 years.

In the next 10 to 12 years there will be more physicians retiring and dying in this country than we're producing in this country. We are not investing in the medical infrastructure to increase the class size, and I don't know where that anybody thinks who's going to provide this care. So that is very correct. It is a huge issue.

The challenge here is affordable health care, and that's accessible to people. It's not going to be easy. I've dealt with this for over 30 years, and this is going to be very, very complicated to do.

We do not need to do this fast. We need to do it right. And I think that's one of the worries that I have is that we're going to go and have this arbitrary deadline of 60 days from now. Who says 60 days from now we should have this right, have it done? We need to get it right. If it takes 6 months we need to get it right because it affects every American.

Let me just give you a couple of little examples. In this country, we have 47 million people that are uninsured. That's about 15 percent of our population.

In the State of Tennessee several years ago, about 15, 16 years ago, we had a Medicaid waiver. And for those out there that understand what Medicaid is for the uninsured and poor in this country, and Medicare is for our citizens over 65, this was a Medicaid waiver to form a managed care plan called TennCare. And what it did was, it was a very rich blended plan that provided a lot of care for not much money. And what we found in the State was that 45 percent of the people who got on TennCare had private health insurance but dropped it.

Well, then I asked the providers, what percent of your costs does TennCare actually pay in our district, in our area? And I went to several different hospital systems. About 60 percent. And Medicare pays about 90 percent. And as you pointed out very clearly, and then the uninsured pay somewhere in between.

And what you pointed out very clearly was that what happens is that cost is shifted and more cost, so your private health insurance goes up each year, part of it not because of what you do, but because of what the government has done, which is not pay the freight. And my concern is, when we get a public plan that's ``competitive'', it also will offer a lot of benefits but won't pay the costs of the services, once again, causing a shift to the private health insurer, meaning they will be crowded out. And over time, I'm afraid you'll end up with a single- payer system. And a single-payer system is not what the American people, I think, want. And certainly that's something that's going to be discussed in great detail in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support for H. Res. 421 and congratulate the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on turning 75. What an amazing success story!

This Park--the most visited in the United States--serves as a source of pride for residents of our entire region and we celebrate the vision of our ancestors who had the foresight to preserve this amazing area for all future generations to enjoy. As an avid outdoorsman myself, I am particularly grateful for this natural wonder.

Two weeks from yesterday, the Park will officially turn 75 with activities planned all summer to commemorate this accomplishment. I hope all Americans will join in the celebration and come visit what is truly one of our nation's finest examples of scenic beauty.

I also want to congratulate the National Park Service for its diligent management of the Park. Without its leadership, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park would not be what it is today.

I hope all members of Congress will join me in supporting H. Res. 421.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of the amendment offered by my friend from Minnesota. As a veteran I support the underlying goal of this legislation to create opportunities for veteran-operated small businesses.

It is important in this global economy to train and provide guidance in business administration for our veterans. Veteran Business Centers and grant assistance should expand the economic playing field for these businesses.

However, if the Congress authorizes these programs it is our duty to the taxpayer to oversee their progress. This amendment calls for the Government Accountability Office to study and report on the effectiveness of these programs. We need to ask the question: ``Is money spent on veteran owned small businesses helping these businesses?'' ``How can these programs be improved?''

I look forward to having those answers and thank the Gentleman from Minnesota for offering this amendment. I encourage my colleagues to support its adoption and yield back.

Mr. Speaker, Americans are tired of watching our manufacturing sector move overseas. We need to implement policies that encourage companies to invest here in America and that make the cost of doing business less expensive. Lowering corporate tax rates, creating tax incentives for purchasing new plant equipment and increasing depreciation allowances all would be helpful in expanding investment here.

Unfortunately, House Democrats are advancing cap-and-tax legislation that has many theoretical benefits but one absolute consequence--the loss of millions of American manufacturing jobs. The Democrats' response to global warming is to tax coal, of which we have hundreds of years of reserves, and to tax oil so that Americans will start using other power sources. Employers who are in globally competitive industries and who can't simply raise the cost of their goods will be forced to lay off even more people, as their factories close, to pay for a program that may or may not be necessary to reverse climate change.

I, for one, am not willing to sacrifice two American manufacturing jobs for every one green job. I hope all Americans will let their legislators know they don't want to pay higher taxes on energy while watching their jobs disappear.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of House Resolution 360, urging all Americans and people of all nationalities to visit the national cemeteries, memorials, and markers this Memorial Day.

Following a tradition begun in 1868, our Nation will pause this Monday in remembrance of those who have sacrificed their lives in defense of our free Republic. Fond mourners and friends will set flowers and flags on the graves of the fallen. Our flag, flown at half staff since sunrise, will at noon be raised high and those gathered will be called to pledge allegiance. A bugle will sound Taps, and we will make another pledge: to aid the widows, widowers, and orphans of our heroic dead, and our disabled veterans.

There is no central location for this observance. Our servicemembers' final resting places are in all our towns and communities. The National Cemetery Administration of the Department of Veterans Affairs maintains 128 national cemeteries in 39 States and Puerto Rico. One of those cemeteries is in my hometown of Johnson City, Tennessee. The Department of the Army maintains Arlington National Cemetery and the U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen's Home National Cemetery.

Americans have died defending liberty around the globe and have been laid to rest far from home. The American Battle Monuments Commission oversees 24 military cemeteries abroad where 125,000 of our war dead remain.

The freedoms we enjoy today, the freedoms enjoyed by a civilized Europe, and those free from despots rising to national power are the proof these men and women did not die in vain. This sacrifice should be celebrated, and never forgotten.

Not all who serve perish fulfilling their duty. They return to us as veterans and deserve our thanks and a commitment to serve them. We erect monuments and markers and make pilgrimages there to honor them.

That is this resolution's call. Congress should urge Americans to visit these cemeteries, these monuments and memorials, and I as a veteran encourage my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.