Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, today I will vote against H.R. 519. This bill would direct the United Nations to return $180 million of previously allocated credits to the United States.

U.S. citizens who work at the U.N. pay taxes on their salaries-- unlike other nations. To offset this difference in pay and put American employees on an equal level with their foreign counterparts, we pay money into the United Nations Tax Equalization Fund. Over the years, the U.S. has overpaid by $180 million in credits. Since the TEF funds are in the form of credits, not cash, they cannot simply be refunded as H.R. 519 proposes.

As a result, the State Department--in consultation with both Democratic and Republican members of Congress--has offset future appropriations by shifting the funds towards areas of spending that ought to be a high priority for everyone: American security and peace keeping operations abroad. $100 million will be directed towards enhanced security at the U.N. Headquarters in New York to better protect the men and women who work there. The remaining $80 million will reduce future spending on U.S. peacekeeping dues, a policy supported by the current and previous administrations.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) states that this bill will not save taxpayers one dime. The money has long been allocated for other purposes and should not be taken away. In this protracted recession, Congress should spend its time on legislation creating jobs and strengthening our economy.

Mr. Chair, I strongly oppose H.R. 359. This bill terminates the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, which provides grants and matching funds during a presidential campaign for primary candidates, general election nominees, and party conventions.

Elections are not the problem in America. Our troubles don't stem from a case of too much non-special interest money.

Every year, nearly 40 million Americans voluntarily choose to support the public financing system by directing $3 of their Federal taxes to the fund. This program, with little expense to the taxpayer, has played an important role of increasing transparency, ensuring that campaigns are funded at an appropriate and sustainable level, and strengthened the voice of small-donor Americans.

While I appreciate that this bill has been brought to the floor under a modified open rule, that does not excuse the fact H.R. 359 bypassed committee hearings, silencing a much-needed debate. In an era of half- a-billion dollar--and growing--presidential campaigns, public financing needs reform, not repeal.

This system was first used 35 years ago in the wake of Watergate to ease pressure on political candidates, enabling them to spend more time connecting with voters and less time securing large contributions.

Before costs outstripped financing, the system helped every candidate from 1976 to 2008, increased the number of viable contenders, and promoted competition in an otherwise restrictive two-party dominated system. The system is broken and has not kept pace with the new campaign environment, but on the anniversary of Citizens United, a decision that upended a century of law that had brought transparency to our electoral process, the last thing we need are presidential campaigns more beholden to private donations.

This piecemeal approach of addressing this nation's fiscal woes is wrong and insufficient. You can't right-size the deficit through spending cuts alone. We must change the way we do business by addressing defense, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Until this happens, we will have a very long and unproductive Congress that fails to address the long-term stability of our economy.

H.R. 359 will eliminate the system when we need--more than ever--to strengthen it. Getting rid of the public financing option in Presidential elections would close the path that leads back towards a better, more transparent democracy where the candidate can more clearly hear the voters, not large corporate interests.

Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, I was pleased to cast a vote that would reduce the legislative appropriation as a symbol that no part of the budget should be off limits as we attempt to deal with the issues of government efficiency and deficit reduction. The resolution before Congress today directs the Budget Committee Chairman to reduce non-security spending to FY 2008 levels or less for the remainder of FY 2011. I would hope that having demonstrated that even the legislature itself is not exempt, that the Republican leadership would reconsider its decision to declare off limits the major areas of government spending, particularly the Department of Defense.

If we are truly to improve our fiscal condition, no part of the budget should be off limits. The Pentagon cannot be left out. We can no longer separate national security from fiscal responsibility. Speaker Boehner has himself said that there is room to find savings in the defense budget.

Even without including the costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. defense spending is the highest it has been at any time since the end of World War II. It is greater than at the peak of the Cold War. Yet we continue to spend billions to protect West Germany from the Soviet Union even though both ceased to exist decades ago.

Our defense budget accounts for half of global military spending and consumes more than 50 cents of every dollar of federal government discretionary spending. Even under the laudable plan announced by Secretary Gates to cut the Pentagon's budget by $78 billion, defense spending will continue to increase in the near term.

There are many thoughtful ways to rein in defense spending. More than $350 billion has been spent by the U.S. in Afghanistan since 2001, a monthly bill for our taxpayers exceeding $8 billion. The U.S. military is the single largest consumer of energy in the world, using as much power in one year as the entire country of Nigeria, and spending $17 billion each year on petrol and another $23 billion annually on refueling our bases and units in Afghanistan. Integrating renewable and energy efficient practices into our armed services have already saved lives and money. Finally, we should eliminate unnecessary weapons programs, such as the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. Despite the Marine Corps commandant calling the program unworkable and unaffordable, some lawmakers continue to insist on funding it.

While today's resolution fails to address this problem, it is my hope that we'll be able to work in a bipartisan fashion to ``right-size'' all areas of government spending, including the Pentagon.

Unfortunately, the proposal put forth by the Republican Study Committee earlier this week has lessened the chance of finding a bipartisan solution. Their proposal would result in cuts of more than 40 percent in education, environmental protection, law enforcement, medical research, food safety, and many other key services. In practical terms, this would include the elimination of nearly 3,000 food safety inspectors--endangering our food supply, dramatic increases in wait times at Social Security centers by slashing that agencies budget,

and dumping 389,000 children from Head Start--destroying opportunities for those children while weakening America's competitiveness.

The Republican Study Committee's proposal would also destroy thousands of jobs renewing and rebuilding America's eroding infrastructure. For instance, cutting $2 billion from the New Starts program would destroy nearly 46,000 jobs and cutting Amtrak funding by $1.6 billion would destroy 36,000. Eliminating these programs makes it harder for those Americans with work to get to work or to find new work.

There are many more examples just like these that hit every community in our country. While we strive to better match our revenues with the cost of services to our constituents, it is important not to destroy the very programs that make our country strong and economically competitive and on which our citizens depend.

Madam Speaker, as one who is firmly in the camp of not just supporting the benefits but the necessity of government regulation, I nonetheless welcomed the President's recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and his executive order to review the regulations we have in place.

This is a unique opportunity to reframe at least part of the regulatory debate to satisfy both sides and better serve the public. The area of opportunity lies in creating a new generation of environmental protections that are performance based. Pioneering efforts to protect the environment, like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, were regulatory based that worked well for their time. Public health requirements, citizen expectations have evolved. Subsequent efforts have become more difficult, expensive, and time consuming.

Having these agencies dictate specifics is not necessarily providing the most innovative, timely, nor cost-effective solutions.

There is an alternative to rules-based procedures, command-and- control rules process. Such a model would give latitude to parties on how they comply with the standards for protection as long as they met or exceeded the requirement.

In Oregon, we were able, some years ago, in partnership with the EPA and the State Department of Environmental Quality, to work with a major industrial presence in our community, Intel, on a plant expansion where latitude was granted for air quality compliance. The company made an enforceable commitment to the requisite clean air and environmental regulations, but the environmental agent regulators did not micromanage how the company complied. The result? Clean air with less cost and time.

There are countless opportunities for this principle to save time, money, and create innovation, and importantly, the potential to reduce opposition to the regulatory process itself: building trust and confidence, partnerships between the regulator and the regulated with more control, more flexibility, producing a cleaner, safer environment.

This requires first and foremost an administration that can be trusted to act in good faith because too often, regulatory reform is a tactic of those who are simply opposed to the regulation in its first instance.

This approach will only invite fierce opposition to watered-down protection. The Obama administration has established its environmental credentials and should be able to avoid, or at least lay to rest, that sort of concern.

There are two other necessary elements. The standards must be clear, and the parties must be both responsible and have the capacity to be held accountable. Nothing must allow the protection in question to be undercut. Indeed, it may be reasonable for performance-based approaches to require higher standards and environmental protection. And we certainly don't have to suspend current rules or regulations. Just give an alternative path for compliance that we can always fall back upon if people fall short.

Once it's clear that we can produce the environmental or other desired protections on a performance basis, perhaps we can tackle redundant regulatory processes. For instance, California has arguably more stringent environmental regulations than the United States Government itself. Can we figure out a way to apply that single, more stringent standard rather than forcing individuals, government agencies to comply with both?

In sum, it's always helpful for an administration to make sure our efforts at government regulation are effective and relevant. By all means, eliminate the unnecessary or the ineffective. What is more important, however, is to usher in a new era of performance-based protections to improve regulations, save money, and protect the public welfare.

Mr. Speaker, you may miss it in the rhetoric, but both parties agree the current path of Medicare threatens to bankrupt the country.

Some parts of America are spending twice as much per Medicare patient as we spend in Portland, Oregon, for example, but deliver inferior care.

We know what to do.

This is why the reform act can give better care for less cost, but it's not guaranteed. The Republican plan would strip away the reforms, the protections and the cost savings.

But this is not just an assault on new health care freedoms. It represents the triumph of politics over adult fiscal supervision. The Republican leadership doesn't just ignore, they discredit, the nonpartisan professionals who, for 36 years, helped keep politicians in both parties honest.

Without this impartial referee, the long, difficult road to fiscal health becomes longer, becomes harder, and becomes less likely to be traveled.

I thank the gentleman.

People deserve a serious debate on a serious subject. Unfortunately, while serious in tone, what we are hearing from my colleagues is not serious in content. I have listened to people come to the floor repeatedly, talking about a government takeover of health care, which was judged by Politifax to be the political lie of the year for 2010.

Indeed, we instead built upon the current system that is a balance to meet the needs of the American people.

We had another serious element that has crept into the approach from my Republican friends--the disregard of Congress' nonpartisan budget referee. It is reckless and unprecedented. It has never happened in 34 years. These are the people who provide impartial information, which is being imagined away by our friends on the other side of the aisle.

Yes, it will require Congress to follow through on the legislation to realize the savings, but the answer is not to turn our backs on reform; it is to make reform work. The current bill builds on the current system. It incorporates elements of reform that have been supported on a bipartisan basis for years.

Now all of a sudden there is the disregard we heard for a proposal signed into law by Republican Governor Mitt Romney.

Instead of repealing reform, we should be focusing on strengthening it. Americans deserve a serious debate about a serious subject, hard work to make reform work, not a ritual of going through the motions of repeal which everybody in this Chamber knows will still be in effect at the end of debate, at the end of the year, at the end of the Congress. The American people deserve better.

Mr. Speaker, we are having debates about health care because Americans are nervous about changing something so important to their families, and that, of course, makes politicians nervous about reform.

This skepticism is understandable. Attempting to adjust policies and programs that comprise now 17 percent of our economy, the biggest driver of the Federal deficit that literally touches every American family, poses daunting challenges. Yet, as people begin the analysis, the appropriate comparison is not some idealized, magical state but the comparison to the path we are on, which everybody agrees is unsustainable.

Medical costs, left unchecked, will literally bankrupt the country. The Department of Defense will spend more on health care this year than China uses to run its entire military operation for 7 months. Every objective, independent expert acknowledges and laments the fact that the United States is the world's health care underachiever. We pay more for health care than our major allies and competitors in Europe, Japan, and Canada, but our people get sick more often; they die sooner, and unlike any other country, people are bankrupted by medical costs--about 2,000 people per day. All the while, we have a record number of uninsured Americans--now over 50 million.

Sadly, we are getting exactly what we paid for: more procedures, multiple providers, an emphasis on specialty care rather than someone who can help us with our own efforts to negotiate this complex, fragmented health care system. America actually spends more administering our health insurance system and finding ways to deny care than any other country in the world spends on providing care.

Starting from scratch, we could give better care for less money, but we are not starting from scratch. We are starting with an economic and structural behemoth, encompassing, as I said, 17 percent of the economy. It is the largest employer in most communities, and it has evolved over two-thirds of a century of public and private investment and government legislation. Today, our hybrid system is largely administered through hundreds of agencies, programs, and large providers, with the Federal Government paying half the bill directly.

The good news is that we have proven that we can get better results for less than we are spending, and the health care reform legislation provides this framework. First, we don't need more money. In fact, if we implement the existing legislation, it can be a source of savings in the future.

The good news is we don't have to deal with unproven techniques or technologies. We know what to do. We don't even have to look at foreign models that are more successful than ours. We can look right here in the United States. My community of Portland, Oregon, delivers better health care for Medicare, for instance, to its recipients than other communities where costs are twice as high. It's not just Portland. This can be found in areas in the

West and the upper Midwest. There are also innovative health care practices in the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, and Gunderson Lutheran.

The government, itself, has proven how to be more efficient. The Veterans Administration has a practice model for older citizens with complex health problems that face our veterans. The VA has automated its medical records system. It pays its doctors for performance, not procedures, and they figured out a way to get better prescription drug costs for millions of our veterans.

Many of the techniques for reducing the number of unnecessary hospital admissions, for bundling services, for having accountable care organizations are known and actually supported by my Republican friends. They've been embraced by Republican Governors.

This is not foreign territory. We know it can work. The path forward is clear. It is important not to lose 2 important years in reforming our medical system, giving better health care, and starting to reduce these massive future deficits.

After having identified weak spots in the implementation, let's work to hold people accountable. Don't attack the CBO for scoring the bill as written, which is their job. Attack efforts to undermine the cost- saving elements of the bill. If States can more creatively provide health care envisioned in the exchanges, let them do it. Give them the waivers, and encourage them to experiment as long as they meet minimum national standards.

Absolutely allow people to purchase insurance across State lines to improve competition and choice, but only after everybody agrees to provide insurance according to the same quality standards of accountability. That prevents gaps in coverage. We don't want massive marketing budgets while denying the money for essential treatment. We need not to have long protracted battles over if we understand and agree upon the terms.

We've reached a critical point where we cannot continue on the path that we've been headed. We do have reform legislation that encourages much of what has bipartisan support. We are spending more money than we need to and there are huge opportunities to improve the quality of service. I would hope that this exercise would be the last of the political ritual on health care. Instead let's turn to working with the Administration to figure out how to achieve the objectives, so critical for our citizens.

I appreciate the opportunity to come together to express our sorrow and support for our friend and colleague, Gabby Giffords, and the 19 other victims of this senseless rampage.

I cherish the time I spent with Gabby in Tucson to promote the livability of her community. There I've seen firsthand the respect Congresswoman Giffords commanded from the entire civic leadership. I witnessed the emotional connection between Gabby and her political supporters. They knew that she was somebody special, and you could see that she treated each and every one of them the same way.

Then there is the bond between Gabby and her terrific team. It makes it so jarring, the loss of Gabe Zimmerman, the wounding of Rod Barber and Pam Simon of her office. Her outstanding staff is representative of the amazing men and women, over 10,000 in all, here on Capitol Hill and back home, who make the government process possible. They are like family, not just for Gabby. We must do all we can to protect the safety of staff and the employees who serve our country every day.

Finally, this is about our relationship with Gabby and our responsibility to heal and repair. The path forward is illustrated by Gabby herself, the best example I know of someone who uses her intelligence, charm, passion, and commitment to bring people together. Then they can sort out the difficult issues that way, and move forward with the same good humor, skill, and results as Gabby. As she recovers, I hope we can honor her service and sacrifice by doing all that we can to restore that spark, that civility, and that commitment to civilized discourse.

Madam Speaker, that's a tall order. Can we beat the odds? Our dear friend Gabby will show us how, as she is beating the odds right now. I am confident her recovery will be a triumph of her spirit, will, and intellect, and be a further inspiration to us all.

Mr. Speaker, I am deeply disappointed in the Rules package assembled by my Republican colleagues. In their campaigns, they promised to improve transparency and to reduce the deficit. These Rules break those promises.

Under these Rules, the new Republican majority will enact a draconian budget without a single hearing, without any input from the Budget Committee, without any outreach to Congressional Democrats, and without a direct vote by the House of Representatives. Merely by entering a statement into the record, the Budget Chairman can subject all spending beyond whatever levels he deems appropriate to a point of order. This level of concentrated authority runs contrary to the premise of transparency that Republicans campaigned on, and, given its disregard for scrutiny, runs the risk of greatly damaging our economy and the welfare of millions.

The rules themselves make a mockery of prudent budgeting. While the Republican rhetoric has been laudable in some instances, their ``Cut- as-you-go'' rule is riddled with loopholes. For instance, it allows tax cuts for corporations to be deficit financed, while programs like child tax credits must find offsets. In fact, these rules forbid eliminating even the narrowest special interest tax loophole to find revenue for effective government programs.

The most casual glance at the origin of this country's debts illustrates the fallacy of their approach. Without finding a dime to offset the cost to our Nation, these rules make it possible to both make permanent the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for the highest-income taxpayers and to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which not only saves nearly $150 billion during the next 10 years, but reduces healthcare costs by nearly a trillion dollars during the following decades.

In no way do these rules result in the type of prudent budgeting that my Republican colleagues campaigned on, nor does it resemble anything like what any hardworking American family must do. At a time when the Republican majority is pledging greater openness, the Rules are also anti-democratic by depriving 600,000 taxpaying D.C. residents of their ability to have their voice heard in the Committee of the Whole.

The Rules package also undermines opportunities to continue investing in America.

By eliminating the point of order guarding Highway Trust Fund balances this Republican majority threatens investments in communities large and small across the country. Historically, this point of order ensured that Congress delivered on the transportation investments promised in the transportation authorization, and that States and communities could count on the long-term commitments made in that legislation. By removing this point of order, and allowing Highway Trust Fund balances to accrue and mask the actual deficit, the Republicans are engaging in budget gimmickry that undermines our economy and the safety of our communities.

Organizations from the Chamber of Commerce to the American Association of Highway Transportation Officials have expressed their strong concern about destabilizing transportation funding, and have urged the Republican Conference to make changes. I join with these organizations in expressing my concern and disappointment.

At a time when the need to invest in our communities is higher than ever, these rules will make it possible for the Republican Congress to decrease our investment in infrastructure, undermining efforts to rebuild and renew communities across the country. In addition to the new rule regarding the Highway Trust Fund, these Republican rules also limit the ability of the House to raise revenue for the Highway Trust Fund. At a time when our needs are greater than ever, and individuals and organizations across the country are calling on Congress to upgrade our Nation's roads, bridges, and transit systems, limiting our options--as these Rules do--is shortsighted and foolhardy.

``The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several State legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.''

Mr. Speaker, today I voted for H. Res. 22, to cut the House operating budget by 5%. It is important for the government to lead by example, especially during these tough economic times.

I would hope that having demonstrated that even the legislature itself is not exempt from budget cuts, that the Republican leadership would reconsider its decision to declare off limits major areas of government spending and savings.

Repealing the Affordable Care Act would be inconsistent with these efforts to reduce costs. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said that repealing health care would cost the American taxpayers $240 billion over the next 10 years. This is in addition to raising the average cost of health care for most Americans and leaving 32 million uninsured, and is something our economy cannot afford.

This is especially important when looking at defense spending. The Pentagon budget, growing at a rate far above inflation, is also the source of the greatest waste and inefficiency. GAO studies have documented tens of billions of dollars of waste, inefficiency, and in some cases, money that can't be accounted for at all.

Even the Pentagon itself is making commitments for budget reduction and efficiency. Just today, Secretary Gates reached out to members of Congress to outline how he intends to trim $100 billion from within the Pentagon over the next five years. I hope these conversations don't fall on deaf ears.

Every part of the budget deserves careful attention. I'm pleased that we're starting with the legislative budget; I hope it will serve as a symbol that no part of the budget should be off limits, making the Defense Department the next source of inquiry, and not the last.

I look forward to working with all members, on both sides of the aisle, to help the government lead by example, improve efficiency and improve our fiscal standing.

Thank you. I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy for permitting me to speak just as I appreciate my colleagues coming to the floor to spotlight something that each and every American needs to be deeply concerned about.

I listened, for example, for the last 4 years, as a member of the Budget Committee, to my dear friend and colleague Mr. Ryan talk about the skyrocketing problem of escalating entitlement under Medicare. Absolutely right. There are 79 million of the geezer baby boomers like me who are going to start collecting Medicare--10,000 a day starting this week and continuing for 19 years--and because of the development of more improvements in health care, not only are there more of us, but we are going to want more complex and expensive care.

My Republican friends were talking about an entitlement crisis. The irony was--and we all heard it on the campaign trail--they talked about slashing Medicare, which they want to repeal starting next week. A great deal of irony. As the independent scorekeeper--the Congressional Budget Office--has pointed out and as you have repeated on the House floor, the legislation will, in fact, save several hundred billion dollars. More important than that, it puts in place reforms that will further reduce entitlement spending.

I know my good friend from Vermont is well familiar with the Dartmouth Atlas in dealing with health care disparities around the country. I come from a part of the country where one of the problems we have is that Medicare needs to be reformed, which is what we started in this legislation. They're relatively modest steps, but they're going to save a couple hundred billion dollars. We need to do more. Rather than repealing these reforms, like stopping unnecessary hospital re- admissions--just that item costs over $12 billion a year--these reforms could enable us to bend the cost curve. If everybody practiced medicine the way it's practiced in metropolitan Portland, Oregon, which is half the price of McAllen, Texas, or Miami, Florida, there wouldn't be an entitlement crisis for decades to come.

I appreciate my colleagues focusing on the hypocrisy and on the recklessness of trying to repeal health care reform that makes a difference for 32 million uninsured Americans and that provides more benefit for the seniors with their prescription drugs. Most important and under-appreciated is that it would reform Medicare so that, instead of driving us off a cliff over the next 20 years, it would, in fact, help us change how medicine is practiced to provide incentives for value, medical value, rather than just volume.

Madam Speaker, due to an illness, I was unable to be in Washington, DC, for votes on December 21, 2010 and December 22, 2010.

Had I been present for the votes on Tuesday, December 21, 2010, I would have voted as follows:

Rollcall vote No. 662: I would have voted in favor of the Motion to Concur in the Senate amendment to House amendment to Senate amendment on H.R. 3082, the Continuing Appropriations Act for 2011.

Had I been present for the votes on Wednesday, December 22, I would have voted as follows:

Rollcall vote No. 663: I would have voted in favor of the Motion to Concur in the Senate amendment to H.R. 847, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.

Madam Speaker, due to an illness, I was unable to be in Washington, DC for votes today. Had I been present for the votes, I would have voted as follows:

Rollcall vote 658: I would have voted in favor of H.R. 6540, the Defense Level Playing Field Act.

Rollcall vote 659: I would have voted in favor of the motion to concur in the Senate amendment to H.R. 5116, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010.

Rollcall vote 660: I would have voted in favor of the motion to concur in the Senate amendment to H.R. 2142, the Government Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Performance Improvement Act of 2010.

Rollcall vote 661: I would have voted in favor of the motion to concur in the Senate amendment to H.R. 5116, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. This long-overdue legislation will help ensure a safe food supply while taking into the realities and needs of America's farmers. I especially appreciate changes made by the Senate to meet the needs of very small farms and processors.

Mr. Speaker, I support much that is contained within this resolution, regarding the need to move forward on direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. A two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is critical to the security of Israel and to the strategic interests of the United States, in the region and around the world.

However, this is a missed opportunity to raise concerns about the unilateral actions taken by both sides. In particular, the ongoing unilateral construction by Israeli settlers. Strong U.S. leadership is needed to bring these two sides together, and any resolution brought to the floor should clearly support that cause.

This resolution does not meet that test and I must oppose it. While the bill recognizes an issue of concern, it does too little to affirm the urgency of achieving a two-state resolution, fails to oppose unilateral actions by all sides, and is silent on supporting the Obama Administration's efforts to negotiate peace.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in Congress and the administration in a more productive manner to achieve lasting peace and a comprehensive two-state solution.