Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 1076, a Republican bill to prohibit federal funding for National Public Radio.

Congress has been in session this year for nearly three months, and what have the American people gotten?

The House voted to repeal new patients' rights and benefits and to strengthen the rights of insurance companies.

The House voted to cut funds for education and Pell Grants at a time when we need to build up, not tear down, our educational and economic competitiveness.

The House voted to eliminate funds for Planned Parenthood, a highly regarded source for medical and health information and services for women.

The House voted to take away the rights of workers to contest workplace abuses by their employers, weaken the reporting system for workplace safety violations, and lower the wages of construction workers on federal contracts.

And now, today, the House is voting to kill the small amount of federal funding for National Public Radio, an important and unbiased source of news for tens of millions of Americans across the country.

Not one bill so far to create jobs. Not one bill so far to invest in America. Not one bill that makes it clear America will be ready to compete in the global economy and win the race to produce the best college graduates in the world.

Instead, the American people are being fed a steady diet of right- wing ideological attacks

on our rights, on our values, and on middle class economic opportunities. American families are desperate for work, but they are getting nothing but a cold shoulder from the House of Representatives under this new leadership.

The attack on NPR, just like the attack on Planned Parenthood, or on Head Start, and on workers' rights and safety, has nothing to do with reducing the deficit and the debt. It is nothing more than a partisan political agenda that is out of step with, and very dangerous to, the American people.

The attack on NPR is outrageous and it should be rejected. The American people benefit greatly having this source of news that is free from the influence and demands of corporations and that consistently delivers top quality, in-depth, and breaking news on foreign affairs, science and technology, politics, the arts, and business.

If this leadership is so concerned with the deficit, why hasn't it called up legislation to reduce tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to major oil companies, companies with record profits quarter after quarter and no need for subsidies to carry out their work?

Why hasn't this leadership called up legislation to reduce some of the billions of dollars in Pentagon waste documented year after year?

And why was this leadership's first major action in the House a bill that would increase the deficit over the next ten years by more than $210 billion by repealing our historic health care law?

Why? Because their rhetoric about deficit reduction is just a cover for a divisive political agenda that they hope will help them in the next election.

I strongly support eliminating wasteful government spending, and I have a long and documented track record of deficit reduction. Whether it was my successful effort to increase student loan aid by reducing taxpayer support to private lenders, or passing the health care reform law, or through my early support for Pay-As-You-Go budgeting, I have always made this a priority.

I know how hard it is to make tough choices about saving taxpayer money and being fiscally responsible.

I know it is not hard for politicians to cut Head Start, but it's really hard on low-income mothers trying to educate their children. And I know it is not hard to cut the small amount of federal funding for NPR, but it is really hard on the millions of Americans who hunger for information from a wide variety of sources.

I'll tell you what's hard to cut. It is really hard to cut land subsidies to multi-national mining companies, or royalty subsidies to oil companies, or water and price subsidies to major agricultural corporations. I know, because I have fought to make those cuts. And corporations fight back, hard.

So, Mr. Speaker, again I rise in opposition to this bill that will not reduce our deficit but will reduce the level of information Americans have about really complex and important issues facing our country. And I rise in opposition to the past three months of partisan, ideological and political attacks on the basic rights, values and services that are so important to our country.

And I urge my colleagues to reject this bill.

Mr. Speaker, the National Football League contract bargaining fight could teach an important lesson to the Governor of Wisconsin about how to ensure high-quality teachers in his State. When Governor Walker dictates that teachers will lose their collective bargaining rights except for negotiations over pay, he shows how out of touch he is with the teaching profession, with school reform in America, and, frankly, with the American workplace.

Having a voice at work has never been just about pay. It is about whether the American workplace will respect and nurture workers' skills, their abilities, and their ingenuity, or will it simply crush their spirits. It's about the total workplace and the ability of employees to utilize their talents and their time to the fullest extent, to be valued by and add value to the enterprise, whether that enterprise is a school, a factory, or an NFL team.

Ask yourself this: If he could, would Governor Walker limit collective bargaining for the world champion Green Bay Packers to just questions of pay? If he tried, he would discover rapidly that in the world of millionaires, as in the world of teachers, it is not just about pay. It is about the quality of the job and the career.

The Governor would quickly discover that, as important as pay is in the world of pro sports, an NFL player innately cares about the conditions of employment. He knows that his ability to get to that all- important second contract is governed by more than just his talent. Will he have to play 16 or 18 games? What is the increased likelihood of concussions or other injuries that can end his career from an extended schedule or fewer practice games? Probably good for the wallet, but is it good for the player?

The NFL owners who are worth $40 billion want the players to give back $1 billion, saying that they need it to improve and build new stadiums. Is that with or without the taxpayers' help? The players ought to find out.

Yes, in the world of megastar athletes, pay is important, but the workplace dictates so many other important issues that NFL players must be concerned with if they are to reach their potential of the profession for which they have trained their whole lives.

For many teachers, like athletes, their careers are their passion. Research tells us that a very significant number of teachers start thinking about a career in teaching while they're in middle school--not too different from athletes who start to get serious about their athletic futures. Like an athlete, the teacher's desire will not be enough to sustain his or her career.

Other important elements are involved to ensure a teacher's success and the success of his or her students. How will teachers be supported in schools? What will be their access to meaningful professional development? Will teachers be given time to perfect lesson plans and presentations? Will he or she have a say in campus safety? Will they be included in the reform decisions that are made for the school and for the students?

All over America school districts are changing the rules from the mere platitudes that teachers are the most important influence outside the home in the education of our children to really making it possible. Districts are soliciting teachers' views to improve both the learning and the teaching environment. It is happening in States and schools in tough unionized areas where some said it could never happen, and it will continue because it reflects what the new and current dedicated teachers view as a modern workplace, where results and outcomes matter to students, parents, teachers, and the community. It's not just about pay. Teachers advocate for our children. They advocate for our children when they are sick or troubled or when they're being bullied, when they need help learning.

The Governor of Wisconsin's view of dictating and mandating without the say and collaboration that teachers want and expect in their careers is a broken model from the past and will not give students, parents, or our economy the results that our country needs as we enter the next generation of a highly competitive globalized economy.

Many Americans may not care who wins between wealthy team owners and often highly paid NFL players, but no one is suggesting that the players should lose their right to collective bargaining on a wide range of issues and only be able to bargain just on pay.

Governor Walker should stop attacking his State teachers and his public servants.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight a very serious and dangerous attack on middle class Americans being waged by the Republicans in the Congress and in Statehouses across the country.

The Wisconsin Governor's assault on public employees is getting most of the media attention, but it is just one of the fronts of the extreme right wing and anti-worker agenda trying to be carried out in this country. In fact, there is a well-financed and coordinated national attack against working families and the unions that they may belong to, the goal of which is to take away power from the middle class and give it to the wealthy special interests that have backed Republicans in their elections.

Here is how it is playing out: The Republicans are taking a real problem, a serious problem--budget deficits and long-term debt in this country--and they are assigning to it a fake cause. Under the guise of cutting deficits they say that working people's union rights and workplace protections must be eliminated. In fact, this attack against working people is designed to remove the vital check on special interest corporate power from overrunning our democracy.

This is an extreme agenda that they have always pursued, but they are now using their newfound political power to relaunch the attacks, to attack the guarantee to a decent wage, to attack the rights to ensure a safe workplace so when the workers leave home in the morning they know they will return safely at night.

They attack the rights to have access to affordable health care and secure retirement. And yes, they're even attacking the rights of working people to join together to bargain for a better life and better conditions in the workplace.

So at the same time that the Governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and

New Jersey are demanding more public and private union employee sacrifices, Republicans in Washington are using the budget fight to roll back the rights and protections of American workers.

Their spending priorities in their so-called continuing resolution of last week show their hand. They voted to take away workers' ability to repeal unjust and unfair and illegal actions in the workplace by getting rid of the National Labor Relations Board. They voted to undermine the wages of construction workers on Federal projects. They voted to roll back workplace health and safety protections guaranteed by Federal law.

While protecting subsidies for corporate interests, they have sought to cut education funding and critical support for workers in need of job training, and yes, even kids in Head Start.

These rights and services helped to build and sustain our Nation's middle class in the last century making the United States the greatest economic power in the history of the world. We have the greatest workers in the world because of these rights. But now the rights and economic strength of America's middle class are at risk. It's under a systematic assault in the statehouses controlled by Republican legislatures and Republican Governors and in this House of Representatives controlled by the Republicans--a systematic assault that goes beyond after the unions, after the workers have agreed to givebacks, to furlough days, to give back health care benefits, pension benefits. They want more. They want their union. They want their rights in the workplace to be terminated. It's un-American.

There's a reason that we have collective bargaining in this country, because we know that workers should have a right to bond together to improve the workplace, to improve their working conditions. And when they do, those rights flow to the rest of middle class working families in this country. In even the non-union workplaces, those rights are there. That's how we achieved an 8-hour day, that's how we achieved vacation time, that's how we achieved health care, that's how we achieved overtime whether you're in the union or not.

But now they want to take away the rights of unions to organize in the workplace, the rights of workers to organize.

But the Republicans have asked for no sacrifices. In all these cuts, they have asked for no sacrifices of the well-off and the well- connected. In fact, these cuts are being made in the name of the well- off and the well-connected so that they will be able to push for lower wages, for lower benefits, for lower health care for our workers, for lower take-home pay. And what does that do to the economy? It makes America poor.

How do you build a strong middle class community on the back of low- wage earners? You can't do it. It's never been done.

But the fact is, many years ago America decided we wanted a strong and a vibrant middle class, and we did that by forming a union and by giving people the right to have a say at work. We know study after study where workers have a say in the workplace, they work harder, they're more productive, they're more innovative, they're more open to new ideas.

But what do we say to workers with the Governors of Wisconsin and Ohio and Indiana? Do what we tell you to do, do it for less pay, do it for less benefits, and do it because we told you so. That doesn't sound like America to me. It doesn't sound like a powerful country that has the best and most productive workers in the history in the world. That sounds like something that we're not familiar with in this country. That sounds like an autocratic system that just demands and takes but never gives.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

The author of this amendment said a few minutes ago that this was a very simple and straightforward amendment. And that's probably true for Members of Congress who have government-paid health insurance, have policies that are looked after by a PPO to make sure that we get benefits. But if you are a member of the American public, this is not a simple and straightforward amendment. If you are a member of the American public, this amendment changes your life. For millions of Americans and for millions of their children, for millions of their parents this amendment changes their life. This isn't straightforward.

So many of our new Republican colleagues have come to town and said, I'm just one of the folks back home. I'm not enamored with Washington. I'm just one of the folks back home.

Vote for this amendment, and you won't be like the folks back home.

Vote for the amendment, and you will be very different than the folks back home, because you will have insurance and they won't. You will have coverage and they won't. You won't have lifetime caps and they will. You won't lose your insurance when you need it for you, your children, or your spouse, but your constituents will. You are not just like the folks back home. You are doing grave damage to the folks back home.

So you ought to think about this amendment before you vote for it. Not only does it add $5 billion almost immediately to the deficit; it adds $1 trillion to the deficit over 20 years, takes us in the wrong direction. But this punishes people back home. Talk to your constituents who now are the seniors who have that free physical checkup and have been given medicine, have been told about things that they are doing wrong with respect to their health and now can prevent additional doctors' visits and hospital care because of that checkup that they now get that this amendment would take away. Talk to the parents. And you really ought to talk to the grandparents of the children who now have coverage that didn't have it before. They are as concerned about the coverage of their grandchildren as they are about their Medicare coverage, which you will change with respect to the cost of pharmaceuticals.

No, this isn't simple and straightforward, and this isn't just like the folks back home. The folks back home are struggling every day to pay their insurance premiums. Pass this amendment, and once again the insurance companies can rip them off. Once again, they no longer have to dedicate 80 percent of your premiums to your health care. They can write themselves the bonuses, the advertising, the salaries, and forget the health care.

There won't be that kind of protection for people who struggle every month to achieve health care coverage, for the 9 million people who are in the middle of getting rebates now because of the change in the law to make sure that health insurance companies provide you health insurance instead of a funding stream for the executives.

No, this isn't simple and straightforward, and you are not just like the folks back home once you vote for this amendment. Is that clear?

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding and thank him for this amendment. I would hope he would withdraw this amendment so we would have an opportunity to go through exactly what the thresholds would be for the Department to award this right to the grantors to make these subgrants.

Obviously, you have been a leader in the effort of improving the quality and number of charter schools, but this is a $50 million pool of money that could rightfully be used for this purpose, but I think we want to make sure that we have some assurances as to accountability and the kinds of subgrants that would be made to expand the universe of high-quality, high-performing charter schools.

I know that Congressman Kline is also supportive of this amendment, but I think it would be best if we had an opportunity to walk through it and then either approach the Department to rewrite the regulation or to have legislation from the committee.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding, and I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Contrary to what the author of the amendment has said, there is no requirement in a PLA that you have only union contractors at that. This is a time when you come together pre-project to decide how this project shall be developed, whether there will be a training project involved in this, whether there will be local hires, whether there will be participation by minority and women subcontractors and others on this.

In my area, some of the largest energy projects in the Nation are being built by worldwide companies and being built with Project Labor Agreements. In our cities Project Labor Agreements are used, and the record continues over and over again, on time, done right the first time, and it's a mix of contractors that get accepted.

There is nothing in the Executive order that requires union contractors. There is nothing in the Executive order that requires a PLA. I know, because I tried to get a few, and the administration didn't go there.

So let's not overstate the case here. It encourages them. But the fact is PLAs have worked both on public projects and on private projects very, very well.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I thank the gentleman for reserving his point of order so that we can speak to this amendment offered by the gentlewoman from California.

I really believe that this is about transparency. I'm for widening that circle of transparency as much as we possibly can. This amendment speaks to a very important part of trying to gain transparency for the American people. You know, it's a rather remarkable process how we all get here. We engage in some form of politics that is straight out of the first Congress of the United States. It's out of the first people who ran for office here. We go to our neighbors and we go to our friends and we go to town councils and we talk to people and we ask them to support us. We go into their organizations and we ask them to support us. We tell them what we're going to do, we tell them what we think, we tell them what we like and don't like, maybe what we like about them and don't like about them. But it's a process of interchange. It's a transparency of ideas. You're held accountable for those ideas. And you raise money because you want to publicize your message further. You go to your friends, you go to organizations that support you, organizations you support, and you raise money to do this. And right now that's essentially all disclosed.

But what we've seen now in the last few years, and especially after this Supreme Court decision, is there's two campaigns that are being run--you run one, the best you can under the rules we have; campaign contributions are all reported, and then an independent group comes in and they run a campaign either for you or against you in your district. Your constituents may never know what even hit them. They may never know where it came from. It may only be about an issue that's linked to you. It has nothing to do with disclosure.

That's their right now under the Supreme Court decision, but the question

really should be: Should those expenditures be disclosed? Because very often we all know that one of the unpleasant things that happens to you in this business, I guess unless you fund your campaign out of your own pocket, is that you'll cast a vote, and the newspaper will immediately go and say Congresswoman ``so and so'' got a contribution from this entity on this side or from this person on this side of the argument or a contribution from this person on the other side of the argument. It happens all the time. That's disclosure. That's the price you pay-- except for these expenditures. They may come from the very same side of that argument and will be completely invisible to the press, to your neighbors, to your constituents, and that should not be allowed. The disclosure should be full and complete on people who spend money on behalf of these campaigns.

You can't have a situation where people move through the night, move with secret money--undisclosed money--and seek to influence the outcome of the elections in this country. This isn't Egypt where secret societies move through and create a party for the purpose of diverting votes from this party over here. This isn't Russia where the oligarchs and the billionaires move around and create parties to defer one another and where people never see where the expenditures are coming from or if they're speculated about.

In this country, in a long, hard struggle, one campaign has full disclosure--be you a working person or be you a corporate chief. Whatever the source of money is in your campaign it is disclosed. But now we have a shadow campaign, and the shadow campaign threatens to dwarf what is taking place in the other campaigns.

How many Members on both sides of the aisle know that they had a campaign run? We've all listened to our friends on both sides about the independent expenditures, about the undisclosed money that came into the campaign. Think how that turns the stomachs and the hearts and the minds of our constituents when they think that this was going on--an election where they in good faith maybe stood in line to vote and made sure they got in their absentee votes, and they might have asked the rest of the members of their families to vote. All of that was taken away by a tsunami of $6 million, $3 million, $9 million, $12 million that just showed up on the doorstep of your district, all of it undisclosed, now gathering the forces once again to get ready for the next cycle--people bragging about how much money they will have, people bragging about their involvement, their success ratios--all of that to intimidate Members of Congress, to make people think about the vote; but they will never be held accountable for those actions.

That's what transparency is truly about. Transparency is as much for us as it is for our constituents, and it is important to our constituents because they do make judgments about us; they do make judgments about issues; they have expectations of us; they have hopes of us. It is only that information and that transparency that will let them act in a rational way on behalf of their votes--to protect their votes, the votes they just cast and the votes they anticipate casting in the future.

We have an amendment here to rip away the $3 checkoff, which is a modest effort by constituents to say, I want to make sure the elections are clean and transparent. Now we see that the undisclosed far exceeds anything that they can possibly do.

I thank the gentleman again for reserving the point of order.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the House, I think Mr. Markey has it about right. You have to kind of decide where you're going to stand. Lawsuits are brought every day that infuriate us in one way or another, depending upon where you stand and what you think about that issue or what you know about that issue. But the idea that we would take this right away from the American people to go up against the government when the government every day makes a series of decisions--not all of them are perfect. Many of them are wrong-headed. Many of them had repercussions that they hadn't thought through when they made the decision. Those are the challenges that go on every day, whether it's in OSHA or the EPA or the Department of Labor, the Department of Interior. And many decisions that are made upstream have a lot of ramifications downstream.

Let's not pretend that every Forest Service sale is perfectly configured and thought about the externalities, the impacts on grazers, the impacts on farmers downstream, the impacts on the streams, the sedimentation, the impact on the fisheries. We live with that in California all the time. The salmon don't have a lawyer. But the harm to the fisheries, the harm to the small fishermen, to the small boat owners, the people who go out and brave their lives in the Pacific Ocean. When the Federal Government makes decisions about water flows and the Federal Government makes decisions about timber sales and when the Federal Government makes decisions

about construction on the dam, they have a right to be heard. But this isn't true if they were Taxpayers For Justice who argue about whether or not the royalties are fair and returned to the taxpayers, whether or not the Federal Government issued the permits in the right way. You think it's a right that somebody else has that maybe you don't like until you think you might want to exercise it.

This is a magnificent tool. I have no problem with the gentleman from Idaho who talked in terms of disclosure and accounting and transparency. That should all be there. I don't know why the Department stopped listing this, but they should have never done it. And I would assume in other agencies, they should disclose what the payouts are because it's a measure of the management, to some extent. This isn't just funding your organization to keep going to court; it's also a measure of the management. You know, it's like a business. If you keep paying out a lot, your insurance company says, Maybe we ought to change the operations. Maybe we ought to change the way you are thinking here. Something's wrong when you have these payouts.

You can argue that this is one of the metrics of performance of a governmental agency. If they keep losing the lawsuits, you might want to think that you've got to have somebody else running the show.

So I would hope that we would reject this amendment and understand that it's a much broader dissipation of citizens' rights to confront the government when the government may very well be wrong. And again, the pay-out comes only when you--you have to prevail on those measures. And on those measures where the court found that the government was wrong, you're entitled to recover your costs and your expenditures.

So I think this is very fair. It's worked for many, many years; and it's protected a lot of citizens of this country against arbitrary and capricious actions by the Federal Government.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I move to strike the last word in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, in my district, after it invented the Internet, it turned it over to the private sector to grow it.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the House, this amendment should not be adopted. It should not be adopted because this amendment is designed to disrupt the regulatory process to determine whether or not students who are enrolled in some--and I say ``some''; I say this as a supporter of proprietary colleges and career colleges--some classes that only leave them in debt, don't leave them better prepared for the workforce, don't leave them better prepared for the career. There is substantial evidence that that's the case. High default rates, students not completing, students ending up in a lot of debt. They are doing this with almost 90 percent of taxpayer dollars.

I think we have an obligation to the students and to the taxpayers. That's what the administration is trying to do with this regulation.

It's been mentioned that there were 90,000 comments. 89,000 of them were a form letter. You would have thought that they could have varied them a little bit for the money they were paying to get it out, but they didn't. But the point is this: The administration ought to be allowed to complete this process because this really is about the future of these students.

Students from these schools in many instances graduate with much higher debt. Some of these schools, they default. In excess of 40, 45 percent of them end up in default, and, as you know, that is not debt that you can discharge in a bankruptcy. So these students start out in big trouble if these schools are not providing the kind of educational atmosphere and, hopefully, the success ratio that they should. That should be a concern to every Member of this Congress. That should be a concern to the taxpayers, and it is a concern to this administration.

If this regulation doesn't turn out, the Congress can tell them they can't do it. That's our power. That's the way it works. But to come in in the middle of the game when it's this serious with this money on the table, with these kinds of default rates, and some of these institutions and some of these classes, we're making a big mistake by putting our thumb on one side of the scale at this point in the process.

As I've said from the time I have been on this committee as these schools started to grow and become more a part of our higher education, I have supported them. I continue to support them. Somebody just said, if you're going to meet the goal of college graduation, it's hard to believe how you're going to do it without these schools. But as we all know, you put 90 cents out of every dollar coming from the taxpayer on the street, there's always a few people who show up to pick it up without providing the services.

We went through this in the HMOs back in the nineties. There were people who said they were becoming health care HMOs. No, they were really real estate companies who were trying to get a lot of people to enroll and hopefully they could sell them to somebody else. In this one, it's a question of whether or not you're offering a curriculum that truly benefits the students, gives them the opportunity.

But, you know, when we see the kinds of scandals that have erupted in the past at some of these institutions--again, not all of them--you have to ask the questions: What's going on? People have paid tens of millions of dollars in fines because of how they have attracted students. When you have a business plan that's based upon attracting homeless people, you better make sure that there is some opportunity for that homeless person to thrive in that educational class other than just end up in debt and still homeless. That was a business plan.

So I'm just asking for caution. I know you want to run to justice. I know the power of these institutions and I know the pressure that you're saying you have to stop this, you have to stop this. We're talking about a few classes within all of these institutions where there is a history, there may very well be a history that all the student got out of it was debt. This isn't about what you end up doing in your career over time, but it's about whether or not you got what you paid for and they delivered services that they promised.

I hope that Congress will reject this amendment. Let the Department continue to work on the regulation, and again, if it doesn't work, if it doesn't make sense and is threatening schools, I suspect that we will all join in making sure that the regulation doesn't go into effect.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, we all recognize the need for us to reduce the deficit and curtail unreasonable spending, but this continuing resolution obviously goes far too in the extreme direction of harming our economy and harming many of the services that our citizens have come to rely on to finish and bring their lives together, whether they're working, whether they need health care, whether their children need education, and this resolution is harmful for that.

But I want to speak for the moment on section 1475, which is a rider that is added to this legislation that will harm the California economy, harm our ability to plan into the future for the use of water.

We have a water system in California that's dramatically oversubscribed, and we're in the process now of bringing that together to make sure that we can meet the future economic needs of our State and also the needs of the various sectors of that economy, whether they be the fishing sector, they be the energy producing sector, the farming sector or the settlement of our cities.

But with this rider--this rider, first of all, throws out 18 years of litigation successfully brought to an end, a long conflict on the San Joaquin River to provide for that settlement, a settlement that is agreed to by almost everyone. But more importantly, for the sake of the long-term water using, this amendment defunds the biological opinions that were going forward that are the cornerstone to provide for the final elements of the plan to provide California and the apportionment of that water for the protection of the fisheries and the economies in northern California, for the protection in the water supplies of the Central Valley's economy and the needs of the great urban areas of southern California. That planning must be completed.

This is as close as we've come. After decades and decades of water wars in the State of California, we finally have the opportunity now to bring the various parties together from all geographic regions, from all sectors of the economy, and plan the future of our State so that we will have the water that is necessary to secure our economy, to secure our families, to secure our agricultural areas of the State, and to provide for the great ecology of the State of California.

We've gone through some disasters, if you will, because of the droughts, because of water cycles, and my colleague from further north in the State, Mike Thompson, laid out this. We saw thousands of jobs lost, the fisheries decimated because of political water decisions that were made over the last several years that decimated the salmon run, not only affecting just the San Francisco Bay delta but affecting the coastal regions of our State and the coastal regions of Oregon and Washington.

These are important fisheries. This is an important part of our economy. It's a renewable part of our economy if we take care of it, but if we have mindless riders that are put onto legislation like the one provided in section 1475, it will bring an end to these negotiations.

It's taken a long time to get the water parties from the south, the water parties from industry, the water parties from agriculture, from the environmental community and the government, the Federal Government and State government together. They are sitting at that table and they're working it through.

Just in the last couple of days, we see the delta planning organization put forth its first document to say what the requirements will be for the conservation habitat plan that all of these elements from north and south California working on. This amendment simply kicks that negotiating table over. It drives the parties away from the negotiation, and California goes back into water uncertainty, economic uncertainty, ecological uncertainty that our State cannot continue to have if we're going to grow our economy, if we're going to come out of this recession.

So I would hope that on passage the Members would vote against this continuing resolution, understanding the kind of damage that these kinds of riders that were inserted in the middle of the night on behalf of a few special interests have the opportunity to really destroy, destroy bipartisan geographical negotiations that are the most promising in the last 40 years in the history of our State.

The opposition from so many of the water users across the State, no matter where they reside, to this rider is well-known, to the fishing community, to so many parts of our economy in the San Joaquin- Sacramento Bay delta, and to the future of our ability to get a handle on these water issues that have plagued us for so many years in California. I would hope that we would reject this provision of this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

The spending bill that the Republicans have introduced is a threat to our economy, a threat to our competitiveness, and a threat to America's working families, and with this amendment, a threat to America's poor.

No one is in favor of wasteful spending and outdated government regulations that don't work or special spending for the powerful and the special interests. Instead of identifying real governmental waste, like subsidies to Big Oil and tax cuts to billionaires, the House Republicans have decided that all the cuts will fall on the backs of working people, on students, and on the poor in this country. The universe of cuts will be limited to those parts of our population, the most vulnerable parts of our population, those who struggle every day to keep their jobs and provide for their families, to hold on to their homes, or maybe to catch a break and get a job, or maybe to catch a break and have their child be put into Head Start, or to have mental health services for a member of their families.

They deny workers the basic rights and protections on the job, and they prevent unemployed Americans from getting job training that will give them a leg up in this economy because they zero out these programs. Simply put, the Republican spending bill eliminates hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of job opportunities for Americans who are seeking to get back into the economy. This bill is reckless and irresponsible. The programs that are targeted in this bill are a lifeline to the future of our economy.

These cuts mean over 200,000 young children will lose their spots in a Head Start classroom. For the first time, as we celebrate the 100th birthday of President Reagan, we destroy Ron and Nancy's favorite program. Those children will not be allowed into the Head Start classroom, and we know exactly what that means. They will start school behind, they will continue behind, and if they graduate, they will graduate behind. That's what we cast them into. That's why it's called Head Start. These children need a head start. These quarter of a million children will not get a head start. They will go to the back of the line. It means that parents will have to choose between going to work and putting their children in a low-quality child care without an option for those Head Start classes.

It means that 2,400 disadvantaged schools that rely on title I, the funding that will provide quality education, will lose the funding for teachers and tutors and after-school programs. And again, the most vulnerable children, the children who start without that head start, the children who are the poorest in our Nation, they will receive the least resources available so that they could participate in an economy if they can get a good quality education, and have the opportunity to achieve it.

These cut means reduced support for students with disabilities. It will leave some 7,000 special education teachers and staff unemployed. And the services those students so desperately need--and they can prosper when they're given those services in our education programs and thrive in regular education programs--they will be denied that opportunity.

And of course, as has already been mentioned, it means that $845 that would have been available for the poorest students, middle-income students who are starting college, whether it's community or 4-year college or it's a proprietary school, that money won't be available for them. But mind you, the costs in the community colleges, the costs in the public institutions, the 4-year institutions, the proprietary

schools, they're all going up. These students' resources to pay for college are going down, and many of these students do not have the ability to replace those resources.

By eliminating the Corporation for National Community Services, we break the great bipartisan compact here that we would join together to provide people an opportunity to give back to this Nation, that we would organize services to serve our community and to volunteers in our community, whether they be senior citizens or whether they be young people starting out, and the people could earn an opportunity by serving their community to earn a scholarship, and grandparents could earn a scholarship to give to their children if they gave back to their community and volunteered in their community. Those programs are gone. They're eliminated. They're zeroed out in this legislation.

By eliminating critical job training opportunities offered through the Workforce Investment Act, some 200,000 unemployed Americans who need these skills to compete in the workplace will be denied their services, as will the returning vets from the vets program who use the One-Stop services. In April, 3,000 of them will be gone, closed down because of the budget cuts here.

Where will those veterans go? Where will those veterans go that are seeking opportunities? Where are we going to take these veterans who were harmed, who have suffered in combat, who are recovering from their injuries and trying to navigate the employment sector and our economy? They can go to a One-Stop shop. They can get special treatment as a veteran in that place. They can see the array of opportunities that they might have to bring to them. But no, now they can cruise the community. They can go from place to place, trying to find and knit together the services that are available today in those One-Stop centers.

So this legislation is devastating, devastating to millions of Americans. Millions of Americans with the slightest bit of help would be able to engage in our economy, be able to engage in our society, and be able to prosper for themselves and for their families. Tonight, the Republicans foreclose that future. They foreclose that future for millions of Americans who will not be able to fight back or hire lobbyists.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I strongly oppose this amendment. The suggestion has been made by the chairman of my committee that somehow if you vote for this amendment you're increasing the government's commitment to fully fund IDEA. No you're not. You're simply restoring the cut that the Republican caucus already made a decision about, and that was to cut $558 million. That would be admirable if you restored the cut.

But when you decide therefore to restore the cut, you're going to now have to make additional cuts, and those additional cuts will come out of the most difficult, hard-pressed failing schools in our country, many with increased populations of children with disabilities. Those will be the schools that we will target.

We will target those schools in the poorest neighborhoods with the poorest records where now, for the first time we have a proposal made, carried out by the Governors, by the local school districts to turn those schools around and to provide the quality education that those children are entitled to so they can take advantage of the opportunities that America presents.

But now money for those schools is going to be taken away on the theory that somehow you are doing a favor for students with disabilities. Don't do them such a favor. I don't think they would appreciate that you are taking the money from their poorest neighbors.

And then, on top of that, you are going to take the funds that we are speaking to. And you have all given the speeches, you have all told people, the most important thing outside of the family is the teacher. Well, this is the funding by which we have prepared teachers to be special education teachers, to be title I teachers, to teach math, to teach science. And now we're going to take that money in the name of somehow that this is a restorative amendment that will be good for

I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to this legislation. As my colleague from New Jersey has pointed out and the ranking member of the subcommittee, this amendment, to begin with, seems to make no sense at all. It is interesting, as the gentleman said, you pull the plug, but then everybody is left without a right. There is no private right of action. There is no place to go.

There were some 1,571 secret ballot elections for union representation last year that were supervised by the National Labor Relations Board to certify those unions, or to decertify unions in some cases where that action was taken in the secret election; and now there will be no remedy. You won't be able to decertify the union; you won't be able to certify the union.

There are employees every day who are fired for simply suggesting to their employer that they would like to have a union. That alone will get you fired over and over again in this country. That employee is now without a job, but no right of action to go back and find out whether that person was wrongfully fired.

The same is true if an employer wants to make an allegation of secondary boycott, which is illegal under the law. Where do they go for the remedy? Where do they go? There is no private right of action. It is contained within the National Labor Relations Act, and it is administered by the board.

So this amendment just sort of creates chaos; and it denies people rights, be they employers or employees, be they pro-union or anti- union, whatever it is. Whatever their situation is, this simply denies them the ability to take advantage of the law or to have the law administered in any way or fashion, and it provides really no alternative to them, because, as I said, this occupies the entire area for these individuals.

So I don't know if this law is a temper tantrum. I don't know if this law is just--I don't know what the hell it is. But clearly it doesn't address what might be legitimate concerns about the operation of the board.

The board has been controversial over the years and back and forth, and people have agreed and disagreed with its rulings and its actions. Or you might want to amend the law. But this amendment doesn't do any of this. And I would certainly hope that we would continue--when you look around at other countries, I think you would say this is a pretty successful system of managing labor relations in the workplace. It certainly took a history of actions that people considered wrong and dangerous and concerned about the economy, concerned about individual safety, concerned about the safety of workplaces and the ability of businesses to survive, and through the passage of the National Labor Relations Act regularized that so people had a place to go for their complaints and determine their rights.

So I would hope that Members of Congress would reject this amendment and maintain the rights of workers and employers to have their concerns addressed and adjudicated, if necessary.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, along with my wife Cynthia, my sons George and Stephen, I rise today to join with the citizens of my hometown, Martinez, California, to mourn the death of our friend and neighbor Kathy Radke.

Kathy was a friend in the best sense of the word, and she was a neighbor in the largest sense of the word: she worried about us, inquired after us, and supported us as individuals and as families.

Kathy, along with her husband Ted, brought a vision of community that would be supportive of children, families, and our elderly. Hers was a vision that included environmentally sound policies to make our city safer and our community a more enjoyable place to live.

Time and again she was successful in realizing this vision, as she moved through Martinez as a parent, as an elected official, as a volunteer, and as an organizer.

We were all shocked and saddened to learn of her serious illness last year and her passing last week. It's difficult to think of our town without Kathy's caring, her vision, and her drive.

Now along with Ted and her sons HT and Dylan, we will all have to work harder to maintain and grow the many gifts she left for us. We all are going to miss her and the strength of her spirit.

I know that my colleagues will join me in celebrating the life of Kathy Radke, and expressing our condolences to her family and her many friends. I want to draw my colleagues' attention to an article in the Martinez News-Gazette about Kathy and her great legacy, and I ask unanimous consent that the full article be printed in the Record.

[From the Martinez News-Gazette, Feb. 10, 2011]

Kathy Radke: Environmental Champion, Civic Leader, Cherished Friend to

Many

(By Greta Mart)

The woman largely responsible for protecting Mt. Wanda from

development, conserving the Franklin Hills as open space and

galvanizing community support for Alhambra Creek died this

week: Kathy Radke passed away on Monday from pancreatic

cancer. She was 71.

During her two terms on the Martinez City Council, Radke

focused on water quality issues and worked to bring cleaner

water to Martinez residents. Later, the geriatric peer-

counseling program she created became a model for others

around the state. Another late career change saw her becoming

licensed as a conservator, managing financial and health

matters for elderly patients.

On Wednesday, her son Dylan Radke, currently the chair of

the Parks, Recreation, Marina and Cultural Commission, spoke

about his mother's life and touched on the many roles Kathy

played in the civic life of Martinez.

Born in December of 1939 and raised in Chicago, Kathy was

the middle of three sisters. Her father Otto ran a family

beer distributing business, said Dylan, and she attended the

Chicago Commercial High School, graduating at age 16.

For a few years Radke worked for the American Medical

Association in Chicago and then New York City as an executive

secretary until she volunteered for the newly-established

Peace Corps.

The Peace Corps took her to rural Guatemala, where she

taught nutrition and trade skills. When her stint was up, she

moved to San Francisco and enrolled at San Francisco State to

earn a B.A.

There she met Ted Radke, who was a fellow student and

served as a teaching assistant for one of Kathy's classes.

The two were married and she dropped out when the pair

moved to Martinez and had their first child, Harold Theodore

III in 1969.

Asked the reason his parents chose Martinez, Dylan said it

was a combination of his paternal grandparents living here

and his father securing a job at what was then

called the Abandoned and Abused Children's Center, across

from the County's Juvenile Hall.

Dylan was born in 1971, at a time when Ted was mounting his

first political campaign. Kathy was the key staffer on Ted's

campaign for City Council, which he won. Ted served for one

term on the Martinez City Council before being elected to the

Board of the East Bay Regional Park District in 1977, a

position he still holds.

``During that same time, both my parents helped found the

Contra Costa Ecology Action,'' said Dylan. ``They were trying

to draw attention to environmental issues; how pollution,

poor air and water quality affect health. It was an

environmental advocacy group.''

Ted left county social services for a teaching position at

Contra Costa College while Kathy worked as a secretary for

the Martinez Unified School District and subsequently the

local electrician's union.

Ted's campaign had apparently inspired Kathy to public

service, as she was elected to the City Council in 1982 and

served for two terms. She ran for Mayor in 1984, but lost to

Mike Menesini.

``Although the office is non-partisan, my mother would not

be ashamed to be identified as a Democrat. She was really

into water quality; it was a hot issue then due to the

proposal of the Peripheral Canal idea. She was also dedicated

to maintaining Martinez's small town character,'' said Dylan.

``Mom was active in trying to protect the Franklin Hills

[from development] and same with Mt. Wanda. She worked with

George Miller to get Mt. Wanda to become part of the John

Muir National Historic Site.''

Former Council member Peter Langley said this week that he

and Kathy were very close friends when they served together

on the Council.

``We were both on the water subcommittee and what we were

trying to do was get better water quality for Martinez,''

said Langley. ``Kathy was very much an environmentalist. One

of the issues was a development in the Alhambra Hills, which

is still before the City Council and we turned down several

proposals for the Franklin Hills. South of Highway 4 where

Alhambra Valley Road shoots off from Alhambra, there is a

place where there is a sort of natural entrance to the hills,

a canyon, and there was a guy who wanted to put a development

there,'' which Radke opposed.

Langley said that one couldn't dislike Kathy Radke.

``She had a very sunny personality, very warm,'' he said.

Dylan Radke said after his mother left the Council, she

returned to finish her Bachelor's degree at Cal State

Hayward. She went on to earn a Master's in Human Development

and started working on a second Master's in Public Health

when she was recruited by Contra Costa County to do geriatric

social work.

When he was on the Board of Supervisors, now-Senator Mark

DeSaulnier proposed creating a senior peer counseling program

and asked Kathy Radke to head it up.

``The program was very successful and become a model for

others,'' said Dylan.

``She set up a fabulous peer counseling program that's been

copied elsewhere,'' said Radke's friend Harriett Burt.

In the mid-90s, Radke was appointed to the John Muir Health

Board of Directors and ran for Board of Supervisors, but was

defeated by Gail Uilkema.

After retiring from her County position a few years ago,

Radke started a new career by obtaining her license as a

fiduciary conservator.

``Conservators are people who manage the care for people

who are unable to do it, older adults who no longer have the

capacity to manage their financial affairs,'' said Dylan.

``Conservators are court-appointed and Mom would essentially

make sure they are being seen by doctors and bills are being

paid, it enabled them to continue to live longer in a home

environment.''

In the late '80s, Kathy and Ted Radke helped found the

Friends of the Alhambra Creek organization.

``There was concern over the accumulation of debris and

trash in the creek and with more development in [Alhambra

Valley], also watershed issues. [The founders] were primarily

trying to restore the creek to a natural flow and making sure

it was healthy for fish, turtles, and of course, beavers,''

said Dylan Radke. ``[Kathy], along with Igor Skaredoff and

Jane Moore, those three would organize creek cleanups because

they saw the creek as vital to the downtown and [Alhambra]

valley ecosystem.''

``The first time I met [Kathy], Shirley [his wife] and I

went to a slide show by the Friends of Alhambra Creek.

Several members had hiked to the source, in Briones, and took

pictures. That's when we joined FAC, circa 1990,'' Skaredoff

said Wednesday in a telephone interview. ``We hit it off and

started doing things together like surveys and creek cleanup.

Kathy and I designed a little brochure [about the creek].

Kathy also created a creek protection ordinance for the City

of Martinez that is still in the General Plan. It's a great

legacy from her; it's actually written into the General Plan

how to protect [the creek].''

Turning to the more personal attributes of Radke, Skaredoff

described Kathy as possessing a great sense of humor.

``Always she could find something to laugh about, something

positive. Whenever you were around her you always felt

better, she had that way about her,'' said Skaredoff. ``She

was a vital force. I'm very happy I met her and our community

was so much better off with her in it.''

Jane Moore also became close to Radke after joining the

Friends of Alhambra Creek, and later worked on Radke's

campaign for the County Board of Supervisors.

``I've been meaning to look up the definition of this word,

although it's usually used in a negative way, because Kathy

always comes to mind when I hear it: instigator. She was an

instigator in the best sense of the word, in the way she got

ideas going, got people interested in ideas, instrumental in

showing people how to use their best potential,'' said Moore.

``I wouldn't be doing the work I'm doing without her, she

inspired me to get my degree. The loss of Kathy Radke is a

huge loss to Martinez and Contra Costa County. She was

pivotal in so many people's lives, programs and services. She

was an incredibly important person, giving and generous.''

Another friend who had known Radke for many years, Sheila

Grilli, said described her death as ``such a loss.''

``We were political cohorts: I ran for City Council when

she ran for Mayor. She was fair and well liked, and a happy

person. We traveled together a couple of times a year to

Mexico and Hawaii--and she was easy to get along with,

energetic and open to suggestions. It's hard to imagine that

someone as dynamic and interesting is gone,'' said Grilli.

Dylan said traveling the world was one of his mother's

passions.

``She couldn't do it enough, she been all over the world,''

said Dylan Radke. ``She also loved to camp, especially with

the family, and she loved to garden.''

Anyone who has visited the Radke home was witness to Kathy

Radke's passion for gardening. When he was young, Dylan said

his parents maintained huge planters for kitchen garden

crops; about 15 years ago, Kathy transformed the back yard

into an Asian-themed wonderland.

Besides raising their two biological children, Kathy and

Ted Radke served as foster parents to three children.

Trying to remember all of his mother's accomplishments,

Dylan added that Kathy was also a licensed social worker on

top of all her other achievements.

``She passed the social work exam right after I passed the

bar,'' to practice law, said Dylan.

Dylan's wife Deidre Seguenza said Wednesday afternoon the

family had set a date for Kathy's funeral; it will be held on

Wednesday, Feb. 16 at St. Catherine's in Martinez.

``She will be greatly missed,'' said Seguenza with

heartbreak in her voice.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Mt. Diablo Unified School District, Board of Education Member and former President, Richard ``Dick'' Allen and congratulate him as he approaches his well-earned retirement.

Mr. Allen's career in public service demonstrates his lifelong commitment to the students, parents, staff and communities of the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, MDUSD, and I am grateful to him for his service to my constituents.

For the past 55 years, Mr. Allen has been an excellent teacher, mentor, respected collaborator, student advocate, leader and school board member. He has no doubt nurtured hundreds of students as they developed their skills to become productive leaders and citizens.

Mr. Allen's dedication is evidenced in the Dick Allen Award which was named in his honor. This award was established in 2006 to recognize someone or a group of people who have contributed above and beyond to the alternative education students and programs of alternative high schools in MDUSD. The first award was presented to Mr. Allen as he was the original administrator of alternative education programs in the MDUSD and a strong supporter of alternative education in general. This is just one small example of his remarkable leadership and dedication to excellence in education.

As Mr. Allen retires, I am pleased to have this opportunity to thank him publically for his service. Our children, their families, and our entire community have benefitted immensely from his work. His is a lasting legacy and I join with his family, colleagues, and friends in congratulating him on a long and highly successful career and wish him a happy and healthy retirement.

Mr. Speaker, last night, President Obama said that the U.S. stands with the people of Tunisia and supports the democratic aspirations of the people. That has not always been true, however. We've stood for far too long with the undemocratic and the dictatorial

Ben Ali, the President of Tunisia. And it is time that we stand, as the President said, with the people of Tunisia now and support their democratic aspirations.

The U.S. gets another chance to stand with the democratic aspirations of another people, the people of Egypt, against the autocratic, dictatorial, and undemocratic leadership of Hosni Mubarak. For too long, the U.S. has stood against the people of Egypt seeking a more democratic country and a more democratic government. Every election has been rigged by the Mubarak government, and the state emergency power laws have been extended so that people would be rounded up so his viable opponents would be thrown into jail and political parties would be outlawed.

The time has come to stop this. The time has come for the United States to tell the Mubarak government that this election has to be free and open. The sole purpose of the election cannot be to pass on a great country to the son of the current leader in spite of the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people.

Mr. Speaker, I rise with my colleagues Congressman John Garamendi, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Congressman Jerry McNerney, and Congressman Pete Stark to recognize East Bay Regional Park District General Manager Pat O'Brien and congratulate him as he approaches his well-earned retirement.

Mr. O'Brien's career in public service demonstrates his lifelong commitment to the citizens and communities of the East Bay. We are grateful to him for his service to our constituents.

Mr. O'Brien held his first park and recreation job at the age of 13, giving swimming lessons and performing maintenance at a local salt water swimming club. After serving in the U.S. Army, he came back to California where he worked at Southgate Recreation and Park District in the Sacramento area. From 1980 to 1988, he served as Southgate's general manager prior to taking on the same position with the East Bay Regional Park District.

For the past 22 years, he has guided the largest regional park agency in the United

States, with nearly 108,000 acres of parklands spread across 65 regional parks and over 1,100 miles of trails in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. Approximately 14 million visitors a year from throughout the San Francisco Bay area and beyond take advantage of the vast and diverse District parklands and trails.

During his tenure, the district has acquired over 40,000 acres of new parklands, adding 17 new parks, doubling the size of 12 existing regional parks, and adding more than 200 miles of new regional trails. He has attracted more than $105 million in matching funds--including this year's historic $10.2 million Tiger II award. He has successfully secured stable funding through ballot measures and by creating assessment districts, and refinanced existing district bonds at lower rates, saving taxpayers over $14 million. Every community in the East Bay has received at least one park, recreation or community center project funded through his efforts.

His dedication to serving the public through the parks and recreation procession is the legacy he will leave behind. His career has been guided by the desire to make substantive contributions to society and to people's lives. His firm leadership has helped to preserve the priceless heritage of our region's natural and cultural resources--open space, parks and trails--and to set aside park areas for enjoyment and healthful recreation for current and future generations.

Mr. Speaker, we invite our colleagues to join us in honoring General Manager Pat O'Brien for his dedicated service to the people of California and the Bay Area. We are pleased to join with his family, colleagues, and friends in congratulating Pat on a long and highly successful career and wish him a happy and healthy retirement.

I yield myself 4 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2, the Republican Patients' Rights Repeal Act.

The question is just simply fundamental here, whether or not people will be able to have control over their health care needs and their health insurance needs, or whether or not we will go back to the chaos of the previous system that is dictated by the insurance companies where people are thrown off of policies willy nilly, where people are not reimbursed for costs willy nilly, given excuses, paperwork back and forth, where young people are thrown off their parents' policy when they graduate from high school, and whether or not they will have insurance or not, or whether people will have the freedom to make the choices, to have insurance that will cover them, that will get rid of the preexisting conditions that eliminate their coverage, that will get rid of the lifetime caps so that those people who contract cancer

or other chronic diseases find out they have run out of insurance at the exact moment they need it. No longer will that be the case under the current law.

Now, the choice is to repeal that law and to make it more difficult for small businesses to provide insurance. Since the enactment of the tax credit under this law, we now see that hundreds of thousands of employees have been extended health insurance by small businesses employing 50 workers or less because of that tax credit, a tax credit that is scheduled to increase.

So we already see the hundreds of thousands of employees that did not have access to insurance because they worked for small businesses today have insurance. That's not the reporting of the government. That's the reporting of the health insurance companies where people and businesses are making applications for insurance.

So what we see now is young people are once again covered and can have the security that they will have health insurance while they go to school or while they start a new job that may not have health insurance with that coverage. We now see that people who may have had a bout of cancer early on know that that will not disqualify them from having insurance as they go out and continue to work to provide for their families.

We now see that after 2014 when people change their jobs or they lose their jobs, they will have insurance so they will not have to go to the poor house because of the insurance costs that they will not be able to provide for because they are unemployed. They will not be locked into a job that they don't want. They will be able to be entrepreneurial and go out and seek a new job knowing that they will have health insurance. That's the certainty of this legislation.

We can now choose the chaos of the current insurance system. We can choose the chaos of people getting a letter saying you no longer have insurance, getting a letter saying your child is no longer covered, getting a letter saying your premium is up 59 percent, as they did last year in California. We have seen health insurance premiums jump dramatically over the cost of living over the last decade and over the last decade have seen more and more businesses shed coverage for their employees.

The Republicans want to believe that there is certainty in that. The Republicans want to believe that that's a comfort to the American working family. The Republicans want to believe that that's a comfort to grandparents who see their grandchildren thrown off their parents' policies.

That's not a comfort. What is a comfort is the freedom to know that never again will you have to contest the arbitrary rulings of an insurance company about your preexisting conditions, about the coverage of your child's health care. Never again will you have to contest whether or not you will get help paying for your pharmaceuticals if you are a senior. Never again will you have to pay for preventive medical checkups to try to keep you healthy if you are a senior. That's the certainty that this legislation presents.

Last night I had a telephone town hall meeting with over a thousand seniors in my district, and all of them--almost all of them, I would say there were three or four in the call--almost all of them wanted the certainty of knowing they were going to get help with their pharmaceutical payments. They struggle with the doughnut hole.

They were appreciative of the $250 check they got last year, and they were appreciative of the help they were going to get paying for their pharmaceuticals this year. That's the certainty that we ought to reject by rejecting repeal of the health care act.

I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

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

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), a member of the committee.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa), a member of the committee.

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

I yield myself 30 seconds.

I would just say to the gentleman from Tennessee it is universally recognized that there was no worse-designed health care plan than TennCare; that all you did was extend the benefits and no cost containment and no pay-fors, and it damn near bankrupted the State.

It is also recognized that nowhere have health care costs gone up faster than in the private sector, much faster than Medicare because, once again, there is not much in the way of cost containment. You just reimburse people for the cost.

This legislation has cost containment, and that is why CBO says, if you repeal it, you will drive up the short-term deficit to $30 billion and long-term deficit to $1.2 trillion. That is the difference.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy), a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva), a member of the committee.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to a member of the committee, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Hirono), a member of the committee.

(Ms. HIRONO asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

Can I just say to the gentleman from Minnesota, I think I'm starting to understand the physician shortage in the country; most of them are in the Congress, apparently.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko).

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass).

I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Peters).

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the time remaining?

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Larsen).

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. Speaker, we have two remaining speakers.

May I inquire of the Chair how much time is remaining?

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

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

I thank the gentleman.

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

I want to thank all of our colleagues who participated in this debate today. I think it has shown some fundamental disagreements and some fundamental differences.

First of all, there is the strong suggestion here from an NFIB study that was done before this law was ever written, that has nothing to do with this law, saying you might lose jobs. But what do we see since the law has passed? We see that for employers of under 10 employees, health care coverage has risen by 10 percent because we've made it less expensive for small businesses to offer that health insurance.

That is not a self-interested study. What you see from United Health Care, the largest health insurer in the country, 75,000 new customers to their health plans from employees of small businesses because the small businesses find it affordable to extend health insurance as a benefit of working for that small business.

Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Kansas City says the number of small businesses buying insurance since April, the first month after the legislation was signed, has jumped 58 percent.

Small business employers are for the first time able to extend affordable insurance to their employees, and that is why the job creation that Mr. Andrews referred to of a million jobs since the passage of this bill has continued and expected to continue. That is why it is different than the history prior to the Obama administration where over 8 years almost 800,000 jobs were lost during those years of the Bush administration.

But there is something more important in this legislation, and that is whether or not families will have the control of their health insurance destiny, whether they will have the freedom to make these choices. Many on the other side of the aisle said this is a bureaucratic system. Has anybody, any family in America, any single mother, any spouse, any child, any grandparent, met a more bureaucratic system than the American health insurance system? There is no more bureaucratic system.

When you send in your premium, they tell you you sent it to the wrong place. When you send in your bill, you sent it to the wrong person. When you send it to the right person, they say that person has left their job. When you say, I went to the doctor, they say you should've called us first. When you say, I had emergency surgery, they say, you should've called us first; we're not covering it.

You want to talk about bureaucracy, ladies and gentlemen, and that is why this legislation is growing in popularity, because small businesses see, senior citizens see, parents with children under 26, they see a chance to liberate themselves from the most arbitrary, the most capricious system in our entire free economy, and that is the insurance companies. Everybody has been run around the block by their insurance company. It is something that they all share.

It is almost the same problems they share with their cable company, not quite. That is not as dramatic as here because this is life and death. This is the security of your family. This is whether or not you can change jobs. This is whether or not your children will be protected. This is whether or not your parents will be able to afford their prescription drugs, because that is what this legislation enables and gives the freedom to American families to have.

Repeal, we go back into the clutches, the clutches of these bureaucrats spread across the world. In the insurance company, you call for help and you reach somebody in another country, in another time zone with no understanding of the emergency that your family, your child, your parent, your grandparent faces. Nobody wants to go back there, ladies and gentlemen. Nobody. They have been there for 50 years, and health care costs have gone up faster than any other segment in our economy. Faster than anything you can imagine. Faster than a speeding rocket, faster than a speeding airplane. Faster than Superman, health care costs have gone up because of insurance bureaucracies.

Madam Speaker, I rise to join my colleagues to honor those who died and were wounded in Tucson, Arizona this past Saturday. The senseless rampage took the lives of six remarkable people and forever altered the lives of their families, 13 other people who were wounded, and each of their families. This tragedy has touched the soul of our Nation and we will not forget it.

Like my colleagues and Americans throughout our country, I am deeply saddened and

disturbed by the events that took place as our colleague, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, conducted her outdoor constituent town meeting in Tucson. To the families of those who died I offer my heartfelt condolences. And for my colleague, Gabby, as we call her, and her family, and to the other victims and their families, I offer my prayers as they receive urgent medical treatment and begin their recovery.

I share in the comments that so many of my colleagues have already made about Gabby. She has worked hard and contributed much. She is a highly respected colleague and a courageous representative for Arizona and our country. The attack on Congresswoman Giffords and her staff and constituents is deplorable and represents an attack on all Americans.

I also join my colleagues in saluting the heroism of four men and women who subdued the shooter and attended to Gabby immediately after she was shot. These men and women truly made a difference on that Saturday. They deserve our praise and admiration.

Madam Speaker, the responsibility for this tragedy lies with the shooter, someone who had earlier been identified as needing mental health care and who should never have been able to obtain a gun. Thankfully, he is in custody and his fate is now in the hands of our law enforcement and judicial system.

But while he will be tried for his act, this attack has raised in all of us a deep and gnawing question that must be unanswered. How can we improve ourselves after this tragedy?

Everyone who meets Congresswoman Giffords knows she is not an angry woman. She has sought to balance the diverse interests of her district while doing what she believes to be in the best interest of our country. Yet she was attacked, vilified and denounced by extreme political factions who sought to demonize her for what she believed as a member of Congress.

We cannot undo the events of Saturday, January 8, but we can and should commit ourselves to a more responsible level of political discourse in America. I hope we can all learn from the events in Tucson, that in the name of Gabby and all of the victims of this deadly shooting, we can commit ourselves to strengthen our Nation, not fight each other, to be able to disagree with each other without hating or demonizing one another for it.

Madam Speaker, thank you for this opportunity to pay tribute to Congresswoman Giffords, her staff, her constituents, and everyone touched by the tragedy that unfolded on Saturday in Tucson.

``But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.''

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