Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to reintroduce the ``Justice for Wards Cove Act'' to correct a grave injustice against thousands of Asian-American workers that took place over a quarter century ago.

In the 1970s, workers of Filipino, Samoan, Chinese, Japanese and Native American descent traveled north during the summer to work in the fish canneries in Alaska. Management at the Wards Cove Packing Company treated these migrant workers differently from white workers. They were forced to eat in separate dining halls, sleep in separate bunkhouses, and were unable to rise to top-paying positions in the company.

In 1973, two Seattle Filipino labor activists named Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes led several class-action lawsuits on behalf of these Asian-American and Native American cannery workers alleging discrimination in the workplace. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled against the Wards Cove workers, in Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, which became a major impetus for the civil rights community to reverse the tide against employee rights. The result was the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which became the most comprehensive civil rights legislation signed into law since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

However, what most civil rights communities forgot was that in the final hours before passage of the Civil Rights Act, a highly unusual and narrow amendment was inserted by two Senators from Alaska that exempted the Wards Cove workers from the expansive protections against workplace discrimination outlined in the Civil Rights Act. They feared that the Civil Rights Act could be applied retroactively to the workers.

The Senators' amendment was inserted in Section 402(b) of the Civil Rights Act, and its sole target was the Wards Cove workers. To date, the Wards Cove workers remain the only people who have been denied the rights promulgated by the Civil Rights Act of 1991.

Mr. Speaker, while my bill cannot retroactively alter the Supreme Court's ruling or grant retroactive rights for the Wards Cove workers, it does remove Section 402(b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 as a symbolic measure to right the wrong.

This is a legislative fight that I started in 1991, when I first introduced this bill. Each time I introduced this bill, it received bipartisan support but was never voted on the floor of the House of Representatives. In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton wrote a letter of support for my bill, stating, ``It is contrary to all of our ideas to exclude any American from the protection of our civil-rights laws.''

Too often, the struggles of Asian-American and other ethnic minorities do not get the attention they deserve by policymakers and law enforcement officials. This issue is about justice and fairness.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that my colleagues join me in honoring the Wards Cove workers by supporting this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Medical Neutrality Protection Act of 2013, which is an updated version of the bill I introduced in the 112th Congress. I have been encouraged by the tremendous support that this bill received since then, including major human rights advocacy groups, medical professionals, U.S. government officials, and medics living abroad who have been persecuted while serving in times of civil unrest.

Since I first introduced this bill in July 2011, we have heard of widespread cases, particularly in the Middle East, where the independence of physicians and medics was severely hindered. Unfortunately, the situation remains dire. Many have been arrested, detained, interrogated, and even tortured for caring for the wounded. Countries that do this to their medical professionals do not deserve our military assistance.

This bill elevates the protection of medical professionals as a foreign policy priority for the U.S. Government so that countries that violate norms of medical neutrality will no longer be able to receive U.S. military assistance.

I first became aware of this issue back in the 1980s during the civil war in El Salvador. The conflict ended in the early 1990s with over 75,000 people killed, some of whom were medical workers who were caught in combat or working in refugee camps. Then, as now, I was concerned that the United States was not doing enough to stop government forces from harming medical workers, who are some of the only unbiased eyewitnesses that we have on the ground.

Protecting doctors and health care workers is a nonpartisan issue that should get broad support in Congress and our government.

I urge my colleagues to support this measure.

Well, Madam Speaker, it's Thursday. Everybody's going home. Got to have your press release ready.

So here we come. The thirty-seventh time they're going to try and repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Now, you've heard a lot of nonsense already in two speakers, absolute untruths told right here about killing jobs and about rising premiums.

Washington State put out their premiums yesterday, and their premiums for young people are down by 15 percent. All that hyperbole about going up 450 percent, or whatever we hear, is nonsense. It is simply fearmongering and, you know, the deficit comes down, insurance is more affordable and accessible and, at the most, 33 percent have been convinced by this stuff over here.

In my home State, people are ready and willing to do it. Our Governor went out and set it up, and we're going to go and do it.

Now, the only thing the Republicans are angry about is that ObamaCare's going to become the law. It's being implemented. It's going to be in place in October. It drives them nuts that they can't figure a way to stop it.

They've come out here once a month to try and repeal it over and over and over again, and they keep failing. That's pretty close to the definition of mental illness: doing the same thing over and over again and thinking you're going to get a different result. You are not going to get a different result. The fact is that this is about votes. We have a new crop of freshmen who are getting their campaigns ready, and they've got to have that check in the box that says, I voted against ObamaCare. Vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, in light of ongoing budget discussions and damaging sequestration cuts to programs that help our most vulnerable populations, it is time to end the austerity debate. I urge all of my colleagues to read and consider Paul Krugman's New York Times Opinion piece, ``The Story of Our Time.''

Those of us who have spent years arguing against premature

fiscal austerity have just had a good two weeks. Academic

studies that supposedly justified austerity have lost

credibility; hard-liners in the European Commission and

elsewhere have softened their rhetoric. The tone of the

conversation has definitely changed.

My sense, however, is that many people still don't

understand what this is all about. So this seems like a good

time to offer a sort of refresher on the nature of our

economic woes, and why this remains a very bad time for

spending cuts.

Let's start with what may be the most crucial thing to

understand: the economy is not like an individual family.

Families earn what they can, and spend as much as they

think prudent; spending and earning opportunities are two

different things. In the economy as a whole, however, income

and spending are interdependent: my spending is your income,

and your spending is my income. If both of us slash spending

at the same time, both of our incomes will fall too.

And that's what happened after the financial crisis of

2008. Many people suddenly cut spending, either because they

chose to or because their creditors forced them to;

meanwhile, not many people were able or willing to spend

more. The result was a plunge in incomes that also caused a

plunge in employment, creating the depression that persists

to this day.

Why did spending plunge? Mainly because of a burst housing

bubble and an overhang of private-sector debt--but if you ask

me, people talk too much about what went wrong during the

boom years and not enough about what we should be doing now.

For no matter how lurid the excesses of the past, there's no

good reason that we should pay for them with year after year

of mass unemployment.

So what could we do to reduce unemployment? The answer is,

this is a time for above-normal government spending, to

sustain the economy until the private sector is willing to

spend again. The crucial point is that under current

conditions, the government is not, repeat not, in competition

with the private sector. Government spending doesn't divert

resources away from private uses; it puts unemployed

resources to work. Government borrowing doesn't crowd out

private investment; it mobilizes funds that would otherwise

go unused.

Now, just to be clear, this is not a case for more

government spending and larger budget deficits under all

circumstances--and the claim that people like me always want

bigger deficits is just false. For the economy isn't always

like this--in fact, situations like the one we're in are

fairly rare. By all means let's try to reduce deficits and

bring down government indebtedness once normal conditions

return and the economy is no longer depressed. But right now

we're still dealing with the aftermath of a once-in-three-

generations financial crisis. This is no time for austerity.

O.K., I've just given you a story, but why should you

believe it? There are, after all, people who insist that the

real problem is on the economy's supply side: that workers

lack the skills they need, or that unemployment insurance has

destroyed the incentive to work, or that the looming menace

of universal health care is preventing hiring, or whatever.

How do we know that they're wrong?

Well, I could go on at length on this topic, but just look

at the predictions the two sides in this debate have made.

People like me predicted right from the start that large

budget deficits would have little effect on interest rates,

that large-scale ``money printing'' by the Fed (not a good

description of actual Fed policy, but never mind) wouldn't be

inflationary, that austerity policies would lead to terrible

economic downturns. The other side jeered, insisting that

interest rates would skyrocket and that austerity would

actually lead to economic expansion. Ask bond traders, or the

suffering populations of Spain, Portugal and so on, how it

actually turned out.

Is the story really that simple, and would it really be

that easy to end the scourge of unemployment? Yes--but

powerful people don't want to believe it. Some of them have a

visceral sense that suffering is good, that we must pay a

price for past sins (even if the sinners then and the

sufferers now are very different groups of people). Some of

them see the crisis as an opportunity to dismantle the social

safety net. And just about everyone in the policy elite takes

cues from a wealthy minority that isn't actually feeling much

pain.

What has happened now, however, is that the drive for

austerity has lost its intellectual fig leaf, and stands

exposed as the expression of prejudice, opportunism and class

interest it always was. And maybe, just maybe, that sudden

exposure will give us a chance to start doing something about

the depression we're in.

Madam Speaker, we haven't done anything in this House all week, and here we are working on a

plan on how the government can default on its debts. That's what this is really all about.

It reminds me of the derivation of the word ``bedlam.''

Bedlam was a large mental hospital in the middle of London. It was really called ``Bethlehem,'' but people locally called it ``Bedlam.'' This is a policy that came out of bedlam and will create bedlam.

If we don't pay our debts, we are going to create problems in our own country, as well as in the world economic system.

If you want to lose the United States dollar as the currency that is used by the world, start by not paying your debts. Everybody will say, Why do we want a dollar? Those folks don't pay. That's what you're creating--bedlam--here today.

I urge everyone to vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend Denis Hayes and the Bullitt Foundation for developing the world's most environmentally- friendly and self-sustaining buildings right here in Seattle. The Bullitt Center represents a deep commitment to environmental stewardship and redefines our ideas about sustainable development in dense urban areas. By creating the greenest office building on the planet, you have provided the world an example leading the way to our future. The building is an inspiration and represents a milestone in our efforts to leave a smaller carbon footprint for future generations.

Each aspect of the Bullitt Center was meticulously planned and evaluated with its striking technical aspects. From its rainwater cistern and photovoltaic panels to its energy transparency and 250 year life span, the Bullitt Center is and will remain a marked departure from what has been previously achieved in large-scale architecture.

Your vision reveals the environmental innovation that can be attained and the completion of this building draws attention to the viability for such projects. The Bullitt Foundation's pledge to construct a complex with so many far-reaching goals in sustainability reflects its hard work, determination and resolve.

The development of the Bullitt Center stands as an example for Seattle, the United States and beyond as a viable solution to our continued efforts to go green and commit to furthered environmentally sound projects. Through your dedication, conviction and perseverance to establish such a groundbreaking commercial workspace you have set a new standard of achievement for environmental sustainability.

Thank you very much, Denny.

Although it makes me sad for the reason we are speaking here today, I am honored to say a few words about my friend, Governor Booth Gardner.

A lot of people will remember us as adversaries, and that's true for a brief time. We ran against each other for Governor in 1984, and I lost. Now, it might come as a surprise to you, but I didn't particularly like losing. And so after the election, I went off to a place I had up in the San Juan Islands to lick my wounds on Lopez Island. It's exactly there where Booth found me a few days later. He called and said, I'm going to be up in the area. I have a place over on Shaw Island, and I'll come over and see you. And so he drove his boat over and we met.

I had a 40-acre farm, and we walked around the property four times, talking about our visions, about the State, about the election, about the campaign, and where we wanted the State

to go, because Booth and I both loved the State of Washington. By the time we landed on my front doorstep, we'd solved all of Washington's problems.

Booth had a unique characteristic which I think Denny alluded to, and that is we had a Senator in the State by the name of Warren Magnuson who used to say you can get a lot of things done if you don't care who gets the credit for them. Booth really did believe that.

I'd been working on a basic health plan for the working poor in the State for a number of years before he got to be Governor, and I hadn't been able to get it through the Republican Governor and the Republicans in the legislature. It was my passion project: giving the poor who fell outside of Medicaid but were working an opportunity to buy into the health care system in some way. It was one of those gaps between what the Federal Government did and what the private insurers and the employers were doing, and there were lots of people who were working full time but couldn't get health care.

So we put together this program. He told me that day when we were talking around that he would do everything he could to get it passed, and he kept his word--also unusual in politicians. He put everything he had into it. And when it was finished, he signed it in the middle of my district in a little clinic called Country Doctor in the middle of the city on Capitol Hill.

That bill has helped the working poor of Washington all over the State get medical care and is one of the first public options. It's so good for the State of Washington that Senator Cantwell took it and put it into the Affordable Care Act. It's now in the blueprint for the safety net that we are developing in this session of Congress.

So Booth lived on beyond his days. His ideas, his willingness to make something happen, carried into the future, and he never walked around telling anybody about it, just did it. That walk with me, a couple of rivals, was really the beginning of it all.

It wasn't only health care. I was the Ways and Means chairman in the Senate, so I had a lot to do with how the budget got put together. But it doesn't matter if you're the Ways and Means chairman or not, if the Governor won't sign it, you can't get it passed. He and I had lots of talks.

He was willing to sign a bill that created the largest settlement for women workers in this country under equal pay for equal work. He signed it after a lawsuit that the State had lost, and I convinced him that we ought to settle the case and let women move ahead in the workplace, and Booth said, Good idea.

Finding a partner like Booth, one who's willing to get past politics and jump in the deep end with you on some issues that weren't exactly sort of centrist--sometimes he took some real risks--is not a very common thing in politics. But with Booth it was common. The best interests of the State always came first.

Although, occasionally I would go over to his office to find him and they would say, well, he's gone. Well, where is he? Well, he's gone up to coach his girls soccer team in Tacoma.

He had all kinds of interests and all kinds of concerns about kids, and he was willing to put everything he had into it, both in the office and out of the office.

Now, some of his most important work, in my view, and what shows his real character and why I feel bad today, is that when he left the Governor's mansion, he was in apparently good shape, as far as we knew; went off to Geneva to work for the GATT trade organization, and while he was over there, the diagnosis was made of Parkinsonism.

Parkinsonism is a very, very difficult disease to cope with. Your mind is active, everything is active; your body just won't cooperate. And Booth had this disease and struggled with it for 20 years, as you've heard.

Now, death is a frightening thing for all of us to think about. None of us want to think about death. It's not something that's usual table conversation or much of a conversation out here on the floor. But Booth was willing to look at it straight on, and he was willing to talk about it in a way that few other people were.

He wanted to talk about what people's options were; and he saw the suffering, he was going through it himself, and felt that everyone should have the right to choose how they want to end their life. In a final directive, when you go into the hospital, you tell them whether you want them to resuscitate you or not. All of that, he looked at all of that.

And the one thing that was obvious to him was that there comes a time when there is no hope, and there is no question when it's going to happen; and people ought to have the right to make their own decision at that point. It's called death with dignity.

Now, he took that issue on. Here's a man who's struggling with a debilitating disease of his own, no political advantage whatsoever in doing it, none. But he came and spent his time. He was sick; it was hard for him to get up and talk. Sometimes he could only talk a few sentences and then someone else would have to take the podium because he was unable to continue.

There weren't any donors watching. There was no election to be prepared for. It wasn't even an issue that affected him directly, because the requirement of the law was that you had to have two doctors say that you had only 6 months to live, and with Parkinsonism, it's not possible for any physician to say that. So it wasn't something he was doing for himself. It was because he thought it was right for the people of the State of Washington.

You rarely find someone with that ability to get out of their own self-interest. He just believed in it. He believed that it was best for the people of Washington, and he wasn't going to let his sickness or anything else stop him from getting it done, and it passed by about a 54 percent majority.

Booth was a great man. They say people are--they pass twice, once when they die, and once when people stop telling stories about him. The stories will never stop about Booth. I could stand up here and tell them for a long time.

But he was a great man. He was a good Governor, he was a good father, he was a good husband, and he was my partner and my friend, and I'll miss him very much.

Rest in peace, Booth.

I yield now to Doc Hastings, from Pasco, Washington.

Mr. Speaker, it is widely accepted, on both sides of the aisle in both the House and Senate, that health care costs are the single major driver of our deficit and that we need better quality health care at lower costs--for our citizens and for our economy. When it comes to implementing carefully crafted gainsharing programs, existing law is in the way. To meet the three goals of (1) decreasing costs, (2) improving quality, and (3) not compromising access to health care services, the ``Improved Health Care at Lower Cost Act of 2013'' (the ``Act'') will require the OIG and CMS to issue regulations that define standards for gainsharing and similar arrangements that will be protected under the anti-fraud laws. The requirements that federal regulators set should include a primary emphasis on quality. OIG has vast experience in approving shared savings programs where the shared savings payment to physicians by the hospital was conditioned upon meeting certain quality metrics. The idea that shared savings payments should take quality into account seems obvious to me; no one should be permitted to share in savings that the hospital accrues without demonstrating that quality either improved, or at a minimum, was not adversely impacted by such arrangements. I am assuming that regulators will draw upon their vast experience with these programs and put in place sufficient protections to guard against fraud, waste, and abuse. Such protections may include requirements around quality; comparisons against historical data; a ceiling on savings that will inure to any given physician; and a requirement that arrangements be reduced to writing to ensure that it easier to identify arrangements that do not comply with the requirements that CMS and OIG set through rulemaking.

The Act will allow hospitals and physicians to better align incentives in order to decrease health care costs through allowing certain ``gainsharing'' arrangements. The term ``gainsharing'' refers to arrangements where hospitals share with physicians any reduction in the hospital's costs for patient care that the hospital gets as a result of the efforts of the physician. Currently, gainsharing arrangements are prohibited under several anti-fraud laws. First, the federal Civil Monetary Penalty statute prevents hospitals and physicians from engaging in ``gainsharing'' arrangements. Second, the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services (``OIG'') has indicated that gainsharing arrangements may implicate the federal Anti-Kickback law. Finally, gainsharing arrangements may be prohibited by the Physician Self-Referral law. Because of the potential legal implications, hospitals and physicians have been reluctant to participate in gainsharing arrangements for fear of prosecution under all of these laws or even under the False Claims Act.

Notwithstanding existing law, the government has acknowledged that there is potential benefit associated with gainsharing arrangements. In its 1999 guidance, the OIG said:

[t]he OIG recognizes that hospitals have a legitimate

interest in enlisting physicians in their efforts to

eliminate unnecessary costs. Savings that do not affect the

quality of patient care may be generated in many ways[.]

Achieving these savings may require substantial effort on the

part of the participating physicians. Obviously, a reduction

in health care costs that does not adversely affect the

quality of the health care provided to patients is in the

best interest of the nation's health care system [emphasis

supplied].

Then, in 2005, MedPAC issued a recommendation in its Report to Congress that hospitals and physicians be permitted to engage in gainsharing arrangements. In this report, MedPAC stated that:

[t]he Commission believes that gainsharing arrangements

have the potential to improve patient care and reduce

hospital costs as long as safeguards are in place to minimize

the undesirable incentives. . . Due to the potential for

gainsharing arrangements to encourage physician and hospital

cooperation to lower costs and improve care, the Congress

should provide the Secretary with the authority to allow and

regulate these arrangements. The Secretary should develop

rules that allow gainsharing arrangements as long as

safeguards exist to ensure that cost-saving measures do not

reduce quality or inappropriately influence physician

referrals [emphasis supplied].

Finally, in 2008, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (``CMS'') issued a proposed rule that would have created an exception under the Physician Self-Referral law to protect certain ``shared savings and incentive payment programs.'' In the preamble to the proposed rule, CMS stated the following:

[s]hared savings programs have been recognized by

stakeholders as an effective means of controlling costs,

improving efficiency, and promoting quality in the delivery

of health care services. Government stakeholders have

recognized similar potential benefits when shared savings

programs are properly structured to ensure compliance with

Federal health care program requirements. Empirical evidence

suggests that the goal of patient care quality maintenance or

improvement can be achieved through a properly-designed

shared savings program.

The rule was never finalized. However, based upon the assertions of OIG, MedPAC, and CMS, the evidence seems clear and convincing: properly structured gainsharing programs show substantial potential in reducing

costs by aligning incentives between hospitals and physicians to make cost-saving improvements to healthcare delivery.

In sum, the Act strikes the right balance between the need for innovation in promoting cost savings efforts and the need to guard against waste, fraud, and abuse. CMS and OIG can structure the requirements that hospital-physician arrangements must meet in a way that ensures federal health care programs will be protected from fraud, waste, and abuse. Federal regulators have been overseeing these arrangements for nearly a decade--either through demonstration authority or through the advisory opinion process--I am confident that this legislation holds genuine promise for being a ``game changer'' in getting us towards the goal of better care at a lower cost without compromising access to quality health care services.

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to recognize one of the finest committee staff members to have worked for me, the Ways and Means Committee and the U.S. House of Representatives. Sonja Nesbit joined the House staff over 11 years ago and has made an enormous difference for millions of Americans since the day she arrived. Now she is moving on to the Department of Health and Human Services to continue her work on behalf of the nation's poor, and I want to thank her for her accomplishments, her ongoing dedication to this institution, and for her service to the American people.

In Congress Sonja was at the center of our efforts to restructure the national foster care system, a reform that has helped innumerable young people get a better shot at finding a good family and personal and professional success. Sonja also worked tirelessly on the creation of the home visitation program in the Affordable Care Act that promotes home visits for at-risk children.

Sonja is a leading expert in her field and is, really, the ideal public servant. She gave thoughtful advice and counsel, helping myself and other members do the right thing for the poor and needy in this country. She was patient, helpful, and always looking for policy that would reflect the values of justice and equality. This is what the American people need in a public servant and in congressional staff.

Now Sonja is moving on to work in the Department of Health and Human Services where she'll continue her work on making the country's social safety net just and strong.

We will all miss her. I congratulate Sonja on her new position, thank her for her good work, and wish her the best of luck at HHS.

Mr. Speaker, after a painful decade of war, the United States needs to take the time to regain its equilibrium and find peace. Without a formal process for acknowledging the physical and psychological costs of war, our collective trauma can undermine our country for decades.

As Ernest Hemingway wrote:

The killing is necessary, I know, but still the doing of it

is very bad for a man, and I think that, after all this is

over and we have won the war, there must be a penance of some

kind for the cleansing of us all.

War involves staggering amounts of loss and--equally important--of killing. Despite great efforts by our soldiers to protect civilians, an overwhelming majority of casualties in modern war are innocent people. This incurs a deep spiritual and emotional cost to those who witness it and are sometimes responsible for it. Many initiatives exist that provide help for the men and women who have fought, but we must go beyond the policy initiatives. Soldiers returning from war need to share their experiences and unburden their souls.

Our soldiers volunteered to serve their country in war, but they did not volunteer to take over the entire moral burden that comes with it. Our Nation needs to discuss the complicated spiritual and emotional obstacles faced by any society that has waged war. This is not a partisan debate about the rightness or wrongness of war. This is a national effort to take care of our soldiers by publicly sharing some of their burdens. We must be willing to explore the responsibility that comes with asking them to fight.

In preindustrial societies, leaders were intimately involved in war, itself--often with a sword in hand--and religious and spiritual leaders were fully engaged in the aftermath. Rituals and ceremonies decommissioned the fighters and made the entire community conscious of the sacrifice. These processes are missing today, and they remain vitally important. The agony suffered by our veterans is vivid testimony: 22 veterans commit suicide every day while an average of almost one active duty soldier a day took his or her life in 2012. That's higher than in combat. Many other soldiers suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder, become addicted to drugs and alcohol, or fall into violence and prison.

If a society fails to address these emotional and moral issues publicly, soldiers and vets will struggle with them privately. Many of them will lose that struggle and leave us all affected by their loss.

The Nation requires concrete ways to address the wounds of the war. We need a national day of solemn ceremonies that acknowledge the costs in lives, trauma, lost limbs, families, a renewed commitment to the social and health issues of veterans, a discussion about national service for young, nonmilitary Americans, and a systematic interaction between combat veterans and civilians.

I worked with Karl Marlantes, who wrote the book ``What It Is Like to Go to War,'' and with Sebastian Junger, who did the documentary called ``Restrepo,'' which was about Afghanistan, in order to create this bill that would address these issues. We propose a commission to examine and articulate the spiritual challenges and to help heal the psychological wounds faced by a Nation emerging from a decade of war.

We call on the President, on the Senate majority and minority leaders, and on the House Speaker and minority leader to appoint a group of distinguished citizens to explore ways to heal this society. The committee should include veterans, spiritual leaders, psychologists, journalists, maybe even a poet. It should strive to reach beyond the politics of war and into the true moral and emotional consequences that violence always incurs. It may be hard for us, but we must do it if we are to remain a humane society.

Some see things as they are and ask why. I dream of things as they never

were. The question we must ask now is: Why can't we do for our soldiers what needs to be done? They need to be taken home and received and understood by the populace for what they went and did for us.

Mr. Chairman, the Back to Work budget is the first budget that recognizes the truth about our so-called ``deficit crisis'': we don't have one. Speaker Boehner and Chairman Ryan went on television on Sunday and said that there is no immediate crisis, that it is the unemployment numbers we should be worried about.

Now is not the time for austerity. It is the time for the government to invest where the private sector won't. They're sitting on their money, waiting. This is the time to bolster our new and growing industries, like biomedical

research and technology. Now is the time to rebuild our infrastructure. Creating jobs, as this budget does, is the only way we will become self-sustaining. With lower unemployment, fewer people need public assistance, and more people pay taxes. That's how you shrink the deficit. That's fiscal responsibility.

My Republican colleagues love to talk about balancing household budgets. Well, I don't know any American family that would use its children's lunch money to pay down its credit cards, and that's what they're proposing in the Ryan budget. Most families choose to invest in college educations, health care and retirements, trading current debt for future returns.

It's time to choose what kind of country we're going to live in. Do we grow with education, investments and a strong social safety net; or do we cut our way to higher unemployment, instability, and class divide?

Mr. Speaker, although I rise to honor the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, what I really want to do today is ask: Why? Ten years ago, I stood on this floor and said we were entering a war under false pretenses. No weapons of mass destruction later, I have never been so sad as to be right.

We took out Saddam Hussein with as much forethought as we gave to arming him just a few years earlier. We scooped him out of office and thought a new democracy would suddenly flower in its place.

Last week, Robert Dreyfuss wrote an article in The Nation that I would like to enter into the Congressional Record. He explains that the CIA is currently training Syrian rebels, some of whom have Sunni fundamentalist ties, at the same time that it is fighting Sunni rebels in Iraq. Recently, dozens of Syrian soldiers fled to Iraq, only to be killed by Iraqi Sunnis. He asked the question:

When will the United States learn that it doesn't know

enough about the Middle East to go charging in there,

seemingly without a clue about what it all means?

So here we are: 10 years of neoconservative hawks preaching that we can franchise American democracy and freedom; 10 years of quicksand diplomacy; 10 years of wrong answers, and we still don't know the question.

What has been the cost of all of this? And I don't mean financially. Because, yes, we've spent probably a trillion or more on this war, or will. Yes, as we speak, we are cutting food assistance to kids in this country and funding for R&D that would drive our economy. But we can't appropriate a sum of money to fix the real cost of Iraq. We can't pay back the lives of 4,486 American men and women who have died there, or the roughly 2,000 broken soldiers who came home and took their own lives.

The wounded--physically and mentally. The soldiers who didn't know how not to be a soldier. The families living with a hole in their hearts, and the families living with someone they no longer recognize. Ten years of young men and women leaving their families, living in hell, and coming home to unemployment and to homelessness. To a country that has forgotten it's at war at all. To a country that seems to think a yellow ribbon magnet on their bumper is the only kind of support that our troops need.

And the cost in Iraq? Untold deaths. Let me rephrase that: unknown deaths. We can only guess at the destruction that we have left in our wake: 115,000 Iraqis? 600,000? You can find a number. What was the long-term impact of that on their environment, water, and health. What happens when someone lives in constant fear of becoming collateral damage?

Today, Iraq is a sad shadow of a society that once boasted the best infrastructure in the region. Instability and violence fester on this very day, and now it teeters on the brink of an inevitable civil war.

This is the legacy of our last 10 years, and I still don't understand why. I hope this anniversary will remind us that a whole new generation of veterans are waiting to help reintegrate into civilian life. I believe it's time to elevate our level of commitment to these veterans.

I am introducing a bill to create a commission on veterans care to investigate what we as a society can do to help our men and women come home. I hope it will remind us that no lives, regardless of nationality, should be taken lightly. I hope it will remind us as to why the next time. And I hope it won't take another war to get that answer.

What, really, could be more bizarre than this: as the United States ramps up its aid to Syria's ragtag rebels, whose backbone is comprised of radical Islamists and Sunni fundamentalists, some with ties to Al Qaeda, the CIA is busily engaged in combat inside Iraq with the very same radical Islamists and Sunni fundamentalists, some with ties to Al Qaeda.

Yep, that's right.

We're backing the same guys in Syria that we're fighting in Iraq.

Of course, we shouldn't be involved in Iraq in any way, shape or form, but try telling that to the CIA. According to the Wall Street Journal:

The Central Intelligence Agency is ramping up support to

elite Iraqi antiterrorism units to better fight al Qaeda

affiliates, amid alarm in Washington about spillover from the

civil war in neighboring Syria, according to US officials.

The stepped-up mission expands a covert US presence on the

edges of the two-year-old Syrian conflict, at a time of

American concerns about the growing power of extremists in

the Syrian rebellion.

The Journal notes that this isn't an accident. It was the result of a carefully thought-out White House decision:

In a series of secret decisions from 2011 to late 2012, the

White House directed the CIA to provide support to Iraq's

Counterterrorism Service, or CTS, a force that reports

directly to Iraqi Prime Minister Nourial-Maliki, officials

said.

The CIA has since ramped up its work with the CTS--taking control of a mission long run by the U.S. military, according to administration and defense officials. For years, U.S. special-operations forces worked with CTS against al Qaeda in Iraq. But the military's role has dwindled since U.S. troops pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.

The paradox, obviously, is that Maliki, the guy we're helping in Iraq, is an ally of Iran's and is sympathetic to President Assad of Syria. That's because were the Sunni-led rebels in Syria to seize Damascus and topple Assad, they'd turn their wrath next door against the Shiite-led Maliki regime, and funnel weapons and fighters to support the Sunni-led rebels in Iraq.

That's not stopping the United States, though, from boosting the fortunes of the Syrian rebels by funneling aid and support to them and coordinating the flow of weapons from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Meanwhile, as The New York Times has been reporting for a while, the same CIA that is trying to squash the Sunni rebels in Iraq is actually training Sunni rebels in a secret program in Jordan, to fight in Syria.

Oddly enough, the rest of the media hasn't picked up on the Times reports on the CIA training efforts in Jordan, and the Times itself hasn't elaborated. How many gangsters are is the CIA training in Jordan? What are they doing?

It all comes together in the recent reports that dozens of Syrian soldiers, loyal to Assad, who fled into Iraq recently, were then massacred by Iraqi Sunni crazies.

We blundered, bungling, into Iraq in 2003 without knowing really a damn thing about the country we invaded. When will the United States learn that it doesn't know enough about the Middle East to go charging in there with guns, seemingly without a clue about what it all means?

Mr. Chairman, you've got to ask yourself what we're doing here today. We're fearmongering again. We spent last week, we spent the last campaign, we spent the last number of years really presenting to Americans that we're in imminent doom, and gloom is coming to America. We're going to be the next Spain, we're going to be the next Italy, the next Greece and probably tomorrow the next Cyprus.

Our debt is so bad, we're told, that we have to take food out of the mouths of children through the nutrition program and send seniors out with vouchers to take care of their Medicare. And then this weekend, an epiphany occurred. Speaker Boehner came on television and told the American people, ``we do not--we do not have an immediate debt crisis.'' And Mr. Ryan, the chairman, was asked, and he agreed.

They finally told the truth. This is not about debt. If the Speaker and Mr. Ryan are right, why are they feeding us this Austerity Kool-Aid all the time? Why are they sabotaging the economy by throwing hundreds of thousands of jobs away in the sequestration? Why are they stunting our future by cutting the legs off our R&D programs and the National Institutes of Health? Why are they asking seniors, kids, the sick and the poor to go without health care and food security to pay for a fantasy crisis?

Why? Because they have needed an excuse to do what they've been attempting for generations to do, and that is disable the safety net; to get rid of Social Security, to get rid of Medicare, to get rid of unemployment, and to get rid of everything that makes a social safety net in a civil society. This charade is built on the fundamental deception that we are on the brink of an economic apocalypse so that politicians can wipe out the programs that people need so that they can give tax breaks to the people at the top.

The Speaker knows it, Mr. Ryan knows it, and it's about time the American people know it. You need not be afraid. Vote ``no.''

Madam Speaker, I rise to talk about the health insurance industry and its role in our greatest national achievement: full implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

In the last few weeks, insurance companies, companies that reported $12.7 billion in profits, had been running a scare campaign arguing that premiums will increase later in the year. They tell us that when they roll out their 2014 health care coverage plans, they will increase premiums unless we weaken the Affordable Care Act's key consumer protections.

The insurance companies didn't get 100 percent of what they wanted, but they got a lot. They blocked the public option, secured an individual mandate guaranteeing that 30 million Americans soon will be customers. That's one

of the most successful lobbying experiments I've ever seen.

But now that we are just a few months away from full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the health industry is launching what The Washington Post calls ``an all-out, last-ditch effort to shield themselves from the blame'' for the rate increases that they will impose. Unless they are allowed to charge significantly more money, they tell us, the whole system will collapse.

Now, this is perplexing. We made every effort to address the concerns of the industry when we developed this landmark legislation. It's also deeply troubling that the industry that will gain so much from health reform is now engaging in a misleading PR campaign against it. Despite unprecedented profits and surplus cash reserves, it is deliberately undermining the law. It already succeeded in shaping its benefits.

So let's take a careful look at their claims. For years, companies have offered healthy young adults junk health insurance at cut-rate prices: plans with sky-high deductibles and lifetime limits that didn't cover much. For $100 a month, you could get a plan that offered practically no useful coverage.

Meanwhile, older people with escalating health care costs were stuck with crippling bills or locked out of the market altogether. Across the board, plans dropped consumers, coverage changed without warning, and people of all ages went without care. ObamaCare will finally put a stop to these abuses.

With better plans with real benefits costs, more than the meager plans marketed by the industry to young people, the stability and affordability will win out in the long run. There are no more games. Instead of avoiding risk, the industry will have to manage it.

ObamaCare will financially help the large majority of healthy young consumers. In fact, 90 percent of the currently uninsured adults under 30 will be eligible for subsidized coverage. Additionally, increased transparency and competition will force rates to drop further, along with the growing pool of young participants who are cheaper to cover. We did all this in my home State of Washington years ago, so I know it can be done.

For the first time, average Americans not insured through a job will get health insurance without having insurance that won't drop you when you're sick, insurance that won't discriminate against women, insurance that won't waste your money on excessive marketing, and will actually cover needed care. These are the crucial consumer protections we fought and got.

Which is the heavier price: an extra $20 a month for a young person with a healthy income to have reliable insurance or bankrupting an uninsured family? Meeting the needs of the Nation and preserving the well-being of our population is healthiest for all.

So I'm calling on the health insurance industry to be team players and to be good corporate citizens. They have a lot riding on this roll- out, at least as much as the Obama administration and the Congress. We need to work together, not against each other. We have to make this advance work.

We don't need to have a scare campaign on television telling people that if ObamaCare goes in, your premiums are going to go up, and it's his fault. They're the ones with the profits, they're the ones with the reserves, they're the ones that are raising the prices.

They have to be faced with that, Madam Speaker, because otherwise the public is going to be confused. They tried to confuse people all through the establishment of the Affordable Care Act. They didn't succeed. And, in fact, when they used it in the campaign, the people said, do you know what, we like Obama, we like what he did, we want it to happen. So the insurance companies had to go back to the trenches and figure out a way to confuse the American people. Stop it, insurance industry.