Joe Barton

Mr. Speaker, I was in Senate Chamber trying to prevent a hold on H.R. 7217. I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 434.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 7217) to amend title XIX of the Social Security Act to provide States with the option of providing coordinated care for children with complex medical conditions through a health home, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials in the Record on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today, the culmination of a 6-year journey. The IMPROVE Act is a combination of three bills. One bill is a bill that allows Medicare to follow the patient; another bill is a bill for spousal impoverishment, to prevent that; and the third bill, and the primary bill in this package, is a bill that we call the ACE Kids Act.

Mr. Speaker, there are, luckily, not a large number, about 2 million children in this country, who have multiple complex medical conditions that are life-threatening. These are the sickest of the sick of our young population. About 500,000 of these children are Medicaid eligible. In other words, their families qualify for low-income health insurance called Medicaid.

Mr. Speaker, under current law, the parents of these children have to create the healthcare network on a case-by-case basis for their child. They also cannot seek healthcare across State lines that is covered by Medicaid. So current law makes it very difficult on these sickest-of- the-sick children.

The ACE Kids Act changes that, Mr. Speaker. It allows the creation of a medical home that can cross State lines, that can coordinate care.

It is optional. The States do not have to participate in this program. The parents of the child do not have to participate in this program. But if they do wish to participate, you create a health home for the child wherein everything is coordinated.

In the pilot programs that have been run using this model, you get better quality healthcare at lower cost. We think the pilot programs show that, over time, if we adopt this model and if the States adopt it and the families adopt it, we get a lot better healthcare at a lower cost. So this is a win-win, Mr. Speaker.

As I said, we have worked on this for 6 years. It is a bipartisan bill. In the last Congress, we had a majority of the Congress that sponsored the bill. In this Congress, we have more than 130 cosponsors on a bipartisan basis.

We have had a hearing in the committee of jurisdiction, the Committee on Energy and Commerce. We have had a markup in subcommittee. We have had a markup in full committee. Now, Mr. Speaker, we are bringing it to the floor.

We hope the House, later today, will vote affirmatively to pass this on suspension and send it to the Senate. We have preconferenced it with the Senate, and we have every reason to believe, if the House passes it today, the Senate will take it up expeditiously and pass it, and this is a bill that will become law.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), who is the current chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, before I yield to Dr. Burgess, I echo what Congresswoman Castor just said about the staffs that have worked so hard. We couldn't have done this bill without all the individuals she just named.

I also thank her. When she said I have been tireless, she makes me look like a snail, and she is the rabbit working every day to make this possible.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), the distinguished subcommittee chairman of the Health Subcommittee, my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Michigan for her kind words. I appreciate the nice gift I got yesterday from her and her husband, his new book, ``The Dean.'' I look forward to reading it over Christmas.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Guthrie).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), the former full committee chairman and the current subcommittee chairman of the Energy Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter), a strong supporter.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Herrera Beutler), one of the tireless supporters of this bill from day one, who herself has a medically complex special needs child, who went through the nightmare of having to create her own network for her child, and who has been a cosponsor since day one.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Zeldin).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

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

Mr. Speaker, before I close, I want to set the record straight on one thing. There has been a report that this bill, the ACE Kids Act, expands Medicaid. That is factually incorrect.

The children that qualify for the ACE Kids Act are already covered by Medicaid.

There is no expansion. We do not create a new program. We do not expand an existing program. We do not change the definitions.

We simply make it possible, if this bill becomes law, for parents of children that qualify and that are already covered under Medicaid, they can choose a healthcare home for their child, and that healthcare home can cross State lines. But as Dr. Burgess pointed out, it is not coercive. The States don't have to participate in the program, the families don't have to participate in the program. It is all voluntary. But the pilot programs that have been done on this model, they save money and they give better care. It has been proven.

CBO has scored this over time that it saves money, but we put pay- fors in the bill. If it did cost some extra money, it would be paid for. There is a 2-quarter, 6-month increase in the FMAP, the Federal matching that the Federal Government gives to States that choose to participate. I think it is about 15 percent extra money for 6 months. That is the only cost.

Now, to close, I am going to read a list, and Congresswoman Castor read a lot of these, but these are the national groups that support our bill: the Adult Congenital Heart Association, America's Essential Hospitals, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, American Board of Pediatrics, American College of Cardiology, American College of Surgeons, American Heart Association, American Psychological Association, American Society of Echocardiography, American Thoracic Society, Amicus Therapeutics, Association of American Medical Colleges, Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs, Autism Society, Autism Speaks, ChildServe, Children's Cause for Cancer Advocacy, Children's Hospital Association, Epilepsy Foundation, Family Voices, Foundation to Eradicate Duchenne, International Pediatric Rehabilitation Collaborative, March of Dimes, Mended Little Hearts, MomsRising, National Association for Children's Behavioral Health. There are about seven or ten more.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the staff, especially Krista Rosenthall, Jeannine Bender, committee staff Caleb Graff, Josh Trent, and Ryan Long. And, again, I thank Kathy Castor and Gene Green.

Mr. Speaker, this has been a bipartisan effort. I ask for a strong ``yea'' vote.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, before Congressman Hensarling leaves, I just want to commend him for his service and tell him what a privilege it has been for me to serve with him and to know him as a friend. We are both retiring, and we are both, so far as I know, going to move home to Texas. And if we don't see each other anyplace else, we will see each other at some Texas A&M football games. So I thank my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, in January of 1985, at the ripe old age of 34, I stood right here in the well of the House with my 2-year-old daughter, Kristin, in my left arm, held up my right hand, and took the oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to the best of my ability. I was one of 43, I believe, of that year's freshmen. I think we had a little over 30 Republicans and a dozen or more Democrats.

As soon as I took the oath, I walked over to the hopper--and, yes, there really is a little wooden hopper here in the well of the House, as I look out, on the right-hand side, as the audience looks in, on the left-hand side--and I dropped the Barton Tax Limitation/Balanced Budget Amendment into the hopper.

That constitutional amendment in 1995 was the number one item in the Contract with America, which, when the Republicans took over the House majority for the first time since 1954, we voted on this same floor the first day that we were in session in January of 1995 on my amendment. It failed. It didn't get the two-thirds vote necessary.

We stripped out the tax limitation requirement and brought it back up for a vote, and it did pass by a two-thirds margin. That amendment went to the Senate, and it failed by one vote in the Senate.

Since that day in January, Mr. Speaker, in 1985, as I stand here on the

House floor tonight, I have voted over 19,700 times on behalf of the people of the Sixth District of Texas. I have an attendance record of 94 percent. I have had a large number of bills that I sponsored become law. I will talk about some of those in a minute.

In this current House, in the 115th Congress, I am number eight in seniority. There are four Republicans ahead of me and, I guess, three Democrats. In the all-time history of the House of Representatives, the House historian is not sure where I stand seniority-wise, but I am in the top 100.

In the Texas delegation, we have had about 250 Congressmen represent the great State of Texas, and I am tied for eighth place in seniority in Texas. The folks ahead of me are an all-star list of former Congressmen: Sam Rayburn, who was Speaker of the House; Wright Patman, who was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee; George Mahon, who was chairman of the Appropriations Committee; Bob Poage, who was chairman of the Agriculture Committee; Jack Brooks, who chaired the Judiciary Committee; Henry Gonzalez, who chaired the Banking Committee; and Jim Wright, who was majority leader and Speaker of the House. That is not bad company, Mr. Speaker, for service from Texas.

Some of the bills that I am proud of that have become law that I was the leader on or the chief sponsor of, we started with the Tax Limitation/Balanced Budget Amendment. That did not become law, but it did pass the House. It did go to the Senate, and it did fail in the Senate by one vote.

I sponsored a bill that reformed the National Institutes of Health. That was the last bill that passed the House and Senate in December of 2006. In January of 2007, the Democrats took the House back, and Congresswoman Pelosi of California became Speaker. Then-Speaker Denny Hastert kept the House floor open until, I believe, 3 o'clock in the morning so that my NIH bill could clear the Senate and come back.

That NIH bill created a common fund that has been utilized to form some of the cutting-edge research that is now bearing fruit. The immune cell therapy that is helping in some cases cure cancer is one result of that. Some of the stem cell research that is going on is another. I am very proud of that NIH bill.

We passed an FDA reform bill that, again, has helped reduce time to bring new drugs to market. It has cut some of the red tape in getting new drugs and medical devices approved by the FDA.

In the energy sector, as a young Congressman, I sponsored a bill to decontrol wellhead prices of natural gas. That bill was signed into law as a part of a larger bill signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, who just passed away.

In 2005, I was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and I led the effort to pass what was called the Energy Policy Act of 2005. That bill included a reform in the review of import-export facilities, which we are now using to permit LNG facilities to export our natural gas overseas.

That bill also had a number of authorizations for renewable fuels and alternatives that have led to wind energy becoming a significant factor in this country and solar power becoming a significant factor in this country.

It authorized some subsidies and protections for corn-grown ethanol, and that has led to the ethanol industry becoming a significant factor in some parts of the country.

It also protected hydraulic fracturing from Federal EPA jurisdiction except in a few limited circumstances. That one thing, if we hadn't done anything else, has led to the boon in oil and natural gas production in this country that is the envy of the world.

Three years ago, with Congressman Henry Cuellar, my good Democratic friend from Laredo, we sponsored and passed the bill that led to the repeal of the ban on crude oil exports, Mr. Speaker.

At the time, people kind of pooh-poohed that bill, but as I stand here on the House floor this evening in this month of December 2018, there are going to be days this month that we export more crude oil than we import, and that is a huge, huge accomplishment, and we are doing it based on market principles.

The U.S. is now the number one producer of crude oil in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia. We are producing in the neighborhood of 12 million barrels of oil per day, and that number is going to go up. Literally, the sky is the limit.

The Lord has blessed the United States of America with great natural resources, and with the energy legislation that I have helped to lead the fight on and helped to get passed, we have the human resources and the capital resources and the natural resources so that the United States is going to be the leader in energy production and energy innovation for the foreseeable future, for the next 40, 50, 60 years, and I am very proud of that, Mr. Speaker.

So I could talk for quite some time, Mr. Speaker, about my legislative accomplishments, but you really don't run for Congress just to legislate. This is the people's House. You are expected to be an ombudsman for the people you represent, in my case, the Sixth District of Texas, which has changed because of redistricting three times since I have been elected, but the core is kind of south central Texas: Ellis County, Navarro County, Tarrant County, and at various times we have gone as far south as Montgomery County. I have gone up into Tarrant and Parker County to the west, and Hood County and Hill County. As it is currently configured, there are a little over 600,000 people.

When you run for Congress, Mr. Speaker, you really run because you want to help people. You want to be their spokesperson on the House floor, but also with the bureaucracy, with the executive branch, and in some cases with the private sector to make sure that they get a fair shake.

In any given year, we have over 1,000 pending cases in the district and a success rate of around 80 percent, but some of these cases stand out more than others, and I want to give you a few.

As a young Congressman back in the late 1980s, we still got a lot of what I call real-mail letters, handwritten letters from people. One night I was in my office in Longworth going through the mail and jotting down responses or looking at draft responses that my staff had prepared, I came across a letter from an 11-year-old boy, Mr. Speaker, in Burleson, Texas. His name was Garrett Roper--Garrett Roper, 11 years old.

I am going to paraphrase his letter, but it was:

Dear Congressman Barton: My name is Garrett Roper. I am 11 years old. I live in Burleson, Texas. I had a good friend, Adam Settle, who was also 11. He was riding a three-wheel ATV on his grandparents' farm, and it flipped over, crushed his chest, and killed him. What are you going to do about that, Congressman? What can you do?

I thought about it and I thought, I don't know that I can do anything about it. But he had a phone number in his letter. Every Congressman has a phone on his desk, and I picked up the phone on my desk and dialed the number in Burleson, Texas. It was probably about 9 o'clock at night.

In any event, the little boy's mother answered the phone. I said: I am Congressman Joe Barton. I am calling from Washington, D.C. Could I talk to Garrett Roper?

And she said: You are who?

And I said: I am Congressman Joe Barton.

And she said: Are you sure?

And I said: Yes, ma'am. This isn't a joke.

She said: Well, he is in the bathtub.

I said: Well, I hate to bother him, but could you ask him to come out of the tub and talk to me?

And she did. He came on the phone. I identified myself and I said: Did you write me a letter?

And he said: Oh, yes, I did.

And I said: Well, I am here to tell you that I have read it. I am not sure what I am going to do, but I am going to try. What do you want me to do?

He said: Those three-wheelers are unsafe. It killed my friend. And, if you can, I want you to prevent them from being used, so that other little boys and adults don't get hurt or killed.

And I said: Well, that is a pretty big order, but let me see.

To make a long story short, Mr. Speaker, I started the work. That issue was in the jurisdiction of the Energy

and Commerce Committee. I was the junior member of the minority party. The chairman was the great John Dingell of Michigan, one of my very best friends to this day. But, at that time, he was the powerful chairman, and I was the junior member of the minority.

The ranking Republican on the committee then, I think, was Norm Lent of New York. So I went to Mr. Lent, and I went to Mr. Dingell. They decided that it needed to be investigated.

We did an investigation. We had a number of hearings that the Justice Department came to, and the ATV industry and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The little boy who had been killed, his mother, Anne Settle, who today is one of my best friends and still lives in Burleson in the same house, she came and testified.

Over a 3-year period--I believe it was 3 years--a consent agreement was formed among the Justice Department, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the ATV industry, and the Congress. That consent agreement was signed and ratified, and three-wheeler ATVs, Mr. Speaker, were taken off the U.S. market.

It was a 10-year agreement. When it expired, I don't know if the agreement was renegotiated. But, in any event, the three-wheelers did not come back, and the industry really moved to four-wheelers, which are much safer and not nearly as dangerous.

Mr. Speaker, that one letter from that one little boy, who was 11 years old, to his Congressman made a huge difference. It saved hundreds of lives per year, thousands of injuries, hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars, and it made the country safer. It took that little boy writing that letter to his Congressman, and then that Congressman, who in this case was me, doing something about it, picking up the phone, calling the little boy, then calling a Congressman. And people in the executive branch and people in the industry made a difference.

I will give you another case of a young woman, I believe she lived in Waxahachie, Texas, named Robin Benton. She was a nurse. Her mother became ill. She quit her job and moved, I think down to Houston, to take care of her. She took out insurance on an individual basis instead of a group basis where she had worked. She moved back after her mother improved, and Robin developed breast cancer--double. She had cancer in both breasts.

The insurance company that she had been covered by dropped her coverage, returned her premiums, and told her that they wouldn't cover her. Her doctor said she needed a double mastectomy, and she needed it immediately.

She didn't write a letter. She called my congressional office in Arlington and asked for help. My staff looked into it, touched base with the insurance company, and got the answer that the insurance company had checked their files and they didn't believe that they had made a mistake, that they had the right to cancel her coverage.

My staff brought the file to me. This was a desperate situation, Mr. Speaker, so I checked with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in Dallas and got their take on it.

Then I picked up the phone, and I called the president of that insurance company. I explained the situation to him. I said: It is my opinion that your internal review has made a mistake. I think this woman should be insured by your company, and I think her surgery should be covered. I would sure like for you to take a look at it. If I am not factually correct, then I won't pursue it. But if I am, if what I say is factually correct, I would ask that you reinstitute her coverage.

To his credit, the president of that insurance company checked his facts and checked the case file. He called me back and said: You are right, Congressman. We should cover her.

They did. She had the surgery. And to my knowledge, Mr. Speaker, she is alive today.

That is the power of the Congress, the power of the people, the power of an individual asking their Congressman for help, and the Congressman trying to help, and, in this case, the private sector checking the facts out and agreeing that the facts dictate that the woma should have been insured.

I will give you one more example. When I was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, we got jurisdiction over the internet. We had an investigation in the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of child pornography in America, Mr. Speaker. We had a number of witnesses in and a number of hearings.

The FBI had set up a special task force on child pornography. We had asked if they could send someone, one of their agents who was involved with that task force, to testify. The FBI said their policy was that their agents didn't testify before Congress.

We went back and forth, the staff to the FBI staff, without any resolution. Then I saw that the particular individual from the FBI who we wanted to testify, Mr. Speaker, did an interview on a national news show. When I saw that, I said, well, if that agent can appear on national TV, that agent ought to be able to appear before Congress and testify.

I picked up the phone on my desk, and I put in a phone call to the FBI Director. I was told that the FBI Director was unavailable. So I called back and I said: Well, where is the Director?

``Well, the Director is on travel, and he is out West.''

And I said: Well, I need this agent to testify. I checked with the ranking member, Mr. Dingell, and if he is not willing to testify voluntarily, I am willing to issue a subpoena that the minority will support to compel testimony from the FBI.

I got an agitated phone call that you couldn't do that, that it wasn't proper. The President at the time was my good friend President George W. Bush. So we said: Well, just check with the President of the United States and then let us know whether you are going to send your agent or not.

Well, sure enough, later that afternoon, I got a phone call from the FBI Director. He was very cordial, what could he do to help, that there would be no problem. I said: Well, I really appreciate that. I am just curious why the change of attitude.

He said: Well, we called over to the White House, and the President said that Congressman Barton was a good man, meant business, and, if it was not totally impossible, the FBI should cooperate.

The agent came the next day. We had good testimony, and that hearing led to a renewal of purpose in terms of the task force against child pornography. The FBI went on and did some really good work, and we passed some legislation that has tightened the law and the laws against child pornography on the internet.

Mr. Speaker, what is the point of all that? The point of those stories is that any Member of Congress who is given the privilege to have the voting card has a great opportunity. There are 435 phones on the desks of offices in the Rayburn, the Longworth, and the Cannon office buildings, and every Member has the potential to pick up that phone and call to help somebody in their district or their country or the world: the power of the people in the United States of America through the Constitution, delegated to the Congress, delegated to the House and Senate, delegated to individual House districts, given to Members who win elections.

And every Member who walks on this floor, Mr. Speaker, comes because they have won an election, not because they have been appointed by the President or the Speaker or the Governor, but because they have won a free and fair election in the congressional district they wish to represent, and a majority of those voting have said: You are the person. You are the man, you are the woman, to come to Washington.

So we are allowed to come up here and take the oath, be sworn in. Then we represent for a 2-year term, Mr. Speaker, our constituents, and we have an opportunity to help people.

In the 34 years that I have served here, I have done some great things legislatively. But the thing, Mr. Speaker, that I will miss the most, that I will really miss, is, every now and then, when I see something that is injurious to a person in my congressional district that I represent, I will not have the ability any longer to pick up that phone and call on behalf of that person. I will miss that. It is not an entitlement. It is a privilege won by being freely and fairly elected.

I have stood for office 17 times. I have won 17 primaries, one primary runoff, 17 general elections. I had the privilege to serve the people of the Sixth District for 34 years. As I said, I

think, earlier, in the history of the House, we are not sure where I stand in lifetime seniority, but it is in the top 100. I am tied for eighth in terms of senior service from the great State of Texas.

I have had the privilege to meet great people. John Dingell, the dean of the House, who served longer than any other person in the history of the House, is a role model for what a Congressman should be. Newt Gingrich, who was a backbencher bomb-thrower from the Conservative Opportunity Society and rose to be Speaker of the House, is probably the most brilliant person I have met who served in the House: inspirational, innovative, and a visionary. It has been a real privilege to get to know him and call him a friend.

Phil Gramm, who was the Congressman before me for the Sixth District, got elected to the Senate and represented the great State of Texas in the Senate until his retirement a number of years ago. He is another absolutely brilliant man who really has been a role model and a mentor for me.

In the current House, our current Speaker, Paul Ryan, I think has done yeoman's work to move this country in the right direction.

The incoming probable Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, we have different views philosophically, but she and I, when she was a junior Member and I was a junior Member, we worked together to pass the Chinese Student Asylum Act that let all of the Chinese students who were here in the country when Tiananmen Square happened, they were allowed to stay in this country legally until it was safe for them to go back to China.

Most of them did eventually return home, but some of them did choose to stay here. That is a bill that I worked on, and I am proud that she and I were able to get it passed.

The current chairman of my committee, Greg Walden, I think he is doing a great job as chairman. I had the privilege to meet wonderful people, like the immediate past chairman, Fred Upton; senior Members like John Shimkus of Illinois, who has worked so hard on Yucca Mountain.

On the other side of the aisle, Bobby Rush from Chicago, a former Black Panther, and I have a bill that passed the House and is standing in the Senate, to reform the strategic petroleum reserve.

This afternoon, Mr. Speaker, on this floor, Congresswoman Kathy Castor from Florida and I passed a bill called the IMPROVE Act, but within it are the ACE Kids Act. That bill passed the House 400-11. And if the Senate can pass it this week or next week--and I think they will--that bill will transform the way we provide healthcare for the poorest of the poor children who are already Medicaid eligible.

Mr. Speaker, it has been a privilege to serve the House of Representatives for the great people of Texas in the Sixth District for the last 34 years.

I consider it the highest honor of my life to have had the title of United States Representative, and I yield back the balance of my time.